Minority Report (film)

Minority Report is a 2002 film by Steven Spielberg loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story of the same name. It stars Tom Cruise, Max von Sydow, Samantha Morton, Kathryn Morris, and Colin Farrell. It is one of several movies based on stories by Philip K. Dick.

The film cost more than $100 million to make, though it made more than three times that in worldwide box office, and sold at least four million copies in its first few months of release on DVDhttp://www.audiorevolution.com/news/0103/17.dvd.shtml. It earned four Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction. It also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Editing.

Style

The film renders a much more detailed view of a near-term future world than that present in the original short story, with depictions of a number of technologies related to the movie's themes. The film also omits certain story details (no punch cards for example).

From the stylistic standpoint, Minority Report resembles A.I., (its immediate Spielberg-directed predecessor) more than the much earlier E.T.. It has a distinct blue sheen which gives the picture a bleaker look. Like A.I., Minority Report is among Spielberg's darker films.

Minority Report is a science fiction film which, like Blade Runner and Dark City, mixes in elements of several genres, particularly film noir, mystery, thriller and action / adventure. People have also noted resemblances to Brian De Palma's The Fury.

Plot

Minority Report is set in Washington, D.C. during the year 2054. Thanks to three "precogs" and technology built around their ability to see murders before they happen, the city has gone six years without a homicide. The group making use of the precogs is called the "Department of Pre-Crime"; the police officers and detectives within the department are empowered to act on their foreknowledge, arresting people who are about to commit a murder, and imprisoning them without a trial in a "Hall of Containment" using technology even crueler than that used to make use of the precogs. The department chief John Anderton is played by Cruise, with von Sydow playing his boss Lamar Burgess. Morton plays the senior precog, nicknamed Agatha (after Agatha Christie; the nicknames of the other two, Dashiell and Arthur, are also references to crime fiction figures).

The country is about to vote on expanding the Pre-Crime program nationally, which brings in the Department of Justice. Colin Farrell plays an observer from that department, Danny Witwer, whose concerns about Pre-Crime could be motivated as much by a desire to advance his own career as from doubt about the constitutionality and absolute certainty of the Pre-Crime process and the people who run it.

The title of the movie refers to a discovery Anderton makes about the precogs: they don't always agree about the future. Since there are three precogs, the "Minority Report" refers to the dissenting opinion, which the process filters out in order to preserve the sense of certainty that Burgess in particular believes is required for the program's success.

Anderton's discovery of the existence of minority reports is one of several clues to the mystery which drives most of the film. It also contributes to the desperation felt by the chief when in the blink of an eye (more literally, the drop of a wooden ball), he goes from being a pre-crime cop to a pre-crime perpetrator, the action which drives the plot. He learns that he is supposed to kill someone he's never met, and eventually discovers a conspiracy involving the pre-cogs, an old friend, and the disappearance (six years before) of his son. All of this prompts his fellow officers, as well as Danny onto a manhunt as John is out to prove his innocence, with the help of Agatha.

Themes

Fate vs. choice

The first and most obvious theme is whether individuals are dominated by fate or whether they have free will. In the opening sequence, the Pre-Crime division led by Anderton receive a pre-vision that tells them that a man would murder his adulterous wife and her lover upon discovery. While the crime is averted, the man claims that he wouldn't have killed them, but he is arrested and imprisoned nevertheless. It is never revealed whether or not he would have committed the murders. Similarly, John Anderton sees a pre-vision that states he would kill a man named Leo Crow, a person he had never met, and he finds this absurd. Yet, as the movie progresses, his decision to escape justice, his belief in his own innocence and his search for the Minority Report generates the incident in the first place.

However, the pre-cog Agatha (Samantha Morton) states at one point that since Anderton knows his future, he can change it. This is demonstrated when Anderton refuses to shoot Crow. The film leaves the answer ambiguous, ending the film with what appears to be someone making an important free choice, but not actually saying that this could not be pre-determined. It is important to note that the only times anyone in the film "changes" their fate is when they are informed of the possibilities of the future by the Pre-cogs - thus one possible interpretation is that the movie is saying we can only have freedom to change the future if we have the power to see it.

