Richard Hannay’s journey into the deadly mystery of The 39 Steps begins by pure happenstance, with international spy Annabella Smith falling into his arms at a variety show the moment gunshots are fired and the crowd erupts into panic. When he learns of her true identity shortly before her assassination and picks up her mission where she left off though, he chooses to become an agent of his own will, navigating a conspiracy of national significance that unwittingly leads him right to the heart of the shady organisation she had been investigating. The stakes are enormous, threatening to compromise the United Kingdom’s military defence should its vital secrets be leaked, but Alfred Hitchcock is smart enough to recognise that this is not why we are watching. The 39 Steps is not a story of complex political intrigue, but rather of one man’s temptation into the sweet allure of danger, paralleling Hitchcock’s own growing fascinations in the 1930s as his thrillers developed new psychological depths.
After all, it doesn’t take much to nudge Hannay into this life that sends him running from authorities, many of whom are convinced he is guilty of Annabelle’s sudden murder. All he is left with to prove his innocence is her cryptic clue of “the 39 steps”, the identifying mark of nine-fingered criminal mastermind Professor Jordan, and a map leading him to a building in the Scottish moors called Alt-na-Shellach. From there, Hitchcock unravels a cat-and-mouse chase that puts him in the crosshairs of both the police and villainous secret agents, never quite knowing who he can really trust.
Double exposure early on as the deceased Annabella speaks to Hannay, leading him down a path of espionage.Canted angles and close-ups as Hannay is pulled deeper down the path he has been set on.The nine-fingered Professor Jordan is a prototype for Bond villains with his distinctive physical deformity, making for some bold iconography.
Though North by Northwest is often credited as a James Bond prototype, it is hard to ignore the standard set here as a precursor to both, traversing magnificent set pieces across rural and urban environments that bring Hannay treacherously close to capture and death. Hitchcock takes advantage of the Scottish Highlands to shoot the fugitive’s shrunken silhouette in marvellous wide shots wading through rivers, hiding within natural cavities, and climbing its craggy peaks, but even more spectacular is his use of national monuments as set pieces that further infuse his quest with colossal significance. Edinburgh’s Palladium Theatre is his choice of location to shoot the climax, while the Forth Rail Bridge sets the scene for Hannay’s quick escape off a train, precariously balancing him on this “monument to Scottish engineering and Scottish muscle” before dropping him into the river below.
Hitchcock may be more acclimated to his urban set pieces, but there is rugged beauty to his chases through the Scottish moors, sending Hannay up rocky mountainsides and through rushing rivers.The Forth Rail Bridge, a “monument to Scottish engineering and Scottish muscle,” marks the site of Hannay’s first dramatic escape from the police.Edinburgh’s Palladium Theatre has since been torn down, but it was once an icon of Scottish class and sophistication – and Hitchcock revels in tainting it with murder and treachery.
It is also upon that bridge that Hitchcock sets in motion another key subplot, briefly crossing Hannay’s path with another train passenger, Pamela, who curtly rejects his attempted alliance and immediately turns him in. When she finally re-enters the narrative as an aid to the police, Hitchcock delights in toying with their romantic chemistry, linking them up at a political conference where he disguises himself as a guest speaker and catches her bewildered gaze while up onstage. As the police close in and Hannay continues his charismatic impromptu speech, we suspensefully cut between their locked eyes, watching him gain the rapturous support of an audience who effectively forms a protective barrier around him with their fanatic clamouring.
Hitchcock’s editing often runs in contrast to the dialogue, here revealing Hannay’s guilt through his locked gaze with the detectives, all while he props up his disguise as a political speaker.
Pamela does not need to worry about him getting away from her a second time though, especially when she finds herself incidentally handcuffed to the man she has been set on bringing down. Hitchcock milks the visual comedy of this for all it’s worth, sending Hannay back through the Scottish moors, though this time with a reluctant companion stuck to his wrist. Stopping at a countryside inn for the night, they pose as a pair of lovers so infatuated that they just can’t stop holding hands, leading to some light slapstick and wry banter brought on by their less-than-ideal attachment. Only when the police officers she is assisting stop by and she overhears their conversation does she recognise the truth of Hannay’s purported innocence – those detectives are in fact spies, looking to ensure he does not interfere with their plans.
Some light physical comedy in the forced attachment by handcuffs, hidden by the disguise of inseparable lovers.Eavesdropping and voyeurism in Hitchcock’s staging, making excellent use of both the foreground and background.
