Now we’re getting somewhere.
I suppose it won’t upset too many readers if I confess that I’ve broken my promise by failing to pause and write individual reviews between every episode from this season of Black Mirror. After reviewing “USS Callister”, I watched the remaining five in one long stretch. I blame Netflix’ auto-start, which I have yet to bother figuring out how to prevent.
Regardless, my having seen every episode at least allows me to declare that, in my opinion, “Arkangel” is this season’s best.
Everything in this episode works.
The story, by Brooker, is excellent, a beautifully constructed study of a relationship between a mother and daughter from its beginnings up to those fraught and frantic high school years. Rosemarie DeWitt and Brenna Harding are outstanding as the mother/daughter duo of Marie and Sara Sambrell, as is little Aniya Hodge, who plays Sara at the age of three. All the other actors acquit themselves beautifully, also, which means at least some of the praise must go to the episode’s director, Oscar winning actor Jodie Foster.
The story, by Brooker, is excellent, a beautifully constructed study of a relationship between a mother and daughter from its beginnings up to those fraught and frantic high school years. Rosemarie DeWitt and Brenna Harding are outstanding as the mother/daughter duo of Marie and Sara Sambrell, as is little Aniya Hodge, who plays Sara at the age of three. All the other actors acquit themselves beautifully, also, which means at least some of the praise must go to the episode’s director, Oscar winning actor Jodie Foster.
Kudos to Foster for taking on the job of directing an episode of a science-fiction anthology series known for bleak, edgy existentialism, and imbuing the proceedings with an unexpectedly warm, human, almost “indie” touch… this, despite the incredibly disturbing and cringe-worthy denouement. But more about that later.
The eponymous technology featured in this episode—an advanced version of the GPS “chipping” currently available to paranoid parents in most first world countries—is sufficiently advanced to be interesting, without ever seeming unrealistic. In fact, Arkangel seems like the kind of product we could expect to see available in the not too distant future. Much of the technology (remote GPS tracking, life-signs monitoring) is already available, and while the most advanced elements (mind’s eye POV recording and transmission) are still a decade or two away from being perfected, you better believe there are a bunch of very smart, capable and ambitious people working on making it a reality.
More than any other episode of this fourth season, however, “Arkangel” isn’t about technological extremes so much as it’s about the extremes to which some are willing to go in order to protect their loved ones. Mom might believe with all her heart that she’s doing right by her daughter when she walls her off from life’s many threats and dangers… but is she really? At what point does benevolent parental involvement in a child’s life become something else, even something potentially… perverse?
That’s where the “disturbing” part comes in. I’m not going to spoil it for you, except to say that, despite being seriously cringe-worthy, the scene is deftly handled and not played for titillation. If you know anything about the hazards snooping parents face when they meddle in the affairs of kids approaching adulthood, you can probably make an educated guess as to what this entails.
There’s a lot more going on in this episode than I can express in this short review, partly because I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, and partly because I’ve only got a partial handle on it myself. I feel that Brooker is definitely saying something about the state of the modern (or is that post-postmodern?) family here, with Marie’s relationships with men relegated to one fuck-buddy, and no mention ever being made of Sara’s father.
This is underscored in the very first scene, where Sara’s birth requires an array of technology and five specialists in a sterile, lab-like environment, all working together in order to achieve something that our ancestors used to do while squatting in the dust. Marie is cut off from the experience, a point driven home with the striking visual of an overhead shot of the operating table, Marie's top half clean, serene, and separated via hanging curtain from her bottom half, naked and covered in gore. We’ve come a long way, certainly… but at what cost?
It also speaks to the unfair expectations put on all children in these days of vanishingly small families, where the loss of a single child to sickness, an accident or worse often means the end of one’s genetic lineage forever and always.
Another interesting sub-plot involves Arkangel giving parents the ability to “block”, in real time, anything the child sees and/or hears that causes their stress levels to spike. So if, for instance, a dog barks, and the child is afraid, the dog will become a pixelated mush and its bark will be muffled while everything else in their line of vision remains clear. While it might seem like a nice idea to spare a child from experiencing anxiety and stress, the potential negative consequences of such are duly explored.