Threat of dystopian government

Another theme is the looming threat of a totalitarian society. Although Pre-Crime is extremely successful, effectively ending murder in Washington for six years, throughout the film we see that the people of the city have little privacy. Shops, mass transit, and government buildings are equipped with iris recognition devices, which identify each individual immediately (bearing some resemblance to a similar device in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). One of the movie's most spectacular scenes involves artificial robotic spiders ('spyders') scouring an apartment complex, barging into rooms without the permission of its residents or a search warrant. It raises the question of whether people would rather be safe or free.

The loss of individual freedom is further explored when it is explained that the people arrested by Pre-Crime are technically innocent. They have not committed any crime at the time of arrest, yet they are sent to prison without a trial and without anyone having heard their side of the story. A darker aspect of the Pre-Crime unit is revealed in the detention facilities, in which prisoners are placed in disturbing animation suspension pods rather than in regular prisons. In the epilogue, it is revealed that all prisoners are pardoned.

It is also shown that the government and the powers-that-be are not above manipulating or outright lying to the public. Before Anderton enters the Pre-Crime building for the second time, the audience hears a Pre-Crime tour guide telling visitors that the three pre-cogs (Agatha, Dashiell and Arthur) are well taken care of and looked after by the Pre-Crime division, at one point stating, "It's good to be a pre-cog." In actual fact, the pre-cogs are kept heavily sedated in a sterile tank at all times, and likely have few fundamental rights, although they (obviously) do not complain. Everyone, including Anderton, treats them as little more than useful tools ("It's better if you don't think of them as human."). Anderton is more bothered about the presence of Agatha's Minority Report (which raises questions about his previously held belief of its absolute nature) than he is about her condition.

Eyes

'Eyes' and 'seeing' are a recurring motif. Examples include:

John purchasing drugs from a blind vendor who ominously states, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
Agatha screaming "Can you see?", repeatedly.
John going to a surgeon (Peter Stormare), who replaces his eyes.
The spyder scene which ends with a spyder scanning one of Anderton's eyes.
In the opening scene, Howard Marks' son uses scissors to punch through the eyes of an Abraham Lincoln picture to make a mask.
Howard Marks returns to find his wife having an affair only because he forgot his glasses when leaving for work. After catching her, explains coming back to fetch them, stating, "You know how blind I am without them."

The idea behind this is that what we see in a film is always veiled in subjectivity, always seen through somebody else's eyes. The images Pre-Crime uses to apprehend murderers before they commit their crime do not show reality or truth; they are an expression of the precogs' feelings, which explains why in some cases, they disagree on what is actually going to take place, as Dr. Hineman explains to Anderton. This can be interpreted as a metaphor for cinema, where increasingly images are seen as nothing more than what they show, as a representation of reality, instead of an artist's creation, something that is entirely constructed and meant to convey meaning. In this perspective, Anderton "scrubbing" the images gathered from the precogs is just like a spectator, not just looking at the images in a movie, but rather interpreting them.

One interesting thing to note is that the interpretation of the image of Crow's murder accurately predicts the death of Crow but when the actual crime occurs several details occur which are not even mentioned in the pre-vision. Most notable is the fact that Anderton chooses not to kill Crow immediately but Crow, who was paid to participate in Anderton's set-up, engages in a scuffle with Anderton and dies as a result. The pre-vision images are shown in such an order that it only shows Anderton pointing a gun and Crow dying. This incident further reveals the difficulty of interpreting images and distinguishing reality from fiction, a notable theme of Dick's works. It also works as a metaphor for the art of editing and its powers of suggestion.

