Re-watching 1995's ‘Strange Days’ in 2020
By: Carrie Mcclain
Tags: Social Justice, Social Commentary, Film, Film Criticism, Black Lives Matter

Sure much of the narrative is Lenny sticking his head in places where he shouldn’t be against the backdrop of seedy places and the streets of Los Angeles about to erupt in riot and party and Mace coming to the rescue. Yet there is a parallel present here between these and some distinctive character development as well. Lenny and Mace are both chasing after someone: both characters are in love with someone who does not return the affections. For Lenny it is Faith who is a past love, for Mace she has feelings for Lenny. Lenny’s whole crusade is to save Faith from danger, as it has befallen a mutual female friend of theirs and Mace’s is to make sure Lenny makes it out alive.

They soon learn that what they’ve stumbled upon is much bigger than the two of them; they have uncovered not just a dangerous serial killer who uses special tech to record his thrills for others to experience it. They’ve also uncovered the digital recording of police brutality at its worst: the unsanctioned killing of an influential African American political figure and rap artist Jericho One (Glen Plummer) that could very well possibly tip the city in full blown riot mode.

It is late in the second arc of the film when Mace, who has always stuck by Lenny, stands her ground as tells if he wants trade the important clip of the death the police are trying to cover up as a bargaining ship for Faith’s safety — she’ll have no part in it or him ever again. Lenny who finally starts to mature some and see more of the horizon other than himself, instructs Mace to give the clip to the proper authorities to someone who he trusts isn’t a dirty cop.

Strange Days is a film that has a narrative that features elliptical storytelling, not linear. At the start of the film we learned that this is a Los Angeles two days before the new year of 2000, two days before the new millennium. All the SQUID clips that are shown throughout the film and loaded up and watched by the characters in the narrative are pre-recorded , actions taken in the past. In fact, Mace has a flashback of her first meeting Lenny, when he was previously a cop that helps explains the emotional foundation of their friendship and why she stays in his corner. Time inches closer as December 31, 1999 2:27 p.m arrives and we, along with the characters uncover more clips, more digitalized memories including Jericho One’s murder which is a big turning point in the plot.

Jericho One’s death? And this carries so much more weight now too, doesn’t it? The death of an unarmed Black man by police officers, the action recorded which functions as the catalyst of what drives the city’s conflict to the point of cops in riot gear and tanks.

It’s sombering isn’t it? Set in the future, the film tells us that the lives of Black people are still so very trivial. Jericho One’s death aids in setting the already untrusting, on edge city into overdrive, much like today.

Continuing on with the elliptical storytelling: later at the night club, Faith’s retelling of the night Iris had that led up to Jericho’s death is revealed to Lenny and Mace by flashback. When Lenny rushes off to save Faith it is 11:09 p.m. and he shakily finds clips of the serial killer with Faith and then Filo’s being forced to overdose with the SQUID device with the reveal that Max (Tom Sizemore) his friend is the psychopath serial rapist (and murder). After the climax where Lenny and Max fight and the resolution where Mace disarms the crooked cops behind Jericho One’s death.

Ultimately the Commissioner Strickland (Josef Sommer) is the one who de-escalates the violence as Mace is being attacked by the crooked cops that pursued her. This scene of Mace being attacked by these white, male cops always bothered me and the Commissioner being the one to ultimately stop them never sat right with me. Especially when, it was first people in the crowd, the civilians that call out for the officers to stop and even try to intervene, their efforts are never recognized. The film ends with enough closure to be considered a happy ending with Lenny and Mace embracing each other and their feelings at 12:02 am on January 1, 2000.

Strange Days is a superb example to use to looking at film editing and how a creative team can be innovative with the technology present in the narrative. So the film shot in 1995 includes a narrative set in then futuristic 1999 (perhaps even tittering the edge of apocalyptic) Los Angeles. We are introduced to the Superconducting Quantum Interference Device also known as SQUID in the first ten minutes of the film. It is a device originally developed for the police force delves in advanced VR tech that happens to record and playback the visual, aural, and cerebral responses from a first person perspective. The device has found its way to the black-market and the streets are full of people who are a new kind of addict, need a ‘fix’ of a new kind brought by this new developing technology.

Death is commonly connected with this device as a sex worker is killed for accidentally recording a murder and two persons are found overdosed due to usage. This whole concept of the device and the havoc it wrecks speaks to technological dystopianism to the dark side of tech in our lives and how it harms us. In fact the opening of the film is a riveting sequence of a botched robbery which ends in the death of the criminal recording it which Lenny upon viewing it automatically describes it as a smut clip.

The clips are always in first person are great point of view sequences that really keep the audience tuned into the action. In fact to achieve these shots as there was no existing camera system in place to use, a crew had to work to make one. Scholars Jermyn and Redmond touch upon the complexities of the process: “The film’s SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot (POV), required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation. A full year was spent building a specialized camera that could reproduce the effect of looking through someone else’s eyes”. (Jermyn and Redmond 144–158)*

In addition to being innovative to create equipment needed for Strange Days, the way in which certain scenes are interlaced into the narrative works on a superb level. Later in the second act in the scene where Lenny, Mace and Max (Tom Sizemore) go to Tick’s (Richard Edson) place. Like Lenny, Tick is involved in the consuming and handling of the clips used by SQUID technology, when the trio find him he is not responsive.

