Surrogates

Surrogates (Jonathan Mostow, dir; 89 mins; 2009):
Unlike the more popular Avatar, Surrogates offers us “ghosts in the machine.” People are spirits or minds that can inhabit any number (although apparently only one at a time) of surrogates, perfect synthetic bodies. Created first for people with various disadvantages or injuries and for military service, 98% of the world’s people have now “phoned it [ordinary life] in” and interact with others only through their surrogates. In fact, most people have become rather fearful of and embarrassed by their less than perfect “real” bodies. Most of the other 2% live in “reservations” in the midst of cities where surrogates are not allowed. The Prophet is the most vocal leader of this minority and harangues the surrogate world on a regular basis for living a lie.

Complications arise when surrogates are trashed and their users die too. Detective Tom Greer (Willis) eventually discovers that the original creator of the surrogates has developed a means to terminate surrogates and their users and plans an apocalypse. Greer stops the apocalypse or, at least, he saves the human users. The surrogates (machines?) all go down for the count (Take that Matrix and Terminator).

A final news report commenting on the end of the surrogates says either hopefully or hauntingly that “we’re on our own now.” The problem is that no one knows how to use their own bodies very well or how to interact with less than perfect people (they could train at my house during family holidays). The Prophet has been exposed as a pawn of the military-industrial complex (or, at least, of the creator). Tom Greer, however, seems poised to lead the way. In the course of his investigation, his surrogate is destroyed and he goes it “naturally,” and, as a result, becomes enamored anew of “real,” physical life. In fact, in the film finale, he connects anew with his “real” wife, not her surrogate, something that he has tried to do increasingly throughout the film.

I’d like to read the film as consciously choosing Aristotle over Plato or Marx over otherworldly religion (Plato and the spirit are more popular than Aristotle and Marx), but I don’t think that’s quite it. The aura is more It’s a Wonderful Life. The film simply validates the “reality” of most of the audience. The film, then, is not so much Luddite as it is a paean to our less than perfect bodies, both physical and social.