Compliance

There are some flicks that I feel the need to review after I hear about them.  Now I am fortunate in the fact of where I live and my access to different events and such.

The truth is that I had heard about Compliance this past January after Sundance. There often is a film there that gets under the audience’s skin and they reach accordingly. In 2011 an acquaintance of mine screened a flick there and one person reacted to his film so angrily that he had to be removed by security and was filmed, the video went viral and the flick was given publicity that you could not buy.

Compliance had a similar situation where the QnA after the screening and you can download it on YouTube where the cast and filmmakers are standing in the front of the screen and the QnA begins and a man harshly berates both Dreama Walker and Director Craig Zobel for the use of nudity which I will rant about a little later in this article.

The film is heavily based on the true events that took place in 2004 at a Kentucky McDonalds where a man called a manager pretending to be a police officer and convinced the manager to perform a strip search of a young female employee. The situation escalated to a sexual assault by the manager’s fiancée.

Compliance follows the story very closely so close in fact that those of you that are familiar with the incident know what is going to happen before it happens. Many will complain about this fact but the real events are so unbelievable that no one would be able to embellish the story because it is unnecessary to the film.

The movie plays in real time with many continuous takes and following shots such as following the manager to her car in real time and following the lead investigator in his trip from the police station to the restaurant showing how far it was from the station. Even pointing out that he is there in less time than it takes him to finish his cigarette. That along with the use of symbolism in this film is amazing. The cinematography is also outstanding and works extremely well with both the music and lack of music in certain scenes.

All in all this flick is what it is it is an Art-house film that has the potential to go mainstream. In the QnA there is a woman that says that many young people need to see this flick to keep this from happening to someone else.

The film and the incident that inspired it brings attention to the infamous Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures. Which featured a test subject that had to shock another test subject if they answered a question wrong? The subjects were told that they must continue by an authority figure and a frightening amount chose to continue with the experiment despite the amount of pain that they thought that they were inflicting to the other test subject.

The truth is most people will listen to authority even as audacious as it sounds especially if the authority is the police.

Being that I am someone that does often question the authority the film was hard to watch In particular times. When the subject of Strip Searches came up and the fact that some refused and then walked away and stayed quiet to what was going on. However the caller even at times threatens harsher punishments to the victims as well as praises to others that are complying to his requests. The Caller, whom is given a super creepy performance by Pat Healy, even maintains his confidence and role as a police officer right until he is discovered as a hoax. Now the characters in the restaurant all think that he is the real thing but the viewers are shown pretty early on that Officer Daniels is nothing but a man at his home taking notes and getting off on what is happening. As soon as he knows that he has them where he wants them he ups the stakes and then escalates the situation.

Now on to what I was saying earlier about the man that reacted during the QnA about the nudity in the film. I feel that the film shares some commons with other flicks of the same nature. Films like I spit on your Grave, and the Woman where there are naked women in the film and the subject matter and the events that the woman are going through aren’t used for titillation but more for discuss where we are seeing how vulnerable the women are in the situation that they are in.

I don’t like the taboo associated with nudity. Now I used to be against nudity in films because of people that run websites that will just post the nude images of the women in the film and not tell anything about the film and just show the scenes or the stills taken from the film.

Now as a filmmaker myself I have seen situations in movies where it both adds to the film and takes away form the film. I can even pinpoint when nudity is used to add income to the film because the actress is willing to go the full monty and then there are times where the image of a naked woman is worth a thousand words.

Now I have also seen the negative reaction that people have against the actresses that make the choice to appear naked on film and it angers me to a point that I feel the need to speak out.

I even had an agent tell a room full of filmmakers that if you can’t make a film without nudity that you have no business being a filmmaker saying that you are being exploitive and that the actresses will regret it later on. I feel that the actress regrets it after the negative reaction from judgmental people that just can’t handle their reactions that seeing a pair of breasts on a screen makes them react and they have to get those feelings out of their heads and they feel the need to lash out at the woman that bared their breasts in the first place.

Now I am not going to say that there are some filmmakers that aren’t being exploitive with putting nudity in their films but at least most of them are being honest about it.

Now all of that aside I feel the need to point all of the creative directions that Compliance took to avoid the nudity in particular in the scenes where the sexual assault takes place and the girl is forced to perform oral sex on the man trusted to watch her. The filmmakers use different angles such as the girl’s feet and hands reacting to what she is being forced to do and I really liked the use of the footage of the straw for symbolism which makes me feel the need to point out that this actually happened.

I agree that Compliance should receive a mainstream release and should also be available on Netflix because of the subject matter. Stressing the fact that this flick is not for everyone as walkouts have happened before and they will continue but that is our privilege as the ticket buyer.

Now for those of you that go and are bothered by the content please don’t spoil it for the others that are in the theater.