'Maniac' Is as Flawed and Beautiful as the Human Mind
With all our modern technology and science and knowledge, humans still understand very little about the human brain. We understand in broad terms identity, personality, and memory, but the nuances of these key definitions of humanity remain a mystery. Controlling our emotions, our behaviors, and our minds are billion-dollar industries, which remain ineffective for providing easy answers for anyone suffering mental illness. The truth is, there are no answers, only approximations and theories. The human mind is a complex maze, a dangerous place, a unique labyrinth that’s impossible to navigate in broad strokes.
To make a 10-part miniseries that literally steps into the darkest places of the human mind is an enormous endeavor. To visualize and personify subconscious thoughts, anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia is something very few directors are able to pull off. It’s, to say the least, very tricky. It can go bad quickly. And in Maniac, creator Patrick Somerville and director Cary Joji Fukunaga tackle a very difficult project-and pull it off to varying degrees.
Based on a Norwegian TV series of the same name, Maniac stars Jonah Hill as Owen Milgrim, a despondent paranoid schizophrenic whose only personal connections are a corrupt wealthy family that ridicules and takes advantage of him. Desperate for money, he volunteers for a pharmaceutical trial for a drug that promises pure happiness on the other end. There he meets Emma Stone’s Annie Landbergh, a drug addict who is haunted by the death of her beloved sister. Their reality, outside of the mind-bending trial that’s to come, is a dystopian alternate future. It’s a mix of '90s nostalgia populated by crummy little robots, antiquated 8-bit displays, and vintage style. It’s like a future in which Apple never made technology aesthetically pleasing. But it’s also a world of crippling poverty, where people must use Ad Buddies to pay for things (a human proxy who reads ads to you), and turn to friend services for companionship.
The overt gloom of this world is jarring compared to the futurist satire, where corporations and brands have monetized even the most intimate of human interactions. Over the course of 10 palatable episodes this tone is hit-or-miss, like many things in Maniac.
If the base world of Maniac isn’t weird enough, things are about to get a lot weirder once Own and Annie start their drug trial with Neberdine Pharmaceutical Biotech. Strapped into chairs in a colorful neon room, they are to take three drugs labeled A, B, and C. Throughout these trails, the subjects explore various dreamscape realities in their own minds, where they become different characters in different times and places that represent versions of their own real-world struggles. These dream sequences range from '80s trash comedy, high-fantasy (Stone sports elf ears and everything), '40s heists, and '60s extra-terrestrial government intrigue. It’s a conceit that demands a lot from its two leads, and thankfully Stone and Hill are versatile enough to handle it-even if their accents come and go, which is later a plot point.
It also demands a lot of Fukunaga, who manages to create what amounts to a dozen different mini-movies in one season. Specifically worth calling out is Fukunaga’s direction of an action sequence in the penultimate episode. It features a stunning tracking shot, with expert spy Emma Stone disposing of dozens of armed goons. (That, along with his famous True Detective tracking shot, should get anyone excited for Fukunaga’s upcoming Bond movie.)
These different dream worlds are fun, and shockingly fleshed out considering only less than an hour is devoted to each one. The world building is effortless and swift. Yet, with so many jarring pivots, it’s hard to care about the overarching plot, which is stupidly simple given the absolutely convoluted way we get there.
Back in the lab-a twee Wes Anderson clinic-Justin Theroux’s Dr. Mantleray leads the pharmaceutical trial, obsessively nearing the end of completing his life’s work. After the supercomputer monitoring the trial goes haywire, things start to get dangerous for his test subjects. The doctor himself is struggling with his broken relationship with his own mother (the amazing Sally Field), a celebrity psychologist whose personality inspired the malfunctioning AI. All of this is, well, a lot-even for 10 episodes. And it’s hard to really care about any of it; at Maniac's core is a story about a malfunctioning computer that’s taking control of a pharmaceutical trial and putting the lives of the subjects in danger. It's surprisingly simple when you cut away the multiple Sally Fields, Stone and Hill's various personas, and all of the mind games.
There’s a running joke in the most recent season of Bojack Horseman (another Netflix original) in which Bojack stars on a gritty, prestige TV series that befuddles its viewers; if people can’t understand his show, then that's proof that it's good. Coincidentally, Bojack’s show is also a psychological detective series not unlike Fukunaga’s own True Detective. And it's easy to get that impression when seeing all the unnecessary padding around Maniac’s rather frail plot.
In the hands of any other director, it would have been a complete disaster. Fukunaga’s visual style and Hill and Stone’s tender, pliable performances, however, brings to Maniac a humanity-and, most importantly, fun. It provides a compelling look at mental health and our struggle to understand our own minds, how we can get lost in them, beaten by them, or overcome them. It gives a sometimes absurdist critique of the inhuman forces trying to heal human pain-at the pharmaceutical industries that hardly understand the organ they’re manipulating, and also the people obsessed with solving these problems. How can a broken mind create the process for healing another broken mind?
Even though the process is often confusing, and at times painful, it’s worth sticking through Maniac for the end result. What’s impressive-possibly more than anything else-is that Netflix gave Fukunaga the platform to attempt such an ambitious project. This is art that wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago, and for that we should at least be thankful. It doesn’t always work, but it is overall effective in creating an unforgettable experience that addresses the key questions of our very tangible reality and the more abstract corners of our mind. Don’t come to Maniac for quick, easy answers or a streamlined viewing experience, because it’s as flawed and beautiful as our own minds.
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