More Rock Hudson on the blog! It is a good thing that I knew nothing of the film beforehand. Anyway, Seconds is a nasty little sci-fi/horror movie that mocks a certain idea of "freedom" along with the dream of "starting all over" (for a certain amounts of dollars). An elderly man lives a humdrum life with his wife. He is contacted by a friend who .... couldn't possibly be alive. The man is lured to go to a shady agency. The agency, who looks like something from Kafka's brewery, promises "a new start" - and a fake death. After some intricate bodily transformation in the form of plasic surgery, Tony the artist is born. He is already established in business (somehow), he's got an apartment, a valet, and soon also a girlfriend. Is he happy? No. Can he begin again, a new start would probably help?
I would not be surprised if Seconds taught David Lynch a trick or two. Some moments of it could have been snatched from Eraserhead. Of course, many European film-makers were doing similar things as Frankenheimer, who uses twisted angles, eerie settings and extreme close-up to create an atmosphere of dread and disorientation.
I must confess I liked Seconds quite a bit, even though the backbone of the plot has been recycled many, many times on the big screen. As a critique of consumerism, the film is both funny and frightening (but don't expect it to be "deep"). And, as I said, the treatment of "freedom" is equally disturbing and amusing. The main character is free from all external burdens, yet he is not happy, or the things the agency presents as external burdens may not be that at all. But most of all, this is a film about the face: look at the elderly man's haggard face in the first very scenes, and then look at Rock Hudson's hollow eyes in the latter part of the movie. Those faces unsettled me, for sure.
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