The fre­net­ic thrills of Abel Ferrara’s abstract sur­veil­lance thriller

Masked, armed and uni­formed Amer­i­can sol­dier J.J. (Ethan Hawke) is in the mid­dle of a noc­tur­nal, locked-down Rome under explic­it threat of explo­sive ter­ror­ist attack. For pur­pos­es that are nev­er entire­ly clear, he shoots – with his cam­era rather than gun – poten­tial tar­get build­ings and oth­er things and peo­ple that he encoun­ters in his infer­nal­ly cir­cu­lar trav­els through the city, and uploads the dig­i­tal footage, whether as part of his offi­cial mis­sion or covert­ly, to remote observ­er Stephen Gure­witz (played by Stephen Gure­witz, lit­er­al­ly zoom­ing his per­for­mance in).

On this long dark night of the soul, J.J. meets mil­i­tary col­leagues, a Mul­lah (Babak Kari­mi), Chi­nese black mar­ke­teers, Russ­ian agents (includ­ing Ferrara’s wife Cristi­na Chiri­ac), a spokes­woman for the Church (Car­la Cas­so­la) and a home­less hero­in addict (Mah­mut Sifa Erkaya) – although we know, not least because Hawke tells us this in a filmed intro­duc­tion, that J.J. has a par­al­lel mis­sion to find his miss­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary broth­er Justin (also played by Hawke), who has left behind a lover (Vale­ria Cor­reale) and baby (Ange­lo Lucariello).

Abel Ferrara’s lat­est fea­ture Zeros and Ones starts out as a para­noid inter­na­tion­al thriller set at the heart of Catholi­cism, but quick­ly shifts into more abstract cin­e­mat­ic ter­rains. For much as it is named for the con­stituent ele­ments of dig­i­tal code that reduce every­thing to sim­ple bina­ries, the film, itself shot dig­i­tal­ly and fea­tur­ing mul­ti­ple intradiegetic lay­er­ing of dig­i­tal media, con­structs its world – an arti­fi­cial sim­u­lacrum of con­tem­po­rary real­i­ty – from all man­ner of dual­i­ties. Fer­rara is reveal­ing a murky, medi­at­ed con­flict between East and West, Chris­tian­i­ty and Islam, man and woman, rich and poor, fas­cism and free­dom, sol­dier and civil­ian, Covid-pos­i­tive and ‑neg­a­tive. From all this, he fash­ions a messy mosa­ic of post‑9/​11, mid-pan­dem­ic anxiety.

“The 3000-year war,” J.J. says in voice-over, of the strug­gle in which he has become embroiled, ​“Jesus was just anoth­er sol­dier, anoth­er war casu­al­ty. But on whose side?” J.J.’s own dual­ism – his inner con­flict – is embod­ied both by his rela­tion­ship to his twin broth­er (him­self falling some­where between Jesus Christ and Charles Man­son, a mar­tyr either to mes­sian­ism or to mass mur­der), and by his own appar­ent dou­ble agency, as he nav­i­gates the blur­ring lines of a bat­tle in which it remains unclear who is the real ene­my. Shot in an eeri­ly depop­u­lat­ed, quar­an­tined Rome under a cres­cent moon, J.J.’s increas­ing­ly sur­re­al adven­tures are ulti­mate­ly a jour­ney inwards – a psy­cho­log­i­cal, polit­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al trip through the soul of 21^st-cen­tu­ry human­i­ty, lost in the dark.

Shoot­ing fre­net­i­cal­ly, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Sean Price Williams’ cam­era cap­tures a shad­ow world where every­one is under shriv­elled, where every­one wears a mask, where God hides, where mon­ey talks, where we all have the pow­er to be Christ or the dev­il, and where even the dark­est night is fol­lowed by the bright light of day. Zeros and Ones is not easy to love. On the con­trary, it is a prick­ly, dif­fi­cult, even impen­e­tra­ble mash-up of arche­types and ideas, all wrapped up in the non­sen­si­cal intrigues of genre cin­e­ma while reach­ing out­ward towards some­thing big­ger beyond. By now, we should expect no less from Fer­rara, a film­mak­er who nev­er stops pro­vok­ing and prod­ding the view­er towards elu­sive, intractable truths.

Zeros And Ones is released on Dig­i­tal Plat­forms 7^th March and on DVD 4^th April, 2022 via Sig­na­ture Entertainment.