There are many ways to “play it safe” when it comes to making a sci-fi film. Aliens. The end of the world. Robots that are a little too human. Humans that are a little too robotic. In 1993 or 2023, these are all timeless enterprises bound to entertain a commercial audience, even if the movie ends up being no Blade Runner. Surprisingly, sometimes it seems that the one thing not so timeless to sci-fi is the future. Y2K films can feel pretty outdated and cheesy, when that date has indeed since passed us, and the world has not ended.
Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, one of the most underrated sci-fi movies of the nineties, is one of the glaring exceptions to that rule. Starring Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett in some of their most alluring roles put to screen, Bigelow’s film is a filthy and scintillating vision of the “future” that still remains deeply relevant today. Fiennes plays ex-cop Lenny Nero, who deals in the illegal sale of “memory”; in this premillennial L.A., technology called a SQUID device allows memories to be recorded straight from one’s cerebral cortex and then re-experienced by others. Lenny and Bassett’s character, Mace, soon become embroiled in a murder case when they find that one of these clips contains footage of a woman being assaulted and killed. Strange Days is nowhere near your “normal” sci-fi, or even a thriller, for that matter. Rather, it is a profoundly successful crossover between the two genres, equal parts sci-fi epic and entrancing neo-noir. While it prognosticates the future, it is also very much a great product of its time.
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Despite the fact that it was co-written by James Cameron - whom Bigelow had been married to during the film’s original conception - with a comfortable $42 million production budget, Strange Days was an epic commercial flop upon release, grossing only a paltry $8 million. Financial ruin of this capacity almost ended up derailing Bigelow’s career. And while some critics, such as Roger Ebert, held the film in extremely high regard, it seemed that the film left the majority of viewers with mixed reactions. Indeed, Strange Days is certainly a tough film to swallow, not only for its “weirdness,” but also for its lofty themes and unflinching depiction of violence and sexual assault. However, it still remains a must-see for any fans of its myriad genres, a cult-classic whose legacy should not be confined to its lack of commercial success.
L.A.’s Candy-Coated Depravity
20th Century Fox
Barring its incredibly potent themes and performances, Strange Days is a masterful accomplishment on the aesthetic front alone. Bigelow both adheres to and subverts cyberpunk convention, making Strange Days beautiful and repulsive to look at all at once - words that can also be used to describe the many experiences endured by the characters throughout the film. While other cyberpunk films, like A.I., Minority Report, and Twelve Monkeys, rely on muted, dispassionate color schemes to evoke a sense of dread, or, rather, douse everything in sterile neon, Bigelow’s film finds the perfect balance between reality and fantasy. Its rainbow hues both cover up and accentuate the violence and filth lurking underneath.
Strange Days’s cinematography is easily one of its most notable features, gripping us from the very first scene, in which viewers are fully immersed into a Chinese restaurant robbery. We are transported into not only a state of voyeurism, but active participation in the events of the film with the unique point-of-view sequences Bigelow utilizes. The director and crew apparently spent an entire year designing and producing a special 8-pound, 35mm camera that could be mounted on a portable rig in order to achieve such advanced sequences. Until then, second-person POV shots had mostly been relegated to the world of video games. Strange Days was truly ahead of its time in terms of what it gifted, and demanded of, its viewer.
We Won’t See Them In a Film Like This Again
Strange Days enlists some of the most talented actors of a generation and puts them out of their comfort zone. Indeed, we are more used to seeing Ralph Fiennes play sophisticated villains than seeing him as a slick antihero. Yet Lenny’s character is a complex and infinitely layered one, at times glib and cunning, at times wounded and sentimental. Fiennes’s natural ability to lean into either of these sides of Lenny, without letting one take too much control over the other, is what makes him feel so oddly personable, adding a layer of profound authenticity to the otherwise out-there film. Strange Days might entertain high-end concepts, but everyone in it feels undoubtedly like a real person, with more-than-real conflicts. This goes for Angela Bassett and Juliette Lewis’s characters as well, although one critique that did seem to come up about the film was Lewis’s being typecast. Regardless, Strange Days was a shot in the dark on many fronts, and we’re lucky we ended up with actors who could both understand and reinvigorate its story.
Prescient In More Ways Than One
“Prescient” is a word that’s often tossed around with sci-fi films when we know they’re ahead of their time, but aren’t exactly sure how - or haven’t lived it yet. Movies like Ex Machina and Gattaca are prescient in that they depict technology that could resemble our own, in the near future. Strange Days goes beyond this; while it predicts technology, it also predicts our dependence on and behavior surrounding it. Lenny deals in memories not unlike drugs, and the energy that seems to underpin the movie definitely speaks to a breed of addiction and dependence evident in our media-addicted world of today. Bigelow does not attempt to proselytize against technology by any means, but rather show us that it’s not just the technology we should fear - it’s being attached, like a new limb, to something we can’t control. Some of the footage throughout the film of the SQUID devices being used, especially from Lenny’s own perspective, are downright hypnotic in effect, and make us feel more compassion for his character than the actual events of the film. As Lenny likes to tell his customers, “This is life. This is a piece of somebody’s life… I mean, you’re there, you’re doing it, you’re hearing it, you’re feeling it.” The thrill is the danger in it, and the danger is the thrill.
A Y2K With No Expiration Date
There is something inexorably fresh about the Y2K of Strange Days, beyond just how it looks. In this case, the film’s sociopolitical relevance can’t be ignored. Bigelow was inspired to start work on the film following the Rodney King riots that left L.A. in a wave of anger in spring ‘92. The police force are a notable character throughout the film, as are these themes of racial and political injustice, and Bigelow does not tread lightly in order not to undermine the threat of these things. Throughout the film, a furor of anger and exuberance always permeates the streets. Especially in the closing party sequence, which had over 10,000 extras on site, it is hard to ever tell whether people are rioting or celebrating. Will the new millennium bring new change? Will people stop having to rely on virtual experiences when the real ones are so unspeakable? The film goes the extra mile to make us consider these timely but paradoxically timeless questions. The political relevance alone of Bigelow’s film is definitely almost as powerful as its creative ingenuity.
