"Severance" Review - Clever but suffocatingly slow sci-fi from Ben Stiller
Cleaned up like an Apple office, a sci-fi series that lasts longer than a painful day at work.
Mark (Adam Scott) is an ordinary office plankton whose workdays consist of only zeros, ones and a couple more prime numbers. Every day he comes to the familiar futuristic office, sits down at the computer and clicks on the numbers fidgeting around the entire perimeter of the monitor: it is not clear why, why and for the benefit of whose interests. Mark does not ask a bunch of other questions - for example, who is waiting for him at home, where he lives and what he does in his free time. The fact is that the man became a participant in an experiment called "Separation", and now his work and everyday life do not touch each other. As soon as he leaves the Lumen Industries building, the memories of the past few hours will disappear. The same thing happens upon arrival at the office - Mark forgets about problems on the personal front, relatives, household debts and other trifles that interfere with a strictly functioning cog in an established capitalist mechanism.
"Severance" setting is a tricky thing. Most of the time the viewer, like the heroes of the series, spends in blissful ignorance. Snow-white corridors and cubic offices confuse, intoxicate and turn the audience into prisoners of a labyrinth, if not a Faun, then a sinister demiurge businessman. The comparison with a deity, by the way, is not accidental - in the series, corporate ethics are ironically identified with religion, and bosses become idols. The show also turns a curious trick with the protagonists: several other colleagues work with Mark (John Turturro, Brittney Lower, Zach Cherry), who voluntarily “separated” and do not know the troubles of burnout. Their daily life outside the four walls will hardly be shown on the screen - it is this curious move with a narrative deliberately filled with plot holes that will make you feel like an operated employee of Lumen Industries.
The new Apple TV+ series, on the one hand, is truly charmingly minimalistic. Even the spaciousness of the chamber scenery here manages to set suspense: in the office where the hero works, the tables are in the very center of the room and occupy only one tenth of the room, and this is no less frightening than the hallucinations of the distraught heroes. In some ways, such a craving for symmetry and "correctness" resembles Kubrick's perfectionism, but, unlike the American classic, the creators need this style for other purposes. First, to emphasize the illusory futurism of the world: it is not clear what year is in the yard, but the future is clearly relatively short. And secondly, in order to revive and brighten up the whole plot: given that the next 9 episodes the characters will talk more than they do, visual polish never hurts.
The only pity is that the script lacks the same minimalism. Divide has a lot of dialogue, monologues, misplaced lines and plot intrigues that would sound and look spectacular if they were written by a master like Aaron Sorkin. Although the directors of the series were Ifa McArdle and Ben Stiller (the first and the second have already established themselves as outstanding visionaries), this hardly saves the day: watching Separation is like waiting for the end of the day at your favorite, but already boring job. Every now and then you cast a glance at your watch, nervously shifting your legs and counting every minute. The characters chat incessantly, repeat the same things that sounded a couple of episodes ago, and try to overthrow the evil system of Lumen Industries - the question, however, is whether someone will remain on the other side of the screen after the finale
The serial structure is almost always novelistic, complex, multi-level. Despite the heaps of dialogue, "The Separation" does not justify its monstrous multi-episode format: this story would have developed much better and more freely in a full-length movie. There, decorative minimalism could combine with scripted minimalism, and the film itself could become a hit among fans of stylish indie. In the case of streaming realities, Dan Erickson’s show falls out of all possible contexts: for thoughtful and meditative science fiction, it’s too obvious (damned capitalism has not been scolded in recent years except by Michael Bay), for a clever genre exercise, it’s too swaggering and pompous. This series does not suit either an office suit or an everyday outfit.
This article was sponsored by Theresa Carroll
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