Bug (2006)
Directed by William Friedkin
***SPOILERS***
As seen in Beyond the Black Rainbow, brainwashing is no easy feat. It can receive a rather
cartoony treatment, from bullshitting hypnotists with a live audience to, errrrr...Spongebob
Squarepants, and what’s lost in the shuffle is the meticulousness involved is
such a grotesque act. Synth artist Laurel Halo recently put such horrors on
display in her album Quarantine,
where beings move from one partner to the next, or nonchalantly speak
to themselves: “Don't get addicted to anything/Just keep on walking/One foot in
front of the other/Forward motion's the only answer.” Brainwashing is represented by a probing presence of deep synths and unrelenting vocals, all lending towards the lifeless beings at hand. In Beyond the Black Rainbow, Barry hypnotizes Elena over the course of
her childhood, slowly penetrating her mind and stripping away a sense of
normality. Barry shifts Elena in and out of drug-induced states, which allows
him to warp her mind through images (a picture of her mother) and invisible
forces (the ever-present prism). He taps on a clipboard to rile her up, and
then secludes her in a white, empty chamber to allow her temper to dissipate
and eliminate a sense of hope. And Elena’s hope—which is kept in tact through
that photo of her mother—represents the opposite end of brainwashing:
resistance. In Elena’s case, her resistance is her strive to return home. And breaking that resistance is the final step in brainwashing.
In Agnes White’s case in Bug,
her resistance stems from her failures as a mother. And White’s (Ashley Judd)
counterpart Peter (Michael Shannon) isn’t as menacing as Barry, nor as selfish,
but instead equally stricken with a troubled past. While Peter is actively
brainwashing Agnes to believe bugs have invaded their motel room, his story
seems entirely removed from the breakdown of Agnes White. With Peter far
removed from societal norms upon stepping into Agnes’ life, Agnes is originally
quite sane. Deeply wounded by the disappearance of her child and the presence an abusive
husband—yes. On the same paranoid and frenzied level as Peter—no. But in
weakening Agnes’ sense of hope, that deeply troubling past lends a helping hand
to Peter’s unreasonable claims of the government controlling bugs. It brings an
emotional factor into the situation, making the brainwashing far more
consequential and captivating, revealing that depths of one’s mind are only as
deep and impenetrable as the heart allows.
While not as wildly paranoid as Peter, Agnes is certainly
skeptical of other people in general, leading to an automatic dissection of the
quiet Peter, labeling him as a potential “axe murderer.” As ironic the
statement is in comparison to what Peter will become—playing mind games with
Agnes and stabbing his doctor repeatedly with a knife—it prominently points
towards her demeanor regarding relationships, which automatically stems from her
troubled family life. Separated from her child and divorced from a jealous
prison convict, Agnes has physically secluded herself from society in her dank
motel suite, choosing to work at a lesbian bar and attempting to hide from her
brute ex-husband Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.). Her dismissal of men from her life
signals her fear in entering a relationship, scared of reliving any of the
life-crippling ventures from her previous stint.
But Peter’s casual strut into her life is indicative of her
desire to recapture that warm instinctual feeling of new love. Weakened by a
tragic past and an addiction to hard drugs, Agnes’ mind is somewhat ready for condolence,
which she never received from her abusive ex-husband. Peter, who assesses
himself during their first conversation by saying, “I pick up on things not apparent,” represents an opportunity to
start anew. While the opposite of Jerry in terms of demeanor, it’s his
attention to his surroundings that captivates Agnes. He examines Agnes’
painting, claiming it is full of “hidden stuff,” which surprises Agnes, as
she’s owned the painting for years without assessing it. Agnes hated the
painting at first, but left it in its place and grew to like it—a tiny snippet of her
personality that reveals trust in others is built with time. Like the painting,
Agnes is hesitant of Peter, but she’s also too hopeful for a new life to push
him away.
