“Did anybody see?”
Swift shot: Even if you live your life in a vacuum, you are being watched – if you think about it, our lives are a constant exhibitionist experiment, with the man, or woman, upstairs kicking back with a cold one and either enjoying all of it or fast-forwarding all the mundane bullshit and getting to the good stuff. Writer/Director Adam Rifkin allows the audience to become the Eye of Providence through the many lenses our modern society provides – from the cameras that keep us safe to the cameras that ensure our stock doesn’t walk away without reason. Getting a grasp on the characters becomes a challenge, but as the story plays out and things start to connect, the challenge of figuring out who is noteworthy and who is just along for the ride, keeps this film entertaining. And, it makes you think about what role you may be playing in your own story – is it LOOK worthy?
Leading right off with T&A, Rifkin directs the Eye to two teenagers changing at the local mall, trying on tiny outfits – wearing nothing but thongs. He effectively gets right to the heart of the voyeur and eliminates the anticipation of when the good stuff is coming. And, if you are easily distracted by T&A, you might miss some of the genuine dialog, but even if you hear no dialog, the character of these girls is immediately brought into question. In fact, watching LOOK on mute won’t detract from the overall payoff – or watching it in foreign tongue, for example. I think a scene where Rifkin actually uses a foreign speaking correspondent displays this well.
As mentioned before, the “guess the characters” game in LOOK is intriguing, so I don’t want to give you a break-down of each, because that is half the fun with LOOK. You learn about each character through their actions more than their words, ultimately, words become pointless, because the actions dictate each character’s role in the film. The actors pulled off a decent feel of authenticity, and I must say, by the end I was wagging my finger at a few of the characters and shaking my head at their choices – so, these actors managed to become their characters. You can’t ask more from your talent than to be loved or hated as the writer intended.
What I didn’t really like about LOOK also has to do with two of these characters – they are killers, referred to as “The Candid Camera Killers”. I wanted to know more about these characters, and only one scene had any chance of pulling that off. Ron (Sebastian Feldman) wears a suit, the other looks like a grungy dirt-bag, Ace played by Rhys Coiro. Feldman gave a forced performance, or at least if felt that way, because I don’t know enough about his character’s motivations. Granted, a lot of the time, real life is like that, people do shit and you scratch your head and find yourself asking why. LOOK suffers for this with a few of the characters.
Ultimately, the way everything plays out in the end is satisfying, because real life never has all the loose ends wrapped up. LOOK is worth the watch, but it isn’t for everyone. It doesn’t have a lot of action, the dialog is parsed together from several days of surveillance footage and some of the characters come across as uninteresting because of that. Still, this one did well in college houses according to Rifkin (you can listen to our interview with him here) and I can see why. The whole film I was reminded of a line from my dad’s favorite film, “That’s the trouble with surveillance, you never get to see nuthin”. LOOK is like that, you only get to see these people through surveillance, so you only get snippets – but, it is disturbing how much can be gleaned about people from these little snippets.
Enjoy LOOK, because while you watch it, someone is watching you!
