Between Style and Substance

There is a dichotomy in film, a battle between style and substance.

Most films that rely heavily on style are doomed by the hollow foundation they sit on.

Inversely those films that stuffed with substance risk becoming overburdened by the weight of meaning.

With this foundation of understanding, here is my analysis, critique and review of the film The Cell, a film I believe to hold the unfortunate values that desperately attempt to create a balance of style and substance, but ultimately collapses under the burden of both.

Opening on a Jordorowski-esque fantasy world of desert dunes, we are introduced to Jennifer Lopez’s main character dressed in the innocence of all white; she travels a seemingly insurmountable distance to reach a child. Eventually inconsequential to the rest of the film this child seems to predict her coming predicament. He continually laments the coming of great evil, which we can deduce is Carl Rudolph

Stargher (Vincent D’ Onofrio’s mix between Karl Childers and Hannibal Lecter.)

In a traumatic change of setting the viewer is opened to the realization this is in fact Matrix like recreation of someone’s conscience, in this example, the child’s. We are proceedingly led to believe that this is a new form of therapy.

Our first philosophical treatise burdening this film is the ironic idea that there is no substance to the work of the therapist. As Descartes implies so often, we are constantly deceived by our senses. There is in essence no way for marked growth when the only perception is that of one individual who may or may not be experiencing the reality of the child. It could, as the father says, “all be a delusion”. We can hardly trust our own sense, how are we to trust the senses of another individual? It is inconceivable, so as is realistic, it is the belief of the father that the child not be subjected to irreality as it could be described. From a personal conception the very real conflict of privacy and personal right is ignored in every right. Is this not the pinnacle of invasion? In both instances we are exposed to the mind of “other” it is never with consent. What does that say for the ethics of such technology? Personally I believe there was a missed chance for true dialogue on the nature of a reality in which this invention exists. This future is heading for a dystopian concept of personality and being.

I digress; it is disappointing that from this first point of introspection we only go downhill.

I do not wish to reveal too much of the film itself (for those seeking the indulgence of madness,) but to say the least its influences only become more clichéd for example the inference of murder as art, with the overt relations to the works of Damien Hirst. The most egregious of these vignettes involves a Shinning-esque stylized bloodbath (the symbolism is lost in its imitation and unoriginality.) As I posited earlier, meaning becomes so overbearing in this moment I was personally moved to chuckle.

With the establishment of a lack of substance despite its best efforts to cram meaning into every facet of its existence, there is the question of style. The style of the film is grand, but ultimately falls flat. The Pre-Saw sadomasochism is charming in its originality, but that is about it. Even the original horrors aren’t that original, as we find out, even torture can be derivative. The visuals presented within the imagination are impressive to the films credit, from the Dunes of the opening scene to the conception of a crown room beholding a demon king donning an incredibly stylized cape.

To its disadvantage, everything outside of the imaginary landscapes the style is boring and puritanical. It is almost as if the film is trying to play it safe in its depiction of what is “real”, by exemplifying it as drab and boring.

Uneven, off kilter and largely unsatisfying I was at points driven to boredom by its tedious nature. For a film that saw itself in such an epic and avante-garde vein it largely fails to live up to any sense of satisfaction, the story is tightly wrapped up leaving no room for interpretation or self-exploration.

The Cell sets itself up in such a way that it should be the paradigm of modern philosophical horror, in the end though it largely misses its most interesting and interrogating parts with a dearth of understanding about the potential philosophical nature of the film.

Rating: 3.75/10