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Strawberry Mansion (2021)
Surreal dream logic romance laced with technological dread and wonder
How do you resist when even your dreams are taxed and mercilessly injected with ads? This low-budget oddity, part Lewis Carroll part Terry Gilliam, follows a 'dream auditor' down the rabbit hole to find a new dream life and a way to stop the invasion of our minds in the 'Strawberry Mansion'. While the production is sometimes rough around the edges, the concept is intriguing, and the casting and creature designs are quite good. Kentucker Audley anchors this as the slightly bewildered auditor Preble, and actors Penny Fuller and Grace Glowicki feature as the artist Arabella, aged in reality and youthful in dreams respectively. How they managed to craft this lightly engaging gem on such a tiny budget is a question for the big studios to ponder.
Travelling Salesman (2012)
More entertaining if you dig the maths...less so if you dig action
Largely entertaining set piece featuring a taut claustrophobic confrontation between a team of elite mathematicians who've cracked a problem (i.e. The Traveling Salesman) that promises to weaken all cryptographic systems fatally with world-shaking consequences, and the increasingly sinister government bureaucrat alternately badgering then threatening the group to sign lucrative and iron-clad hush agreements.
Torn between the desire for public fame and recognition, and the ethical dilemma that their N=NP proof could represent an information weapon capable of enormous harm, the team led by renowned math prodigy 'No 1', spars verbally with the bureaucrat and each other over whether to sign over their historic achievement and thereby lose all claim to it - and to affect the terrible ways in which it might be used by the government.
This is by no means an 'action' film. Your enjoyment of the film will be directly correlated with your familiarity with the type of cryptographic/NP-complete problem that the team has 'solved', but from which they must now disavow any further knowledge. I rather enjoyed the closing images of No. 1 walking the now-idle railroad track, having symbolically become 'The Traveling Salesman' personified.
The rapid clip arguments, cajoling and very personal threats made over the conference room table are mostly quite good if you keep pace - but I can't help wondering if our intrepid mathematicians realize that whether they sign the non-disclosure agreement or not, the government interest in keeping their discovery absolutely secret makes them all dead men walking?
Danger Man: The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove (1965)
Foreshadowing of the Prisoner
To add to previous reviews, several scenes in this episode contain elements that reappear strongly in the Prisoner.
The casino figures prominently (as does the femme fatale) much as did Mme. Ongadine and the gaming table in "A, B and C" at which No. 6 (Drake) may be gambling his future. The casino is an apt symbol of the risks Drake constantly faces; threat of exposure, failure, disgrace and death. Constantly scrutinized and re-evaluated for any sign of treason, or the slightest willingness to entertain the merest suggestion of 'going over' to the other side, Drake is always betting - and always watched.
The ubiquity of Lovegrove in this piece strongly conveys the sense of constant surveillance Drake must feel as a 'travel agent'. In fact, the implication in the Prisoner that No. 6 may actually have simply been going on 'holiday' (the tropical photos seen being stuffed into a briefcase in every opening sequence seem to fit this view) may be innocent enough. But it being a Cold War, it was entirely likely that his superiors had every reason to view their No. 1 'travel agent' 'going on holiday' (i.e. not on official business) with grave concern. Such actions would be impossible to interpret as benign, or to dismiss lightly.
Not only is Lovegrove ubiquitous, but in one action piece, Drake is engaging in fisticuffs with .. himself along with several other flashes of himself briefly in the place of other characters. This calls to mind several Prisoner episodes with strong elements of conflicted or hidden identity, particularly the " Schizoid Man" and most famously, "Fall Out" which I dare not describe here ;-)
Some passing observations. - Drake enters a door prominently labeled '6' and is greeted by a very short footman, or Butler. - When examined by the doctor (Lovegrove), the eye chart is reversed; not so when the real doctor is taking the initial call. - The corridor of laughing busts is strongly reminiscent of Town Hall. - The repeated use of timpani in the soundtrack is a dead-on 'Rover' cue. - Two thirds of the production end credits could be transposed directly to the Prisoner with almost no revision!
The episode does have numerous technical and story flaws, and would be easily dismissed, except for some of these items which point clearly toward McGoohan's *next* assignment.