Even as Hitchcock’s characters are shaken by developments such as these, his camera never falters in its calm precision, here framing Pamela high in the foreground as those she is eavesdropping on unwittingly confess their fraud a floor below. So too does his editing maintain a steady tension in its pacing, timing its reveals with tantalising accuracy, though it is when he combines his stylistic virtuosity with a brilliant narrative economy that his adventure pays off in a twist as clever as it is exhilarating. The national secrets at the centre of the film’s conspiracy are not written down, but rather hidden inside the head of a man with a photographic memory, who Hannay realises he has encountered once before – in the variety show from the very first scene.
The camera slowly tracks back from a mid-shot into a wide as the room empties, communicating a growing isolation without so much as a cut.
Compelled to answer whatever questions are thrown his way from the audience, Mr. Memory doesn’t falter either in accidentally exposing the duplicitous spy organisation when Hannay, determined to save himself from being arrested, shouts out a single, damning question.
“What are The 39 Steps?”
Professor Jordan’s efforts to shut up Mr. Memory with a swift gunshot come a few seconds too late. With one villain being taken in by police and another bleeding out backstage, Hitchcock does not hold back his dark sense of humour, keeping the variety show joyfully running in the background with a line of can-can dancers. Hannay and Pamela may have faced very real dangers on their journey, and yet much like Hitchcock they have also fallen for its intoxicating pull, discovering exultation where one might only expect to find trauma and regret. As the camera pulls back from Mr. Memory’s death in the final shot, their hands join again, though this time not because of any handcuffs forcibly binding them together. For the first time in The 39 Steps, their physical union emerges from genuine romantic affection, willingly embracing the partner that their fateful mission thrust upon them with mutual care and profound understanding.
Another short, swift camera movement right at the very end, this time ending on a shot we have seen before – only this time, these hands are joined out of love and free will.
The 39 Steps is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV. You can also purchase The 39 Steps on DVD from Amazon.
True to Ingmar Bergman’s seasonal metaphors drawn through so many of his films, Autumn Sonata oversees a harvest of the emotional kind unfold in the twilight years of one mother’s life. For the entirety of her daughters’ childhoods, Charlotte has been dedicated to her career as a classical pianist, and held both Eva and Helena to standards as rigorous as those she imposes on herself. Perhaps she has wanted to see them succeed in similar fields, letting them enter the world as even more refined versions of herself, though now with a more mature mind and decades’ worth of hindsight, this does not seem the case to Eva. All at once, the insecurity which haunts Charlotte’s mind simultaneously turns them into similarly flawed copies, and ensures that their successes may never exceed her own. Bergman’s framing of them as echoes of each other represents just as much too, as both habitually grasp at their faces in close-up while Eva levels biting accusations at her mother.
“The mother’s injuries are handed down to the daughter. The mother’s failures are paid for by the daughter. The mother’s unhappiness will be the daughter’s unhappiness. It’s as if the umbilical cord had never been cut. Is that true? Is the daughter’s misfortune the mother’s triumph? Is my grief your secret pleasure?”
Shared habits carrying across generations of women in a single shot – brilliant acting from both Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Bergman, but also an excellent framing of their faces.
For Eva, this grief most prominently manifested in the form of an abortion forced on her at age 18, introducing her to the profound trauma of losing a child that would strike her again many years later in the death of her four-year-old son Erik. So too does she blame her mother’s abandonment for indirectly causing Helena’s severe disability, leaving her paralysed and unable to speak. In the grand scheme of things though, it is the accumulation of subtle, cruel acts which have left the deepest psychological imprints. With a childless void left in Eva’s life, and Helena feeling the absence of her mother, a surrogate relationship has formed between the two that cuts Charlotte out altogether, seeing one sister become the other’s caretaker. Now with Charlotte suddenly visiting their home after many years of silence though, the time has come for her to reap the seeds of misery she has sown – not merely neglecting the wellbeing of her daughters, but wholly sabotaging their attempts to lead happy lives.
The earthy, autumnal colours of Bergman’s exteriors seep indoors, grounding his film in the season of harvests.
Besides the symbolism of growth and harvest that Ingmar Bergman attaches to Autumn Sonata, it is fitting that this is the season he left until last as a figurative representation of his career, having previously used Spring, Summer, and Winter in cinematic illustrations of life’s cycles. At this point he still had a couple more decades of filmmaking ahead of him, including one of his greatest accomplishments in Fanny and Alexander, but the large bulk of his work from the 1980s onward would largely be in television productions that inhibited his creative freedom. As such, Autumn Sonata is located near the edge of his sharp artistic decline, reflecting Bergman’s concerns of old age and mortal regrets in its central mother figure.
