Spotlight
Spotlight Date: 11-April-04
Spoiler Rating: High
Seconds (1966)
For better or worse, Seconds marks the first time that The Jujube Spotlight has shone on a movie commonly referred to as a "cult classic." (I still love you, Buckaroo Bonzai!) To be honest, I only recently heard about John Frankenheimer's paranoid exploration of the futility of modern life and the terror of getting what you wish for, and I'm glad I did, because it offers some interesting images and a terrific dramatic performance by the usually lightweight Rock Hudson.
As rendered by Frankenheimer and cinematographer James Wong Howe (who got an Oscar nomination for his trouble), Seconds tells the story of 50-something bank executive Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), who receives strange messages from an old college chum he believed to be dead. On a tip from this mysterious correspondent, Hamilton visits an office where he is manipulated into accepting the services of a clandestine company run by a creepy geezer who looks like the Snow Miser from the old Christmas special (Will Geer). Hamilton agrees to pay the company to stage his death (complete with corpse), surgically reconstruct his face and body, and set him up in an entirely new life "absolved of all responsibility except to [his] own interests." Weeks later, he emerges from the office looking like Rock Hudson, with a fresh identity as Antiochus "Tony" Wilson, bachelor and resident artist of a posh but freewheeling California beach community.
Were this movie made today, Tony Wilson would ecstatically embrace his new life before learning that the traditional comforts he once had are more satisfying than narcissistic license. (And then he'd rage against the company that led him astray, hook up with some hot chick, and shoot a bunch of people.) But Hudson maintains Randolph's low simmer throughout the film, painting a portrait of a lost soul who never finds the answers, or even thinks he does. After arriving in California, Wilson keeps to himself until he meets a liberated divorcée (Salome Jens) who preaches the gospel of carpe diem (in part by taking him to a bacchanal which was heavily edited for the theatrical release but has been restored to video). He then spins out of control, unable to forget his past or root himself to the present he has bought so dearly. When he abandons this life and returns to the company seeking another try, Wilson discovers just how dangerous shuffling identities and asserting oneself can be.
"Seconds" refers, of course, to second chances, but it also ironically alludes to the notion of companions or alternates during a challenge. One of the most unsettling elements of the movie involves the connection between the erstwhile banker and the long-lost pal who sets the affair into motion, and the film's shocking ending results from Wilson's inability to name a second in his turn. The communal aspect of the story highlights the theme of the subjugation of modern man, how no one is really his own person because his goals and choices are dictated by trends and institutions. Hamilton never knew what he stood for or wanted — as an individual as opposed to a middle-class, white, American man — and, lacking self-definition, never connected with another person. His struggle represents not just the ordinary restlessness of middle age, but the search for identity and meaning at the most intimate level, which makes the brutal calculation and inhumanity that rules his fate all the more disturbing.
Howe's camera depicts Wilson's confusion with odd angles, swooping close-ups, and the occasional loss of focus, further heightening the picture's overall feeling of horror. Like Frankenheimer's other late-blooming classic, The Manchurian Candidate, Seconds leaves you feeling like They've got you under their thumb and, furthermore, there's nothing you can do about it.
Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
