Surge Review: Aneil Karia, British filmmaker, makes his feature film debut at Sundance after making a number of highly-acclaimed short films including The excellent Bafta-nominated work. This is a tense, claustrophobic, and atmospheric character study that features a huge pressure-cooker performance by Ben Whishaw as Joseph, an airport security guard who suffers from loneliness, insomnia, and unresolved feelings towards Lily (Jasmine Jobson). Joseph has a major meltdown at work and walks away from the job. His brain is almost audible pulsing with suppressed craziness as he strides through London’s crowded streets in a chaotic and confrontational odyssey. Surreal scenes are shared with complete strangers, but also Lily and Ian Gelder (Ellie Haddington & Ian Gelder), which can lead to unexpected tender moments.
The title of the movie is well chosen. Nearly every scene, and perhaps the entire movie itself, is a surge. It’s an oppressive swelling in Joseph’s head. Each sequence seems to be building up, building up, building towards something. But instead of a climax we mysteriously cut to another scene and restart for another psycho-emotional surge. It is a clever depiction of Joseph’s everyday unhappiness. Every body search Joseph must do at the security gate involves unbearable intimacy with a total stranger. One of these strangers is clearly disturbed. And, for an awful moment, Joseph’s own innate instability is so overwhelming that the audience isn’t sure if he is mad or sane.
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While violence or outbreaks are clearly inevitable, the violence itself seems almost indistinguishable from the prelude’s tense brooding. Whishaw’s performance is mostly a wordless anthology of flinches, tics, grimaces, periods of unsettling blankness, together with a bit of Henry-Portrait-of-a-Serial-Killer looking in the mirror. Whishaw is a charismatic and accomplished actor. It’s clear that he is a strong salesman.
Although this is a fascinating essay in mood, This feel that Surge’s feature-length length does not adequately test the material. It might have been better to make a short film about the opening scenes at the airport. Joseph is wearing a heartbreakingly dull uniform with a V-neck jumper, ID on a lanyard, and his drab uniform. Surge can feel lost at times. In his despair and near madness, Joseph becomes a criminal and does no less than three bank stand-ups before he has to confront a police officer. With something like this, wouldn’t the police be more attentive? Perhaps not.
These crimes feel strangely like part of Joseph’s weightless, free from consequences existence. Karia is able to control the mood but it seems that the mood is never in decline. Some of the most remarkable images are those in which Joseph, in delirium, takes a room at a fancy hotel and then opens the mattress to climb inside this quasi-womb. This is a great start by Karia, a talented film-maker.