Maybe this is also why he finally resolved to collaborate with the last truly great Swedish actress of the era that his path had not crossed yet, Ingrid Bergman. Autumn Sonata marks her final film performance before she would pass away four years later, but even so she makes every minute onscreen count, embodying a severe repression that holds back any displays of maternal affection. Quite significantly, this coldness extends to her music as well. Though her face breaks into soft tenderness while listening to her daughter play the piano, this is not something she can express verbally. Instead, her only remark is an aloof correction of her stylistic interpretation, and a far more refined demonstration of how the piece should be played instead. The way she speaks of music, it might as well be a form of self-punishment, proving her wilful endurance against the temptation to connect with her audiences.
“Chopin was emotional, but not sentimental. Feeling is very far from sentimentality. The prelude tells of pain, not reverie. You have to be calm, clear and harsh. Take the first bars now. It hurts but he doesn’t show it. Then a short relief… but it evaporates at once, and the pain is the same. Total restraint the whole time… The prelude must be made to sound almost ugly. It is never ingratiating. It should sound wrong. You have to battle your way through it and emerge triumphant. Like this.”
The piano scene succinctly captures everything about this mother-daughter dynamic and boils it down to a piano piece played twice over. Everything about this is brimming with subtext, from the musical performances to the monologue on how Chopin should be played.
On the other side of this relationship too, Ingmar sets up Liv Ullmann perfectly as the daughter dealing with her own repressed pain, only now bitterly recognising flaws in the woman she had been seeking praise from for so long. As Ingrid Bergman plays the same piano piece we heard a few moments earlier with greater technical proficiency, Ingmar captures both their faces in a shared close-up, though it is Ullmann’s defeated expression of contempt, exasperation, longing, and sadness which draws our attention. Very slowly, her gaze slowly shifts between Bergman’s face and hands, recognising how this single demonstration of snobbish superiority captures their entire relationship. When Bergman finally finishes playing, the only remark she can muster up is a feeble acknowledgment – “I see.” She has no words yet to express the emotional isolation she feels from her mother, but by the time the final act of Autumn Sonata arrives, they will start flowing freely like notes on a piano.
Tremendous acting from Ullmann in this shot – an expression of contempt, exasperation, longing, and sadness as her gaze moves between her mother’s face and hands.
In the meantime, verbal expressions of this grating tension are predominantly expressed through monologues in separate rooms. While they independently prepare for the evening meal, Ingmar Bergman intercuts back and forth between their petty jabs, each one imagining what the other is thinking and trying to outsmart them. “Watch carefully how she dresses for dinner. Her dress will be a discreet reminder that she’s a lonely widow,” Eva gripes to her husband, only barely masking her resentment with an air of humour. As if reading her daughter’s mind from across the house, Charlotte mutters her response. “I’ll put on my red dress just to spite Eva. I’m sure she thinks I ought to be in mourning.”
Besides Helena, it is that fourth member of the household who acts as a neutral witness to this malicious dynamic, at times even becoming a surrogate for the audience. Viktor has long grown distant from his wife, dealing with the grief of losing his son far more internally than Eva’s outpouring of emotion, and so within Autumn Sonata he becomes a framing device of sorts who opens and closes the narrative with direct addresses to the camera. He often silently watches from neighbouring rooms, refusing to involve himself in their drama, and it is often this perspective that Ingmar Bergman takes with his consistent framing of actors through doorways, mirrors, and casings.
A superb framing device in the fourth wall breaks by Viktor, Eva’s husband, peering in at this complicated relationship as an outside observer.
On one level, these beautifully curated interiors invite us into their warm, orange colour palettes, reflecting the seasonal exteriors in the lighting and décor of Eva’s cosy home. Its inhabitants frequently dress in bursts of red and other earthy tones, and there is even a cosiness to the light clutter of flowers, chandeliers, and striped wallpaper which decorate the mise-en-scène. Still, there is an undeniable harshness to Ingmar Bergman’s blocking, integrating a touch of Yasujirō Ozu’s aesthetic in his rigorous setting of frames in family environments. From this distance, Eva and Charlotte are totally isolated, oppressively bound together within close domestic quarters yet failing to reach any emotional understanding of each other.
Some of Bergman’s most extraordinary visuals can be found in his framing of domestic interiors and blocking, painting out scenes of family discontent and isolation.
