Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Proxy Blu-ray Movie Review

Reality and Delusion

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 13, 2014

Even to explain the title of Proxy would involve giving away important elements of the plot. Director and co-writer Zach Parker has said that he likes films to surprise him and that he expects audiences to be savvy enough to spot the character arcs of a typical film in the first half hour. His goal is to construct a story that subverts viewers' expectations, but not with arbitrary "twists". The plot has to fit together by the time the movie ends, and the characters' actions must have an internal logic that gradually reveals itself, even if the logic is crazy by everyday standards. Proxy, which Parker scripted with Kevin Donner, succeeds in keeping the viewer off balance for much of its two-hour running time, but it also demands your attention as it keeps changing direction and whipping around unanticipated curves. I can't say as much as I would like to without revealing too much of the plot, but I can assure you that it all pays off. But you may find yourself going back to replay some or all of the film after the final frame, just to be sure. (I did.)

Proxy was shot in 2012 and premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. It toured the festival circuit for the next seven months before being released in a limited theatrical run and via video-on-demand by IFC under its "IFC Midnight" label in April 2014. IFC and MPI Media are now releasing it on Blu-ray with a generous complement of extras.

The best way to describe Proxy without spoilers is to call it a story about three women whose lives intersect in unexpected ways. The first is Esther Woodhouse (Alexia Rasmussen, Our Idiot Brother), who, as the film opens, is getting an ultrasound in her ninth month of an uneventful pregnancy from an anonymous sperm donor. Quiet, withdrawn and solitary, Esther has no apparent friends or family. As she leaves the office of her ob-gyn, she is attacked, dragged into an alley and brutally assaulted. She survives but loses the baby. The Richmond, Indiana police have no leads, and Esther cannot remember anything about the attack.

Reluctantly steered to a support group for women who have lost loved ones to violence, Esther meets Melanie Michaels (Alexa Havins, Torchwood: Miracle Day), who stands out from the rest of the group because she seems so poised and self-possessed. ("I guess most of my damage is on the inside", Melanie explains.) Her face perfectly made up and smiling, her hair all in place, her clothing neatly coordinated, Melanie doesn't appear to need any support, but eventually she tells Esther the terrible tale of losing her husband, Patrick (Joe Swanberg), and three-year-old son, Peyton (Xavier Parker, the director's son), to a drunk driver. Their pictures remain on her phone. To Esther's surprise, she finds herself drawn into a friendship, but it's one that develops oddly. Sometimes Melanie attends the support group, but sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she's available to socialize; at other times, she's not there. Then, by chance, Esther encounters Melanie in public, and her behavior is entirely different than what Esther has seen previously.

The third woman in Proxy is Anika Barön (Kristina Klebe, the Halloween remake), who is everything that Esther and Melanie are not. Indeed, she is almost a walking cliché. A tough-talking lesbian who drives a pickup truck, hangs out in tattoo parlors and loves to brawl, Anika would seem the least likely woman in the Midwest to become involved with either the shy Esther or the middle class Melanie. Nevertheless, a series of events conspires to bring them together in unlikely and ultimately violent confrontations.

Parker's directorial style in Proxy is deliberate, taut and precise. He often works in long takes where both the framing and the performances convey that something is very wrong, but you can't be sure what it is. And unlike thrillers that are all tease and no payoff, Parker delivers—just not necessarily in a way you were expecting. His scenes of violence, which are more effective for being sparingly used, have a dreamy, surreal quality that recalls the early films of Brian De Palma (with whom Parker shares a fondness for slow-motion reaction shots). They suspend you in time while they're happening, and it's only when they're over that you realize the film has just dropped through a trap door into an entirely different level of the story.

Proxy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As Parker describes in the "Behind the Scenes" documentary, he and his cinematographer, Jim Timperman, did extensive tests comparing the behavior in post-production of footage from a Red camera, which they had used on their previous feature, Scalene , with footage from an Arri Alexa. They concluded that the Alexa offered them greater flexibility for what they wanted to achieve with Proxy. Having been captured and completed digitally, Proxy has been transferred to Blu-ray with no intervening analog stage, so that the image on disc should represent the finished film accurately.

Although the Alexa is renowned for its ability to create a film-like image, Parker and Timperman have elected to shoot Proxy with photo-realistic clarity that looks more like first-rate video than film. At the same time, the camera movements and framing are almost classically cinematic, providing a striking contrast to the video style of the imagery. Combined with precise adjustments to shadows, densities and colors (examples which can be seen in the "VFX" featurette), the effect is consistently unsettling, because everything seems to be clear and well-resolved, but there's a persistent sense of things hidden just outside the frame.

