France is a quiet, calm atmosphere which is suddenly interrupted by a completely unusual event. Residents of an apartment building, waking up, see that the world outside their windows has completely disappeared. That it is banal there, just as there is nowhere else to go, there is nothing to take from. There is absolutely nothing outside the windows, only one frightening and overwhelming darkness.
Any things thrown into it dissolve in it, and people crossing its barrier die, as if cut by an invisible thread. Yesterday’s carefree life is over, people will have to come to terms with a completely new reality, start living in conditions of total limitation, being locked in their own homes. This is not simple isolation, but a complete iron curtain from which there is simply no way out. This is a brief plot of the film “Lockdown Tower” – the work of director Guillaume Niclou. Over the past decade, this is his first author’s project, in which he dispenses with the involvement of star performers in the roles, but does everything modestly, without the usual scope.
What is the meaning of the film “Lockdown Tower”
In fact, there is no horror in the work, except for the very main fear into which humanity has driven itself, as if following it during the last centuries of its development. People have fallen into dependence on everything that is outside their own lives, outside the world they are accustomed to, outside themselves. They fell into total dependence on society, all its benefits, placing on it all the responsibilities for organizing their own well-being. And this made them change, lose their previously habitual skills, lose their own mind, skills, waste all their abilities and shift them, trusting someone, without any guarantees and assurances.
If earlier society coped with the task, albeit at the cost of billions of victims, establishing interaction, then in an instant, according to the script of the film, it fell apart, ceasing its own existence. And people were left completely alone, without any external help and support. No matter how scientific minds prove that a person is a social being, in fact everything is completely different, he has never been like that, cannot be and will not be by definition. He remains that asocial individualist, living exclusively for himself and for himself, neglecting the whole community, remaining alone with himself.
Ultimately, this is what happened, the centuries-old evolution, which drove a person into the framework of a herd, is now forced to go the opposite way and return to him everything that was stolen by society. This refers to the main thing – the ability to survive in extreme situations, it is with them that the main characters will have to face. Initially, as long as there is food, water, there is nothing to worry about, but this is short-lived. Soon everything will end, you need to gradually start taking care of yourself, going in search of everything you need, solving urgent problems and simply achieving the main thing that is so necessary for life.
Residents immediately, having lost public tyranny, total aggressive control, begin to independently improve the situation. Someone acts alone, someone is still trying to break into separate groups along racial or ideological lines, to get together and act together. This systematically leads to the main thing – to the beginning of the war, where everyone opposes everyone and begins to fight for their own survival. Allies begin to create separate states in the house, breaking through the walls between apartments. This is just a pathetic attempt to bring back the society that was before, an attempt to fix everything the way it was before. But, such an approach does not give absolutely no chance of survival, does not allow, in general, to ensure reasonable coexistence, only aggravates everything, making life even more difficult.
Someone is trying to figure out what this darkness is, why it is so aggressive towards everyone outside it. There are no answers to this, just as there is not a single chance for the return of the usual foundation. Everyone is forced to return themselves, to look for what was lost, to go all the way anew, building a fundamentally different world.
What came of it
Even dividing the picture itself into several separate chapters, by periods and years, does not change the situation in any way. It doesn’t matter how things are now, two years later, or five years later, the message remains the same. Over time, any situation only gets worse, without opening up new perspectives and without submitting new solutions. Children who eat some kind of bugs are growing up, forced to limit themselves in everything. And only for the sake of a monotonous life, which does not promise them anything worthy and good in any future. The extinction of humanity, although it will not be brought to the very end, nevertheless, the standard of living will change significantly and for the worse.
Everyone continues to live in the same apartments, only in even more disgusting conditions, forced to constantly fight for survival, in an effort to simply not die. But the main thing is that they still manage to return what was stolen by society – their own freedom, albeit limited by the framework of their homes and their walls. The freedom to live as they please in this limited world.
