Comfort is a heck of a thing. Our pursuit of it—in our appliances, our devices, our relationships—requires a tremendous amount of effort. We all want to feel special, to be safe and to insulate ourselves from bad thoughts, feelings or sensations. It’s when we forget that those things are not always attainable that we get into trouble.
That’s the predicament faced by Joe Larsen (Martin Starr), a computer programmer on the verge of something big, in director Logan Kibens’ feature film debut, Operator. Joe and his software company, owned by his neglected best friend, Gregg (Nat Faxon) have hit on a program that has the potential to revolutionize the “corporate robot answering service” problem we’ve all experienced too many times to count. When someone calls into their service, they won’t be greeted by the cold, dead voice of an automaton. They’ll get an approximation of a real-deal human being—the word “empathy” is tossed around a lot in meetings with an insurance company executive played by Retta of “Parks and Recreation.” That “person” on the other end of the line will offer them relief, answers to their questions and, yes, comfort in their time of stress.
Problem is, the voice Joe and his linguistics-expert partner, Meghan (Kate Cobb), have created ain’t doing the trick. Their data-driven (data-only?) approach to the project has left their creation too short with customers, too condescending, more invested in finishing the job than doing it with something resembling a heart—probably because it’s a computer without feelings and not connected to humanity in any meaningful way. With the insurance company about to pull out of their deal with Joe’s firm unless they fix the voice issue, and fast, the panic attack-prone Joe calls his wife, Emily (Mae Whitman), at her job as a hotel concierge. She is his rock, an eternally selfless woman who has an answer for every problem and an attitude that can accomplish anything. She is soft-spoken perfection as Joe’s romantic partner. During this phone call, he understands that she is also the answer to his career difficulties.
But there’s something off about Emily. She is empty and subservient, wishing to pursue her art—she is the newest member of Chicago’s Neo-Futurists theatre troupe—but she can’t get over her docile timidity to tell the kinds of hard-hitting, straight-to-the-bone stories her new theatre cohorts specialize in. Kibens and her cinematographer, Steeven Petitteville, spend the early part of the film framing Emily straight on. She speaks directly to the camera, occasionally with artificial white backgrounds behind her, like the host of the planet’s gentlest instructional video—it’s why she’s perfect for the role Joe wishes to cast her in. That effect, when combined with the hotel uniform Emily wears, gives her a soft kind of authority, but that authority does not equal agency over herself. Her role in her own life has become a false one. As she appears in the first third of Operator, Emily is little more than one of Joe’s technological devices meant to calm him during his panic attacks. As he hyperventilates on the floor, she lies on top of his back to recite words of comfort, which Joe later repurposes for his commercial enterprise. It’s not a healthy husband-wife setup.
Operator gets a little shaky in its middle section. When it gets away from Emily’s growing concerns about her relationship to focus on Joe actively harming their marriage, it struggles. This is partly a result of relying on Starr as a dramatic performer. He is a master of scathing, deadpan one liners on “Silicon Valley” and he can even go serious, like he did as a no-nonsense soldier in 2014’s Amira & Sam, a role he succeeded in playing partly because that film’s Sam is a man of honor and purpose, filled with quiet confidence. He has a code because it’s the “right” way for him to live. Here, he is asked to play a man at his breaking point, without a code beyond self-interest, and always in a heightened state of dread. Starr’s deep, monotone voice doesn’t always carry that emotion. Possibly as a compensation move, the film shifts Joe’s storyline to one of paranoia, tipping in one scene into ‘70s thriller territory, complete with the image of red string connecting to printed photos of his wife, charts, schematics and more. That scene feels dropped in from an Alan J. Pakula flick, and it doesn’t carry the emotional resonance of a breaking romantic partnership. It feels conspiratorial rather than melancholy.
The movie shines when it turns its attention to Emily. Whitman has been a utility player for series like “Arrested Development” (her?) and “Parenthood” throughout her career, and she was great at that, but here she does something more substantial. She continues her star breakout she began with last year’s teen romantic comedy The DUFF, although she takes her charisma and inherent good-heartedness in a sadder direction as Emily. She finds herself trapped by her own desire to help others, which emerges in Operator’s one truly transcendent scene, involving Joe’s ill mother, played by Christine Lahti. Mrs. Larsen, showing where Joe’s mental paralysis came from, refuses outright to take an injection that could prevent a trip to the hospital, but Emily takes control of the situation, holding her mother-in-law’s hand while she states flat-out that there is no other option in this moment. Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” is heavily involved in resolving the situation. This brief moment is a terrific piece of filmmaking that buoys Operator just as it threatens to slip away. If only every scene involved Patti Smith.
The post Operator appeared first on Spectrum Culture.