When curious viewers hit play on the primary episode of Severance again in 2022, they might be forgiven for being a bit stunned by the director credit score. Ben Stiller, just like the man from There’s One thing About Mary, Tropic Thunder, Zoolander? That Ben Stiller? It seems that sure, the identical man who starred in among the silliest and most memorable comedies of the ’90s and 2000s was additionally one of many forces behind this rather more sober sci-fi collection.
It might need appeared like an uncommon match, at the very least for viewers who hadn’t seen Stiller’s earlier directing venture. That may be Escape at Dannemora, the 2018 Showtime restricted collection that dramatized the true story of two inmates who managed to flee the Clinton Correctional facility in Upstate New York in 2015. It marked Stiller’s first time directing a restricted collection, and his most overtly dramatic venture so far. It additionally might need been a kind of unintentional dry run for Severance, as the 2 share some shocking stylistic and thematic similarities.
Escape At Dannemora
- Launch Date
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November 18, 2018
- Solid
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Benicio Del Toro
, Paul Dano
, Patricia Arquette
, David Morse
, Eric Lange
, Bonnie Hunt
, Gregory Dann
, Daniel Johnson
, Dominic Colon
, Jeremy Bobb
, Skipp Sudduth
, Amber Grey
, Micah Inventory
, Michael Imperioli
, Leo James Davis
, Charlie Hofheimer
, Jim Parrack
, Richie Allan
, Carolyn Mignini
, Charles Prendergast
, David Neal Levin - Seasons
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1
Stiller’s Directing Historical past
Stiller was an energetic power within the growth of Severance from very early on. The script for the pilot episode, penned by Dan Erickson, crossed Stiller’s desk as a submission to his manufacturing firm Purple Hour Productions in 2015, and he helped carry the venture over the end line as govt producer and director of a number of episodes, with the remaining directed by Aoife McArdle. His involvement within the present predated his work on Dannemora by a number of years, however his work on the latter collection would show influential on Severance’s ultimate kind, if not deliberately.
Whereas Escape at Dannemora was Stiller’s first time directing a restricted drama collection, it was hardly his first time behind the digital camera, and even his first time with extra dramatic materials. He made his directorial debut with Actuality Bites in 1994, which is much less an overt comedy than a comedy/drama that grew to become a touchstone for Gen X. He made his identify with a lot broader comedic fare within the intervening years, however even his most up-to-date movie venture as director, The Secret Lifetime of Walter Mitty, has a extra melancholy tone than earlier works like Zoolander or Tropic Thunder. Following this development, Escape at Dannemora wasn’t fairly the outlier it could have appeared at first, however was nonetheless seen as a departure by many.
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Break up Identities in ‘Severance’ and ‘Escape at Dannemora’
At first look, Severance and Escape at Dannemora look like very totally different tasks, one being a office satire with a sci-fi bent, and the opposite being a dramatized true story from the latest previous. However a more in-depth examination reveals that there are some shocking connections between the 2. For one factor, each collection take care of the idea of internal and outer lives, and the best way that particular person identification is subsumed by bigger forces, whether or not that is company America or the penal system.
The “Innies” at Lumon Industries have their work and residential lives willingly separated by means of a surgical process, permitting their at-work selves to develop as a separate entity from who they’re at house. The inmates in Escape at Dannemora do not have a selection of their confinement, however nonetheless need to develop a brand new identification with a view to survive on the within. For Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro), he is in a position to develop into extra revered and influential within the jail ecosystem than he was on the surface, changing into the go-to man for smuggled contraband and even providing his paintings to the guards. When he and David Sweat (Paul Dano) escape, Matt appears all of the sudden adrift, seemingly in no hurry to truly make it to freedom.
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This kind of identification shifting does not simply have an effect on the inmates both. Joyce Mitchell (Patricia Arquette, the one actor to make the soar to Severance) feels let down by her lot in life, operating the jail tailor store in a small city the place just about all the things revolves across the jail, permitting her to get caught up within the fantasy of operating away with the inmates and dwelling a brand new life on the lam.
Each collection finally see their characters attempting to interrupt freed from their constructed realities. When the innies find out about their outer lives and all the things that is being hidden from them, they attempt to mount a rebel that is not solely totally different from Sweat and Matt’s jail escape, a possibility to break down the 2 distinct variations of themselves. The process could have been voluntary, however the innies are prisoners of their outer selves, with no lives exterior of labor and their very personhood denied them.
Stylistic By way of-Strains in Stiller’s Work
The similarities lengthen to among the collection’ stylistic selections as effectively. The monotonous hallways of the severed ground at Lumon aren’t all that totally different from the limitless grey partitions of the Clinton Correctional Facility, and Stiller movies each with the identical sense of disorientation. One sequence in Dannemora Episode 5 follows Sweat as he works his approach by means of the jail’s sprawling decrease degree, the digital camera dizzingly monitoring his progress round corners and down lengthy hallways, generally racing forward of him and ready for him to catch up. It is an echo of the intentionally unmooring monitoring photographs following Mark’s (Adam Scott) makes an attempt to navigate the labyrinthine severed ground.
It is unclear whether or not these parallels have been deliberate or simply the product of a career-long curiosity in constructed identities, from Tropic Thunder’s pampered film stars in real hazard to Zoolander’s jabs on the vapidity of the modeling world. In an interview with Metacritic, Stiller stated he hadn’t thought in regards to the similarities between the 2 collection till effectively into the event of Severance, when the connection lastly dawned on him. In any case, the thematic and stylistic depth he dropped at Escape and Dannemora paid off when Severance lastly made it to streaming.
Stream Escape at Dannemora on Netflix and Severance on Apple TV+.