Searching is an interesting cinematic experiment, a film entirely “shown” through a computer desktop. A genre film, a thriller, but an almost anthropological work that perfectly makes one understand our times.
Searching for life
The title itself explains the story of Searching. A recently widowed father is searching for his daughter, who has mysteriously disappeared. And all the traces that can lead him to find her are encapsulated in the young woman’s digital life: chats, browser histories, clouds, banking transactions, and online purchases. Everything we do is recorded, in data of different types, whether written, audio or video.
Everything is available to everyone. Everything goes through a screen, less and less through everyday social interactions. Windows that open endlessly, fields of vision that intersect and overlap, sequence plans that multiply in a clever system of well-constructed internal montages. This matters in the film directed by Aneesh Chaganty, who had the happy insight to build it in a nonplace as limited but as potentially infinite as a computer desktop.
Searching for the story
It’s too bad that the story is missing, or rather, it’s there, but it’s thin. It couldn’t have been any other way because everything has to be thought out according to the particular structure and screenplay joints one can indulge in while remaining within verisimilitude. Chaganty does his best, with a couple of almost exciting twists, but the limitation remains and is not crossable unless the house of cards collapses miserably. It does not, and credit is due to him.
One of cinema’s many futures?
That said, is it an experiment that will have a sequel? Probably, but no matter how much experimentation and improvement can be made, done once, the game is already no longer a novelty and is quickly dull. The limitations to the cinema machine are many; it is a different language, indeed, but not necessarily beneficial for the big screen. It may be that thinking about the majesty of a dolly in an open field always has a particular effect. Watching a Skype chat from a movie theatre seat, much less so.