http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_(film)
A movie named “Compliance” got some attention last year from the National Board of Review for the performance of Ann Dowd in a supporting actress role, she’s a middle-aged woman playing the manager of a fast food restaurant. I put the movie on my Netflix cue and it came up recently after I’d forgotten about it.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120829/REVIEWS/120829979
Melanie and I watched it Sunday night and what an experience. I can’t recommend it because it will make you so powerfully uncomfortable, but what an unforgettable experience. I kept wanting to turn it off, especially during the first 30 minutes. It’s so amazingly well done and true-to-life in the way people behave and in the truth of the mundane situations depicted, it’s almost a documentary.
The premise is, the manager of a fast food restaurant gets a call from a cop investigating an alleged theft made by one of the counter workers in the restaurant. The cop is with a woman who says she was robbed earlier that evening. He also has the restaurant's district manager on the other line. It seems the worker dipped into this customer’s purse while it was on the counter and stole some money. The cop has cars coming to the scene but in the meantime is asking the manager to detain the girl, the counter worker.
The manager – played by Ann Dowd – is a bit surprised but wants to help. She agrees to bring the girl into a back room while the cop tells her how to interrogate and search her.
The movie is based on true events. Over a ten year period a prank caller, in real life, called a bunch of grocery stores and fast food restaurants pretending to be a cop and persuaded people to detain and even strip-search their employees. This movie is about those events, and it’s so hard to watch because on the one hand you think, I’d never fall for that!, but on the other hand you think, or would I? Because people did, and workers were victimized by the bizarre dictates of a prank caller.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_(film)
Not too many movies stay with me like this one does, and not too many make me question human nature like this one does. And not many are as brilliantly well-acted and put together, playing like real life, pulling you along from the opening scene.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_prank_call_scam
Now that I‘ve seen it once and know what’s coming, I might have to check it out again and figure out why it worked so well at provoking an emotional response from Melanie and I. How and why did this movie, an artificial artifice, disturb us so profoundly? What kind of brilliant filmmaking is this? I knew it was a movie but I almost turned it off because it was so hard to watch. Why?
I can’t recommend it to you because I could barely sit through it myself. From what I read the movie had walkouts everywhere it played. But I can say this is one you won’t forget. Catch it if you want an unforgettable movie experience, and let me know what you think.