This sense of peering into the lives of this family is magnified even further when Ingmar Bergman slips into dreams and flashbacks, imbuing each with the uneasy surrealism of their repressed memories. Easily the most horrific of all these scenes unfolds in Charlotte’s sleep, unfolding her nightmare of being choked by Eva while she lays helpless in bed, though our brief journeys into their subjective recollections of the past develop a far more wistful tone. Not once does Bergman submit his camera to close-ups when we are in this subjective realm, instead dedicating a single, wide tableau to each scene and thereby refusing to engage too intimately with such sensitive traumas. When a much younger Charlotte shuts herself away to play piano, her daughter waits patiently outside the room, further revealing the unnurtured roots of a relationship painfully captured in one long dissolve dominating the tiny child Eva with a close-up of her mother’s aged face.
We too feel as if we are examining the past from a cold distance through Bergman’s tableaux, setting his camera back in wide shots for each flashback and looking through doorways.Long dissolves dreamily connect the past to the present, underscoring the formidable dominance of Charlotte on her daughter’s life in this specific composition.
When the seal is finally broken on Eva’s wounded silence and the past comes pouring back into the present, there is no longer any holding back the honest anger between both women. “I distrusted your words. They didn’t match the expression in your eyes,” Eva recalls, reflecting on the lie of her mother’s smile when she was clearly mad. Her attempts to live up to her mother’s beauty, intellectualism, and musical talent were never compensated with any sort of recognition. From that desperate insecurity grew hatred, which in turn gave birth to an insane fear, clearly stunting her emotional growth which has echoed through to her adult years.
Although Eva is effectively reduced to the mentality of a distressed child in her sobbing, there is at least a conscious connection being formed for Charlotte when, for the first time, she embarks on her own self-reflection. She too recalls her childhood where she was never touched by her parents, whether out of affection or punishment, and so she turned to music as a form of expression. She did not want to be a mother, she confesses, desiring to be held rather than the one who does the holding, though Eva does not hesitate in calling out the obliviousness of this desire.
“I think I wanted you to take care of me… To put your arms around me and comfort me.”
“I was a child.”
The final act of the film is where mother and daughter can finally speak honestly, leading to a showcase of virtuosic acting from both Ullmann and Bergman, and almost convincing us that they may move past their mutual traumas.
With Charlotte’s cold, stone heart finally breaking and recognising the trauma that has spread from one generation to the next, Ingmar Bergman almost gives us hope that there may be some change on the horizon for both women. Quite despairingly though, it only takes until the next day when she is on her way back home that old habits and attitudes rear their head, summoning them back into the toxic cycles which originally drove them apart. As far as Charlotte is concerned, she can’t be that terrible a person – after all, she plays concertos with warmth, and she isn’t at all stingy. Even more painfully, Eva has completely reverted into her submissive desperation for acceptance, resolving to write an apology letter to her mother.
“Dear Mama, I realise that I wronged you. I met you with demands instead of affection. I tormented you with an old hatred that’s no longer real. I want to ask your forgiveness.”
Falling back into old habits as the reunion comes to an end – Charlotte blaming her daughter for their breakdown, and Eva shamefully taking the blame.
Ingmar Bergman’s characters may be cruel and cowardly, but this is not a barrier to establishing empathy in Autumn Sonata. He has the utmost compassion for those who have experienced the profound depths of the human experience, emerged as maladjusted individuals, and faced up to their repressed desires and insecurities, even if they are unable to reconcile them with their outward expressions. Like the persistent rotation between immaculately framed wide shots and close-ups, and the seasonal changes which echo across his broader filmography, both mother and daughter here are trapped within cycles set in motion several generations before either were born. At the root of all emotional and psychological problems in Autumn Sonata, Bergman simply finds the inescapable reality of a past we never had any control over, inextricably connected to our defiant, tormented humanity.
Autumn Sonata is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV. The Autumn Sonata DVD can also be purchased on Amazon.
From the moment that the scatter-brained Susan throws David’s golf game into chaos at their very first encounter in Bringing Up Baby, unruly forces of nature seem to conspire against the perfectly ordered life he has built for himself. A leopard called Baby sent from Brazil unexpectedly falls into their care, wreaking havoc on his plans to complete a giant Brontosaurus skeleton at his museum, and marry his fiancée Miss Swallow the next day. A troublesome dog named George interferes too, running off with the final bone needed for his project, and a second, dangerously untamed leopard complicates the ordeal even further when it is freed from a local circus.
