What makes a movie? What are the essential component parts of every story we see onscreen? That’s a silly question, of course, the answer so basic that it’s almost difficult to come up with. I mean, ok: I guess there will be an assortment of characters, portrayed by various actors. Through dialogue and action, they’ll perform the story, in various places and at various times as the plot demands. There will be various camera angles, hopefully with some striking images among them, edited together with a musical score and sound design to steer our emotional response. And so on and so forth; it’s obvious, right?
Stop and think about it, though, and you realize it’s not quite that simple. The above statements do apply to the vast majority of movies, but they’re not quite universal. In every art form, there are works that upend conventional practices—not just in content, but in the basic building blocks of the medium. Visual artists create paintings and sculptures from unconventional materials. Musicians make music with objects designed for other purposes, and with manipulated, non-musical sounds. Writers tell stories with all sorts of self-imposed technical, narrative, and grammatical limitations.[i] And cinema is no different; even within the relatively narrow category of fictional feature films, there have always been works that function at least partly as experiments in limitation: how much can you strip it down and still have a compelling movie?
It would be hard to find a better example than the 2013 British drama Locke, a movie that’s maximally stripped down in just about every aspect. It’s less than 90 minutes long and takes place on a single evening, unfolding more or less in real time. It’s set almost entirely in a single, narrowly restricted location: inside a car on the motorway from Birmingham to London. Only one character appears onscreen—and after the briefest of opening sequences, only the top third of him. There are a number of other characters heard as voices on the phone, but for the duration of the movie, we’re with Ivan Locke in that car, making that drive.
Strictly speaking, there is cinematic precedent for this; indeed, these sorts of self-imposed restrictions may be more common in film than in any other art form, probably because it’s so damn expensive to make a movie. (You can imagine any reduction in scope playing well in a pitch meeting.) Movies that take place in a single day or night are quite common once you start looking out for them, and even a list of those that unfold in real time is surprisingly extensive, including many classics and mainstream releases that you may not have noticed were structured that way.[ii] Single-location movies are also more common than you might think, from venerated classics (12 Angry Men, 1957) to indie horror flicks (Green Room, 2015) to high-octane action blowouts (Die Hard, 1988) where it’s safe to assume that cost wasn’t the main motivating factor. Even those that ride on a single performance aren’t confined to experimental films and micro-budget indies; Cast Away was one of the biggest hits of 2000 and won Tom Hanks an Oscar.
Such movies are uncommon, of course, a tiny fraction of cinema as a whole, but they do exist, even in the mainstream. And yet, Locke still feels like a radical, daring experiment—for two principal reasons, I think. First, it is genuinely rare for a movie to pile limitations on top of one another like this: if it takes place in a single day or in real time, it’s usually pretty typical in most other respects; if it’s set in a single location, we’ll probably see multiple actors, or some jumps in time, or both. And you’d be hard pressed to find any movie willing to show its protagonist exclusively from the chest up.
The second reason has to do with narrative content; Locke’s most distinctive limitation is that it’s a one-man show, so to speak, and other such movies are often similarly stripped down. The key difference is that the others usually involve some sort of physically extreme situation, with the lone protagonist lost in the wilderness, say, or being hunted by shadowy pursuers, or stranded in space, or imprisoned for some mysterious reason.[iii] Extremes certainly define the closest recent cinematic relative to Locke that I’m aware of: Rodrigo Cortés’s Buried (2010), in which Ryan Reynolds wakes up six feet underground in a coffin, with only a lighter, a cell phone, and a rapidly dwindling supply of oxygen. (I confess I haven’t been able to track that one down yet—and might not be able to get through it when I do, given my reaction to the buried-alive sequence in Kill Bill: Vol. 2.) Locke, on the other hand, is a single-actor movie that rides entirely on interpersonal interaction, and features little in the way of life-or-death danger—indeed, the only possible threat to Ivan’s physical well-being would be a car crash, and it’s never suggested that that’s likely.
It’s worth noting that when any work of art is restricted in an unconventional way, it’s always, on some level, a gimmick. Movies in particular need to attract the attention of fickle audiences, and something like this is guaranteed to at least arouse curiosity in those who might not otherwise notice. But that doesn’t mean that the choice can’t also be artistically valuable. Locke is one of those special movies that not only works within narrow restrictions, but is actually enhanced by them: a small-scale character study and family drama with fairly conventional narrative elements is given the gripping urgency of a thriller with much higher stakes.
