Maniac
Netflix, 2018; Paramount
Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga
Written by Patrick Somerville
Jonah Hill…Owen Milgrim
Emma Stone…Annie Landsberg
Sonoya Mizuno…Dr. Fujita
Billy Magnussen…Jed Milgrim
Aaralyn Anderson…Belle Milgrim
Dai Ishiguro…Head Control Tech
This. Is. Brilliant.
Cary Joji Fukunaga, director of the first season of True Detective, brings the same sensibilities of that grim and goofy series to Maniac. The result is a grand mixture of powerful emotional depth, weirdness, and a striking balance between the real and the surreal.
Maniac takes place in a near-future New York, which features a Statue of Extra Liberty, and has a gig economy in which people earn credits by watching ads, and can spend them on such things as computer dream spouses and mostly rent (87% of income). Vehicles are about the same as our world, and LED screens and holograms are everywhere, but the electronics technology is all 1970s and 1980s, big clunky computers, some of which use tubes, 72-pin parallel ports and 5.25” floppy disks. Televisions are color, but straight out of 1967, with green faces and purple grass. Cute little Charlie shitbots prowl the sidewalks in an endless search for dog droppings.
Despite these elements, this is not a silly series. Owen Milgrim (Jonah Hill) is a near-cast-off from a sleek, vicious, plutocratic family, and who is delusional with paranoiac ideation. Pigeons in the park deliver secret messages to him, and when they flew away, the corn scattered on the sidewalk for them begins to pop. Annie Landsberg (Emma Stone) is a depressed young woman ravaged by guilt and regret. (Stone as a child suffered from severe panic attacks.) Both sign up with a mysterious Japanese company (Neberdine) that promises to rid them of their inner demons and make them whole people again.
The corporation is run by Japanese officers (most notably Dai Ishiguro, Sonoya Mizuno, stellar as the Director and Head Medical Tech) and Fukunaga has amplified some of the oddities of Japanese business culture, using excessive formality and loud Ganbarimasu chants to conceal the fact that nobody in this outfit really knows what the fuck they are doing.
One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. And the one that Neberdine gives you doesn’t do anything at all. At first.
Things do not go as planned. Viewers are advised not to put too much stock in their own plot expectations.
Cary Joji Fukunaga is definitely a rising star. True Detective was superb, this is even better, and he’s mooted to be directing the next Bond movie, which may reinvigorate the 60 year old franchise.
Fukunaga has a unique vision, suited to our mad yet curiously mundane times. For much of the cast, these are roles of a lifetime. Watch Maniac and enjoy it.