Dystopian What Happened To Monday? may hint at Netflix’s film priorities
One actor in many roles, a population-controlled future—so Hunger Games plus Orphan Black?
https://youtu.be/hOiWSWLt-NA
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Warning: This piece contains mild spoilers for Netflix's What Happened to Monday?
Halfway through its major 2017 original film push, Netflix seems to have more hits than misses. That's not to say the company has had its Stranger Things equivalent; none of Netflix's films has captured popular conversation as sweepingly as traditional offerings like Get Out or Baby Driver. Maybe the Brad Pitt-driven War Machine fizzled, but Okja and The Discovery became favorites around the Ars Slack water cooler, while smaller projects like Joe Swanberg’s Win It All keep hope alive that future Netflix films like the high-profile Bright (Will Smith and elf cops?) and the smaller Death Note (supernatural manga adaptation just released) can still deliver this year.
Critical wins and losses for these projects may be the headline grabber, but Netflix continues to grow as a film company in a less flashy, more traditional manner: as a distributor. "Netflix original" these days seems to encompass both films produced for Netflix with invested streaming money (see War Machine, Bright) and a bevy of films the company picks up after they're previewed on the festival circuit.
Every major film festival these days is followed by a round of announcements where Amazon and Netflix engage in an arms war to snag the best and most unique content. Almost precisely one year ago, the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival proved no different. IndieWire proclaimed Netflix’s spending there “left few acquisition targets for traditional distributors,” as the company snagged things like a biopic about a young President Obama called Barry.
Released this week, Netflix’s What Happened To Monday? represents another TIFF 2016 acquisition finally reaching home audiences. The film may also nicely demonstrate the type of general acquisitions Netflix makes these days. It’s from a relatively young director (Tommy Wirkola, of Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters fame). It has a niche premise and audience (dystopian sci-fi). It doesn’t have to meet any particular set of expectations that come with more traditional distributors.
Honestly, this could be the first you’re even hearing of What Happened To Monday? despite some big names in the cast. That’s a shame, because the film offers enough interesting material to merit a two-hour Netflix distraction.
What is this again?
What Happened To Monday? opens with the oldest trick in the dystopian film playbook: an explanatory sequence done via a bad news media clip collage. Over the last 50 years, Earth’s population has doubled while food and water usage tripled and fossil fuel usage quadrupled. President Obama’s famed “I believe in climate change” UN speech leads into the introduction of our main character, Karen Settman (Noomi Rapace), as she orders a to-go meal with some percentage of supplemental rat meat blended in.
Technically, we only meet this Karen Settman at first. Given the dire situation for humanity and the planet, a government agency called the Child Allocation Board has been established to ban siblings. Led by a catchy slogan (“One Child. One Earth."), politician Nicolette Cayman (Glenn Close) pushes the legislation as a means of preserving natural resources and improving quality of life for those currently living. Families may each have a single child, but any additional kids born will be placed in Cryofreeze, a temperature induced-stasis to keep someone free from hunger, safe from harm, and ready to “awake to a better world,” as Cayman puts it.
Flash back 30 years, and we see Karen Settman began life as one of seven in the early days of the CAB. Papa (Willem Dafoe) lost a daughter during a complicated childbirth, so he can’t bear to turn his new granddaughters in to this new government initiative. Instead, he builds hidden rooms in their apartment, hacks the government-issued tracking bracelet he received for a single child, and trains the girls from birth to function as a unit. Each will get to go into the outside world—where merchants, door people, and cops scan bracelets as you enter and exit zones for residence, school, work, etc.—just one day a week, and they’ll be responsible to share everything with their sisters before bed to perpetuate Karen Settman. As such, Papa names the girls after the days of the week.
The plan, remarkably, works for those 30 years with only a few minor (albeit horrific) incidents. But now as full adults with distinct personalities, the would-be Settman sisters harbor a little dissent during their evening meals and meetings.
“it’s just a mask—one day a week we get to go into the real world and we can’t even be ourselves,” Thursday laments during the film's opening rat dinner. As a child, she once escaped to skateboard on the streets for a few hours and nearly severed her finger, which lead to, well, Papa needing to create identical little girl fingers. As an adult, she maintains this adventurous desire for independence, and she dreams of relationships or of wearing the clothes and hair she (and not Karen Settman) chooses. “This isn’t a life," she declares. "It’s a sad, agonizing, soul-sucking death.”
