Mr. Robot and the art of blatantly recycling stories
A tinge of yellow on screen. Everything seems like a result of a concerted effort at de-coloring. The walls around almost arch in, like utterly sincere firewalls for one’s thoughts. There’s a window at the background but the blinders obstruct the view beyond. The view beyond is the eerie silence of a concrete jungle overpowering the pandemic city noise. A woman sits in an opulent chair, but stares at her patient with a distinct lack of confidence. She sees. Doesn’t look. Her mind is somewhere else where her body doesn’t want to go. This psychiatrist is different, you gather. She is more like a middle aged bank clerk at the cash counter wondering his inconsequential purpose. She stares at her patient and asks him a question that he almost begs the world to ask. What is about society that disappoints you so much?
Replies the inadvertently condescending inner voice of our existential hero:
Oh I don’t know, is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man, even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it’s that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit. The world itself is just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our running commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy.
In short, every idealistic anger springing from the heart of Quixotic heroes in cinemas across the world, ever. Except Elliot Alderson, the antisocial genius of the 21st century dystopian tale of the TV show Mr. Robot, sets himself apart from his predecessors with his natural talent for hacking. He isn’t a poet, for poetry doesn’t bother the hearts of the ones with power. He cannot be dramatic like Randall McMurphy (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest), because the stage for him is too big for such eccentricities. He isn’t Cool Hand Luke (Cool Hand Luke), for he isn’t a naturally charismatic leader. He is a nobody. He is pre red pill Thomas Anderson (The Matrix), who digs deep within his own self to find a Neo. So whilst his rage comes from the same place as hundreds before him, his weapon of choice keeps him away from the maddening crowd, till someone mysterious comes and pushes him into light. He might be Edward Norton from Fight Club, except, his ambitions do not spring from personal vendetta. Or does it? It so happens, it does.
At night, he becomes a vigilante like Dexter Morgan (Dexter), during the day he becomes a cubicle zombie protecting his own enemy, like Mr. Anderson. He finds his guide in Mr. Robot, and Tyler Durden (Fight Club again) comes to mind. In the normal sense of a suppressed man trying to bring down the establishment, Elliot is every such story ever told before.
Social awkwardness- check.
Drug addiction- check.
Detachment- check.
Dysfunctional patient counselor relationship- check.
Contrarian inside voice- check.
Paranoid schizophrenia- check.
Mr. Robot is a quintessential cynical antihero with a romantic ambition to change the world. It is almost a tribute to a bunch of movies dealing with similar plot points, and the tribute isn’t even subtle. It is blatant. Even gleeful. Unabashed.
What makes it stand out then? The simple fact that it involves coding? And yes, REAL coding. Those fsociety programmes that we see on screen are all real codes. They’re not meant to be understood by most of us to their last technical detail, but the authenticity of Sam Esmeil in his creation takes our breath away. Right till the last dystopian microwave burning a CD. The obvious references to Enron with the tilted E of Evil corp, or the counter Orwellian trait of stalking the establishment in a quest to bring it down are extremely impressive. As we were impressed by the relentless observation and almost lonesome mulling of Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) in those heady and intoxicated NYC nights.
The blurring lines between observation and voyeurism, the incessant inside voice that plants a seed of discord, eventually growing in the form of suppressed anger. Self-righteous monologues. Breaching conformity. The irony of breaking fundamental moral codes to safeguard the greater good of the universe. This is Will Hunting’s (Good Will Hunting) sarcastic view point of the society, coupled with the psychology of Fight Club, the rage of Bickle, and the potential wherewithal of Neo. So as far as the suffocating story of Elliot goes, it has been told before by Hollywood. Numerous times. In almost exactly the same way.
The consistent claustrophobia of the frames, and the haunting classical music at the background for ten continuous episodes transform you to that zone so you relate to that world more intimately. Like, a long time ago, you related to Alex lying in bed even as Beethoven played ‘Cure’ (A Clockwork Orange), or more recently, when you followed Jesse Eisenberg in The Double as he took his suffocating elevator journeys with a sinister doppelganger. The style is there for Esmail. It doesn’t overpower the content like a Guy Ritchie film, it doesn’t scream out more than the internal turmoil of Elliot, or even the chilling indifference in the tone that he uses to speak to the witnesses of his story (which he identifies as non-existent). The style adds to the narrative just like it should. Just like it has in so many movies before.
So what makes Mr. Robot so unique then? Well, nothing. Unless it’s compared with other TV shows. Which is what the media has consistently done. Mr. Robot has been compared with the cynicism of True Detective, the anti-heroism of Mad Men and Breaking Bad. And how intelligently it has set itself apart by taking a course that TV hardly has. But that doesn’t make Mr. Robot unique, it, at its best, makes it a very novel business decision to make a TV show borrowing plot points from numerous movies.
Mr. Robot is thoroughly enjoyable as a series. If we had to make a narrative with the collage of all the movies that talk about the same subject, this would be a perfect graduation year assignment in an ivy league film school. A standing ovation may be. However, it is perhaps time we exercised a little restrain in the way we embellish it as being a stroke of genius. It is intriguing yes. But it is also a very well made echo of a handful of films that we have come to love and respect. We mustn’t forget that what Mr. Robot did in ten hours, and will continue to do (to our delight) for ten more, has already been done by those films in two.
Mr. Robot is great television. But there’s nothing in it that I haven’t seen before. Except may be, a study in self-importance.
