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Dis­cov­er the hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry hor­rors of one man’s men­tal collapse

10 Oct 2016

Words by Anton Bitel

Distressed man with head in hands, grimacing in anguish.
Distressed man with head in hands, grimacing in anguish.
Joseph Sims-Dennett’s taut psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller Obser­vance is out now on DVD.

Obser­vance’ is an equiv­o­cal term, refer­ring equal­ly to acts of sur­veil­lance and of reli­gious rit­u­al – and in Joseph Sims-Dennett’s Obser­vance, these two mean­ings merge into a flu­id uni­ty, as the bound­aries break down between mys­tery’ as both genre cat­e­go­ry and rite of silent passage.

I’m think­ing this job’s not what you’ve been say­ing it is,” com­plains Park­er (Lind­say Far­ris) on the phone to his unseen employ­er. I’m think­ing you’ve been lying to me.” Park­er is a man under immense strain, both emo­tion­al and finan­cial. Not only is he liv­ing with the recent loss of his young son William (Gabriel Dunn) to ill­ness, and a sub­se­quent sep­a­ra­tion from his wife, but he also has to pay off the hefty hos­pi­tal bills from William’s last days – and so he has tak­en a well-pay­ing assign­ment as a pri­vate eye. His task is to move into a dingy apart­ment and observe the move­ments of the young woman (Stephanie King) liv­ing across the street.

Just watch and report back, it’s that sim­ple,” Parker’s employ­er instructs him. Indeed, the assign­ment ought to be a sinecure, not least because Parker’s tar­get nev­er leaves her apart­ment, and seems only to argue with her well-heeled and force­ful fiancé Bret Buchanan (Tom O’Sullivan). Yet while Park­er watch­es and we watch him watch­ing, the griev­ing man begins to unrav­el and to sus­pect, whether out of good detec­tive work or pure para­noia, that he may have become a pawn – and an unwit­ting agent – in a dia­bol­i­cal game. As Parker’s dark mem­o­ries seep into the very space he is occu­py­ing, and as a con­spir­a­cy appears to be unfold­ing around both Parker’s own past trau­ma and Bret’s pecu­liar fam­i­ly his­to­ry, ambi­gu­i­ty wash­es over every­thing, and noth­ing looks sim­ple anymore.

Cast adrift, like Park­er, as vig­i­lant inves­ti­ga­tors and recorders of pro­ceed­ings only half-glimpsed and semi-under­stood, view­ers are tak­en on a dis­ori­ent­ing, hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry trip through one man’s men­tal col­lapse – or is it one dynasty’s repeat­ing rit­u­al sac­ri­fice? This uncer­tain­ty, fil­tered through Parker’s – and even­tu­al­ly the woman’s – own focalised bewil­der­ment, engen­ders a sense of uncan­ny dread, as we too slip through the hermeneu­tic cracks in the film’s unsta­ble archi­tec­ture. Immac­u­late­ly unset­tling sound design – all over­am­pli­fied drips and buzzes and wash­es of rum­bling bass – only adds to the ris­ing unease.

Parker’s rent­ed apart­ment – plas­tered all over with news­pa­per, con­ceal­ing hid­den putre­fac­tion and decay, ooz­ing with strange dark flu­ids (the lit­er­al mean­ing of melan­choly’ is black bile’) – becomes a phys­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Parker’s fraught psy­cho­log­i­cal state, as our pro­tag­o­nist gets locked into pat­terns of grief and loss that he can­not him­self con­trol, and from which there seems no escape. If Park­er, his mar­riage on the rocks, is lost at sea, then his rec­ol­lec­tions and dream states keep return­ing him to a gloomy lit­toral bor­der­land where waves end­less­ly buf­fet the hard sand­stone. This lim­i­nal seashore set­ting might sound like a (men­tal) refuge from the claus­tro­pho­bic con­fines of the apart­ment, but in fact the two con­trast­ing loca­tions grad­u­al­ly flow into one, as Park­er finds him­self, like the Buchanans’ pre­vi­ous employ­ee Wal­ter S Moore (played by the direc­tor), gone fishing”.

Park­er is from a bro­ken fam­i­ly that con­sist­ed of him­self, his wife and his son; he has bath­room visions of rot­ting female spec­tres; and events unwind, rather point­ed­ly, on Over­look Street. All this points to The Shin­ing as a key inter­text for Obser­vance, as though we were watch­ing Kubrick’s 1980 film relo­cat­ed to an anony­mous Amer­i­can city and reimag­ined (most­ly) from the father’s dis­in­te­grat­ing per­spec­tive. Sims-Dennett’s slip­pery take on manip­u­la­tion and mad­ness ush­ers in a wel­come return for the messy obfus­ca­tion and creepy inde­ter­mi­na­cy for­mer­ly found in the neu­rot­ic cin­e­ma of the late 60s and ear­ly 70s. Here what is elid­ed is as impor­tant as what appears on screen, and view­ers are trust­ed to watch and com­pile their own reports, sim­ple or otherwise.

Obser­vance is released by Soda Pic­tures on DVD 10 Octo­ber 2016.

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