A perfect jewel

Rating: 10/10 (28 June 2017)

My husband is a psychotherapist with 35 years of working with all sorts of patients, and most crazy movie characters get a lot of, "When you have this diagnosis you aren't going to see that" or "This guy's rages would disrupt the plot." In the case of this movie, he was more interested in making the diagnosis. The "goofs" in this movies may be many in terms of the minutia of how a television station works, but in terms of of plot, character and cinematic imagery, it is practically perfect. Nothing is extraneous, from the props to things that seem illogical initially. The movie opens with him cutting through a fence right next to an opening in the fence and it proceeds from there. BTW, I remember the last shot of the watch and it isn't plastic.
In some respects, this movie fits in with movies about artificial intelligence, as the main character has logic and learning, but his empathetic function is severely damaged. Usually, these people come to the attention of authorities at an early age because of their anger. However, the film makers let us know that this guy has managed to separate himself from the people who knew him as a child and has been using the internet to learn to modify his behavior and affect in order to appear more normal. Ironically, many of the things he teaches himself to do are things a therapist would advise, usually to no avail.
Margeret Mead had a theory that different societies favored different personality types, although the individuals in those societies would still show the usual range of personality type. This movie is a bildungs roman of a man learning how to fit his pathology into a perverted society where antisocial personality disorder with something mild on the Asperger's spectrum gives him advantages. It isn't just the news room, either. An internet that encourages people to manipulate their way to personal power fits him like a glove. The role of lieing in his psychology and the psychology of a certain prominent con artist makes this a truly relevant movie, powerfully prophetic. No, I am not thinking about Martin Shkreli, but I could be. A number of studies have shown that as people gain personal power their empathetic function diminishes, and we live in a time when that dynamic is being normalised and politicized.
I wanted to see this movie because the trailers reminded me of an ex- boyfriend. This person had a highly developed empathetic function and took care of everyone around him, as in making sure they had a place to sleep and something to eat, because those were the people who were his friends. The earnest literalism, the manic energy, even facial expressions continued to remind me of my friend for the whole movie. Ironically, he had been a man with a plan that was going to keep him firmly in the middle class, when he decided that he didn't want to be that person and reorganized his life so he could hangout and help people he liked. In a world flooded with movies about evil falling from the sky or popping out of a box, this is a real movie about real evil.