According to some dictionaries, the word “work” has its origins in the Latin term tripalium (which designates an instrument of torture). A definition that will not contradict Severancethe nightmarish and disturbing new series from Ben Stiller, premiering February 18 on Apple TV+.
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The Covid-19 pandemic and the successive confinements it has caused have made us realize one thing: the importance of establishing boundaries between work and private life. It’s not easy to stay focused while telecommuting in the middle of the living room, with the youngest running around. It’s not easy, on the other hand, to know when to turn off your phone or your computer when they have made us reachable 24 hours a day…
But there may be a solution. Lumon Industries offers its employees an infallible way to separate private life and professional life. The idea? A surgical procedure, severance, or separation. Through this irreversible operation, volunteer employees agree to have an implant inserted into their brain. Implant that allows to divide their memory spatially. Outside, they have no memory of their day’s work. And,$!!!!!! at work, they forget everything about their private life.
When Orwell goes to work
Supposed to guarantee the well-being of workers, the process actually seeks to maximize their productivity… by totally alienating them. We begin to suspect that there is a problem following the main character, Mark Scout (played by the brilliant Adam Scott, who perfectly embodies the oddity of the “ordinary character” and the deep sadness of a man who has just losing his wife), on his way to work.
First step: go through the multiple security checks worthy of a prison establishment. Second step: leave all traces of his outside life in the locker room. Third step: enter the elevator, the place where the change of consciousness between theoutiethe outer self, and theinnie, the working self. Seesaw which will be effective at the very moment when the hypnotic ringing of the elevator resounds. Final destination: the floor of the macro-data refinement department.
We then sink into a sanitized and oppressive universe, without any windows. In a maze of endless white corridors, Mark walks confidently to his workstation in the middle of a gigantic impersonal room. The suffocating atmosphere of the place takes you to the guts, in particular thanks to perfectly controlled and aesthetic shots. The camera alternates between dives, first-person visions (video game type), or even motion games reminiscent of a surveillance camera. The staging, supported by a fluid and dynamic editing, becomes truly distressing. Impossible, even, to know in which time we are located – perhaps somewhere between the 1980s and 1990s, if we are to believe the design of computers.
Computers on which Mark and his colleagues work… without really knowing what they are doing. From 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. every day, the team in the macro-data refinement department is in charge of the same repetitive task. That of categorizing and classifying numbers according to the emotions they evoke. In this dystopian world, where employees worship the personality of company founder Kier Egan, it’s all procedure and protocol.
The missions entrusted to Lumon employees are reminiscent of those of the famous bullshit jobs, useless and meaningless. The agents follow the manual, without understanding it and without any thought. This is the case of Mark, when he gives a rather special job interview to the service’s new recruit, Helly. He scrupulously reads each question of this famous manual, without even looking at his interlocutor, or adapting them to her. Like the other employees, he becomes a robot, a slave to productivity. And comes to no longer know who he is.
Robot workers in search of identity
Because in the world of Lumon, everything is standardized. The staging, made up of cold colors and ultra-symmetrical photography, accentuates this depersonalization even more. The robotization of innies is also due to the fact that they are nothing more than carnal envelopes. This is what Helly reminds his inniewhen she says to him: “I am a person, you are not! » The innies have lost all identity, except that of employees stuck at work in perpetuity. Because their reality is uniquely that of the company: as soon as they enter the elevator at the end of their day, they come out to start a new one.
Consequence: they know nothing of the outside world. They no longer have any family and have no idea what nature is, because they live in an artificial place that they never leave. And, despite their desire to know who they are on the outside, to find out if they have children and life partners, this knowledge will remain hidden from them… By themselves. This hell, the employees have chosen it, even if they do not remember it. And they will not be able to leave it without the validation of their outie. In full respect of their free will.
Because the best way to keep a prisoner is to make him believe he’s free. Each of them made the choice to receive this implant. Mark repeatedly expresses his refusal to have it deactivated. Eight hours a day, this man in full mourning can thus forget the sorrow which assails him vis-a-vis the loss of his wife. If he made this choice, it is above all for emotional comfort. By depriving themselves of all memory and reflection, Lumon employees consent to unlimited infantilization. As soon as they make a mistake, they are punished by the terrifying Mr. Graner, a kind of school principal who sends them to the dreadful Break Room. A dark room where brainwashing takes place, employees having to recite hundreds, even thousands of times of excuses, until they are considered sincere. On the contrary, when they achieve an accomplishment, the workers are rewarded with small childish gifts, snacks or festive moments.
Once the employees are reduced to the status of ignorant children, the hierarchy becomes the parent. A hierarchy embodied by the founder of Lumon, Kier Eagan, a sort of paternalistic God (he is the author of Manuela fake Bible gathering the precepts of the company), and by the misnamed director Harmony Cobel (played by Patricia Arquette, more chilling than ever, who finds Ben Stiller for the third time after Flirting with Disaster and Escape at Dannemora). The hierarchy is deified even in the play of light, particularly detailed and well thought out, which recalls how omniscient the director is.
But the belief and admiration for Kier Eagan and his principles waver when another book challenges them. By mistake, a copy of the book on personal development written by Ricken, Mark’s brother-in-law (character who brings the welcome touch of absurd humor that one would expect from Ben Stiller, usually more regular in comedies) lands in the macro data refinement department. Little by little, the rebellion takes hold, carried by the free will retained by the innies, and brilliantly accented by music in keeping with the events. Over the nine episodes, sometimes a little long, the sound environment evolves: first made of bland elevator melodies, it degenerates gently until exploding during rebellious pieces of Metallica or Motorhead.
An invitation to indiscipline, which invites the characters, as well as the spectators, to think for themselves rather than for the system. By mixing influences ranging from Black Mirror at The Office (which varies depending on the version), via an endless day, Ben Stiller reminds us that above all, it is our work that needs us, and not the other way around. And that it is up to us to make it happen. Waiting impatiently for the continuation of the adventures of the employees of Lumon, in a very probable season 2 of Severance.
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