Ted K is an anxiety-inducing character study of one of America’s most notorious criminals, Ted Kaczynski, aka the “Unabomber.” Kaczynski is played by South African actor and District 9 star Sharlto Copley. Copley nails Kaczynski’s look and nasally voice, proving him to be a great casting choice for the role of the madman. The film borrows from Kaczynski’s actual writing, using it to supply the majority of the film’s dialogue. Additionally, the film was shot on the land that Kaczynski had built his cabin on. By delving into the mind of Kaczynski, director Tony Stone captures his anti-social personality and the effects that his twenty-five years of isolation in the Montana wilderness had on his mental state.
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What is most disturbing about Ted K is that it shows audiences the monsters amongst us and how anti-social and vengeful people can be pushed to a violent edge by their inability to impact the changing environment around them. In Kaczynski’s case, the environment is the destruction of the mountain ecosystem. Copley’s performance lingers long after the credits roll. For over two hours, the audience is left alone with Kaczynski, his paranoid thoughts, rage, and warped sense of purpose stemming from years of self-imposed isolation.
Ted K Is an Irritable Man
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The film opens with Ted watching a group of snowmobiles tearing through the landscape from the treeline. One can feel Ted’s distant seething as he sees the snowmobiles disturb the land. He follows the snowmobile tracks back to the cabin they originated from. At this point, the audience sees it isn’t a group of reckless teenagers but a family with young children on a holiday that Ted is angered by. After watching the family leave, Ted destroys the cabin and the snowmobiles. He’s a man who thinks the worst of people and their intentions, but most startlingly, he’s willing to act on his anger.
As Ted is increasingly annoyed by a local phone booth he regularly uses, he proceeds to write a letter to the Montana Telephone Company and even confronts them in person. However, he is disregarded when it is revealed that all the fuss was over five dollars and seventy-five cents, which he lost over the course of a year. This shows Ted as a man that looks toward the most minor things as sources of anger. He lives to be annoyed, letting these petty grievances drive his life direction.
One of the key sources of Ted’s irritability is his lack of success with relationships. Early in the film, Ted goes into extreme detail on a phone call with his mother, saying he had only two relationships and never made it farther than kissing a girl. Ted projects this irritation onto his brother, closing himself off from him after he decided to get married as if his brother had picked his new wife over him. Ted’s hatred of women gets him fired from a logging job he took to fund his bomb-making. While removing bark from the logs, the foreman, who is a woman, remarks to Ted to keep the blade away from his crotch so an “unfortunate” accident doesn’t occur. While this remark was a joke tied into some important advice, Ted lashes back and says he’ll take his orders from her husband and not a woman. To Ted’s shock, it turns out that was the woman in charge, and Ted once again finds himself unemployed, letting his short temper and mistrust of women get the better of him.
Ted K is Powerless
Some of Ted’s concerns in the film are certainly valid. As the years pass in his cabin, he witnesses plane and military jet emissions polluting the skies, open pit mining/logging destroying the forest, and the Montana Electric Company spreading cancer-causing herbicides near power lines, contaminating nearby berries. If anything, these issues are more prevalent today with growing concerns over climate change. Still, for many, the means to make a significant difference in the fight against ecological destruction are not within their power. Ted is no exception, barely having a cent to his name and being essentially non-existent by being separated from society. Ted doesn’t have much power in the fight.
One of the great dangers of this powerlessness is that an irritable and anti-social man, such as Copley’s Kaczynski, is willing to take violent measures to ensure he is not rendered ineffective. After his first few bombings, Ted remarks that he is still angry but feels he can now strike back to a degree. This is a concerning statement as Ted now feels empowered, but with his anger at society and those around him still festering within, no amount of bombings will satisfy. He will act with malice until the end times come in the form of an arrest or his death.
Ted K Has Purpose
What started as Ted simply striking back becomes something more. As he begins to witness the fame and success he’s accomplished, he sees himself as more of a revolutionary. Ted begins speaking of himself in terms of an organization, the Freedom Club, confusing the public into thinking that there is an organization behind these bombings rather than an individual. Eventually, Ted is outed to authorities by his brother, who recognizes his distinct voice in the letter the Unabomber sent to the papers. His brother hints in a letter to Ted that he may know it’s him by sending him a loaf of bread out of the blue and stating he wants to come up to the cabin to visit. If anything, this is confirmation for Ted that his brother hasn’t abandoned him, but Ted disregards the letter and burns it. Ted wants to be abandoned. Without that feeling of abandonment, one of the driving purposes of Ted’s violent actions would cease to exist.
What is particularly haunting about Copley’s performance is that he gives audiences a portrait of a man who sees the same issues as the public but lacks the rationality and kindness of the common person. In a sense, this is a cautionary tale of those living amongst the public who have the capacity to act out with violence in respect to the issues of the time. Ted states in the film that he’s acting simply for his desire for revenge, and he is, but what he doesn’t say is that not only is it revenge against corporate elites contributing to ecological destruction, but to get back at those women who rejected him and the family he felt abandoned him.
In reality, what Ted sees as an internal need for revenge is exaggerated, as it was himself who abandoned his family by living alone in the woods. He was the one rejecting women and all other beings all around him, expecting the worst of everyone and everything while believing in the righteousness of his life choices.