But given the tight surveillance and data collection done by the government, such complaints stay within the Settman apartment for now. Dinner arguments fade, and the sisters hold their evening meeting to prep for a promotion presentation at work. Luckily Monday—calm and collected, seen as a leader among the group—will be the one doing Karen duty for that one. But they never hear how the meeting went. Monday, as the film's title suggests, appears to have gone missing.
Quietly worth a stream
What Happened To Monday? probably hasn’t gotten the big marketing push of some of its Netflix brethren because a sense of familiarity hangs over this film. Orphan Black already did the one-actor-several-roles thing. Dystopian futures with varying degrees of population control have been all over the mainstream (Hunger Games) and independent scene (Domain). Close, Defoe, and Rapace all have cache normally worth trumpeting (especially Rapace, given she’ll be co-starring in Bright with Smith), but you’d be hard-pressed to know this film hit the streaming service this week just by logging on. We didn’t even receive a press release, and Netflix has previously sent us notes for things like Last Chance U, something called Haters Back Off, and a Tony Robbins documentary (admittedly that last one sounded interesting).
Despite the lack of pre-release energy, What Happened To Monday? has plenty to enjoy, starting with its lead. Rapace never lets you consciously think about the CGI happening all around her. Despite the script relying on quick stereotypes (smart one, sporty one, rebel, etc.) to establish differences, Rapace plays all the sisters confidently. She inhabits the unique personalities for each in an understated way and avoids crossing the line into caricature. The film doesn’t place the actor in many logistically compromising situations, either, as the initial dinner scene feels like the only instance of seven. But even as the story progresses and the interactions between sisters grow more tense, the emotions and confrontations continue to feel real.
Rapace has plenty of opportunity to flex those old Girl With The Dragon Tattoo muscles, as well, because What Happened To Monday? delivers more unflinching action and gore than expected (the film would easily earn an R rating with a traditional release). Despite the near-future tech flourishes—the holo-interfaces, prevalent surveillance, perfected cryo-tech, etc.—the overall world is gray and run-down. Combined with some brutal violence and high-tension sequences, it places a layer of grim anxiety over much of the film. You may end up watching multiple passages through your fingers, usually in that “but I can’t look away, either” manner.
As her opposite, Close stays chillingly evil as Cayman, and she serves as another instance of what's quickly becoming a new villain trope: the Silicon Valley-style prophet promising to fix the world through technology (see also Tilda Swinton in Okja or maybe Andrew Scott in Spectre).
"I think the most interesting villains in film are the villains who are kind of right. Their means are wrong and the way they’re doing it is wrong, but their worldview is kind of right," Wirkola told The Verge. "Humans are very bad at making hard decisions and planning for the future, so in many ways Glenn Close’s character is right. But of course, what she’s doing is very wrong."
Ostensibly, the film nods to worries about climate change and diminishing resources—or maybe it encourages embracing individuality. But What Happened to Monday? reveals itself to actually be more about the dangers of blind faith in tech, propaganda, or the will of deceitful and oppressive regimes to do anything to preserve perception and message. While made well in advance of our current geopolitical climate (the script, originally focused on brothers, made rounds all the way back in 2010), such underlying topics could have certainly merited some promotion and warranted fan interest on their own.
But, again, creating a good (aka critically beloved) movie seems to be more of a priority for Netflix when it invests in a project from the start. As a pure distributor, things like building its library in specific ways (more dystopian sci-fi, check), connecting with young directors and stars that may become future collaborators (Rapace, Wirkola, check), and establishing itself as a major player during events like TIFF instead appear to reign supreme. You could say the formula applied to recent acquisition hits like The Incredible Jessica James (a rom-com, with former Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams, purchased at Sundance), too.
So we’ll tell you about What Happened To Monday? because it’s fun enough for genre fans despite some imperfections and familiarity. But we'll also continue keep an eagle eye on Netflix's quiet-yet-obvious quest for critics'-darling status in the streaming world.
