Disconnect (Film Review)

It's been a full week since I saw Disconnect. It's taken me that much time to recover. Been a long, long time since a film has hit me this hard. This is not a film for liars or those who like to be lied to. It will rip you open and spill your guts out on the floor leaving the aftermath to you. There are, however, many misconceptions about the movie out there from the, uh, disconnected.

It's not a film about the evils of the internet or how technology is "changing our lives" or any other rot like that though I could see how someone could misconstrue that. Sure, every story involves a wired device but almost everyone has a tool like that for communicating without making it their life. No, this is about human behavior as old as mankind itself and how this new wired age exposes that behavior.

Although there's a lot of plot in the film it is not a film for movie literalists (meaning when you watch it you're supposed to know it's a movie). It seeks to fully explore the issue of communication in both the destructive nature in the lack of it and the healing power of restoring it. Some idiots have called that a "Hollywood ending" but that is for those people who want movies to disconnect them from reality and not come full circle.

I was nervous through most of the film, afraid it was going to tease me and fall into easy clichés or cynicism during the oh so very many opportunities it had the chance to do so. Instead, I was greatly gratified that it maintained its integrity and stuck to its guns all the way to the end. It's a tough act to pull off because one drop of poison would ruin the wellspring of truth the filmmakers had so deftly created.

I beg everyone to go see this film. It will most certainly make you uneasy at times because the crimes in it are very human and you will recognize yourself as a perpetrator. But ultimately you will be thankful you made it through and perhaps given the strength to face something that you may not be able to do on your own, disconnected.

If there's any one word I'd use to describe this godawful, nightmarish century it is certainly "disconnected". We have divorced ourselves from reality, hurtling ourselves over the cliff of doom all in the name of saving ourselves. It's a world where a terrorist can blow people up in the afternoon and return to his dorm room that night like nothing ever happened. Disconnected. It's a world where the most powerful military on earth blows up children because we live in fear. Disconnected. It's a world pretending blindness with its eyes closed. Disconnected.

One day we're going to be able to communicate openly and without fear and realize just how foolish we've been for the entirety of our existence.