These mischievous creatures represent more than just the breakdown of structure in David’s life though, wearing away at his patience until he surrenders to the mayhem. Howard Hawks’ animalistic subtext is ridden with sexual innuendo at every turn, comically undercutting the seriousness of David’s mounting stress with reminders of his vulnerability and repressed, primal desire.
Hawks wields his comic subtext wth a deft hand, positioning David and Susan as the reluctant parents of Baby the leopard, and thus pushing the boundaries of a conventional American family.
With the Production Code’s censorship at its peak in 1938, Hawks and his screenwriters could have never been so explicit with their gags even if they wanted to, yet the underhanded subtlety of their perpetual double entendres speaks even more acutely to David and Susan’s simmering romance than any brazen statement of their attraction. Besides, David’s just not that sort of man to speak so plainly of such personal matters. Only when he is forced to beg Susan to return his balls, goes searching for his “precious” bone, and becomes a surrogate parent to Baby is he able to admit to his innate animalistic impulses.
If Baby the leopard effectively becomes David’s child with Susan, driving them mad with frustration, then that giant dinosaur skeleton which he is working on with Miss Swallow is theirs, and she virtually says as much herself. “This will be our child,” she proclaims, gesturing at this dry, dead beast. “I see our marriage purely as a dedication to your work.” Not even she is saved from Hawks’ sexual innuendos, with him poking fun at the connotations of her suggestive name, and humorously implying the sterility of their relationship as David ponders where his new bone goes.
“You tried in the tail yesterday and it didn’t fit.”
If Baby the leopard is David’s child with Susan, then this dinosaur is his child with Miss Swallow – dry, dead, and sexless.
With jokes this sly being thrown out at such a breakneck pace by Hawks’ talented ensemble, we are often left catching up on several punchlines at a time. This propulsive narrative power and madcap energy isn’t atypical of 1930s screwball comedies, but Bringing Up Baby reaches near-perfection in the hands of a genre master like Hawks, orchestrating an amusingly tense dynamic between his actors that lands each comic beat with razor sharp timing. Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde no doubt deserve credit for penning one of Hollywood’s finest comedies too, but at the same time this is just the springboard for two career-defining performances – Katharine Hepburn taking control of scenes with her rhythmic dialogue and clipped intonations, and a sarcastic Cary Grant nervously stammering through the confusion.
“Now it isn’t that I don’t like you Susan, because after all in moments of quiet I’m strangely drawn to you. But, well, there haven’t been any quiet moments.”
With actors, writers, and director working at the top of their game, Bringing Up Baby is about as flawless as any piece of cinema can get with such little dedication to any distinct aesthetic. Hawks’ physical gags may be hilariously inventive, at one point seeing Grant awkwardly hide the back of Hepburn’s ripped gown by trailing behind her a little too closely, but this is not the sort of visual comedy innovated by Buster Keaton which relied heavily on framing and composition. Almost the entirety of the comedy here is driven by the eccentric screwball antics, leading a pair of opposites towards a more fulfilling romantic union than either of them previously knew existed, as well as the erotic subtext that lies just beneath its surface.
Visual gags and slapstick galore. Grant and Hepburn are two of a kind in their tight, comedic coordination.
Hawks formally signposts the disruptive transgression of this relationship virtually all the way through the film too, with Susan implicating David in a few minor crimes at the start, and later stopping to note the unlikely friendship that forms between Baby the leopard and George the dog. Most prominent of all though is the gender subversion that Hawks wields such a deft hand over, dressing the low-voiced Hepburn in traditionally masculine outfits and positioning her as the more dominant figure, while Grant is forced to dress in a fluffy negligee upon realising his clothes have been stolen. On one level, his improvisation when he suddenly meets Susan’s Aunt Elizabeth while wearing this outfit is simply an exasperated resignation to the ludicrousness of the situation without even trying to explain himself, though on another he is sardonically pushing the boundaries of his own apparent queerness even further.
Elizabeth: You look perfectly idiotic in those clothes.
David: These aren’t my clothes.
Elizabeth: Well, where are your clothes?
David: I’ve lost my clothes!
Elizabeth: But why are you wearing these clothes?
David: Because I just went GAY all of a sudden!
Gender bending typical of Hawks’ comedy, dressing Hepburn in traditionally masculine outfits while Grant is relegated into a fluffy negligee.
