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It takes something truly extraordinary for me to be dazzled by an actor, writer, or director, but, with her work on SURVEILLANCE, writer and director Jennifer Lynch earned my deep respect, greatly strengthening my beliefs regarding her unique vision, style, and how she works on a project. It is widely documented that Lynch earned a notorious reputation for blurring the lines with her film “Boxing Helena”, and now, with SURVEILLANCE, she does the same with psycho thrillers. She manages to captivate, enthrall and intrigue us with the intensity of her own voice, all while she expertly tells a gripping tale of cat and mouse, and all of it is bound together by the voice of the innocent child.
Let’s face it, sometimes the highway can get a little creepy. The golden brown hapless fields can get so monotonous that one can lose themselves in a trance. That is why companies like Tesla are so popular now. But, even with barrenness all around, a car can be their solace. As a family driving to a vacation, the parents can listen to their endless chatter while the kids have fun fighting and wailing at the back, which is far better than sitting in silence. If you are young and drug users who are deeply in love, you drown in your unsophisticated fantasies, taking constant puffs to get high. Or the worst case scenario, if you are a cop whose biggest concern is getting bored, trying to play horrible pranks on all the innocent travelers can feel like heaven. And then those who contemplate murder have an entire bracket of new emotions. Pushing the road raged drivers or unsuspecting tourists over the edge can be their idea of fun.
The law enforcement has not kept with the times and that puts out officers Jack Bennett and Jim Conrad as the last two people who should be on the police force. They get a thrill from harassing unsuspecting drivers either by setting up fake speed traps or bursting their tires, chasing after them with the goal of ‘having fun’ with them. They dream of more extreme forms of entertainment, such as being serial killers. Luckily, Bennett and Conrad’s wish is about to come true. Their chief, Captain Billings, enjoys his tranquil town with no signs of crime. But everything changes when FBI agents, Sam Hallaway and Elizabeth Anderson, show up at the station. Their goal to investigate the highway shooting case in the area. Coincidentally there is a call of a local motel which is suspected murder scene. Captain Billings is already having a meltdown, having just gotten reports of an Officer Bennett, who was accompanied with a bizarrely calm yet terrified young girl, claiming she was one of the survivors of a mass murder spree that took place on the highway.
Having taken control of the investigation, Hallway puts himself in a position of voyeurism, listening to the interrogation from another room which is made possible by the monitors, while Anderson chooses to ask gentle questions to a motherly Stephanie about her experience of witnessing the murder of her mother, step-father alongside her brother. Or does she? Bennett who has just witnessed the murder of his partner is hotly pursued by Billings and the second officer. Prescott who has been watching her boyfriend being murdered gets her chance to speak too. And so, we retrace the timeline of the day. All of them have now been disked served into the same ultimate encounter of intersectionality and destiny. They were all on the scene at once. But, each of them has a distinct narrative. But who watched and documented what? And what was their observation? And who is declaring, or isn’t declaring, reality? And just what is it that wee little Stephanie gets to see and understand?
My good friend Bill Pullman is aware about how deeply I admire and adore him and his work. Pullman in my opinion is one of the most underrated actors in the world. He is an actor, teacher, writer, and a doctor, and to top it all he is an amazing cowboy. As unassuming as he is, and quiet as he might appear, his firm, eatable performance is nothing short of awe inspiring.
Pullman’s talent helps him to easily transition between the roles of a lovestruck man with Sandra Bullock, the US president battling aliens, and a vintner in ‘Bottle Shock.’ It’s hard to believe, but I think I would have liked Pullman more as Bill Frich in ‘Your Name Here.’ In Pullman’s most recently captivating role as Sam Hallway in ‘SURVEILLANCE’, I was besotted. He truly exceeded all expectations. Pullman’s portrayal of Hallway is completely uncharacteristic of everything he’s done up until this point, and in my opinion, it’s legitimately genius. He captivates the audience with an extreme portrayal of a problematic psychological profile, With a devilish twinkle in his eye and a smile that can win over anyone, he sets the stage to turn on a dime. It becomes impossible to differentiate where Pullman ends and the character begins; instead it draws you deeper into the character and the story. You simply can’t look away. It makes me wonder how Pullman and Julia Ormond managed to pull off such an impossible role together without being rated NC-17. There are so many scenes in which they act alongside eachother that shocks me.
The first time I came across Julia Ormond on a See Now, I vividly remember being infatuated with her.
