Growing up in the 80's, I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books, so I eagerly anticipated Bandersnatch (2018, Brooker and Slade), the first interactive, "choose your own adventure" movie since I first heard rumors that Netflix had decided (wisely I think!) to hand over the technology to make such a film to the creators of Black Mirror.

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As we've seen, film has been playing with the metaphysical moment when someone realizes what they thought was real was, in fact, illusion, at least since Plato kinda created his own little movie in our minds when he beckoned us to imagine people watching something like a movie in the Allegory of the Cave over 2,000 years ago. For me, the most amazing feat in Bandersnatch is its ability to get us to question the limits of our own control, and the reality of our own free will. Echoing the fundamental shift endemic to the internet, where the consumer of media becomes the producer of media, the audience is suddenly in a position to tell the story, to decide what happens to the characters and how the plot develops. We go from passive recipients of content to "uploading" content via the choices we make with our roku sticks.  We are suddenly in the position of the puppet masters deciding what images flicker on the screen and the film's protagonist, Stephan (Fionn Whitehead) is under the illusion that he has free will and is in control of his life. Depending on the decisions we make, at some point Stephan begins to question his control. He feels he is being controlled by someone, or some force, outside of his world. We know it's us. We're the ones in control. We're comfortable in that position, as the ones in control.

 

And then we realize we are, in fact, not, in control -- the film's creators are themselves calling the shots, giving us just enough control to be under the illusion that we have free will. In one sequence, we are given two choices, but they're both the same...