The Box - (film review)

            During the onset of the marketing campaign for this film, a friend and I were returning home on the subway (from a shopping extravaganza, no less!) where a movie poster came upon us.  This sparked my friend to remark:  “That looks so stupid!  Someone brings them a box and tells them if they push it, they’ll get a million dollars and someone in the world will die.  How ridiculous!”  I answered: “Well, there’s more to it than that.  You can reduce any film to a singularity.  The Descent is about five girls going spelunking and encounter horrible freakish mutants.”  (He loves The Descent).
            In the first twenty minutes of the film, I knew I was right—there is more to this film than just the proposition of pushing a button, which kills someone (you don’t know) and rewards you with a million dollars.  However, at times it seems like there is needlessly more.  The premise itself is an intriguing one, however filmmaker Richard Kelly (of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales) is not satiated with the simplicity of the thematic elements and the complexities through which it can stir great debate.  There is definitely more to it.  The first hour of the film is seamless, menacingly ominous, and suspenseful.  Frank Langella is perfectly eerie as the stranger who entices the couple with this wonderful narrative contemplation—push the button, kill someone, and make a million dollars.  Even the explanation of the button device itself, and the metaphorical trappings through which its construction and structure manage to litter itself upon the social world (we live our entire lives in some kind of box) is compelling.  James Marsden and Cameron Diaz are a perfect Virginian 1976 couple who seem to be ‘targeted’ by this person in a manner that suggests if they don’t push the button there are some other serious consequences.
            However, upon the inception of the second hour, the slow paced, needlessly convoluted storyline allows the audience to pick away at the film in a way that was probably never intended.  Brad Miska at  Bloody-Disgusting claims that one should not be distracted at the films unintentional plot holes instead urges the viewer to not “ask questions and don’t try and put two and two together; just accept it for what it is” (Miska 2009).  Unfortunately Miska, the very essence of your request would lead practically every movie to be a brilliant one—it is the very ability of the viewer to ‘put two and two together’ that pressures the filmmaker(s) to circumspect the narrative devices he/she is inculcating the audience with.  I managed to put two and two together and ultimately the result is not as satisfying as the anticipation of the film, for I (and my partner) had very high hopes for this film—we opted to see it instead of The Fourth Kind this afternoon based simply on its engaging storyline.
            The most disturbing thematic element of the film comes from the fact that the ‘test subjects’ are always a heterosexual couple with one child, and the wife is always the one to press the button while the husband looks on suspiciously.  The very notion of Pandora’s Box being opened by the female spouse harkens back to historical biblical sexism and the original sin.  The period of the film is 1976, so perhaps this temporal location instills some dire significance to the destruction of the nuclear family and the emergence of the female head of household.  It does not.  There is no mention of the significance of the wife to push the button, in fact, it almost suggests that the experiment is only viable if the wife pushes the button, for the ramifications of this action subsequent to the pushing of the button imply that certain marital dynamics be in place for the drama to unfold as it does.  Gender, and the Eve-complex, are conveniently ignored in this film, an aspect that (if you’ve read previous reviews of films) I cannot abide by.
            The Box instead focuses on the obvious theme: the consequential actions of succumbing to one’s own personal wants and desires over the well-being of the social cohesive whole.  It is an interesting theme, however laced in the 70s and reeking of heterosexist anti-feminist elements, it loses some of its appeal.  If for instance, Mr. Steward relished in the destruction of marital bliss by infusing his own warped chaotic sense of ironic justice into the fold, this glaring flaw would be overlooked.  In that instance, the destruction and implosion of the marital nuclear bliss would be the point of the film—exposing the structure and institution for what it is and can be and the boxed in confinements it upholds.  However, in The Box what propels the film forward is the clinical callousness of the experiments and the how these kinds of qualitative analyses can misinterpret or completely ignore the personal factors involved, and clearly not properly elucidated, in the decision and subsequent regret of one’s actions.  Norma (Diaz) is truly regretful for what she’s done, and surprises Mr. Steward with empathetic compassion where he expected pity.  This is a truly remarkable current in the film, it is unfortunate that it is muddled by a stylistic technique that purports to be more complex and profound then it needs to be.
            Once The Box settles into the viewer, two or three hours after the films ending, it becomes clear all the various elemental fragments inter-dispersed throughout and its linearity.  If only the story were told in this manner (and a half-hour were cut from it), The Box would be monumentally more successful than it supposes it is.  Its intriguing subject manner and superb pace and cinematography are subsequently undercut by its demand for self-importance pretentiousness.  Ultimately The Box is not a bad film by any means.  Instead it suffers from its own refusal of gripping simplicity in favour of gratuitous convolution.  Its own inept ignorance over the implications of a 70s setting with a central heterosexual couple is too staggering to be ignored, and its subtle grace over the presented ‘horrid’ deformities, is troubling when considering the advances in disability studies.  In all fairness, the film does address this deformation in a rather unexpected and well-intentioned manner.
            I really want to like The Box more than I do, and perhaps upon repeated viewings I may serendipitously bask in undiscovered subtlety and significance where I did not find it before.  Or my friend may be right—there isn’t much more to this film than I first thought.
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Grade: 79% (B+)