‘Mickey 17’ shows us who is expendable

4 months ago 45

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We see them every day. People we pass on the street. People sitting at a restaurant or wandering through the grocery store. People occupying the other seats on an airplane, a train, or a movie theater. Sometimes our interactions are pleasant: a smile, an opened door, a random compliment; sometimes they’re less pleasant: watching a video aloud on their phone, cutting us off in traffic, turning to cough just as we walk by; but most of the time there is no interaction at all. We go on as if the other person doesn’t exist. In our experience, where we are the protagonists, they are disposable. Exactly as we are to them. Every single one of us, from me to you to everyone you know to everyone they know to those people who think themselves powerful because we know who they are while they’ll never know who we are to even the cast and crew of Mickey 17 themselves are in every way both essential and expendable. We are, every one of us, simply one of billions of others living on this planet.

This is where Mickey 17 begins: with a man whose entire life is so inconsequential that he becomes expendable.

Following Academy Award wins for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay (shared with Han Jin-won), South Korean auteur Bong Joon-Ho continues the same examination of class structure seen in Parasite as well as his English-language debut film Snowpiercer. Although trending more towards the latter of genre and setting, the refinement and discipline of the former continues in this latest. As much fun as tonal shifts and scattershot satire are in Okja, it was slow-mounting tension and fine-edged critique which finally earned Bong the international acclaim his skill always warranted. While not as precisely crafted as his previous film nor as wildly unpredictable as those before it, Mickey 17 does an exceptional job melding the focus of Parasite with the creativity of Snowpiercer and Okja, resulting in a film that never loses its narrative and thematic course even as it detours and gathers new passengers along the way.

By starting on a darkly comedic scene in which Timo (Steven Yeun) asks his lifelong friend Mickey (Robert Pattinson) what it’s like to die before stranding him to freeze in the snow with a happy “See ya tomorrow,” the film sets a tone that is callous and yet caring. As our protagonist and narrator we quickly come to sympathize with Mickey, particularly after a series of flashbacks show us how tragedy, circumstance, and bit of personal naivety led him to becoming expendable. Despite his numerous faults, Mickey is, at his core, a decent person, just another one of the billions of others simply trying to live. The irony of course comes when desperation causes him to sign-up for a colonizing mission, one of the last to flee what most consider a dying planet, where his uncultured manner of speaking and low self-worth make him vital to humanity’s survival.

Under the literal job title of “expendable,” Mickey is as useful for necessary activities like testing out new painkillers, making ship repairs, and inhaling an unknown atmosphere as he is for flights of indifferent scientific fancy such as seeing how long it takes for solar radiation to boil his skin and single-handedly collecting a sample from an alien species, which is what leaves him in the snow. Like so many workers in the real world, those in charge of the mission consider Mickey inessential even as he does all the things they aren’t willing or able to do themselves. While his bosses may synthesize an antidote to a foreign pathogen, none of them are willing to be the first test subject of that antidote. And why should they be? It’s not their job to do that. They’re too smart, too skilled, too experienced to be exposed to such dangers. Council members are too qualified to make basic repairs. Pilots are too skilled to wander into the unknown. Clergy are too important to risk losing. They’re the essential workers and without them society would collapse.

At the top of this buffoonish hierarchy is failed political candidate turned religious figure Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), who places himself above all others despite a notable lack of any skill beyond that of placing himself above all others. While not entirely analogous as a character, particularly in the way Marshall and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) engage in nauseating displays of public affection, Ruffalo’s mannerisms and physical affectations of an under-bite, clenched jaw, and mush-mouthed, stunted speech are clearly inspired by a certain pretty tyrant whose cult also wears red hats. Declaring himself the “one and only” Marshall serves as both villain and comedic foil, a figure so obviously ridiculous that he’d seem impossible if such a thing weren’t literally happening today. Interestingly, Marshall’s preoccupation with choosing women whom he finds “genetically perfect” in order to restart humanity on a “white planet” would again seem cartoonish if not for a real life elite obsessed with genes, space travel, and resetting civilization in his own “pure” image.