Refusing to stick with the easy anti-censorship stance, however, Brooker also takes the opportunity to explore the potential consequences of exposing children to the kind of horrific violence and extreme sex acts that are easily available to one and all these days. This is an example of the moral ambiguity and philosophical sophistication that is the hallmark of the best of Black Mirror, and which was sorely lacking in the season’s first episode, “USS Callister”.
With “Arkangel”, Brooker has added yet another masterpiece to the Black Mirror canon, an episode worthy of the legacy forged by “The Entire History of You”, “White Christmas”, and “Shut Up and Dance”. If any Black Mirror episode has a chance at winning an Emmy or two (not that it matters), it's this one.
The eponymous technology featured in this episode—an advanced version of the GPS “chipping” currently available to paranoid parents in most first world countries—is sufficiently advanced to be interesting, without ever seeming unrealistic. In fact, Arkangel seems like the kind of product we could expect to see available in the not too distant future. Much of the technology (remote GPS tracking, life-signs monitoring) is already available, and while the most advanced elements (mind’s eye POV recording and transmission) are still a decade or two away from being perfected, you better believe there are a bunch of very smart, capable and ambitious people working on making it a reality.
More than any other episode of this fourth season, however, “Arkangel” isn’t about technological extremes so much as it’s about the extremes to which some are willing to go in order to protect their loved ones. Mom might believe with all her heart that she’s doing right by her daughter when she walls her off from life’s many threats and dangers… but is she really? At what point does benevolent parental involvement in a child’s life become something else, even something potentially… perverse?
That’s where the “disturbing” part comes in. I’m not going to spoil it for you, except to say that, despite being seriously cringe-worthy, the scene is deftly handled and not played for titillation. If you know anything about the hazards snooping parents face when they meddle in the affairs of kids approaching adulthood, you can probably make an educated guess as to what this entails.
There’s a lot more going on in this episode than I can express in this short review, partly because I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, and partly because I’ve only got a partial handle on it myself. I feel that Brooker is definitely saying something about the state of the modern (or is that post-postmodern?) family here, with Marie’s relationships with men relegated to one fuck-buddy, and no mention ever being made of Sara’s father.
This is underscored in the very first scene, where Sara’s birth requires an array of technology and five specialists in a sterile, lab-like environment, all working together in order to achieve something that our ancestors used to do while squatting in the dust. Marie is cut off from the experience, a point driven home with the striking visual of an overhead shot of the operating table, Marie's top half clean, serene, and separated via hanging curtain from her bottom half, naked and covered in gore. We’ve come a long way, certainly… but at what cost?
It also speaks to the unfair expectations put on all children in these days of vanishingly small families, where the loss of a single child to sickness, an accident or worse often means the end of one’s genetic lineage forever and always.
Another interesting sub-plot involves Arkangel giving parents the ability to “block”, in real time, anything the child sees and/or hears that causes their stress levels to spike. So if, for instance, a dog barks, and the child is afraid, the dog will become a pixelated mush and its bark will be muffled while everything else in their line of vision remains clear. While it might seem like a nice idea to spare a child from experiencing anxiety and stress, the potential negative consequences of such are duly explored.
Refusing to stick with the easy anti-censorship stance, however, Brooker also takes the opportunity to explore the potential consequences of exposing children to the kind of horrific violence and extreme sex acts that are easily available to one and all these days. This is an example of the moral ambiguity and philosophical sophistication that is the hallmark of the best of Black Mirror, and which was sorely lacking in the season’s first episode, “USS Callister”.
With “Arkangel”, Brooker has added yet another masterpiece to the Black Mirror canon, an episode worthy of the legacy forged by “The Entire History of You”, “White Christmas”, and “Shut Up and Dance”. If any Black Mirror episode has a chance at winning an Emmy or two (not that it matters), it's this one.
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