MPI's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray offers an impressive presentation of Proxy, despite a notably low average bitrate of 15.46 Mbps. The low average results from the many shots where Parker holds steady on a single character, or on two characters talking, while the rest of the frame remains unchanged—a gift to the compressionist, especially in a digitally originated film, where there is no film grain moving in the static portions of the frame. In the film's sudden, sharp eruptions of activity, by contrast, the bitrate spikes up sharply. In general, the image is sharp, clear and finely detailed, with very good black levels that provide an accurate delineation of Parker's subtle use of shadows. The colors are almost unnaturally bland, neither assertively bright nor noticeably desaturated. The major exception is a TV broadcast near the end of the film that has the excessive brightness and contrast of your typical consumer set.

Proxy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Proxy's 5.1 soundtrack is encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, and there is also an undocumented Dolby Digital stereo track. The mix contains various forceful effects that I will leave for the viewer to discover, but the most impressive component of the soundtrack is its orchestral score by The Newton Brothers (Oculus), which has a scale and emotional range that recalls the scoring supplied by Pino Donaggio for Brian De Palma's thrillers and Bernard Hermann for Alfred Hitchcock. While seemingly ordinary events are happening on the screen, The Newton Brothers' music conveys the scale of the emotions sweeping through the characters' interior worlds. Even when we're not quite sure exactly what those emotions are, we understand that they're big and powerful. The score is beautifully reproduced on the lossless track and is so critical to the film's impact that at key moments it becomes the only audible element, while everything else goes silent.

Proxy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Warning: Many of the extras contain major spoilers.

• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 31:05): This comprehensive look at the making of Proxy opens with the documentary interviewer asking various cast and crew members to describe the plot of the film. All of them beg off answering. Instead they speak informatively about aspects of making the film together, including a detailed presentation by writer/director Parker about the relative merits of Red vs. Arri Alexa cameras. Many of the shorter interviews below are taken from segments included in this longer documentary.



• Alexia Rasmussen On-Set (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:39): The actress talks about doing Steadicam shots.



• Alexia Rasmussen and "The Support Group" scene (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:15): The actress explains why this particular scene appealed to her.



• Kristina Klebe On-Set (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:23): The actress goes in and out of character and gets her tattoos painted on.



• Alexa Havins On-Set (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:38): This segment was recorded on a day involving major practical effects.



• Alexa Havins: "An Actor Prepares" (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:47): The actress discusses her approach to an especially demanding scene late in the film.



• Joe Swanberg On-Set (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:49): Another day involving practical effects.



• Behind the VFX (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:51): This series of before, after and interim comparisons demonstrates the role of visual effects in Proxy. Much of it involved inserting images onto video screens, including smartphones and TVs.



• The Phantom Set (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:53): "The Phantom Set" refers to a specific set constructed in a shop and then assembled in an empty space at the art museum in Richmond, Indiana. Both the set design and the photographic technology used on the set are discussed.



• Extended Inteview: Alexia Rasmussen (480i; 2.35:1, enhanced; 5:52): The actress discusses her character, how she got the part, and how she approached the role.



• Extended Inteview: Alexa Havins (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 13:14): This interview is long enough for the actress to discuss the character of Melanie at length and also what aspects of her own life are reflected in her portrayal. Havins also speaks generally about the difference between the experience of acting in movies vs. daytime soaps, where she worked for many years.



• Extended Inteview: Kristina Klebe (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 8:08): The actress recounts how her casting arose from a chance encounter at a horror convention, her initial reaction to the script, and her history in acting.



• Extended Inteview: Joe Swanberg (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 6:17): The actor/director discusses what he calls his "accidental" career in horror films.



• Extended Inteview: The Music of PROXY (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 6:17): The Newton Brothers discuss their symphonic score for Proxy.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:05).

Proxy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Proxy is not a film for all tastes. It requires a patient viewer who doesn't mind letting a story unfold at its own pace and who is willing to wait in confusion as conflicting information arrives in bits and pieces. Parts of the film probably won't make sense on an initial viewing, but it does all fit together (assuming, of course, one can accept that there's method in madness). Parker is clever enough to leave enough mystery at the end to let each viewer decide the ultimate resolution, but by then one is simply choosing among different versions of a terrible outcome. However you view it, though, Proxy isn't like anything else out there. Highly recommended.