Code 46 (DVD)

...the desert. This is the Code 46 of the title. It is a glimpse of a sinister possible world that takes today’s corporate globalisation to its logical end.

Though it may be a thematically dark world, it is visually beautiful. Winterbottom has grasped the full extent of the digital video revolution, making use of various grades of video footage to subtly alter our perspective and perceptions. Thus night-time Shanghai is a glittering ...
...almost featureless sepia wasteland, factories and hotels are sterile fluorescent boxes and a nightclub is a warm, womb-like cocoon. The visual trickery extends to cutting between types of video footage from shot to shot, so we see people as William might - a little fuzzy round the edges on account of the semi-gloom of artificial light, or on a screen as they would be seen by a security system. This eclectic style of shooting is meshed with a penchant ... more

In a dystopian near-future the rich live in sterile cities while the poor live in the sun-scorched wastelands beyond. Nobody can travel without “papelles” (a combination passport, visa and insurance). When it is discovered that papelles are being forged in Shanghai, William is sent to investigate, falling for the factory worker who is the main suspect. But is their attraction love or something more complex?

Director Michael Winterbottom defies the perception that the British film industry is on its uppers. He has knocked out eleven films in the past nine years, including “24 Hour Party People” and “The Claim”. He doesn’t get a lot of recognition because his films tend to be competent and unfussy rather than great. That doesn’t make them less watchable, though. Together with screenplay writer Frank Cottrell Boyce he has created a future world that is both new and familiar. The focus is on social rather than technological changes; people still travel by car, plane and underground, eat and drink the same food and get up and go to work in factories and offices. What has changed is that night has become day, with no-one daring to step out into the sunlight and the English language is now peppered with chunks of other languages. There are technological advances like video phones in every home, video photo albums and fingerprint entry systems everywhere, but these are incidental to the story and do not play a major role. One can even take viruses to heighten the senses or learn things. The main change is that relationships are now regulated by science. With a majority of people being conceived by in-vitro fertilisation, there are only a certain number of genes to go round, so people with twenty-five percent or more identical DNA are not allowed to have children. And those that do fall pregnant to someone with a common genetic heritage have their pregnancies terminated and their memories wiped. If they fall pregnant to someone they know to have shared DNA, they can be exiled to the desert. This is the Code 46 of the title. It is a glimpse of a sinister possible world that takes today’s corporate globalisation to its logical end.

Though it may be a thematically dark world, it is visually beautiful. Winterbottom has grasped the full extent of the digital video revolution, making use of various grades of video footage to subtly alter our perspective and perceptions. Thus night-time Shanghai is a glittering mass of shimmering lights, the desert is a bleached and almost featureless sepia wasteland, factories and hotels are sterile fluorescent boxes and a nightclub is a warm, womb-like cocoon. The visual trickery extends to cutting between types of video footage from shot to shot, so we see people as William might - a little fuzzy round the edges on account of the semi-gloom of artificial light, or on a screen as they would be seen by a security system. This eclectic style of shooting is meshed with a penchant for voice-over narrative and overlaying the action with large chunks of text by way of exposition as well as jump-cutting between shots. Unfortunately this smacks of the over-zealous film student playing with his new toys on occasion and threatens to undermine the clever concept behind the film.

Recent Oscar-winner Tim Robbins plays William, who takes a virus to enhance his intuition, to find those guilty of forging papelles. Apparently Robbins was uncomfortable with Winterbottom’s directing style, but this translates into a cold detachment that suits his character down to the ground. He is played like a faceless drone brought to life by the free-spirited Maria. His intuitive talents are presented like a malign parlour trick that is too studied to be fun and used to further his own ends. His relationship with Maria is a curious one that lacks passion and seems to be borne of necessity rather than lust, but it is no less convincing for that.

Samantha Morton has an incredible knack for naturalistic acting. Though not blessed with fantastic looks, it is easy to see why William would be attracted to Maria; she is supremely self-confident, yet maintains an air of vulnerability. She seems at once very young and terribly old. And she has incredibly blue eyes that draw you to her as an audience member. Now that’s what I call presence and my only question is why Morton hasn’t won an Oscar yet.

A multi-national supporting cast of familiar faces rounds out the film. It is testament to the casting director’s skill that they all seem at ease with the futuristic mix of English, French, Spanish and Chinese and there isn’t a bum note among the bit-part players. Of particular note is Om Puri as the factory manager. If you get bored you can always play “spot the actor” – I noticed people from “Eastenders”, “Moulin Rouge!”, “Love Actually”, “Goodness Gracious Me” and a random pizza advert amongst the ethnically diverse cast.

The soundtrack is by “The Free Association” - scenes are generally overlaid with thrumming guitars that threaten to turn into a Coldplay track at any minute and in fact do during the closing titles. Sometimes they add a sense of urgency to the proceedings, other times they just jangle on your nerves.

Surprisingly for a ninety-two minute film, it often feels longer than its running time. There is no sense of pace or time and though the actions occur quickly, they seem to pass very slowly, if that makes any sense. In the main the love scenes are handled sensitively (with the exception of one gratuitous shot of female genitalia) and shore up the characters’ mutual attraction.

It’s not so much a film you enjoy as one you appreciate. It’s an interesting vision of the future that is well-realised and beautifully shot. It’s a subtle film that won’t appeal to everyone because of its cold approach to its characters and the human race in general. It’s a film that alludes to many things like a global catastrophe, technological advances and a Big Brother style ruling company and poses more questions than it answers. But if you’ve ever read “The Catcher in the Rye” and liked it without really knowing why, you’ll probably like this film. It has the same understated attitude. It will probably look better on the small screen, though.
 

...less