A shot from inside Tick’s van shows Lenny, Mace and Max in the background looking down on him in his pitiful state. The next shot is more of establishing shot outside the van with the three friends at odds with each other standing away from each other not agreeing with each other on what to do next. They have an incredible piece of damning evidence in their possession: a clip of Jericho One’s death by police accidentally recorded by Iris who is now dead.

In regards to editing this particular scene is innovative and a striking one because as the friends debate on what steps to take next the reinsertion of the clip of that they’ve talking about is cut throughout this interaction as it becomes more and more heated. Mace, the usual voice of reason wants the clip to be released to the public. Max reminds her of the sensitivity of the situation: this blow up and take a turn for the worse.

Lenny, nearly always indecisive is slow to pitch in as he’s still at Tick’s body, very possibly still in shock over finding him dead. As the friends continue to discuss the severity of the situation: there are very hard cuts back and forth from them to the scene from the night of Jericho One’s death. It is almost breaking the fourth wall in a sense as the audience gets to experiences watching the clips again without a person in the narrative booting up a SQUID device.

Making the audience relive the death again in the midst of how to proceed with a clip of the incident which has been attempted to be covered up making the audience get engaged once again. Are you horrified once more re-watching? With more context are you shocked with how intricate how the narrative has evolved? Each one of them look frustrated with Lenny looking on to Tick to close his eyes, with the cuts to Jericho One’s unsanctioned murder by crooked cops reminds is, the audience of all the death that has occurred in the course of these two days.

I think of the visuals, I think of footage of the deaths of unarmed Black folks that we’ve seen over the years by white men who are cops or former law enforcement — this year, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd’s deaths were (Arbery’s was partially at least) caught on camera and played again and again, re-traumatizing Black people the world over.

Photo by Maria Oswalt on Unsplash

I even think of how not having footage of death of a Black person — in the case of gender, makes an impact but lessens the degree of how much visibility one can receive by the public after death — Breonna Taylor’s death wasn’t recorded and the level of visibility for justice for those who took her life has waned. This too is a recurring tragedy in itself that traumatizes Black folks too — Black women who are victims are perpetually erased in the fight against police brutality.

This also brings to mind that the city is drenched in violence and scandal with its police force, something that we get a glimpse of within the first few minutes of the film as we see officers in riot attire and even tanks. This tone that speaks to an overall distrust in the cops and their over policing that includes police brutality that doesn’t go unnoticed and is something that is still felt to this day especially in the city that the film is set in. In today’s landscape, the situation has become so severe that calls for abolishing the police have perhaps, never been so loud as a collective in 2020. The call for checking what role the police have in our lives, if so much harm is attached to their work, continues to be a hot topic in current news.

The SQUID technology in the film calls to mind, body cameras for police officers. On paper, they sound like a great idea — to help the police force be accountable for their actions. Introduced more widely back in 2014 and 2015, to help bring a solution to the issue of police brutality that was plaguing the nation results were a mixed bag with departments slow to receive them and issue them out. Procedure on when and how long they are worn by officers wasn’t consistent across the board. Maintenance was another issue.

Worst off, there’s been enough instances where these devices weren’t operational on duty or situations where an officer would disable the device. A device created for the folks who are meant to serve and protect has become not a tool but instead a glaring reminder that technology, surveillance tech especially, doesn’t always provide a solution. Body cam footage that has been released to the public, even before 2020 has reminded us that police brutality is still very much a constant talking topic — they do not equal transparency. Nor accountability.

Nor peace of mind for the average Black or Brown citizen who lives in a community that is over-policed who can’t find these devices useful when news channels keep flying off the handle with a new case in another city of a tragic death by hands of police that may or many not have been captured with a body cam.

This can circled back to surveillance technology and the how usage of footage can work in the favor of those who lives were lost — to help bring about justice but…at the risk of who? The livelihood of who? The personal burden that can be attached to those who film is great, for some greater than others: 17-year-old Darnella Frazier started recorded George Floyd’s final moments, a knee on his neck as he lay on the asphalt.

Will she, a young Black woman suffer the same fate of Ramsey Orta who filmed Ramsey Orta filmed the killing of Eric Garner? Will she suffer a future of being seemingly punished by law enforcement for daring to record a horrible moment in time — of police brutality on display? (Versus, say George Holliday, a Caucasian man who recorded the footage of Rodney King’s beating by Los Angeles Police officers in 1991 that was also seen around the world whose life was forever changed — but doesn’t share the same fears of retaliation from police as a Black or Brown person would.)

Rashad West, the 26 year old who is now becoming more widely known as “The Man Whose Surveillance Camera Sparked a National Uprising” remains convinced he did the right thing with he proved that George Floyd was not resisting arrest with footage from his surveillance camera from his restaurant. Yet, even his friends, family and employees mention that it will be a while until he has ample time to process everything that has happened.

Again, I ask — at what cost?