"Computer Savvy"


S1m0ne
Written and directed by Andrew Niccol
Starring Al Pacino and Catherine Keener

FearDotCom
Written by  Josephine Coyle from a story by Moshe Diamant
Directed by William Malone
Starring Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone and Stephen Rea


                It is embarrassing enough for me to be duped by a film, believing something that is revealed later to be false.   It is even more embarrassing, though, to be in on the deceit, watching as others are lied to.  Andrew Niccol accomplished this abashment in his screenplay for The Truman Show, where a man lives in an environment known by everyone in the world to be a fake.   In his new screenplay for the new film S1m0ne, which he also directed,  the situation is reversed, placing an unreal person into the belief of the world. 
The unreal person is Simone, aka Simulation One, a virtual actress created by a computer programmer (Elias Koteas) and willed to Viktor Taransky (Pacino), a filmmaker who is having trouble casting the female lead for his new picture.  Simone is quickly celebrated with fans and journalists (including Jason Schwartzman) dying to find out more about the supposed recluse.   Actors even cancel plans to work with Bertolucci to appear opposite the  mysterious star, despite the knowledge that Simone will never act alongside them, overly excited just to have a conference call with her at the script-reading. 
                 Also curious is Taransky’s ex-wife and studio head, Elaine Christian (Keener), who grows jealous of the relationship between Viktor and Simone.  Daughter, Lainey, sees the jealousy as hopeful reuniting of her parents.   It is with these characters that Niccol attempts to put warmth into satire, a genre which traditionally has less heart than he would hope for.
Eventually Taransky caves in to the celebration, throwing away the ideals which made Simone so intriguing to the public.  She appears on talk shows via satellite, shows up on magazine covers, records a pop album and performs a concert courtesy of a hologram and lots of smoke.  She becomes the biggest international sensation since The Beatles. 
               All of this is manufactured by the imaginably tireless filmmaker from a sound stage, empty save for an superfluous console of large monitors and computer equipment.  Taransky speaks into a microphone and moves in front of a camera which the computer translates into the voice and action of Simone without any processing delay.  This may seem like a small hole in Niccol’s conviction, but its just one of the many unbelievable situations.  If we are expected to take in the world’s belief in Simone, we must have more belief in the world.  
             Andrew Niccol created a convincing universe for his debut feature Gattaca, which was just short of brilliance but screamed out potential.  I expected great things from him afterward.  I tried to like The Truman Show but it was a good idea more than a good story and fell apart for me.  S1m0ne multiplies the problems with that film by ten.  Niccol seems to desire philosophic discussion in his work inspired by Philip K. Dick, yet he lacks the courage to be so cold and dejected.   The least thing he could have done, in my opinion, if he must be light in his satire, was to let Jason Schwartzman and Jay Mohr have more to do.

         My brother constantly tells me that web-savvy stories and screenplays always end up cheap despite, and in light of,  their attempt at hipness.  Maybe the internet is still too new, too complicated and too monopolistically recognizable that any deviation from what we are aquainted with crumbles our relativity to the subject matter. 
         FearDotCom, a new film that isn’t horrific or thrilling enough to fall into either of its closest genres, follows a young detective (Dorff) who seems to take charge of an entire precinct and a quickly out-of-jurisdiction investigator for the Department of Health (McElhone of The Truman Show) working on a series of deaths linked by stigmatic symptoms and a sadistic voyeur site called FearDotCom.  The site is run by the crazy “Doctor”, Alistair Pratt (Rea), who seems to be making a point against perversion as an unmistakable knockoff of the villain from “Seven”.  Subscribers to the site begin seeing hallucinations of a little girl (now a horror film staple, yet not necessarily always creepy, as proven here) who was Pratt’s first victim.  After forty-eight hours of their initial logging in, they fatally come to terms with their greatest fears, the connection and relevance of which is never let known.  It is a curious bit of information that the website has hundreds of subscribers yet only a few victims.
             Suspension of disbelief works best when we have no substantial evidence against the questionable belief.  In the case of FearDotCom, my disbelief lies in, not the obvious stupidity the characters and overall script, but in the unconvincing portrayal of internet usage.  Not since “Weird Science” have I seen a more ridiculous representation, but I can forgive that film more easily since it was released long before mainstream modem usage.  It may be respectable for a film not to go the route of You’ve Got Mail with its blatant corporate sponsorship, but at least it was familiar.  Am I being too picky?  Maybe, but with a film this bad, I got distracted.

Simone gets digitally planted into the video for
 Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees"