Who knew Ben Stiller was this good a director. A slow churning examination of identity. The sci-fi-ish thriller drama makes a case for the pace of awareness. I know where I am and I know the truth, the truth is what is needed now and even the next five steps to the door can reveal whatever peace or grace is needed to live. Dan Erickson’s scripts and vision of the close up featuring a doorknob opening, Severance encapsulates time within the present thought, from there it shares everything: the story, the rhythm, and the need. It’s so hard to figure out, yet so easy when you understand. It’s as if I was angry the story was such a mystery and that the plot was even left for us to figure out. The main character played a bit too reserved by Adan Scott and Britt Lower was even more intentionally vague because the script is a conundrum of competing beliefs. At one point involved in satisfying work, and easy existence that reflects and cherishes art or a simple philosophy that drives peace from sheer ignorance. Scott and Lowers eyes met the task but I didn’t feel the layers needed to examine safely like I did with Zach Cherry, Christopher Walken, Patricia Arquette and John Turturro who all felt more authentic in their portrayals believing in the moments whereas Scott and Lower saw many different outcomes as if an abstract painter we need to figure out. Perhaps that decision to play a cynical sadness consumed their skills in convening plot and story. It’s fine for the script, one of the most unique things about Severance is this vague line dividing decisions and identity. The whole give in to your feelings to know who you are crowd is too existentialist. You are not what you want. You are what you need. This is perhaps the best lesson from Severance, but the direction that Erikson takes defines an ill-fated freedom into living in a false reality, a new one that’s distorted from the current one, taking self-duality to a level of defeat; but it’s almost as if the Zen like compliance of raw emotion supplants need for want. How can someone pick what they want if they know it’s not what they need clearly. It feels somewhat unbelievable in Severance, yet not so much in life when someone that sounds intelligent and charmingly kind stoops to shill for corruption to get whatever perverse issue they believe based on want and desires. Some are so obsessed with ending violence that they let insane notions harbor unanchored to the facts that surround what is happening, in Severance we don’t have the facts, the foreground is missing and all we are left with is a background to gleam reality from.
In the case of school demonstrations for Palestine they detain protestors and cut school funding but aren’t going after the outside instigators of the protests or the actual antisemitic suspects; perhaps that goes beyond there capability especially so far removed from when the protests occurred. The same goes for gang members sent to prison without criminal charges when one of the leaders of MS 13 had his charges dropped allegedly so he could be sent to El Salvador as part of a bribery scheme with El Salvadorian officials. A similar incident occurred in April after a so-called leader of MS 13’s charges were dropped for immediate deportation according to immigration prosecutors instead of getting more information on the gang from the leader to further persecute the gang. With regards to short windows of due process for sending legal residents to foreign prisons, as a blue dog democrat, I’m all for sending in special soldiers to go after gangs, but imprisoning suspected ones without any charges is unamerican and unconstitutional. The latter is opinioned and discussed in the media ad nauseam but the former conspiracy theories are left uninvestigated, underexpose or examined. The DOGE employees who quit, the Starlink over the White House as well as the Russian Ip’s found meddling at the National Labor Relations Board, the confidential information sent on gmails, and other groundbreaking stories fall out of the attention span, deemed no longer “news”, awaiting a documentarian or historian to account. What’s missing is the relentless investigative work that keeps the issue, its cause and effects in the headlines, not merely part of the tone or feeling as if a fleeting memory seen after crude brain surgery.
It’s absurd to think how the Trumpian era has made a large portion of our population distracted from all the facts focused on their scheme to entertain a false narrative that serves the corrupt.
What is Lumon’s corruption? Why are they creating new identities to serve their seemingly diabolical needs yet the extent of which, the details of which, we do not know. All we know is a cocreator wanted to separate their minds to create a separate existence. And it appears somewhere down the line, her vision was stolen, going from science to something unknown in Severance but in real life that reality is clear, even though the task to undo it is absent as if the minority cannot understand what is happening or is just incapable of overcoming it or stopping it. Senator Schumer knows the reality all too well. The president wanted to shut down the government so he could continue shutting down the government by dismantling it without any congressional fight to stop him. How the president has a grip on executive orders and is grifting the country with Elon and company is a complete shock and much worse than I had ever thought it could be. Senators Murphy and Booker laid the tale on tape for us to listen to on the floor bare.
The hero needs to file a discharge petition to bring up the CRA act forcing a vote on executive orders or enacting one or 2 other similar acts, the REINS act or the SOPR act; all three could get a vote on restricting executive orders before it’s too late. Its erroneous that democrats haven’t focused on flipping votes to make this happen or for impeachment. All they need is 8 or 9 votes in congress. The hero needs to convey to the majority why the use of Trump’s 143+ executive orders have been unconstitutional and in the case of some departments or programs too late to reverse even with a court order. The problem is folks like AOC who I adore didn’t even mention executive orders in one of her speeches I caught during the “fight oligarchy tour”. While there is a lot of middle ground progressives can meet to appease conservative votes what’s most imperative now is to convince the “innies” what reality is. The republican Lumons in turn have introduced the “no rogue rulings act” which would dissolve the judicial branch because their reality is based on grift, plain and simple market and institutional manipulation. A house committee’s republicans recently voted the Trump administration could deport American Citizens, and the Administration is working to eliminate investigations into voter suppression and manipulation. It’s clear they are moving to sever Americans from democracy, truth. and reality hoping we, like the main character in this thought-provoking series, choose what distracts us most from who we are.
