Manager Sandra takes a call from a ‘police officer’ in Compliance.
The background
One stressful Friday, the manager of a fast-food joint in suburban Ohio, Sandra (Anne Dowd), receives a phone call from a self-proclaimed police officer, claiming one of her employees, the pretty, young clerk, Becky (Dreama Walker), has stolen money from a customer. The caller then encourages the manager to expose Becky to various humiliating procedures, such as detention and strip-searching her, until the alleged authorities get there; as Sandra complies, viewers are forced to watch.
Compliance, directed by Craig Zobel, is based on true events and asks, how far are you willing to go to follow orders?
Real and challenging viewing
The film invites the audience to ponder about the deeply ingrained psychological dimensions of one’s unquestioned compliance with authority. In a way, the audience too was forced into silent submission to observing such injustice – or, as Richard Corliss put it in his review for TIME, “The movie dares spectators to stick around and, implicitly, become accessories to the crime.” It also forces viewers to ask themselves, “What would I do in this situation?” noted Jordon Magrath from Film Equals. “We’d all love to think we’d stand up to this caller and stay strong… The characters on-screen (and in real life) obviously didn’t realize how badly they were being duped. But, when a movie seems this real, and dares you to reflect on how you would act, it is terrifying.”
Doesn’t connect
Andrew Schenker at Slant Magazine, however, sniped about how ineffectively the movie managed to connect with the audience on a deep level. “It seems as if Zobel wants to implicate the audience in these proceedings, but he doesn’t have a very clear idea how to go about it.” He continued, “So when we watch the scene unfold, rather than saying, ‘If I were in Sandra’s position, I might have done the same,’ we’re more likely to conclude, ‘These people are idiots…’” Schenker called the film a “sadistic exercise in deliberate, relentless unpleasantness” to make the audience squirm.
You either love it or you hate it
But several audience members walked out halfway through the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, suggesting that, if nothing else, Compliance did find a way of getting into their heads on some level. In the end, as Magrath from Film Equals concluded, Compliance is “the type of movie that half the people love […], while the other half loathe”. What is for sure though, is that it will evoke some kind of reaction, as, he continued, “at the least, Compliance is a thought-provoking case-study… but at the most, it’s a profound look at human psychology”.
