Joseph is reserved and withdrawn. He is all but anonymous at his place of work, as we see when colleagues tuck into the cake he has brought in to celebrate his own birthday. They gripe about the cake, they help themselves to it, but nobody knows or seems to care whose birthday it is. Joseph remains silent.
Each day he is forced into intimate proximity with strangers in his job in airport security - frisking people, having to carry out 'private' searches, but all through his working day he must follow strict rules and is consequently deprived of any expression of his own personality.
After work he goes to see his parents for a birthday supper. His father is an angry, bullying man who sees fault in everyone but himself, his mother is cowed and acts in ways in which she appears to seek her husband's approval. Joseph is so tense that he bites through a glass from which he is drinking and flees the house.
The next day at work, the pressure has built to a such an extent that Joseph's mental state collapses and he walks out of the job. Then he robs a bank.
Ben Whishaw carries a heavy burden in his role as Joseph, he's in every scene and has to convince us of his character's mental decline. A job which he performs with great accomplishment as he draws us into the growing unreality that is Joseph's existence. A special mention should go to Ellie Haddington who playsJoseph's mother. She gives her character delicate shading so that we glimpse the real woman behind the mask of the dutiful and obedient wife.
The claustrophobic feeling of sharing space inside Joseph's head is greatly aided by cinematography, courtesy of Stuart Bentley, who uses hand-held cameras and a very shallow depth of field, and often fills the frame with Joseph, giving the impression that it is the world beyond his mental state that is the dream. We gain further insight into Joseph's anguish in a scene where he dismantles a hotel room and, cutting open the mattress on his bed, crawls inside as if trying to return to the womb.
Aneil Karia, director and co-writer has had made a name for himself with short films and this is perhaps where the fault lies with this, his feature-length debut. One can't help but wonder if the film may have had more punch had it been just an hour long. But it is, nonetheless, a striking debut with great promise for things to come.
Surge is a film that is at times almost painful to watch, such is its intensity; but it's a remarkable feature debut, and I will certainly be looking to see what else Aneil Karia will be bringing us in the future.
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