Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

The fact that the film pushes you in to a specific path is the entire point of the film!

The idea that we are all brainwashed and that free will is up for debate in any choice we make in today's society is, by its very purpose, the whole concept of the film.

I thought is was a brilliant new step in film making and an incredible concept. Would highly recommend to any open-minded individual with good taste in film and a love for science fiction and 80's vibes.

The overall idea behind an interactive film is great and it was a good attempt. However, the film kept taking you back to the same options over and over again until you chose the one you hadn't seen yet. So, for me it was dessesperating and I felt like it didn't actually give me much of a choice, if I dint chose what I was "supposed" to, then the film would keep looping. Maybe that's the point but I'm just not a fan, I had bigger hopes for an interactive film.

I'm a big Black Mirror fan, that sophisticated dystopian British/Netflix series that explores the darker side of technology. So when I heard less than a week ago that Netflix was releasing a new full-length movie installment into the Black Mirror universe on December 28th, I gasped, "It's a Christmas miracle!"

And when I learned that this new movie, set in 1984 and centered on a young video game designer writing the code for a new video game called Bandersnatch, would immerse the audience in the story by allowing each viewer to choose how the story unfolds for them, I was cautiously optimistic. After all, The Cave of Time was one of my favorite books as a child. Indeed, for a couple of years in the early 1980s I lived on a steady literary diet of Choose Your Own Adventure books (here is a great boxed set for your favorite 9-12 year olds ... or nostalgic forty-somethings).

So last night, I sat down to watch (is that the right word?) Bandersnatch.

The choices begin early on when we are asked to choose which cereal our hero, Stefan, will have for breakfast. Fortunately, from there the choices increase in gravitas as the program unfolds.

One thing is clear: Bandersnatch is essential viewing for anyone remotely interested in Black Mirror ... or anyone with a Netflix account and an hour or two to spare. (Depending on your choices the program varies significantly in length.)

But here's my major frustration: if the show doesn't like your choice, it eventually steers you back to the main storyline. Personally, it felt a bit like getting your knuckles rapped and as the story begins to unfold again, you realize that you have rather less control than you'd been led to believe. After about 1 1/2 hours, I found myself growing increasingly impatient. Along the way, I'd been offered a couple of opportunities to bow out to the end credits, but I wanted to persist to the real end. However, eventually, I realized that my interest in completing this dark story had been outweighed by my desire to do something else, and so finally I bowed out.

It was at that point that I thought back to the video game Dragon's Lair. When it came to the arcade in 1983, we were dazzled by the animation.

But soon, the novelty wore off as we, or at least I, realized the playability was low. Put simply, there wasn't much fun in learning how to link a series of animation sequences and calling it a game.

For all its innovation, I have the same feeling about Bandersnatch. There simply isn't much fun in learning how to link a series of dramatic sequences and calling it a movie.

The graphics and music were great, and the transition was smooth at the "crossroads". But the story... It didn't feel like much of a story, and then I felt pushed into making choices that I did not want to make. I think it captured the choose-your-own-path game feeling, but to me that didn't really feel right in a movie, everything felt too simple and a bit too forced. It's great that Black Mirror wanted to do something innovative, which this truly is, but because it is Black Mirror all the endings feel wrong. In a game like this, you play for the best outcome, but here, you just play to see what else you can get.

A movie about the struggles involved in the creative process, both technical and personal, and the problems artists face when expected to deliver something personal and profound with intense public scrutiny, on a constricted schedule, while simultaneously having to deal with their own personal relationships.

I actually didn't write this myself, this is a description from the Wikipedia article about Fellini's prominent movie 8½.

This film takes the public pressure on the write a huge leap further - he's actually not only pressed by some vague 'public' but literally controlled - by you, the viewer. Or maybe not? The film shows how hard it is to tell, and the process of going back and forth in time trying to remake the plot and improve the result is similar to what is happening in the creators mind.

So far so good, a very interesting idea. And of course it would be unfair to compare almost any movie to the rich ingenius and amazing experience of watching Fellini's 8½. So just as a film I watched without such expectations our of curiosity, beside the idea it is a minimalist, dark, moderately interesting film, with a pessimistic feeling that matches the series. Not a highly entertaining experience, but interesting as a pioneering experiment.