Code 46 Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)August 2nd, 2004
CODE 46
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: B+
United Artists
Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Written by: Frank Cottrell Boyce
Cast: Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri, Jeanne Balibar, Nabil Elouhabi, Togo Igawa
Screened at: MGM, NYC, 4/8/04
What would happen if you seated President Bush and his attorney-general, John Ashcroft, in a screening room, and told them that "Code 46" might conceivably represent the results of their policies forty years from now? Michael Winterbottom's thoughtfully provoking sci-fi pic would probably evoke mixed reactions from the two major policy-makers, whose activities during the past three-plus years have been globally resonant. "Code 46" deals with cutting-edge issues like cloning, globalization, global warming, and government control, with the addition of an Oedipal incest theme that could have the two honchos enthusiastic enough about globalization, in denial about the global warming that their policies have advanced, saying "I told you so" about the consequences of cloning, and in favor of the ways that governments in the not-so-distant future keep a tight lid through a rigorous stand on I.D. cards for their citizens.
You might think that Winterbottom, whose most recent film "In This World" (about a journey by a pair of young Afghani men from a refugee camp in Peshawar to London) is going far afield into Steven Spielberg-Ridley Scott territory by dealing with such a futuristic landscape. A closer look, however, allows us to see that there's a straight line from the director's interest in world politics to his intriguing and actually credible vision of the dystopian society that is to come. As with "Minority Report," "Code 46" deals with attempts of civil administrations to stop crimes before they can happen. As with "Blade Runner," Winterbottom uses a handful of officials to track down people who have made their way out of their appropriate orbits.
Though the production notes indicate that the budget for the film was moderate, Frank Cottrell Boyce's script puts us in Shanghai and Hong Kong, Dubai and Jaipur the locations used to contrast life in big, efficient cities, the wasteland of the desert, and the sort of exile that the unfortunate Greek King Oedipus ultimately faced. Featuring the considerate acting talents of Samantha Morton and recent Oscar-winner Tim Robbins, "Code 46" takes us on the journey of insurance investigator William (Robbins) who is sent from Seattle to investigate a fraud carried out by an employee, who is making fake papalles an I.D. card, visa for travel and insurance policy emanating from the Shanghai office of William's Sphinx Insurance Company. Equipped with an "empathy virus" which allows him to read people's minds, William quickly discovers that the culprit is the sexually assertive Maria (Morton), but chemistry has a way of frustrating criminal investigations. Soon Maria and William are bedded, while (shades of "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind"), the government discovers Maria's pregnancy and compels her to submit not only to an abortion but to an erasure of her memory. She has violated Code 46, the text of which should not be revealed here lest it undermine the surprises.
When Winterbottom is not honing in on the fast-developing relationship of the loving couple, he exposes a view of the Brave New Society whose global warming has converted much
of the world into a barren wasteland, while shortages of necessities like oil have condemned a large part of the population into outcastes both literally and figuratively people who have been denied valid papalles and therefore exist on the fringe. Sophisticated identification technology effectively prevents the dispossessed from entering into cities, while genetic engineering, so despised by Bush and Ashcroft, has had at least disastrous consequences for the two lovers.
As the critic David Thomson states in his film encyclopedia, Winterbottom has embraced a single theme: that of lost souls who are putting on a busy display of being safe and sound. Among the many themes covered by this effort is the idea that we tend to love people most like ourselves, which is to say that ultimately, we marry people who most reflect our own values and even our own physical features. Technology has not led to happiness but has in fact consumed whatever natural bounties we have been afforded since the days of Eden. A prospective audience hoping for "Robocop" or "Hellboy" will be disappointed by the pacing and emotional frigidity depicted here, but those who like their science fiction to be realistic commentary on today's society, on experiments being conducted this very moment, will be rewarded.
Rated R. 92 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
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