Ryan Simpkins is more than holding her own with veterans Pullman and Ormond. As Stephanie, she wide eyed innocence with an abundance of charm. without having much to say, she captivates the audience with a single thoughtful glance, which is why her performance is so exceptional. She is one of those actors who will always be appreciated, as she has already been featured alongside DiCaprio and Winslet in “Reservation Road,” and now Pullman and Ormond. Alongside her, we also have Pell James as Bobbi Prescott. James is a raw force of nature, who infuses a grounded yet dynamic energy while portraying the coked out Bobbi. She completely balances the fierce, protective, and maternal relationship she has with Simpkins’ Stephanie, layering over the character.
2009-07-01 Rounding out the cast, Officer Conrad will be played by French Stewart who gives a tour de force performance with his demented and twisted character. This is a real casting coup by Lynch. It’s also delightful to see for me at least two of my long time favorite character actors, Michael Ironside as Captain Billings and Caroline Steiner as his secretary Janet. Both of them are welcome faces recognizable to you all. And there’s no way to miss Cheri Oteri who has a serious turn as Stephanie’s ill-fated mother.
Lynch compared her casting process to a ‘painfully pleasant one’ and wrote the character of Hallway for Pullman who, for whatever reason, turned down on the part at first. Fortunately, with the passing of time and endless revisions, two weeks before going to camera he was recast. Lynch was quite fortunate in this instance, because the Pullman was wrapped this time. “I’m in,” he said. “or ‘I’ll get in’ after Lynch told her the role was waiting for her. For Lynch, the quote ‘a dream come true’ fit perfectly. Simpkins on the other hand was a surprise who’d come asking for the role and looking for Lynch, which was quite the challenge for Lynch. For Simpkins, the child cum performer which Lynch was looking for reminded her of her daughter honest and plenty of childlike excitement.
Fascinated by the concept of being able to ‘make a serial killer film that [I] hadn’t seen before that really examined how f***ed up it is when people are wounded and then become people who wound…and how the lines between sex and violence get blurred’ is what motivates Jennifer Lynch to bring forth a new level of psychological horror with SURVEILLANCE. (In my opinion, she is far more gifted than her father, David Lynch). The fact that she has decided to draw on her personal background as “the kid in the back seat who saw something on a cross country trip and wasn’t listened to” served as the inspiration for an alternate version of SURVEILLANCE which is gloomy, as well as thinking about powerful and heavily armed law enforcement, mold FBI agents who “got something kind crazy going on,” and “cookie cutter cop who isn’t at all what he seems to be.”
Storytelling has always been Lynch’s forte, and her writing is akin to that of a cake maker.
She builds and builds, moving you closer and closer to the edge of your, intentionally creating complexities in the story, all of which is done to showcase the motives behind the characters lies and each other’s morally ambiguous actions, and further deepen their interest, and increase their anticipation, and cinematic arousal before the climactic revelation. The tension is intense and vivid and plays to the intelligence of an audience, raising the bar. Which is pertinent to the plot. John McTeague once said when you film Mulk, all you are doing, is compressing an enormous amount of detail into a small physical space, so everything is extremely vivid. Dynamic is the right word. While filming Mulk I wondered what Ryan Simpkins was thinking, and how he ended up where he was. That statement alone is quite revealing. He does not believe that “anybody has to suffer to make something good” or “be unhappy to make an unhappy scene,” Jennifer would motivate Ryan to inspire “something without torturing her,” like discussion about how Brussels sprouts soup would “get her to look the way I needed her to look without torturing her.”
Speaking to Lynch is an experience that I will forever cherish and hope to have many more of. Her enthusiasm for the film and life itself is unparalleled and so is her clarity of thought. Lynch was involved in all aspects of the film and her decision on the selection of the technical crew, starting with her cinematographer Peter Wunstorf and his astonishing work, was some of the many crystal clear and calculated choices she made. The different color palettes and patinas, along with the work of Wunstorf, play a key part in the sensory effects of the film. There is a cold distinctness to the outside, while the interior is a muted amalgamation of colors with the occasional splash of golden brown. The use of black and white for the surveillance monitors is deliberate on the part of Lynch and Wunstorf and adds to the concept of “everyone’s memory looking different.” The cop is patinaed in an auburn gold to reflect his “legend in his own mind,” and everything is hyper-real, so overexposed that every single thing being viewed is just a little too bright and washed, but not too much. The individualized looks for each character also adds to the scenery.
This piece was shot on four different kinds of Kodak film stock, each creating a different look due to the treatment applied to them. It was then the task of Wanstor to elaborate on the distinct looks of Lynch’s vision to film perfectly.
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