Blackhat

Originally published on 02/12/23 on Letterboxd

Director’s cut- total ontological flux that begins with the destabilisation of a world built on borders and systems of exchange, and ends with two lovers turning its instruments of suppression against it. The volumes of Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard on Hathaway’s shelf in prison are far from mere set dressing, for Mann does not take personhood and self-definition of identity for granted- he understands that it is an arbitrary denotation that can be stripped away from the individual at will via incarceration, manipulation of capital, hyper-objects and quite simply the very dehumanisation that is the defining characteristic of the 21st century. Final image of this feels like the defining image of Mann’s entire career- an image unable to hold steady, dissolving as its inhabitants walk towards the camera (both the one shooting the film and the cameras that monitor them within the film itself) and disappearing as if they were never really there at all.