Red Road

MOVIE #1,479 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 03.27.24 ᴾᵃʳᵗ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ᴬᴺᴰᴿᴱᴬ ᴬᴿᴺᴼᴸᴰ ᴰⁱʳᵉᶜᵗᵒʳ ᶠᵒᶜᵘˢ There's something about seeing a person stare at the grainy footage of CCTV cameras (being collected on VHS!) that's oddly satisfying. Not just because of its voyeuristic nature, though that's part of it. There's something beautiful in this now aged technology and it's integrated beautifully into this wonderful debut film: aesthetically, pragmatically and thematically. As Jackie (Kate Dickie) explores these physically close places IRL, outside of the tiny lo-fi boxes where they felt so far away, almost alien, a juxtaposition is created which spurs a razor sharp tension. The divide between meat space and a screen. And I haven't even mentioned the plot — that she's discovered someone from her past dwelling in this world after an early release from prison — which adds yet another layer of mystery and fuel to a fire burning with anger, sadness and obsession.

As much as she wants (and gets) revenge, the film doesn't paint this guy as a monster. He's a complicated and fucked up person who might have a good heart under all of his pain and is clearly trying to get his life back together. When we see him lug a large chunk of tree through the CCTV camera, it's menacing. When it's revealed that he's carving art out of it, it's touching, and symbolic of his attempt to turn his ugly life into something better

[Sidebar — see “podcast” below: I don't think the exposition/definitive reveal sequence involving his friend breaking into her apartment was needed (it felt clunky). There could have been a better way to answer the question, or it could have been left vague, but this is a very minor complaint. I talk about it... and more?! Sure]

There are so many subtle aspects and little details here that are pitch-perfect: I loved the subplot with the stranger whose dog she sees grow old and die on the CCTV, before ending the picture meeting his new dog in real life. And the final shot is masterful, as we see her through the lens of the CCTV. Being watched, instead of watching. Living instead of being trapped. It's evident in her short films as well, but Arnold has a gift for displaying the moral complexities of life that's somehow both nuanced and extreme. And I guess that's the point.

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Red Road is a 2006 psychological thriller film directed by Andrea Arnold and starring Kate Dickie, Tony Curran, Martin Compston, and Natalie Press. It tells the story of a CCTV security operator who observes through her monitors a man from her past. It is named after, and partly set at, the Red Road Flats in Balornock, Glasgow, Scotland, which were the tallest residential buildings in Europe at the time they were built. It was shot largely in a Dogme 95 style, using handheld cameras and natural light. The Observer polled several filmmakers and film critics who voted it as one of the best British films in the last 25 years. It was released on May 20, 2006.