Her journey in truly accepting Peter into her life is far
more grueling than her casual acceptance of a painting on her motel room’s
wall. Agnes’ level of adoration for Peter directly correlates with how deeply
she believes his lie. As she becomes increasingly paranoid of the bugs invading
her home, she falls deeper and deeper for Peter, spilling her buried regrets
and unhealthy longing for love along the way. Agnes is hesitant of Peter at
first, yet intrigued. They lightly touch on each other’s pasts, but her
resistance is revealed through her subtle actions. She is somewhat skeptical of
Peter’s claim about radiation in smoke detectors, yet not altogether
dismissive. She doesn’t allow Peter to sleep in her bed, but also doesn’t kick
him out, allowing him to sleep on the couch. Once Peter probes deeper and
learns more of Agnes’ past, we see her guard letting up. He says to her, “You should be scared,” and “Maybe a long time ago people were safe.” He
makes paranoid claims about machines gaining knowledge and the mind-controlling
chemical administered by the government, which she begins to buy into. And as
he intertwines his paranoid banter with probes into her tragic role as a
mother, she says, “I do get scared at
night,” indicating her acceptance of Peter as a lover (and his false
claims) as they move into the bedroom. This breakdown is tragic, for as Barry utilizes Elena's greatest weakness knowingly in Beyond the Black Rainbow, Peter is far too removed to realize how detrimental his actions are. She later reveals that she searches for her son in her dreams, indicating that Peter's paranoid statements were really affirmations of Agnes' deepest fears, which were then utilized and built around Peter's lies.
We see her adoration growing alongside her paranoia, as she
vehemently defends Peter to her friend as bug traps flood their apartment, and
culminating with a glorious final act where she stands by her man as he stabs
his doctor to death. Launching into her own construed explanation for the
“presence” of bugs in her home, she exclaims, “I am the Super Mother Bug!” which is a ludicrous statement, yet
indicative of her warped state of mind and her deep commitment to Peter. No
longer accepting Peter’s claims, Agnes’ own manifestation of the truth
represents her true acceptance of not only Peter, but herself as a woman,
making her newly brandished title as the Super Mother Bug much more gripping
than silly. So as she and Peter pour gasoline on themselves and set the motel
room ablaze, we see “true love” in its sickest form: Agnes finally reaching the
same level as her lover and truly accepting him into her life; becoming a single
entity and returning to the life she had desperately tried to escape.
Screenwriter Tracy Letts built such a breakdown gloriously
through Peter’s warped tales of bugs and the military, and William Friedkin
matches blow for blow in his direction. Much like Panos Cosmatos did with Beyond the Black Rainbow, employing the
environment becomes key in transforming Agnes. Cosmatos utilizes vibrant,
shifting colors to indicate Elena’s controlled state of mind, and Friedkin
exhibits a similar tactic. Drenched in pale browns and greens, Agnes’ motel
room seems a less glamorous and more cluttered version of Jef Costello’s
apartment in Le Samouraï: a lifeless,
unwelcoming space of living that’s solely in place to seclude its occupant from
society. But Friedkin transforms the apartment alongside Agnes, littering it
with Peter’s tools that represent his own paranoia, which surrounds Agnes and
slowly brainwashes her along with Peter’s stories. Friedkin finds the presence
of bugs in every crevice of the motel room without every actually finding them,
amping up the buzz of the radiator and cutting to a close-up of the smoke
detector as it emits cricket sounds. Peter’s claims of government personnel
watching his every move is depicted through the ever-spinning ceiling fan,
which Friedkin adopts the point of view from on several occasions, and
eventually allowing to spin rapidly and depict a very powerful helicopter
landing on the roof.
There’s an emotionally draining element to Friedkin’s
photography, and it’s equally offset by Letts’ meticulously pieced screenplay,
making for a psychological trip that’s benefitted by more than a sad woman with
a beguiling past. Agnes’ hope is what drives her adoration Peter, yet as she spirals
deeper and deeper down Peter’s lies, we see all hope dissipating. It creates a
strange ambiance, as Agnes’s brimming desire for love is admirable and
endearing, yet leading her down an unrelenting path that can only result in her
demise. Constrained solely to the apartment for her psychological tearing, we feel the outside world’s presence only when it enters her home, never allowing
her to escape a mindset she’s attempting to move away from. For as Peter
preaches of the government’s bug experiments, the bugs only exist within Agnes’
home, revealing that brainwashing isn’t a comical or entertaining affair, but
an intimate connection with horrific results.
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