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I Do not hesitate to enter the word "reality" when you look at "Maniac" (Netflix). The series ventures through the altered consciousness of two participants in a psychiatric trial, one of whom, Owen (Jonah Hill), has a history of schizophrenic delirium. Momentary hallucinations turn the show into a thriller of mental hygiene, and long sequences of dreams mingle with waking life to intensify tensions.
But the basic reality of history – Owen's launch pad at the heart of its history – is the city of New York, rebuilt in a dysphoric future. The apocalypse we are talking about is the one that goes on. Using obsolete tactile and technological tokens of the late 1900s to build his world, "Maniac", created by Patrick Somerville and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, gives a fantastic form to contemporary anxieties. He plays as if dressed REM sleep – assembled in an instinctive farce through a disordered archive of cultural memory. Its design offers a strange imitation of life. (The design of the production is done by Alex DiGerlando, a veteran of "True Detective", and the artistic direction is provided by Audra Avery and Anu Schwartz.)
The New York lights of "Maniac" evoke a disappointed "Blade Runner". Electronic advertising profane the bridges, but boredom, in front of the window of Owen Roosevelt's apartment, an announcement for Oral-B alternating with Jolly Rancher. It's as if the whole city was online at Duane Reade. The society is postindustrial, but only primitively digital: a lot of dot matrix and monochrome printers. There are no smartphones on the screen, but everywhere you look, they are shabby analogues of the cybernetic trade. Cash-strapped citizens can use Ad Buddy: they pay off their debts by paying attention to commercial sites presented by flesh-and-blood sellers, a fun, but festive, reflection of the economy of the Warning.
Doxxing's services are as practical as copy shops, with a guarantee of service. Annie (Emma Stone) visits one of them making their way through the drug trial, with the goal of nurturing a chemical addiction. The leading company, Neberdine Pharmaceutical Biotech, has a logo inspired by Paul Rand's logo for I.B.M., whose typography punctuates inviting surrealism. Also note the lettering Helvetica – "SANITATION" – on robots that slam and whip to evacuate the poo from the sidewalks. We are in a world advanced enough to have real Roombas for the dirt of dogs working in the streets, but they proceed with dirty familiarity. The balance between banality and wonder stimulates the sympathetic imagination.
In the offices of NPB, this eight-bit futurism takes on hues of both 'Being John Malkovich', where LesterCorp's offices have hosted a portal in other minds, and 'Sorry to disturb you', which like ' Maniac, "the atmosphere by setting moments in elevators that range from a Morlockian basement to elite heights. In the test center, Owen and Annie and their peers wear coveralls, and their subconscious journeys are piloted by researchers who talk about taking care of a spaceship. The command center is like the bridge on NBC's "Buck Rogers" spacecraft – an idea from the 1970s of the twenty-fifth century.
Dominating the laboratory and crushing the visual system is a large and rickety central computer: an artificial intelligence that has developed emotions. It's a surprisingly ridiculous machine, whose buttons light up to mimic a woman's face. With her free will and fierce convictions, she remembers Godard's "Alphaville" sensitive machine, especially when Dr. Fujita (Sonoya Mizuno), with her bangs and shining shine like Anna Karina, appears at the head of his conscience. Fujita is joined by Dr. James K. Mantleray (Justin Theroux), an outcast called to work in a crisis context, unlike Ted Striker in "Airplane!"
With his pynchonian name and alarming toupee, Dr. Mantleray is a wacky figure and his nonsense encourages "Maniac" to maintain his eccentric orbit. He refers to the flourishing dreams excited in drug trials as "reflections". These play with the same dream logic as the "real" story, with Owen and Annie filed in scenarios designed as fantastic fantasy epic. At the same time a drama of self-help and ironic metaphysical emotion, "Maniac" concerns the construction of the world – to give to an interior life a semblance of coherent narrative, about the stories we tell ourselves about to get out of it.
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