Many other movies deal with this issue, such as Fritz Lang's Fury (in the scene where the jury is shown footage of the lynching), Hitchcock's North by Northwest (the photograph of Thornhill "killing" a man at the U.N.), and of course the most well known film to directly deal with the subjectivity of human vision, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up.

The ending

There are at least two interpretations of the events portrayed at the end of the movie. The literal view holds that all events in the plot occurred exactly as they were portrayed in the film, leading up to the largely upbeat resolution depicted immediately before the film's credits.

An alternate interpretation advances the view that the events of the film's plot terminate 2:01:50 into the movie, when Anderton has been arrested, convicted of murder, and imprisoned. In this view, the remainder of the film consists of an extended dream sequence, and the ultimately favourable resolution is merely a creation of Anderton's subconscious mind.

This latter view hinges on remarks made by Gideon, the guard portrayed by Tim Blake Nelson, when Anderton is being incarcerated. He says, "You're a part of my flock now, John. Welcome. It's actually kind of a rush. They say you have visions, that your life flashes before your eyes, that all your dreams come true". These lines seem to open the possibility that the remainder of the film is a dream and wish fulfillment, similar to Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" or, in film, Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

Reinforcing this view, the film's concluding events do seem like a 'dream come true' for Anderton. He is freed and exonerated, the Pre-Crime division is disbanded, his rival's duplicity is exposed, the rival kills himself in disgrace, the precogs are freed under circumstances enabling them to live normal lives, and Anderton re-unites with his wife, who is pregnant with another child to replace the one they had lost. These aims are accomplished with extraordinary ease, as he encounters no resistance during situations where it might be expected, such as his escape or his call to request one last favour from his former colleagues at Pre-Crime headquarters.

Those who adhere to the literal view of the movie question why this supposed "dream world" of Anderton's would contain any flaws at all, such as the revelation of his trusted friend Burgess as his ultimate betrayer or the continued absence of his missing son. These apparent discrepancies could possibly be resolved through the attribution of subconscious psychological motivations to Anderton, such as an Oedipal wish to supplant the "father of Pre-Crime" or a longing for closure in his relationship with his son. In the larger case, the entire question is a reframing of the problem of evil, as originally voiced by the philosopher Epicurus.http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/epicur.htm

A third possibility also lies within Gideon's commentary before Anderton is incarcerated, though taken in a different fashion. As noted above, Gideon states that one's life flashes before one's eyes. With that in mind, it can be theorized that the movie, as it is watched, is Anderton dreaming about events which have already happened to him. This could explain various inconsistencies throughout the movie, as well as the stylistic approach to the first two hours (the blue wash over the vast majority of the film being indicative of his dream-state, a wash which largely dissipates after Anderton is frozen). It is also a markedly less depressing interpretation than the other "dream sequence" possibility.

As an example, the character of Witwer is obnoxious and irritating for most of the movie; it is only after Witwer determines that Anderton is being framed that he is portrayed with any sympathy, in spite of his often being correct--i.e., that police officers who use drugs are hypocritical and should be arrested. If the majority of the film is Anderton dreaming, it could be reasoned that Witwer was demonized in the beginning simply because Anderton did not like him. As his dream progressed, Anderton's mind began to realize that Witwer was merely doing his job, and that Witwer was also interested in defending him from murder charges. After that, Witwer was shown as being highly intelligent and dedicated; his death was portrayed sympathetically, giving him a human touch (kissing his prayer beads) which contrasts with the inhumanly-cold man seen in much of the movie. Scenes of which it is impossible for Anderton to have any knowledge, such as when Witwer visits Lara, can be explained as the "visions" becoming vivid enough to fill in the blanks and support the logical sequence of events in the film; there is also the fact that Anderton was told of most of these goings-on, and may be imagining how he thought it would have gone.

Spielberg has not mentioned that the ending should be interpreted in any fashion other than the literal one, and production notes from the film indicate that at one point the writers had intended the film to contain a dream sequence, in which Anderton interacted with his son shortly after the scene in which he was imprisoned. These factors might argue against a non-literal interpretation, but they are not conclusive.

