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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
But Rachel's view from the balcony also reminds us where we've been. Throughout the film, we're inundated with shots through dry or rain-drenched windows, reflections in mirrors or panes of glass, instances of screening and forkings in reality that subtly accrue weight as they remind us of the ultimate permeability at stake in the film: that of the cinema screen itself.
In this regard, it turns out that poor old Freud is relevant after all. In his 1919 essay "The Uncanny" (a piece of literary criticism on E.T.A. Hoffman's short story "The Sandman"), the good doctor attempts to track the mechanisms in irrational tales that disturb us; among them, he identifies what he calls "reality testing," moments in which the characters reassure themselves that their fundamental assumptions about the world still hold, temporarily normalizing the natural order. On her second viewing of Samara's tape, Rachel crouches in front of the monitor, baffled by the fidgeting fly, and presses her finger on the glass, verifying that it's a simulation, an image. But the borders don't hold. On her next viewing of the tape, Rachel again starts picking at the fly and this time peels it from the glass; while Rachel develops a photogenic nosebleed, the fly immediately goes airborne, now free in our world. Reality is in flux.
In fact, the subliminal level on which "The Ring" operates reaches hair-raising proportions. Regarding point of view, Verbinski is better than most in positioning the camera such that it situates the viewer's sensibility within the drama. At times, our perspective aligns with that of the character: In one early example, Katie crouches in front of the troublesome TV and glimpses a tremor in the blank screen. She wheels around to see what's behind her and the camera shows us what Katie sees (but not Katie): the inoffensive bookcase. Of course, what she fears is inside the screen, not behind her. When the disorienting, hyperspeed death arrives, we see Katie's rapidly wilting face rushing toward us, not Samara. In the same vein, consider one of the video's images as seen by Rachel: a static shot of an empty chair. Later, when Rachel arrives at Samara's hayloft dormitory, we find that, not only have the images on the video merged with Rachel's reality, but also -- as we see Rachel and the chair reflected in the blank television screen -- we realize that the video footage positions us inside the screen, in the dark well of meaning where Samara reigns.
Horror films have long exploited the complex identifications that take place within the viewer. In part, we like scary movies because they give us a safe environment in which to confront that deepest wellspring of human anxiety, our own mortality; thus we identify with the victims. But even if we insist that we take no pleasure in the actual carnage typical of such films, it is still our taste for this violent brand of entertainment that ultimately generates the body count; hence, we identify with the source of menace. In this regard, "The Ring" is more successful than most films in having it both ways.
Beyond the sly camerawork, our leading lady herself plays both roles. Rachel is victimized by Samara but becomes her instrument as well. One could argue that dying in "The Ring" is itself a conspiratorial act, a process of becoming Samara. The hideous death masks we see deliver almost the same shock to the viewer that Samara doles out to the victims. And the victims start resembling Samara as well. Maybe Rebecca in the psych ward provides the clearest living instance, with her institutional drapery and long black tresses pointedly frazzled. Or look at the drawings that Aidan creates after Katie's death. In conference with Aidan's understandably concerned teacher, Rachel identifies the dead girl in black crayon: "That's Katie." But isn't it really Samara, or both of them at once? None of this suggests that becoming like Samara by dying is empowering in any way; it only tightens the grip of the nightmare.
But the psychological tensions here still don't quite fully explain the awful wallop this film packs. It's one thing to "perform" or allegorize the viewer's anxieties, no matter how cleverly, and quite another thing to project a sense of dread that endures in many cases beyond the seven-day grace period. (Think of the icy tune Samara sings just before her mother clamps down with the plastic bag: "When it's over, it's just beginning.")
Drowning in the Shallows
So how else does "The Ring" do it? Maybe we'd better have another look at that tape. Consider that when Rachel prepares for her first viewing of the video in the Shelter Mountain cabin, she is already, unknowingly, in the middle of one of the film's images: that flaming tree whose sun-tinted leaves make it seem as if the room is submerged in a glass of burgundy (or that more precious burgundy of human vintage). It's as if pushing "Play" only triggers a preexisting force; the logic of the tape exceeds the actual viewing of it.
Consider that when Aidan views the tape, we catch a glimpse of the chair that sat still for Rachel, but now it's levitating and spinning rapidly. Does the tape change with every individual viewing? This apparently endless editorial revision is worrisome: Like the victims, we rely on the tape to provide order in the film's universe, however diabolical. Now even this reassurance disintegrates.
Consider also that another image on the tape -- the writhing maggots that slowly resolve into human figures thrashing in a watery hell -- has a potential "real" counterpart in the horde of flies that ascend when Rachel cracks the seal on the sarcophagus in Samara's well. Between the tape's image and the film's event there appears to be an organic continuum (those maggots mature into adults) rather than an existential divide.
And finally consider the audio static the tape generates, which is linked with water when Rachel hops the ferry to Moesko Island and inadvertently drives a horse to horrible suicide in one of the film's most frightening sequences. Just after the panicked horse plunges overboard to be in the propellers, the sound of the churning water fades, grading into the sound of the tape's audio static. Water is elsewhere associated with Samara's presence; it floods the hall outside Katie's bedroom door as she trembles at the prospect of what's inside. A glass of filtered water causes Rachel to cough up an EEG cord in an unappetizing dream sequence, and in the same dream, water surrounds the chair where Samara awaits Rachel's approach. As the characters drag themselves around rain-drenched Seattle, we begin to suspect that Samara pervades the atmosphere, is elemental, ubiquitous, which begins to extend the parameters of the film's reach considerably. The depths of the well are everywhere.