It’s too bad for him that this Aunt Elizabeth also happens to be the multimillionaire who has offered a large donation to his museum, should he prove to be a suitable enough candidate. The rest of the evening doesn’t exactly prove her first impressions wrong either, especially with Susan still drawing him into her hijinks. Mistakenly believing he is a zoologist, and later lying to her aunt that he is a big-game hunter, she is constantly landing David in awkward positions that assume he possesses some dominance over the animal kingdom, only to expose his total ineptness. No matter how hard he tries to coax Baby off rooftops with hilariously desperate renditions of ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’, he is not a man who controls nature, but is tormented by its unpredictability and lack of order.
‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’ hilariously forces David and Susan to express their affection towards Baby the leopard – only then will it behave like a good child should.
In short, Susan embodies all of David’s most embarrassing weaknesses, continuing to radiate her aura of chaos out into the lives of strangers and drawing them to a jailhouse in Hawks’ climactic comedic set piece. The farce which binds them, Miss Swallow, Aunt Elizabeth, her lawyer, her housemaid, a big-game hunter, a circus crew, and a pair of daft policemen together within a series of misunderstandings only continues to disintegrate the bureaucratic structures which hold society together, until everyone is cut down to the same humiliating level.
Hawks builds his narrative a brilliant climax in the prison set piece, drawing each character into Susan’s aura of pure chaos.
As Susan unwittingly leads a dangerous leopard right into the middle of this crowd and sends them climbing the prison cell bars, it is clear that no one is safe around her, but perhaps David is the only one who can see the joy in such maddening volatility. Once the dust has settled, he barely seems fazed when Miss Swallow curtly breaks off their engagement back at his museum, and even when Susan accidentally sends his prized brontosaurus skeleton tumbling to the ground, he quickly moves past the loss of his life’s work. After all, that dinosaur was the child of a relationship he now realises was uncompromisingly rigid and exceedingly inauthentic. The dead belongs to the past, Hawks symbolically asserts, while life in all its impulsive uncertainties should be embraced, delivering an amusingly peculiar logic in the romantic union of two incongruent yet totally compatible opposites.
Returning to the museum in the final scene is nice bookend, sending David’s dinosaur crumbling to the floor as he embraces his new life with Susan.
Bringing Up Baby is not currently available to stream in Australia.
Samuel Armstrong, James Algar, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Ben Sharpsteen, David D. Hand, Hamilton Luske, Jim Handley, Ford Beebe, T. Hee, Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson
Detective Hae-jun does not let go of unsolved cases easily, instead sticking their photos up on the wall of the apartment he lives in during the week, and making them as much a part of himself as the marriage he returns to on weekends. This compartmentalisation is the only way he can properly function as a normal human being, and yet even his wife knows that drawing such a hard division between his home and work life is no perfect solution. As she observes early on, he grows morose when his routine becomes too peaceful. He is a man who needs murder and violence to be happy.
Given the fascinations of crime and vengeance running through Park Chan-wook’s career of brutally spell-binding thrillers, perhaps there is a little bit of himself written into Decision to Leave’s protagonist, much like the psychological obsession that Alfred Hitchcock shares with James Stewart’s detective in Vertigo. For Hae-jun, the subject of his psychological fixation is Seo-rae, a freshly widowed Chinese immigrant whose husband fell from a cliff while mountaineering. He spends hours questioning her with delight, sharing sushi and enjoying friendly conversation, though he does not let his guard down entirely. True to Park’s Hitchcockian sensibilities, a thread of surveillance is tied through this ambiguous relationship, visually navigating the boundaries and secrets that envelop it. Inside the interrogation room, Hae-jun and Seo-rae’s interview is set against a two-way mirror with split diopter lenses and focus pulls restlessly guiding our eyes between characters and their reflections, leading us to wonder whether he is really the only one here leading a double life.
Park’s focus pulling and split diopter lenses play with our focus in disorientating ways – one half of the image focuses on the foreground while the other focuses on the background, before swapping around.A wall of unsolved cases decorates Hae-jun’s apartment, manifesting his obsession with mystery and death.
The subjectivity of Park’s camera is virtually impossible to escape in Decision to Leave, taking the perspective of a dead man as an ant crawls over his eye, and tracing the subtlest character details in close-ups – the slight movement of a hand for instance, or the tan line left by an absent wedding ring. Park’s editing too adopts a fluidity in its graphic match cuts that, at their most graceful, delicately frame an anxious Hae-jun in the palm of Seo-rae’s hand through a long dissolve, and at their craftiest play tricks on our sense of space. Park will often rapidly shift back and forth between the detective and the distant subject of his focus in POV shots that keep cutting closer, before suddenly zooming out to reveal the drastically narrowed gap between them. All of a sudden, we find ourselves in Hae-jun’s mind where he is speaking to her directly rather than on the phone, and reconstructing a crime scene by invisibly stalking his visualisation of her.
