Strip Search

Saw a movie day before yesterday called “Strip Search” on HBO…..just chanced upon it while flicking channels…you know, there are some movies that just catch you in your tracks just by the momentary glimpse that you get of them….this was one of them….

The movie is this….we are shown two scenarios, two scenes of interrogations….one, in USA, an Arab man being interrogated by a female official; the second is in China, an American woman being interrogated by a Chinese Army official who is male…..as the scenes follow one another, an interrogation that is simply terrifying follows, terrifying because it all seems so real…..very rapidly the interrogation becomes a brutal strip search, brutal not so much in the physical sense as in the psychological…..the classical interrogation technique is shown in full blast; that of forcing the victim to be in a state where his/her perceived dignity (the most profound of which is dignity of privacy) is shattered repeatedly with cold-blooded precision, in the end transforming them into wrecks….

The hallmark of the movie is not this brutal interrogation, which on its own would have made it a terrifying movie without doing anything else, is that it forces us to examine our own stereotypes, our own perceptions – of male and female (both in the role of victim and oppressor), of geographical/regional biases, of our perceptions of people being inherently just. The interrogation techniques employed by the American (a female) and the Chinese (a male) is a complete Xerox as it were, down to the dialogues….what this was doing, was that it was constantly churning our feelings, our perceptions which we had unconsciously accepted…..the repeat of the dialogues, mouthed by the American in one instant and then repeated by the Chinese in the next heightens this. So do the response by their victims, from their initial defiance to their all too human break eventual breakdown, which is again a perfect xerox.

This film, directed by Sidney Lumet is harsh look at the lengths governments can go (while hiding as much as they can from the public) when faced with a threat, perceived or real….how they tend to get overboard and entrap ordinary people (in this case tourists) with nothing more tangible than mere suspicion……how terms like freedom, liberty and safety from terror swing from idealistic terms with a feel-good aura to becoming banal and inane and finally plunging into positively dangerous territory, much like an Orwellian nightmare (remember Ministry of Peace, Ministry of Love etc in 1984? – the former obsessed with war and the second with torture, its something similar here).

It shows how dangerously close we all are to having this as a living nightmare, if not actually living it already (which so many of us already are, in US, Indian, Israeli (etc…) detention centers….

It does this and more in a short span of time, over just an hour in running time….it literally leaves your mind on edge and unless one is downright desensitized or plain dumb (as some imbeciles who have called this a pseudo-porn movie), you cant help but have your mind churned out….movies like these are needed more and more, to have an impact in an overcrowded noisy media marketplace which more often than not strives to simplify, falsify reality and which attempts to divert and fatigue our attention with inconsequential trivia…..

Which is why I was surprised to see a movie like this on prime time, in India (which is becoming more and more a satellite of the USA) on an American channel (which have been accused of cultural imperialism – a loose term which covers many things)….maybe it being on HBO was an explanation (which has some done some pioneering, if not radical programming), since such a film would be unthinkable on Star Movies, controlled by Rupert Murdoch….

It was only later, while looking it up on the net, that I found out that what I was seeing was actually a shortened version (brutally shortened if I may say – almost half of it was snipped), with HBO having taken it off their schedule and website (when it was released in 2004), only showing it after some spirited campaigns by subscribers….typical isn’t it?? In my view, it vindicated the movie….perhaps, these days, if you are not censored, you are not doing anything worthwhile.

You can look up all the controversies at http://www.imdb.com/ . Search for the movie title and go to the message boards…..the message boards show how much of debate can be generated by a movie of this caliber…..which is what the purpose is, isn’t it?