“This is your life, right here, right now! It’s real-time, you hear me, real time!” – Mace, Strange Days
Somewhere back in the dim and distant mists of time, around this sort of time of year, I made a resolution to start a blog to post movie reviews and articles, rather than just dropping them scattershot on social media. Finally, far too many years later, I just went and did it (go me).
So, what to write about for that first post…
I thought about grinchily sticking the knife into some Christmas movies (there’s an especially awful Heather Grahamstarrer that will get a proper shivving at some stage), or drooling about a couple of great films coming in 2024, then we caught a showing of Kathryn Bigelow’s shiny millennial angst proto-cyberpunk-noir thriller Strange Days at the NFT, and it seemed somehow apt to start a story about belatedly making good on promises .
Many of the films that came out around the same time look woefully dated now, especially Hackers (Oh wow, it’s a 14.4Kbps modem!) and even the Matrix with its unmistakably 90s trenchcoats, shades and mobile phones. So it’s odd how untroubled by the passage of time Strange Days has been, especially considering the events of the film are all pegged very specifically to New Year’s Eve 1999, nearly a quarter century ago.
Part of that is down to Bigelow and writer (and erstwhile hubby) James Cameron not bothering to explain the technology in any real detail, a la Blade Runner and Cameron’s previous The Terminator. We discover that the “S.Q.U.I.D.” device records someone’s entire experience – sight, smell, touch, emotions – onto something that looks suspiciously like an old Sony Minidisc, but how it works may as well be magic.
Beyond that McGuffin though, there’s little in the film that pegs it to anyone’s wild 90s swing at what the future may look like. No one’s wearing wacky asymmetrical polyester tailored jumpsuits or driving around in weird jelly mould cars. Scumbags dress like scumbags, punks dress like punks, suits wear suits, and Juliette Lewis wears clothes. Sometimes.
Plot-wise, Strange Days is a classic noir more than anything. With very few major changes, it could easily be set in the forties, fifties, sixties… It’s just the age-old tale of the corrosive effect of money, drugs, love and power, and one of those films where every character has a detailed past and more agendas than a branch of Staples. It also keeps you guessing right to the end, with a couple of great twists that will blindside you the first time, but the clues are there all along when you watch it again.
What makes Strange Days feel especially current is that a major plot point involves social unrest after the murder of a black man in police custody, and the authorities’ disproportionate paramilitary response to it. This film was written partly in response to the Rodney King beating and subsequent LA riots, and seemed like a slightly overinflated parody back then. Since then we’ve had George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, largely unaccountable paramilitary US police forces, armoured vehicles on the streets, and institutional offenders only getting banged to rights if they’re caught on film and posted on YouTube. These days what we see in the film just feels like life.
The film centres around Ralph Fiennes’ ex-cop, VR experience dealer and general cockroach, to whom Fiennes brings a grubby likeability, some flashy shirts and perhaps the most natural American accent I’ve ever heard from a Brit actor. Alongside him, Michael Wincott, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore and Vincent D’Onofrio all shine in roles tailor-made for them. However the film is very much Angela Bassett’s. What could be a cartoon character becomes the beating heart of the film in her talented hands, and she makes you feel every moment of the anguish of having that one person in your life you’ll never abandon but have to watch as they go down a dark spiral, and just might take you with them.
Strange Days is a film that merits being seen on the big screen at least once, preferably on New Year’s Eve, because it is a beautiful piece of work. The VR scenes are extraordinarily cleverly done considering the technology available at the time, but more than that, the camerawork is just breathtaking, creating spectacle from tiny details and vivid colours rather than the sheer sturm und drang of more recent effects films. The soundtrack is also an excellent snapshot of the late 90s, from Skunk Anansie to Lords of Acid, not to mention Juliette Lewis stamping her authority all over a couple of great PJ Harvey covers, in what seems in retrospect like an audition for Juliette and the Licks.
It’s weird to be part of the only group of living humans to ever experience pre-millennial movies. And even weirder that the next generation to have that experience (on the off chance humanity is still around) are further away from us than we are from William the Conqueror. Maybe by then it will be indeed possible to inject movies right into your frontal lobe, for better or worse.
And on that cheery note, have a great 2024!
