I've just begun the 2009 AMC
remake of The Prisoner, starring Jim Caviezel and Sir Ian McKellan. It condenses the action of the series into six episodes, and significantly changes aspects of the story - changes which appear to have lost many loyalists of the original show, but to me, so far - a third of the way in - have me wholly engaged and curious. Whereas in the original series, the inhabitants of The Village realize they are in a village, separated from the rest of the world, with which they retain a relationship, in the remake, everyone seems to labour under an enforced, unquestionable consensus that the Village is the only such place in the world, and has always been thus. There is no London, no New York, no ocean, even, just the Village and the desert beyond it; thinking about the village in any other way is seen as a threat to stability, a sure way to mark oneself a lunatic, and all media and government efforts in the Village encourage acceptance of the consensus and ones lot in life. Everyone is happy in the Village; why would anyone want to imagine life any differently?
(Already that description is reminding me of growing up in Maple Ridge...)
Enter number 6, who wakes up on the Village outskirts one day, not understanding where he is or what's happened to him. His refusal to accept that the Village is all that there is - his insistence on a
before and an
elsewhere - quickly become a metaphor for any individual at odds with his society, unwilling to accept its limitations and customs, or, indeed, even its reality. His continued refusal of the consensus marks him as insane - but becomes a point of pride (all of which is a bit richer and more complex than that rather dated, oh-so-'60's proclamation that "I am not a number - I am a free man!"). The vividness of 6's insistence on another world threatens to unbalance the status quo, since gradually, Number 6 draws other people into his "delusion," drawing on their own half-forgotten dreams and memories of other ways of being; but just as they are partially seduced by him, so too 6 is partially seduced by the collective hallucination that he himself has always been a resident of the the Village, with family, a job, coworkers and so forth, who are all worried about his sudden insistence that nothing around him is real. Maybe everyone else is right, and he really
is insane? After all, so much around him is eerily familiar...
It's a very curious show! Its metaphors are a bit more streamlined and its narrative quite a bit more coherent and consistent than the original series, which, while brilliant, was highly uneven and, er, at times a bit ramshackle. The 2009 remake seems determined to improve on the original, and - while it can never match the original for cultural/ historical significance, and labours in great debt to it - appears (based on the first two episodes), to succeed quite admirably. Sir Ian McKellan, further, is delightful to watch, as always, as the totalitarian in charge, Number Two, who appears just as convinced as everyone about the reality of The Village, and genuinely confused by 6's contrary assertions; he only wants to help the poor man come to grips with reality - just like so many other fascists before him...
I reserve the right to do an about-face on the series if the next few episodes lose me - but so far, I think I'm recommending this'un!
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...and then I watched episode three, which completely confuses matters by introducing queer themes and, it *seems* to be hinted, an incestuous or quasi-incestuous relationship between McKellan and his pretty-boy son. This seems HIGHLY out of place - McKellan HAD been playing an apparently straight totalitarian, complete with a wife; to hint that he might have something going with his boy, too, almost seems like an inappropriate riff on McKellan's actual sexuality (why couldn't he just play a straight character? He IS an actor, after all). Suddenly I no longer know where the series is going or what I make of it, and my confidence that I am in the hands of people who know what they are doing has been shaken. There is some interesting stuff about Villagers being "undercover agents," spying on each other - but without having, say, William S. Burroughs to explain it all to me, I felt just a little lost. Is this queering going to continue? Is this The Gay Prisoner, then? Do I need to add that matrix of interpretation to my way of reading the show.... which, really, seemed complex enough without this further elaboration....? Episodes 4-6 have been placed on hold for the time being while I focus on other things, but my eagerness to complete the series has been dampened considerably. They really just might have screwed it up.
Hm. The thing about this series is that it really rather hurts your head. It's a mindgame that you can't quite win, since the makers withhold key information both about the narrative world they're creating ("what the hell is going on?") and the thematic significance of what happens there ("what the hell does it mean?"). I can't begin to go into detail, I'm afraid. It's also - for a six hour miniseries - a bit less "even" than it should be; the first two episodes have a certain elegance, but the complications really pile on, and episodes three and five, so far, end up the most confusing/ unsatisfying, since they seem to stray furthest in their sub-plots from the themes tabled in episodes 1 and 2. I have yet to watch episode 6, so I am still in the dark about certain things, but there's definitely the sense that everything WILL be resolved shortly. I don't *think* it's all a momentous, half-baked ripoff, which is my impression of Lost, say (bearing in mind that I tuned out mid-way through season 1 of THAT show).
Anyhow, I'm back to recommending The Prisoner, but only for ambitious viewers, and not without certain reservations.
I should also mention that the real oddity of the series is that there are two buildings that appear as ghost towers in the distance, hovering over the Village, that seem deliberately designed to evoke the World Trade Centre... Very strange, given the conspiratorial, reality-questioning mindset of the series, and plot details that include an explosion in New York, government mind control and reality-manufacturing, and such. That they would include such a reference makes me trust less in their agenda (and tact), but sometimes untrustworthy cinema can be fascinating viewing... It remains to be seen what I'll make of things ultimately...
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