Maybe the greatest edit of the film, framing Hae-jun in the palm of Seo-rae’s hand as she becomes his unsolvable mystery.Another graphic match cut, this one purposefully dissolving the face of Seo-rae’s deceased husband over the back of Hae-jun’s head.Hitchcockian POV shots cutting between voyeur and the subject of their gaze – except Park mixes it up by physically closing the space between them in Hae-jun’s obsessive mind. Subjective camera shots and editing are everywhere in Decision to Leave, even taking the perspective of a dead man as an ant crawls over his eye.
In this voyeuristic compulsion there is something that goes beyond intellectual interest or romantic passion. Their relationship is defined by an unresolved longing, simultaneously drawing them together into the same intimate world, yet keeping them as far apart as the mountains and oceans woven throughout Park’s imagery. Quite significant to this is the language barrier that stands between them, situating Seo-rae as an outsider in Korea who needed her late husband’s influence as an immigration officer to keep her safe, and who occasionally uses a translator app to communicate complicated ideas. No doubt Hae-jun finds this an inconvenience at times, but at the same time it is yet another slight separation which he finds utterly tantalising in its precarious uncertainty.
Seo-rae is no passive subject of voyeurism in this equation though, equalling Hae-jun in shrewdness and recognising the mystery she perpetuates as the foundation of their relationship. Even as Park’s story spins off into concurrent cases that Hae-jun is investigating, it consistently winds back to Seo-rae as she helps him solve them, perhaps hoping to situate herself as his most impossible puzzle. So dedicated is she to this mission that when he finally gets to the bottom of her case and leaves, she encourages him to reopen it with newly incriminating evidence, desperately eager to rekindle their lost romance.
Like so many of Park’s films, there is a defined colour palette guiding his aesthetic. On one side of it we get greens painting his mise-en-scène on a spectacular level, even decorating its urban infrastructure.In the lighting too, murky greens sink Park’s characters into uneasy atmospheres.
Even when it comes to Park’s costume design, his characters can never quite agree which side of his green and blue palette that Seo-rae’s teal dress lands on, letting her escape the binary that he paints with melancholic beauty all through his mise-en-scène. He lays it out with attention to detail in key props such as her green notebook, fentanyl pills, and beach bucket, but even on a larger scale too as he tracks Hae-jun’s chase across rooftops in one sweeping crane shot, he matches the urban scenery in the background to the same verdant colour scheme. His enthralling set pieces are perfectly suited to such gloomy yet tranquil designs, underscoring a subdued romance that finds gentle repose at a turquoise Buddhist temple, makes grisly discoveries in an empty swimming pool, and develops domestic bonds in Seo-rae’s apartment decorated with aquatic wallpaper.
Even greater than Park’s use of greens is the dominant blues, leaping out especially in the temple scene that is designed to absolute perfection.The blues of this palette most obviously evoke the bodies of water that Seo-rae is often associated with. The fact that her second husband is killed in this empty pool is no coincidence on Park’s part – his formal dedication to the motif is strong.Seo-rae’s wallpaper could be waves or mountains, leaving a deliberate ambiguity in Park’s geographic imagery.And of course, there is the soft, natural blue that comes through in misty oceans and overcast skies.
At least, that is what the pattern resembles at first glance. On closer inspection, those waves could just as well be mountains, enveloped by a cool, chilly mist. Dizzying altitudes and deep bodies of water become fitting metaphors for this perilous connection, frequently threatening to send Hae-jun tumbling over the edge of steep drops not unlike Seo-rae’s deceased, rock-climbing husband. Her fear of heights is totally understandable when we reach the narrow, plateaued mountaintop where he perished, caught in a dizzying panorama as saturated in soft blue tones as the foggy sea she holds such fondness for. Hae-jun and Seo-rae may be united in the wistfulness of Park’s breathtaking colours, but symbolically they belong to entirely different worlds – him dangerously staggering atop treacherous summits, and her dwelling in the mysterious, oceanic abyss, pulling lovers down to her level and sending damning evidence into its depths.
High angles and overhead shots looking down from great heights, as if we too are about to plummet to the ground.A combination of excellent location scouting and photography makes your hands sweat in this mountain set piece.