So how does it work so well? I think there are three key factors in the movie’s success, starting with its primary creator, the writer/director Steven Knight. He’s been in film and television for three decades, mostly as a writer, and on an uncommonly wide range of projects. In TV, he’s worked on comedy shows—Canned Carrott (1990 – 92) and All About Me (2002 – 04)—and more recently as the creator and sole writer of the historical crime dramas Peaky Blinders (2013 – present) and Taboo (2017 – present). He was also one of the original creators of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in the late 90s. His film work is similarly varied, from romantic comedies to contemporary thrillers to historical dramas, and all sorts of stuff in between. He’s written small indie films like Woman Walks Ahead (2017) and action extravaganzas like Seventh Son (2014). His screenplays have been brought to the screen by various big-name directors: Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace (2006); Lasse Hallstrom’s The Hundred-Foot Journey and Edward Zwick’s Pawn Sacrifice (both 2014); Robert Zemeckis’s Allied (2016). The one thing Knight has done very little is to direct his own scripts; before Locke, his only directing credits were a few episodes of his comedy series The Detectives in the mid-90s and the unconventional Jason Statham action vehicle Hummingbird, which came out earlier in 2013. Overall, the critical and commercial reaction to his film work has been mixed, and interestingly, his most highly regarded movies as a screenwriter are also some of his earliest: Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises (2007)—both chillingly effective thrillers about the dangerous, off-the-books London underworld where organized crime and illegal immigrant communities intersect. But no matter how his words have been translated to the screen, he’s always been impressively versatile, with a natural writer’s instinct for expressive dialogue and sound dramatic structure.
Those talents are perfectly suited to a self-consciously limited movie like Locke, which conveys story beats and character development mainly through dialogue, and which must be carefully structured to keep us from getting lost or losing interest. Knight handles it with the assuredness of a veteran storyteller, beginning with a doozy of a premise: Ivan, ultra-competent construction manager and dedicated family man, had a one-night stand several months ago with a woman he barely knows named Bethan—the only major mistake in his eminently respectable life, which fate has now contrived to make him pay for in the worst possible way. Bethan has gone into premature labor, so now, as Ivan drives to London to be there for the birth, he will be on his Bluetooth car phone juggling three closely intertwined crises: her childbirth and its complications; the reaction of his blissfully unsuspecting wife and sons; and his attempts to coach his colleagues through preparations for the biggest concrete pour (excluding nuclear and military) in European history, for which he will now, suddenly, be absent. That’s a lot to set up, but Knight’s dialogue does so clearly and naturally; the major plot threads are all established quickly, yet the characters rarely sound like they’re explaining things only for the sake of the audience. An initial suspension of disbelief is necessary—that Bethan has gone into labor at this particular time, on the night before the pour—but it’s far less significant than most movies demand, and once you’ve made it, everything else follows quite plausibly: why the birth is premature, why Ivan hasn’t told his wife yet, how the pregnancy happened in the first place, everyone’s utter shock upon learning about it, the twists and pitfalls that arise and the steps Ivan takes to deal with them. The premise creates an ideal situation, a sort of narrative symbiosis in which realism and drama reinforce one another.
That symbiosis is far from inevitable, however; Knight makes a number of smart decisions in the way he structures the story, maintaining a consistent, highly effective narrative balance that enhances both realism and dramatic payoff. Tension steadily mounts as the main narrative threads feed off one another: the increasingly dire complications with Bethan’s pregnancy, the increasing anger of Ivan’s wife, Katrina, as the truth settles in; the increasing uneasiness of his sons as they realize that something’s not right; and the increasingly complex problems that he has to help his subordinate, Donal, to solve—all growing more intense in tandem. But it’s not just a slow build to a final unraveling, which might seem too contrived; we also have smaller-scale detours in the narrative that make it seem more natural. A significant plot point—Ivan losing his job—happens fairly early on, and his frantic attempt to secure a road closure permit is begun and concluded in a similarly brief time. Knight also includes, along with main supporting players, a handful of other characters from whom we hear only once: an apathetic police officer, a friendly but harried doctor, a splendidly annoyed city official and a subtly judgmental nun. These third-tier characters, if you will, make Ivan’s ordeal feel more grounded in the real world, and contribute a lot to the occasional hints of Kafkaesque comedy in the story. (In the third act, the car itself becomes a character of sorts, its monotonously chipper declarations of “You have a call waiting” landing almost like slaps across the face as Ivan struggles to keep a grip on things.)
