SURROGATES
US, 2009, 104 minutes, Colour.
Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Boris Kodjoe, James Cromwell, Ving Rhames.
Directed by Jonathan Mostow.
The cast, led by Bruce Willis, Rhada Mitchell and Rosamund Pike, is not exactly a Who's Who of action drama casts. But Who's Who is a key to understanding this intriguing futuristic parable about identity, responsibility and allowing technology to cut people off from the realities of life.
The opening credit sequence has a lot going on: a resume history of recent decades with the progressive development of surrogate technology, the creating of robotic technology where the androids are controlled by the owners but speak and act vicariously for the controlling person who does not necessarily have to leave their room or their bed, lying down, physically idle, while the surrogate acts for them. And the surrogate need not be a look-alike. An individual can commission many surrogates, including their younger selves, or their would-be selves. That is the difficulty with Who's Who. James Cromwell as the inventor has several surrogates, younger men, a boy and can connect to other surrogates to disguise himself, including a police investigator.
At first we are bemused by a wigged Bruce Willis who looks as if he has had some plastic surgery. But, keeping out eye on the title of the film, we realise that this is an artificial Bruce Willis – and Bruce, in his mid-50s (and without the hair-piece) is soon revealed to us.
When the son of the creator of surrogates is killed, the surrogate police (Willis and Mitchell) investigate. So, we have a police investigation film where the surrogate can be destroyed while the controller lives – and takes on another surrogate. The moral of the story, however, is that technological advances are destroying our humanity, so Willis (the human one, not the surrogate) goes out to do the investigating himself. He ventures into a zone where humans against surrogates have a colony ruled by The Prophet (Ving Rhames) and are instigating protest and revolution.
Willis also has problems at home. His ageing wife refuses to come out of her room owing to the accidental death of their son – and lives through a glamorous and very worldly surrogate (both parts played by Rosamund Pike).
There is a satisfying semi-apocalyptic ending – but, while in real life and in public opinion, most people seem to be in favour of 'breakthrough' technological advances like this surrogacy, the movies tend to take the Frankenstein point of view, that science creates monsters that destroy us. Surrogates is one of these warning parables about such a future.
1.Audiences and futuristic films? What if…? Imagination, creativity, warnings? The critique of technology out of control?
2.The credits, the history of surrogacy? The outline, the developments? The founder and his success? The mystery of his disappearance?
3.The film as futuristic yet contemporary? The look of the city, the streets, the police precincts, apartments? The sector for the protesters? The credibility of the plot?
4.The basic idea: the inventor, robotics, androids, going beyond robots? Connecting the androids to the person and their minds? The person physically passive, the surrogate doing the experience for them? Vicarious experiences? The isolating of the individuals? Their stunted emotional development? Avoiding responsibilities? Letting the surrogate take the chances? Their alternate selves, their better selves, using other images for themselves?
5.The opening with the inventor’s son, his friends, relationship with his father, behaviour, not going to the opera, the club, his dive, the dancing, the girls, going outside, the mysterious rider, his being killed? The real self also dying? The witness?
6.Tom Greer and Peters? As surrogates? Their police work, thorough, on the crime scene, the investigation? Their ordinary police work? The film as a murder thriller investigation? Stone, his commands, the co-workers, the clues, the interviews?
7.The real Tom Greer, the appearance of his surrogate, younger? The surrogates going into the cases and being recharged? Peters at home, the real Peters and her surrogate? Stone, his ageing self, his presentable surrogate?
8.Tom Greer and his wife, her glamour, her lifestyle, lacking affection for Tom? Her independence, going out, her job, the beauty salon, her friends, their behaviour, giving themselves extra charge as a drug equivalent? Tom’s reaction? Confronting Maggie? The issue of their dead son? The real Maggie as aged, refusing to talk, isolated? Finally talking? Tom and his warning to the surrogate to beware the meltdown?
9.The real Tom, his age, appearance, sense of self, decision to come out, the clashes with his wife and the surrogate? Police work? The pursuit, the chase? Catching the assassin? The reaction of Stone? The reasons? The company manufacturing the surrogates? Assassinations?
10.The character of the Prophet, his ranting? The group of protesters, their slogans, Tom entering the precinct, seeing the Prophet, the warnings? The reasons for the revolt? The Prophet as a surrogate? Surrogate of the inventor? His death? The plans of the founder? His aims to destroy the surrogates? Using the appearance of the Prophet to raise the rebellion?
11.The variety of alternate surrogates for Carter? In the offices? The office assistants, the executives, the appearance of the boy? Tom tracking down Carter, the cupboards of surrogates, his use of a surrogate of Peters? His explanations?
12.Carter, the change of heart, the invention and his pride, the destruction, the death of his son? The plan to destroy all surrogates? His suicide?
13.The technology expert, his not being a surrogate? His control, the programs? The cross-examination by Tom? The alternatives, Tom and his decision whether to destroy the surrogates or not?
14.Peters as a surrogate, the chase, her personifying Carter, the fight, her being paralysed?
15.The result of Tom’s decision, the mass collapse of all the surrogates, in the street – like a massacre?
16.The television commentators on the event? Their observations on the consequences of the surrogates being destroyed and the effect on people?
17.Normal life rediscovered?
