So, “Daddy” is a psychological drama written and directed by American director (let’s accept this feminist demand: director!) Christy Hall. Initially a playwright and producer, this is her directorial debut, which immediately visited several world festivals and there received applause.
This is one of those psychological experiments in cinema, when characters are placed in a closed space, and in their forced communication certain truths are revealed to them, up to a complete revolution in consciousness. The conventionality of such a move is always obvious to the audience, but it is justified by the depth of introspection that this particular conventional technique provides.
There are only two characters: a young Girlie (read: just a generalized Girl), played by Dakota Johnson, and an elderly taxi driver, Clark (Sean Penn), who drives her from the New York airport to her home in Manhattan. Until we arrive at the location, that is, until the end of the picture, the action does not leave the car salon and we see only two faces communicating mainly through the rearview mirror. The fact that this radio play is not boring to watch, we must thank the virtuoso operator Fidon Papamichael. And, of course, wonderful actors who accepted and brilliantly carried out this challenge, giving the dialogue not only depth, but even a semblance of pronounced “chemistry”.
Photo: kinopoisk.ru
I have already noted that the “female wave” brought with it a new measure of frankness in discussing such intimate details that were previously almost taboo in cinema. Greater attention to physiology, a more cynical view of man as an inevitable evil, an object of sad necessity. In “Dad” all these gender paradoxes are presented in abundance. On a long trip, taxi passengers often enter into a dialogue with the driver, especially if he is talkative and prone to philosophizing, as is the case. Moreover, so that the driver still has the opportunity to look his beloved passenger in the face, the author of the film arranges a car accident on the road in time, blocking traffic for a long time and giving the heroes the opportunity to talk – eye-to-eye, and for the film to temporarily change its monotonous perspective. The artificiality of the construction of the image is too obvious – let us take this as a very necessary convention.
At first, the conversation is routine: who you are, where you come from, what you do. She is a programmer, she flew in from Oklahoma, where she was visiting her sister, and it is still unclear why she suddenly opened up to a much older taxi driver. But the taxi driver turns out to be a psychologist, a sophisticated and corrosive one at that, and he will find out who she is going to and who her boyfriend is (it turned out that he is also much older than her, that is why she calls the guy dad). And, of course, dad is married, has a beautiful wife and three children, and the girl is stuck in this impasse: she needs dad, but she cannot hide her feeling of guilt from herself.
And the question arises: does she need love or daddy? A rich patron who primarily needs her… I will not repeat the term, which is indicated in Girly’s correspondence with her lover in the chat. In general, the simplest truths that for some reason had never occurred to the heroine before. She floated with the flow, as one floats, not realizing which shore she was heading towards. A wise taxi driver with an understanding, fatherly look, who passionately questioned her, made her think for the first time about the main thing – this is the essence and pathos of the film.
I confess that I love films in the genre of psychological, social or political investigation, a kind of experiment in a sealed test tube, where nothing extraneous interferes with the elucidation of truths. But it is still not as basic as it is here. Although, of course, Christy Hall’s film touches on many situations where these elementary truths are ignored and all frivolous programmers in the world are reminded of them. To what extent this is relevant, the supporters of the new “female wave” know better.
What happens in this film could happen in a movie, in a play, in a radio play. In real life, if a taxi driver gets into someone’s soul so persistently and unceremoniously, he will send them to hell and then to the end of the film.