We can also see that balance in the way Knight handles the principal storylines: not simply rotating through them, which would come to feel overly schematic, but never staying away from any one long enough that we lose track of how it’s progressing. Instead, he’ll put one thread on the back burner for a bit, developing the other two more deeply; it feels more organic, but it’s also carefully calibrated, creating a subtle spike in tension when a storyline that we’ve half forgotten about rears its head again—a call comes in with the associated name on the screen and we think, “Oh god, that’s right, he’s got that to deal with, too!” This happens over and over again, but Knight ensures that it never becomes a slog. Ivan is subjected to a pretty relentless cascade of anger and grief from these people, but individually, it’s hard to blame them for reacting the way they do. This, along with Ivan’s steadfast refusal to make excuses or claim that he somehow hasn’t done them wrong, ensure that they never quite come across like a chorus of tormentors, unfairly ganging up on our intrepid hero.
Which makes sense, because the same realistic balance is the defining characteristic of Ivan himself. Like most people in the real world, he’s a man “whose strengths and weaknesses are so bound together that it’s difficult to know where one ends and one begins,” as critic Mick LaSalle writes. “This is someone with a strong will, but too strong; who has confidence, but too much; who is honest, but sometimes ought to think about lying; and whose sense of responsibility is so pristine that he’s about to nail himself to a cross.”[iv] The plot reflects this complexity, as the aura of competence and dependability that Ivan has so assiduously cultivated ends up being a double-edged sword: it allows him to call in two favors, from the city official and from an old construction worker friend, that help to save the concrete pour, but it also means that his confession comes as an especially brutal shock to his wife, who never imagined that he’d do anything of the sort. His adherence to his principles is commendable, but it sometimes rises to absurd levels: when his wife asks him if he still wants a work-related phone number, he won’t lie or betray his other responsibilities even though it seems likely to cost him his marriage. His refusal to be like his alcoholic, absentee father has been the driving force behind his success so far, and is now leading him down a path likely to tear it all down.
Knight isn’t reinventing the wheel when it comes to character psychology; Ivan’s conviction that order and stability can be constructed out of even the worst situation, the attendant reverence for concrete as the ultimate material for making that happen, and its source in his hatred for his father—none of it is necessarily groundbreaking, but it is coherent and skillfully portrayed. Knight’s one misstep, in my opinion, is the inclusion of Ivan’s monologues to his imagined father in the back seat. I understand the inclination, but they don’t really tell us much that isn’t communicated elsewhere, and they have a stagey quality that the movie, powered as it is almost entirely by dialogue, otherwise does a remarkably good job of avoiding. But that’s a very minor quibble; necessary or not, the monologues are still forcefully written (you can imagine Knight’s reluctance to kill those particular darlings) and Tom Hardy still makes them into compelling viewing.
Which brings us to the second key factor in Locke’s success. If a movie limited to a single face in a single location is going to work, it needs an exceptional performance to anchor it, and Hardy gives that and then some. Acting exclusively with his voice, face and hands, he nails the emotional beats of the story, vividly portraying coolheaded authority, tortured confession, fierce introspection, wrenching devastation and everything in between. Even confined to the driver’s seat, his inherent onscreen magnetism is undiminished; he holds our attention as completely as any actor with a normal range of motion. Ivan’s mellifluous Welsh accent was apparently Hardy’s idea, and it’s a perfect fit for a character who has built his entire identity around being competent and dependable. Hardy makes him an endlessly watchable and appealing protagonist, one whose obvious decency makes him easy to root for even when he’s making mistakes, or doing things that seem to border on self-sabotage. We like him because this is how most of us like to think of ourselves, at least at our best: capable, reliable, even-tempered, able to face adversity with aplomb.