By turning to a potentially unreliable narrator during the conclusion, the film itself mirrors the unreliable visions of the future delivered by the Precogs, and reinforces several of its own larger themes, regardless of the viewer's interpretation of the film's concluding events.

Score

The score was composed and conducted by John Williams, orchestrated by John Neufeld. The vocals were sung by Deborah Dietrich. The score is largely (though not entirely) athematic, featuring an unusually large amount of atmospheric or highly jarring "questionably-tonal" music, though certain centerpieces, such as the action cue "Anderton's Great Escape" are written in a more familiar idiom. Connections are often drawn between Williams approach and that of one of his strong composerly influence, Bernard Herrmann.

Similar films

The film explores several science fiction themes common to films and novels:

Government and personal freedom (Conspiracy thriller): 1984, Enemy of the State, Conspiracy Theory, The Manchurian Candidate, A Clockwork Orange
Free will: The Matrix, Aeon Flux
Fate vs. Choice: The Terminator, Judgment Day, Rise of the Machines, The Butterfly Effect.

Trivia

In 1999, Spielberg invited fifteen experts convened by Global Business Network and its chairman, Peter Schwartz (and the demographer and journalist Joel Garreau http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A20469-2002Jun20) to a hotel in Santa Monica, California to brainstorm and flesh out details of a possible "future reality" for the year 2054. The experts included Stewart Brand, Peter Calthorpe, Douglas Coupland, Neil Gershenfeld, biomedical researcher Shaun Jones, Jaron Lanier, and former MIT architecture dean William J. Mitchell http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/spielberg.html. While the discussions didn't change key elements needed for the film's action sequences, they were influential in introducing some of the more utopian aspects of the film, though John Underkoffler, the science and technology advisor for the film, described the film as "much grayer and more ambiguous" than what we envisioned in 1999http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/underkoffler-0717.html.
In the portrayal of the future world, there were certain aspects of the imagined technology that gained some attention in the popular computer presshttp://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,102455,00.asp. One sequence features Cruise's character using a futuristic graphical user interface, where several wall-sized screens were projected into space in front of a standing Cruise. With gloved hands, Cruise uses gestures to zoom, shift and manipulate images on the projected screen.
The film is full of chase scenes and expensive special effects created by Industrial Light and Magic and other companies.
Hawthorne Plaza, a mall in Hawthorne, California where several scenes were filmed, is now being remodeled into office space and retail. The mall, which closed in the mid-90s, will be redubbed South Bay Center Onehttp://www.cityofhawthorne.com/bus_hawmall.htm.
Two futuristic non-lethal weapons are featured. One is a gun that uses concentrated sound waves to knock a person off their feet; a second, called a "sick stick" in the film, causes its target to vomit.
The 1955 movie House of Bamboo can be spotted being played on a projection screen in the scene where we first see Dr. Solomon (the scene shows a man being shot in a Japanese hot-tub).
"Moon River" plays during the scene in the mall. This song plays prominently in Born on the Fourth of July, starring Tom Cruise.
The look of Minority Report was set with a visual effects device called the "Squishy Lens" that resembles a breast implant squished between two plates of glass.
Although not mentioned on IMDb, the fire in the cabin fireplace at the end where Agatha, Dashiell and Arthur are living takes on a rather peculiar shape. Does the word computer come to mind?
In the scene where John Anderton gets new eyes, Miss Greta Van Eyck (Caroline Lagerfelt) is singing a traditional Swedish song called "små grodorna" (the small frogs). The original text line is "ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar hava de" (no ears, no ears, they do not have no tails), but in this scene "öron" (ears) is changed to "ögon" (eyes) as a pun.

References

External links

Official website
Senses of Cinema - An in-depth article dissecting the film
Filming locations in the Los Angeles area
Is there a Minority Report?, or: What is Subjectivity? essay by Matthew Sharpe, Other Voices, Jan. 2005

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