The danger in this romantic tension does not come from any malice on Seo-rae’s part, as she herself recognises the sacrifices that Hae-jun makes in protecting her, but rather the inherent incongruency of their stations in life. He is a police detective, destined to observe and contemplate crime from a distance, but never to cross that line to the other side. Seo-rae, recognising how much these boundaries define their love, cannot stand to see them broken. Not only would her guilt compromise his innocence, but once he sees her as she is, she would also become just another solved case taken down from his wall and ultimately forgotten.
Park may not get enough credit for his use of architecture to frame his characters, often using it here to paint out their melancholic isolation and delicate romance.
There are so many shots in Decision to Leave that leave us teetering on the edge of mountains and rooftops, it is somewhat surprising to find the most impactful tragedy of the film takes place on a cold, lonely beach. That this is where Seo-rae decisively resolves to “unsolve” Hae-jun’s case is poignantly poetic in its open-endedness, sinking her into an oceanic enigma that he may very well spend the rest of his life trying to unravel. For lovers as deeply obsessive yet incompatible as these, such elusive romance can only be kept alive through death, bound together by the promise of an eternal, impenetrable mystery.
A blue coat and green bucket as Seo-rae “unsolves” Hae-jun’s case, drawing Park’s double-sided palette right through to the final minutes.A very purposeful lack of resolution in Park’s narrative – we are haunted by the same open-endedness that torments Hae-jun’s obsessive mind.
Decision to Leave is currently streaming on SBS On Demand, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.
What the newest antagonist of the Mission: Impossible franchise lacks in characterisation, it makes up for in its unsettling, intangible influence over the basic functions of our technology-dependent world. When we do see the Entity manifest, it is as white beams of light fanning out from a dark centre, pulsing and breathing a raspy, electronic rattle. It is described as a sentient virus, a digital parasite, and artificial intelligence gone rogue, manipulating the transfer of information to impersonate people and fabricate digital signals. Its destruction of a Soviet submarine in the opening minutes of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning lays out the stakes in a thrilling set piece, but even more significantly it also demonstrates the modus operandi through which it takes down civilians – not by launching its own weapons, but by taking advantage of humanity’s reckless naivety.
Much less intimidating than the Entity is the far more standard secondary villain who acts as its “Dark Messiah”, carrying out its orders in the real world to establish its dominion. Practically speaking, Gabriel is little more than a necessary device to give our heroes a body to fight, never quite measuring up to the threat his master poses despite his ties to Ethan Hunt’s past. The other new additions to the cast are served much better in their more ambiguous roles, with Pom Klementieff entering as a reckless assassin set on taking Hunt down, and Hayley Atwell’s professional thief alternating between adversary and ally with her deft sleight of hand.
Even so, Dead Reckoning most of all proves to be a stage for Tom Cruise and his globe-trotting set pieces, taking part in horseback chases across the Arabian desert and pursuing Gabriel through the cobbled streets and canals of Venice. When Christopher McQuarrie’s direction matches Cruise’s practical commitment to the action, the film possesses an even greater exhilarating tactility, reaching a peak as Cruise rides over the edge of a cliff on a motorcycle and parachutes down into the valley. Not even the bombastic finale of green screens and CGI can match the awesome spectacle of seeing Cruise throw his body into truly creative stunts.
McQuarrie may not be taking artistic ownership of the Mission: Impossible series the same way Chad Stahelski has with John Wick, though his contributions towards revitalising its image in recent years should not be discounted. Despite carrying the canted angles across from the first film, his visual style has a sleekness distinct from Brian de Palma’s, and there is even a bit of Skyfall present in the bright, dynamic lighting and silhouetted dancers of the White Widow’s Venetian party. It is through the precision of his parallel editing though that he most effectively ratchets up the tension of his set pieces, crosscutting between a bomb that must be defused through riddles and Hunt’s pursuit of a crucial key through an airport, and later the action unfolding simultaneously inside and outside the Orient Express.
That Dead Reckoning does so little to distinguish its relatively standard espionage narrative from others begs the question why it was conceived in two parts, besides the fact that the Entity holds so much potential for further development as a villain. Playing on renewed cultural fears of an AI takeover is a smart move for McQuarrie as he takes his own creative spin on the subject. As the seventh movie in the Mission: Impossible series, Dead Reckoning proves there is still life to be found in Ethan Hunt’s perilous undertakings 25 years since it began. As the first instalment of a new story arc, there is also just enough to keep us in its grip.
Mission: Impossible series, Dead Reckoning is currently streaming on Netflix.