However, consistent with Bong’s previous work, Mickey 17 isn’t singular in its critique, with class structure being only one of the many topics addressed and often satirized. Set in a universe where humans can duplicate themselves, the film seems tailor-made for a discussion on the ethics of scientific development and at what point we cease to be human. Yet, also consistent with Bong’s previous work, the film brushes past the most predictable elements to focus instead on the peripheral issues of the legal, moral, and political ramifications of such technology, then brushing past those to further exam topics such as colonization, media manipulation, religious zealotry, population control, and even, human relationships, making it feel as though the film has thoroughly examined its main conceit. As much fun as there is in Mickey’s deadpan takes on these topics, it’s that last one – relationships – which forms the core of the film.

As an expendable, Mickey’s job makes him anything the people around him want him to be. For the ship’s scientists he’s a crash test dummy, for Marshall he’s a patsy, for Ylfa he’s a sauce taster, for Timo he’s an escape. For these people, as with so many of us in the real world, Mickey is only worth what he can do for them. It is only Yasha, security agent and Mickey’s girlfriend, who views Mickey as a person. For her, Mickey isn’t the nimble body he may have initially been, and it’s in her that the film finds the warmth which keeps it from becoming a parade of human cruelty. As Yasha, Naomi Ackie brings all the strength that Pattinson’s Mickey 17 lacks and the grounding that his Mickey 18 needs.

Likening his dual performance to the personalities of both Ren and Stimpy, Pattinson does an excellent job in varying his facial expressions, vocal pitch, and physical presence to make the two Mickeys distinct enough that we seldom wonder which is which. As mentioned earlier, Ruffalo’s performance is familiar and yet understated, allowing Marshall to spring forth as an individual, insomuch as his wife allows him to. Although limited as a character, Collette ably fulfills the role of unappealing, singularly-obsessed supporter typical of Bong Joon Ho’s English films (see Jake Gyllenhaal in Okja and Tilda Swinton in Snowpiercer… and also Okja). In his second collaboration with Bong, Steven Yeun brings a slimy quality to Timo which makes every scene with him feel like it should end with either a personal cleansing or a bloody beating. Still, it’s the central connection between Pattinson and Ackie on which Mickey 17 builds and elaborates.

Different as Yasha and Mickey – and Mickey and Mickey – are, their relationship is comfortable, affable, and believable, providing stability even when the film itself seems dangerously close to flying off course. Yet, digressive as some developments may seem, Mickey 17’s themes and narrative are flexible enough that diatribes feel more like necessary tangents than unimportant fluff. Where Bong’s past films had a freewheeling spirit and Parasite was almost disappointingly linear, Mickey 17 finds a happy medium, giving itself room to play while never getting lost. While firmly planted in Mickey’s head, it’s actually through Yasha that both narrator and viewer come to understand Mickey’s value beyond offering a disposable body, with one third act montage being genuinely heartwarming in a way that is best described as “Get yourself a girl who….” And then duck when Yasha hears herself referred to as “girl.”

With every day bringing new stories about unelected billionaires slashing thousands of jobs, calling them “inessential” and “government waste,” Yasha’s treatment of Mickey reminds us that there are people filling those jobs. Real people whose value is not limited to how much money they’re paid, how many hours they work, where they work, what five things they did that week, or which genes are dominant. Though they or the people at the restaurant or at the grocery store, in the other seats, playing their videos or coughing on you, or any one of the billions of others living on this planet who we’ll never know or will never know us may not be a part of the experience in which we are the protagonist, that doesn’t mean any of us are unimportant. In fact, for many of us, our lives, our jobs, and our achievements, are only possible because of them. It’s notable that in a film about a disposable human, Mickey 17 envisions a society where even one small, unremarkable being, is worth fighting for.

As more information comes out on how essential “inessential” workers are, and the corruption and inability of those who fired them, we need to remember that those who think themselves powerful are nothing without people willing to submit to that power. Just as Kenneth Marshall works so hard that he has time to plan lavish dinners and host a nightly talk show, a petty tyrant has time to take daily naps, attend sports events, and spend taxpayer money at his own properties while the alleged CEO of seven companies trolls social media, parades his kid like a pet, and infiltrates an entire country’s financial system. It’s all enough to make anyone wonder who in society is truly expendable.