Reflecting on The Amatuerist

As I watched Miranda July's "The Amateurist," I couldn't help but impose my own narrative outside the limited frame. To me, the character of the Professional didn't seem unsure of herself in her technical expertise, just of her ability to communicate that expertise on a human level. This seemed like a textbook case of a "techie," someone so engrossed in the techincal aspects of their field that they lose (or fail to develop) their interpersonal skills. The character also expressed a kind of forced contentment. More to come...

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Furthermore, the character of the Amateur as depicted seemed like a representation of caged freedom, restrained against her will, forced to bid by outside authority, but retaining the anger of wanted liberty.

Based on these observations, I constructed an Orwellian dystopia outside the frame. (It helped that the surveillance cam was in a grainy black and white, suggesting a vision of the future from the 1950s.) The movie, to me, was as though a hand-held first-person documentary were being made about the ordinary people who make the Big Brother network operate, as ironic a concept as that might be (since the overall tone was one seemingly of ironic humor, that didn't bother me very much). The Amateur was a free-spirit, brought to wherever she was for the purposes of re-education or just observation and experimentation. The Professional was just a technician doing a job, one she was particulrly skilled at, even though she may be aware of the dubious morality. Any such inclinations would need to be forced back, of course, or else it would be her on the other side of the monitor.