Across a dozen features, David Fincher has cultivated one of the most cohesive modern oeuvres, delineating and exploring a world whose free-flowing cruelty channels directly into his protagonists’ psyches. Using color as starkly and selectively as the best noirs employed black and white, these movies transform personal and aesthetic emptiness into a defining characteristic, leeching the landscape of joy and the narrative of excess, stripping things down while sharpening stylistic edges. They engage with genre in a fashion similar to Hitchcock, offering excuses for creative run-throughs of challenging scenarios, creating problems that need to be solved by technical means, in a trial-and-error manner that mirrors the characters’ developing crises of ego. Yet where much of Hitchcock’s experimentation centered around construing different psychological schema as the basis for narrative structures, Fincher’s starting point is generally the same, envisioning alienation as a persistent state of being which must repeatedly be challenged, a task which often proves impossible.
The classic Fincher hero is a loner whose solitude is largely a consequence of their own choices, which isn’t to say that the films stand in indictment of those decisions. The coldness of the world is established through formal means, and it’s the characters’ awkward fit in these uncaring environs that sets them out on their singular quest. In this way, tales of individual estrangement are dramatized via technical exercises that mirror this process; technology encloses and isolates all of us, but also fuels the filmmaking itself. This thread weaves its way up from the early coarseness of Alien 3, beneath the scuzzy, isolating netherworlds of Seven, up through Fight Club, with its post-Yuppie salaryman sent on a dark journey of violent self-discovery. The tenor changes a bit with The Game, whose captain of industry is caught in a self-imposed hall of mirrors, his personal life inextricably tangled with his professional one. The journey thus far has culminated with The Killer, in which corporate branded, rise-and-grind nihilism reflects the hollow core of modern techno-capitalism, the next horizon of self-confinement and desolation.
Jumping back a few decades, 2002’s Panic Room does the same for the heady atmosphere of pre 9/11 America, a world where catastrophe always seemed just around the corner. Following up on the The Game’s anxiety-baiting thriller structure, it envisions a scary, nocturnal world of external threats gaining access to private spaces, while also acknowledging how easily perspective and sympathy might pivot to the point of view of its antagonists. The primary focus of this dynamic is the duo of Meg Altman (Jodie Foster), a divorcée recently kicked to the curb for a younger model by her wealthy husband, and her pre-teen daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart), who’s not happy with this new arrangement. The two attempt to form a new functional family in a huge Manhattan townhouse which scans as a high-priced prison, its cavernous interior representing a form of continued exile rather than a new start. Their first night in the place is disrupted by the appearance of a small B&E crew led by Burnham (Forest Whitaker), who also led the team installing the house’s panic room. Relatable despite his positioning, he stands out as a prototypical noir fall guy and would-be hero of a different movie, the everyman-gone-wrong just trying to make a clean score, his insistent attempts at professionalism frustrated at every angle.
The thieves, in search of a cache of bearer bonds secreted away in the house’s titular fortress within a fortress, are not expecting the house to be occupied, and all react differently upon discovering the new residents, who quickly enclose themselves in the secured space. That the foolproof precision of this caper is scotched by a misunderstanding of the relationship between escrow and business days is the perfect impelling detail, the veiled hand of finance again defining and structuring the characters’ run-in with fate and plot. The antagonistic trio is anchored on one side by Junior (Jared Leto), an idiotic, over-confident rich kid whose crack pipe and cornrows play as important personality signifiers, unstable affectations and active signs of danger, summing up a livewire tangle of racial and economic concerns. There’s also the masked, mysterious Raoul (Dwight Yoakam), a surprise guest of Junior’s who at first seems like a hanger-on poser, but steadily establishes himself as the most dangerous of the bunch.
Junior, who’s incited the scheme as a means of circumventing his grandfather’s will, seems to be playing gangster partially out of greed, partially as an extension of the general racial cosplay that defines his character. The thuggish figure he aspires to strike is akin to the one Burnham is afraid of being seen as, yet he’s here nonetheless, lured in by the same stink of easy money, with a likely side bonus of finally getting the best of one of his wealthy clients. Raoul, a downmarket denizen of far-off Flatbush, represents both bona fide desperation and genuine menace, the flip side to Junior’s infantile desire for more. It’s an intricate triangle, encompassing two different versions of the professional who just wants the job done right, one sympathetic, one psychotic, along with a wild card whose incompetence keeps the plot lurching forward. Together they form a composite image of urban rot, the passive interplay between wealthy adventurism, middle-class self-interest and lumpen criminality, each doing its part to erode safety and security for everyone.
The duo on the other side, meanwhile, is just as complex. Trapped inside the room designed to protect their safety, Meg and Sarah are trying to find a way out, just as they’re trying to sidestep the curtain of financial privilege that separates them from true connection with one another. This is literalized by Sarah’s diabetic condition, which ups the stakes while further centering the focus on interpersonal care. Caught in a felonious lark rapidly spinning out of control, the three thieves are hungry for a way in, looking to claim the same prize their counterparts are trying to leave behind. This big, fat, all-purpose symbol serves as the film’s central node, around which Fincher, screenwriter David Koepp and cinematographer Conrad W. Hall (in his first effort, replacing the fired Darius Khondji) each attempt to get their hands around. Achieving this involves a series of puzzles for all involved, including the audience, who are tasked with figuring out how this potboiler will conclude, and whether escape is actually possible for anyone.
Despite centering around a single location, producing Panic Room proved a very complicated undertaking, partially due to the fact that its progressively wrecked townhouse had to be shot in sequence. Utilizing an organic, multi-level set that had to be repatched for retakes and destroyed for good as the production progressed, Fincher makes the most of his increasing technical proficiency, although the digital seams do look a little worn two decades on. A distinct, two-toned color palette differentiates the story’s two sides – the icy blue of the panic room, the sickly tungsten streetlight glow of the rest of the house – although this too looks less impressive after the mounting scourge of modern color grading. Still, the foundation of the film’s basic dichotomy remains firm, hitting all the notes of the thriller format while managing to express a deep ambivalence about the distinctions between its characters. The demands of the genre insist the two sides must be delineated, but the movie’s focus points toward a more holistic viewpoint, reminding us that one side cannot exist without the other, the haves fated to be forever menaced by the have-nots.
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