A new writing segment, "Ten Items or Less" is an attempt to consciously cutback and restrict how much I write. I get ten sentences or less to discuss a movie. That's it. Let's see if some genius comes out of working around my self-made obstacle.
"I'm watching you watch me," Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) tells his next unsuspecting victim as he films her filming him, and in that line and moment is the thematic and visual crux of Peeping Tom, a film about scopophilia, or the act of taking pleasure in viewing something. Peeping Tom is a film steeped in metatextual commentary on filmmaking and asks us to question why it is we get such pleasure from film watching experiences and how strange and potentially troublesome the voyeuristic qualities of viewing a film are. It does this by making us identify with its unsettling protagonist and see events through his eyes. The film is a psychologically rich and disturbing character study. Mark is awkward and soft-spoken, which allows him to pass as a shy person rather than one who is on the verge of turning violent at a moments notice. He is the titular peeping tom, and he can't seem to meaningfully interact with anyone or get enjoyment out of anything, except for through taking photos and filming things, especially sexual and violent acts. He's living his life through the filter of the camera, and he doesn't know how to live any other way because he was raised by an obsessive scientist who filmed his son twenty-four seven and used the experiment to test the effects of fear on children. Beyond the fascinating ways the film calls attention to its questions about our film experience, there is simply the creepy story of Tom as he fights his baser impulses and kills women while filming them, in order to re-watch the footage later for the pleasure it will bring. But Tom is still very human in spite of how sickening and unbalanced he is, in part, due to a great performance by Boehm, but also due to Leo Marks' script and Michael Powell's direction allowing us to understand why Tom is as messed up as he is and sympathize with him even as we can't stand to look at him.
Grade: ★★★★
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