Strange Days (1995)
Another near-future set film, in which the interaction between humans and technology leads to bad things – Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days takes place in the winter of 1999. It centres around the use of SQUIDS – Superconducting Quantum Interface Devices – which record events directly from the wearer’s cerebral cortex. When those recordings are played back (on a “deck”), the user can experience the memories and physical sensations associated with them.
In this vision of the imminent future, Los Angeles has descended into localized warfare, with crime and corruption having spiralled out of control. Former LAPD officer Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) is active within the black market, trading in illegal SQUID recordings. The anonymous delivery of a series of ‘snuff’ recordings triggers a chain of events that lead Nero to the hunt for corrupt police officers involved in a series of brutal murders. It all strikes a little close to home when it becomes clear that his former girlfriend, Faith (Juliette Lewis) is somehow caught up in the conspiracy.
Themes of power struggle and control surface again in Strange Days, as the interaction between humans and technology gives rise to violent crime – with corrupt individuals seeking to manage the flow of data and information recorded on these devices that connect directly with the human brain. Desperately needing to perpetuate and protect the situation that affords them power and wealth, the bad guys here are human – working against those that would harness the opportunities provided by these technological advancements, to bring them down. This humans/technology film is unusual in the sense that here, the betrayal comes from sections of the human race, and the thing they have created that is spinning out of control (with the aid of technology) is their own corrupt lives.
This science fiction thriller was a commercial disaster at the time of its release, which was surprising given that it was co-written by the legendary James Cameron and Jay Cocks (Gangs Of New York), and starred Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore and Vincent D’Onofrio. However, its themes about technology in surveillance and corrupt authorities were, in hindsight, ahead of its time. The world currently records everything on smartphones – which is not many steps removed from the drastic measure of a device recording directly from the brain. Using such measures as a way to combat chaos and disruption in society is not many steps removed from the current revelations about surveillance on citizens, either – perpetrated by “security” agencies in the west.