Movie Review--Meander

"Whoever put us in here wants us to die like rats."

--Lisa, Meander

Very reminiscent of the much older film Cube, which centers on a group of people who wake up in a set of cubic rooms that together form a massive cube structure, Meander relies almost on a single character (who is the only cast member for almost half an hour), its mystery, and its excellent cinematography and set design.  These qualities are utilized very well to take advantage of a simple but very promising plot, one with the uncomplicated yet still nuanced elegance of Alien.  Even amidst the small labyrinthine passages with flamethrowers, flooding, or acidic liquids below a receding floor, the character of Lisa, played by Gaia Weiss, stands out as by far the strongest asset in a movie full of strong assets.  She is used to explore determination, grief, isolation, and even the hope for an afterlife in a setting that reflects some of the unique elements of Cube and Saw.

Production Values

What seems to be largely set-based practical effects and the performance of the character played by Gaia Weiss are ultimately the visual pillars of Meander, and both of them are spectacular.  This is a film unafraid to let the camera show somewhat prolonged takes of Gaia's Lisa in a very narrow, isolated environment, her face and its expressions often being the center of its attention.  Though the setting itself is very limited in its style and color schemes, as very similar crawlspaces and rooms are shown for most of the runtime, there are some great shots that emphasize the colors of red, yellow, and blue lights lining the metallic walls--and the traps in certain spaces.  As the only character that gets more than a handful of screentime, though, it is Gaia Weiss on whose shoulders the majority of the acting falls upon, as she has to navigate these sets with the urgency and sadness that unites the abstract themes with the events of the plot.  Lisa has to make everything from difficult survival maneuvers to a very personal decision across the course of the movie, and Weiss does a phenomenal job of letting her physical mannerisms, facial expressions included, fit the bleakness of the situation while expressing Lisa's willpower, sorrow, and confusion in various scenes.  This is actually my first exposure to Gaia Weiss as an actress, and I look forward to seeing more of her in the future.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A woman gets inside a stranger's car when she is found lying in the middle of the road, admitting she is lost.  After turning on the vehicle's radio, she hears a description of a man wanted for two murders, the broadcast describing the physical features of the very man next to her.  He slams on the brakes so suddenly that she loses consciousness when her head strikes the dashboard.  An unknown amount of time later, she wakes up with an illuminated band on her wrist and inside a cube-shaped room with circular, closed passageways in the walls.  The glowing device on her wrist soon displays a timer, and one of the passageways opens up, which she crawls through only to find more branching artificial tunnels.  A dead body with a similar wrist attachment indicates that perhaps the device kills its wearer once the time runs out or that it signals an environmental trap.


Intellectual Content

Beyond exploring the logical (metaphysical) possibility of hypothetical situations like the one Lisa finds herself in--though the premise was used more as a means to a storytelling end than a way to take the logical possibility of bizarre scenarios seriously by means of storytelling--stories like that of Meander are ripe for tackling matters of epistemology and ethics.  The former is addressed through showing how Lisa gradually gathers sensory information that helps her survive, and the latter is addressed primarily in one scene where Lisa and another captive brawl over access to a safe area that could fit both of them at once.  Like in a particular scene from Saw V, more than one person could have survived a lethal situation if they had all cooperated with each other insead of trying to exclude the other from a small room to wait out a trap.

In Saw V, it was an explosion that would harm anyone not inside one of several cells, of which there were fewer than the number of Hoffman's victims; in Meander, it was a row of flamethrowers that could only be survived by entering a side chamber in one of the walls that would be sealed off from the flames.  Both Lisa and the man she fights with could have fit, though it might have been very uncomfortable due to the limited space.  Instead, largely due to the desperate aggression shown by the man, the other person dies for refusing to work with someone else instead of against them.  Fitting in so very well with the focus on survival in its personal and moral aspects is the recurring focus on how Lisa longs to be reunited with her dead daughter in some kind of afterlife.  What she expects the afterlife to be like or why she believes in one other than emotional preference is not revealed, and there is plenty of genuine ambiguity about many other things, from where exactly these time trials are taking place to what the implied aliens are who are overseeing the events.  At least this vagueness is not met with verbal proposals of things that are logically impossible even as strange but possible events are shown onscreen, making the characters idiots while holding onto great visuals as is the case with fellow ambiguity-laden film Tenet.


Conclusion

Meander uses its small handful of characteristics to accomplish more than any of the individual components could on their own.  Handling them all with the care of someone who does not appear to have made an excellent film on accident, it shows how simplicity and depth in a creative and intellectual sense are not opposed to each other.  Complex plots have their own kind of grand potential, but so does simplicity, something that can be denied, overlooked, or forgotten by those who think that artistic quality is dictated by how complex or convoluted something is.  Meander makes the most of an unusual scenario and a level of persistent ambiguity while still having technical, emotional, and thematic depth.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  A hand is sliced off by a transparent panel as it lowers.  Acid and barbed wire draw blood in other scenes. 

 2.  Profanity:  The word "fuck" appears in the French subtitles in one scene where Lisa speaks in French instead of English, but "shit" and "bitch" are used in English dialogue.