Neurological Correlates

In Return to Waterloo, written and directed by Ray Davies of the Kinks, we see the inner landscape of a successful psychopath. The more I think about this film, the more I think it genius, in perhaps an unintentional way. It’s ambiguous.

The film reviews are useless.  Probably the least useless is from the NYT, 1985, here, and here are the IMDB comments, which are better. Click on the sidebar Amazon widget for the Amazon user reviews, which, imo, miss the point. (Stop here if you don’t want spoilers).

So this we know: an ordinary British white guy (played by the actor Kenneth Colley, who looks amazingly like Vladimir Putin), a well-respected man, if you will, goes about his business; the viewer is invited to see the world through his eyes. It is disturbing. And set to music.

We see our Putin-esque protagonist breakfasting with his wife before leaving for the train: there is no emotion. A gray kitchen painted green; coffee and a cigarette, his barely perceptible contempt for her sadness. We see him on the train looking at other well respected men with contempt: they are accountants and dupes. We see him casting his eye on prey: pretty women. We see him identify with his own ilk: British antisocial punks in full glory, who wear their violent brand of psychopathy out loud, shouting down the war veterans and the orderly way of the past. We see our protagonist peering at his pretty teen daughter, undressed, through a crack in the door; and her look of total dread until she, too, is gone.

It is the world as viewed by a predator; no heated emotion or passion, only calculating manipulations, potential prey.

We see him forget to be “normal” and the energy it takes to remember to act “human” to put up the false front. I wonder: if he finds his daughter, will he kill her so she won’t rat him out? Has he already killed her? Is he the “Surrey Rapist”? The film is gray, cold, industrial, dreary, coated with the grime of sniveling unwashed masses. There is no warmth or spark.

Now, lest no one watch the film, it is a rock musical and the ’80s music is great, imo.  What lacks in dialog is presented in song and dance — in a very razz-a-ma-tazz, traditional musical kind of way. Very entertaining and watchable.  Almost Gilbert and Sullivan in its storytelling, except not. Perhaps prescient to the later Absolute Beginners hilarity in Mr. Davies’ “Quiet Life” soft-shoe through the Bye-Bye Birdie -esque cross-sectional Hollywood-squares-ish scene of a post war English boarding house.

Now this is an interesting synesthesian cinematic technique: our comfort with the traditional musical format and our discomfort with the out-there, head-case, disturbed visuals.  Was that intentional? Contrasting song and image has been used — opera playing during war scenes, or more lately marching music played to kittens on treadmills. But here, it’s the idea — traditionally structured musical against disorienting plot and visuals.

The net effect: we’re not sure what to think. Just how one feels upon a psychopath dénouement .

And there’s ambiguity in the ambiguity. Is the ambiguity intentional? It’s ambiguous. Is the protagonist an estate agent commuting to Waterloo, or the Surrey Rapist who hangs at Hyde Park all day? Is he a loving father who wants to find his daughter, or an incestuous father hunting down his daughter? It’s all left open; we don’t know; we think we know, we are pretty sure, but, we’re waiting for the definitive conclusion. And, there isn’t one.

I guess what should we expect from the author of the most ambiguous lyrics in a rock song:

I’m not the world’s most masculine man, but I know what I am,

and I’m glad I’m a man. . . and so is Lola

Is Lola glad? Or is Lola a man? The ambiguity is only a prelude to the ambiguity in the movie.

Several years ago, during one of those 100 year rain storms that hits SoCal every 2 or 3 years, I watched this film twice in a row. In fact, I have the video, but I’m not even sure I have a VCR any more. But what I’m left with is the imagery.  There is a recurrent image of railroad tracks. When we see our commuting Putin-esque protagonist alone, he is by the cold tracks in the rain. There is no longing to go home; no hopefulness to go to a new destination. There is only the passivity as a lizard waiting for the occasional fly; the receipt of what ever comes along with the occasional hunt for prey; and the opportunistic release of inner demons with the irregular violent shards who wear their psychopathy out loud.

Very instructive if one wants to know the inner landscape of a successful psychopath, I would think.