Welcome to Now Playing!—A column in which I’ll be introducing little hidden gems of the entertainment world, films and television series alike. Keep reading, keep watching, and let me know what you think. You never know what you might discover.
Press the Home button on your iPhone, have your Android on standby. Shut down your laptop and turn off your TV. And what’s staring back at you but that black mirror. That empty screen. Blank, unresponsive. But the damage’s already done. Technology’s in your system. The internet is flowing throw your blood. We’re addicts, our generation. We check our smartphones constantly. Rely on our laptops and television for a large part, if not most, of the time. We tell ourselves we can’t live without them, these devices, and in some cases, that rings alarmingly true.
The late 1950’s had The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling’s famed sci-fi television series whose macabre effects played on the dark side of human psyche, the not-so-fanciful possibilities of extraterrestrials, and that beloved idea of a dystopian future. Inspired by the series, Charlie Brooker, British satirist, served up the 2010’s with his original, acerbic creation: Black Mirror. Black Mirror started off strong and haunting, grabbing its viewers’ attention from the first scene of its premiere episode in December 2011. The storyline is deceptively simple and prevalent; a fictional royal princess is kidnapped, and a specific ransom demand is made to the Prime Minister of the UK. Except this wouldn’t be Black Mirror without the underlying complications: the ransom video is uploaded onto YouTube, and the demand involves the Prime Minister engaging in a grossly indecent, personal act—one that could drastically injure his reputation and family relations. The consequences are predictable but disturbing, and Black Mirror rolls them out, unflinching and brutally honest. The internet speculates. Twitter blows up, and the Prime Minister’s reputation hangs on a fragile string held by the public. The episode, aptly titled “The National Anthem,” explores the disparities between our private and public personas. Each scene is well-executed, gripping, and—towards the end of the episode—even difficult to watch. Rory Kinnear, one of Britain’s leading Shakespearean actors, pulled off a flawless performance in the role of the conflicted Prime Minister. What awaits him at the episode’s denouement is a grim fate that would leave a sour taste in one’s mouth and spark a series of doubting questions in one’s mind long after the credits roll.
The next Black Mirror episode lands the audience in a “nightmarish Orwellian future,” as termed by Charlie Brooker. Each Black Mirror episode is a different cast, a different reality, a different ambience. The audience gets a fresh perspective of another dark corner in Black Mirror’s world. “Fifteen Million Merits” stars the UK series Skins’ Daniel Kaluuya as Bing, a citizen living in a world in which its population bike to gain credits to trade units for food; for continuous, omnipresent entertainment brought by corporate advertising; and for a digital presence. The citizens’ bedrooms and workout rooms are entirely surrounded by screens, which monitor and pause its “entertainment” whenever the citizens choose to “block their vision.” The only way out is through an Britain’s Got Talent-like contest, called Hot Shot. When Bing falls for Abi (Downton Abbey’s Lady Sybil, Jessica Brown-Findlay), an amateur singer with a lovely voice and an even lovelier face, he trades his credits to pave her a path into the contest, a trigger that crumbles up his entire world. Black Mirror takes our obsession with reality shows to the extreme in Bing’s world, and mocks the empty existence which seems to be the next step from our indulgence in applications and in these non-human interfaces, backed by corporate advertising.
Facebook stalking. Sounds familiar? I’m not accusing anyone here, but it’s that prevalent concept, a stranger to none of us. Black Mirror’s “The Entire History of You” dramatizes the concept in a stark, believable way. Everyone in Liam’s (Toby Kebbell) world has a “Grain” implemented in their eyes, an invisible device that allows one to replay, zoom in, and pause on any memory one has experienced. When suspicion waltzes into Liam’s house in the form of his wife Fifion’s (a fantastic Jodie Whittaker, Broadchurch) old fling Jonas (Downton Abbey’s Count Gillingham, Tom Cullen), the Grain has Liam digging further back into of his and his wife’s trail of personal information in such scruntiny that threatens to disrupt the stability of his life. The story is cliché and has been told before, I hear you, but this is Black Mirror. Nothing is what it seems, and the role technology plays in this soap opera turn of the show lays bare the thin line between “natural impulses and ubiquitous technology,” according to Brooker. Humans, when given the chance and cornered by circumstances, can impulsively drown themselves in unsurprising negativity.
That concludes an overview of Black Mirror’s Season One, all episodes of which I enjoyed and was shocked by. Season Two’s highlight is the Hayley Atwell-led (Captain America’s Peggy Carter) episode, “Be Right Back,” in which a woman mourning the loss of her boyfriend becomes attached to almost an exact, but digital, replacement of him, built entirely upon the information he, a social media addict, had posted online. Domnhall Gleeson (the charming lead man of About Time, also on screen now as the software developer entangled in an artificial intelligence existential crisis in the brilliant Ex Machina) co-stars as the boyfriend, Ash. The episode’s build up was teased from the beginning, yet expected and dreaded. Hayley Atwell single-handedly carried the episode, without turning her grief into cliché or a caricature of one, subtly allowing the audience into her desolation, and you’d root for her without even knowing how.
The first episode of the latest season, Season Three, is a particular favourite of mine, a Christmas special told in five parts and possibly the best episode Black Mirror has ever done. White Christmas ropes in Matt (Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, in a delightfully evil Don Draper role) and Joe (Rafe Spall, the usual supporting man as he was in What If, in a superb acting showcase, the kind you have never seen him in before) in a remote cabin house with a lone window looking out to an eternal snowing season. Joe, the more tactiturn of the two, refuses to converse with a cheerful Matt, all done up in a Christmas spirit. When Matt talks, he reveals his past hobby as a virtual pick-up artist, and the web is spun. The concept of “blocking,” as you would do on Twitter or Facebook, actually exists in this reality—you could “block” people in real life. A rich person could even pay to have a miniature virtual copy, a “cookie,” of his/herself work to serve him or her. As to how the two concepts tie into Matt’s and Joe’s stories, and how they intertwine to a terrifying twist, I’ll leave that for you to watch. I was exclaiming a huge, “WHAT!” in disbelief, my voice strangled and my heart bruised—I can tell you that much.
If your favorite series is on hiatus, and you’re looking for something fresh and unique to fill that 45-minute break, definitely give Black Mirror a chance. Watch an episode and try to silence those thoughts ringing in your head afterwards.
Now: turn off your TV, laptop, or phone screen, and see if you still look back at them the same way.
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