The Invisible Gaze

H.G. Wells's sci-fi novella "The Invisible Man" makes for rich cinematic potential; it's a much better unseen movie than it ever was a book. That's because it's based on sight, and so a visual medium such as cinema does the concept more justice than the literary form. I've seen a few film versions since reading it, including the five classic Universal ones from the 1930s and 1940s, plus a couple Invisible Man appearances in Abbott and Costello parodies, as well as Paul Verhoeven's lousy "Hollow Man" (2000) and unseen characters in everything from a B-picture such as "The Amazing Transparent Man" (1960) to a throwaway gag in Woody Allen's "Alice" (1990). Maybe three or four out of all these pictures realize the cinematic potential of the material, and this 2020 rebooting is one of them. Other reviewers have mentioned the allegory for not believing and gaslighting victims of an abuse they don't see, which is apt, but this picture, including the female empowerment, is much deeper than that visually.

The original 1933 film was made when synchronized sound was still relatively new in Hollywood, and so it played with the notion of visual spectacle and the bodily presence of actors vanishing in favor of a focus on the voice and audio mediums, including the telephone and radio. The underrated sequel, "The Invisible Man Returns" (1940) elaborated upon the semiotics of cinema's indexicality by way of the traces that a concealed body continues to leave behind. The also underrated "The Invisible Woman" (1940), meanwhile, had fun with inverting the traditionally-male gaze with the female character's not-to-be-looked-at-ness.

In hindsight, this 2020 version, unlike its predecessors, is from the perspective of the victim and woman instead of the crazy mad doctor or otherwise malevolent or mischief-making see-through figure. Partly, it's an abuse/rape revenge slasher flick. From the opening sequence, however, it becomes clear that there's an advanced notion of the role of the camera, as well as of technology and a motif of water as metaphor (which also plays into the importance of liquid in catching a transparent trespasser--traces again). (As a further digression, I would like to think the opening breaking of the waves references the shared themes of control of women and sex in Lars von Trier's 1996 drama.) Their home is a modern panopticon, covered in surveillance cameras and alarms. As for the cinematographic apparatus for the movie proper, there's the first of what turns out to be several pans and cuts throughout to empty spaces, as if a character were there and, perhaps, because they are. This set-up was the whole idea behind Jeremy Bentham's panopticon--down to the design to control one's thoughts by them internalizing being watched. Ironically, at least at first, however, it's the imprisoned, punny-named protagonist, "Cee" (an evermore impressive Elisabeth Moss), who is the architect.

Recalling the 1933 film (besides the appreciated Easter eggs), technology figures highly into the control and surveillance here. Besides the invisibility outfit and the surveillance equipment, Cee covers the lens of her webcam out of privacy concerns--hiding herself electronically just as she does by physical location and choice of association. Her email is exploited to steal her identity. She benefits from tech, too, though, as a vibrating smartphone first alerts her to turning the tables on her stalker. There's even the Uber ride she calls for to escape (her fleeing, appropriately, also covered on and seen from the point of view of another surveillance camera).

For the most part, the cinematic gaze follows Cee through different spaces, which plays into a familiar pattern of the visual pleasure derived from cinema, of women's supposed to-be-looked-at-ness and the association of the gaze with the male gender--as previously dealt with in one of the aforementioned 1940 films. Psychoanalytic feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's famous essay, too, is all about this. In a sense, the camera is already an invisible man, and by association of our gaze with that of the camera, we, the spectator, too, are invisible. We see but are unseen by the characters. This puts the camera and the spectator in the position of the baddie here, the Invisible Man. In a lot of ways, this paradigm is similar to that of one of the first great slasher flicks, "Halloween" (1978), where we shared the gaze of the masked (and, thus, partly unseen) murderer, as it, along with the knives, was wielded to stalk horny teenagers turned victims. Jamie Lee Curtis's character challenged this at the level of the look, including by unmasking her assailant--and, by association, the spectator.

This "Invisible Man" redoubles all of this. Instead of some serum, chemical cocktail, rays, atomic radiation or what have you, invisibility here is achieved by bunches of cameras and a system of projection, as it is with the role of the spectator to the filmed picture in front of us. Cee, then, attacks the gaze at its source through the cinematographic apparatus (not entirely unlike "Spider-Man: Far From Home" (2019), come to think of it). I even appreciate the pacing of this picture and the embrace of long moments of silence, although I see how some may find it slow or not scary, but this isn't a movie about jump scares, gore and base thrills. While the score is serviceable, there's no need to replicate, say, John Carpenter's iconic music. "The Invisible Man" is about seeing. The best part may be the last scene: her exploitation of the surveillance--audio and visual--and its perspective, her repurposing of the gaze by possession of the camera-ed suit, and, finally, she looks directly at the camera--right at the spectator, returning the gaze. As she shares in our seeing, we're no longer invisible. Then, she blinks, fade to black, and the looking disappears.

(Included in my ranking of Invisible Man movies.)