At the same time, however, Ivan doesn’t come across as a one-dimensionally virtuous, perfectly unflappable hero. He’s defined by his sangfroid and professionalism, but he wouldn’t seem human if he never bent under the pressure. In moments of acute vulnerability, Hardy shows the toll this is taking on Ivan, and we see him trying to work through that along with everything else; he struggles to keep himself focused and under control, but he doesn’t always succeed: cracks appear in his unruffled facade, and his conflation of what he’s doing with the physical act of building eventually becomes sort of strange. And while Hardy embodies all the admirable qualities we mentioned, as David Edelstein writes: “The low boil is his natural state… Civilized as Locke is, nothing can soften Hardy’s innate volatility. He never seems still, even when his face is immobile, even when he’s trying so carefully to modulate his tone.”[v] This aspect of Hardy’s performance helps to connect us with Ivan on a deeper level, despite his specificity and exceptionality. I’m not British, don’t have a wife or kids, know nothing about concrete, and will probably never drive a BMW X5, but that vague undercurrent of restlessness, discontentment and regret feels deeply universal.
We should also note that while Hardy delivers the tour de force that the movie needs, his performance isn’t the only one. The supporting actors are never seen, of course, but you’re probably more familiar with them than you realize. The voice of Bethan is Olivia Colman, who later played the pregnant spymaster in The Night Manager (2017) and won an Oscar for The Favourite last year. Ruth Wilson, who plays Katrina, had a starring role in The Affair (2014 – 18), and played the brilliant sociopath Alice Morgan in the British crime series Luther. The voice of Donal is Andrew Scott, better known as the wildly psychotic Jim Moriarty in Sherlock. Ben Daniels, who plays Ivan’s boss, was that photographer who had an affair with—and then inevitably had his life ruined by—Claire Underwood in House of Cards. And Ivan’s older son, Eddie, is none other than Tom Holland, now known round the world as the young Spider-Man in the great Marvel extravaganza. These are accomplished actors, and they make their characters’ personalities and emotions vividly felt, given the limited tools they have to work with. Knight set up the production to aid in this, devoting the first of two weeks to rehearsals and then filming the whole thing twice each night, with Hardy cruising down the real motorway in a car mounted on a flatbed truck, making real-time phone calls to the other actors, who were gathered in a conference room. They stopped only for cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos to change the memory cards, every 35 minutes or so; otherwise, Knight had them to perform it like a play, dealing with any irregularities in real time—surely a reason why the conversations sound especially natural and free-flowing.[vi]
The work of Zambarloukos and his crew is the third key factor in Locke’s success. It turns out there are a lot of ways to film a single journey on the motorway, and Zambarloukos captures it in widely varied, often beautiful images. Shooting with three cameras simultaneously, he changed the lenses when he changed the memory cards, and changed the camera angles for each run-through, generating what must have been a daunting amount of material to sift through. The production’s secret weapon is editor Justine Wright, who assembles all that footage in consistently creative ways, cutting quickly between disparate perspectives and often laying multiple shots over one another, resulting in a movie that, given its narrow scope, is quite visually compelling. And this approach has thematic significance; as Ty Burr writes, “Locke also intercuts skillfully and rhythmically between close-ups of its hero and the visual night music of England’s motorways. Occasionally the patternings of headlights, taillights, road signs and slipstream metal blur with a surreal beauty. It’s a universe that could so easily slip out of control, and all a man can do is grip the steering wheel tighter.”[vii] Headlights drift across the frame, so far out of focus that they appear as oval discs of light, while cars and signs pass by at odd, almost abstract angles, often layered over clearer images of Ivan at the wheel—a visual representation of his weakening grip on life outside of the car. Wright also creates visual parallels with the course of the narrative. At the beginning, we cut often to Ivan’s GPS navigation screen, which shows him moving along a straight, clearly defined path. But these images fade away as the movie progresses, and in the second half, we begin to get shots of the motorway from a static position, not moving along with the cars, again reflecting that loss of control.
The visuals also express some deeper themes that Knight is exploring. The story may be narrowly focused, but Locke also gets at something fundamental about the way we live now, about the isolation and alienation that we often feel even as the world grows more interconnected. Ivan is deeply connected to other people, at times oppressively so, yet he spends the whole movie alone with his electronic devices, cocooned in a metal box as the world outside grows increasingly confusing and unmanageable. And on a separate but related note, Locke also examines, indirectly but powerfully, a certain unforgiving quality that persists in modern adult life. Ivan moves through an ill-defined, increasingly abstract blur of civilization, watching the place that he’s built for himself within it gradually crumble away. As he says to Donal during an impassioned speech about the purity of concrete, “You make one mistake, Donal, one little fucking mistake, and the whole world comes crashing down around you.” Perhaps this is something felt more strongly by younger generations like Ivan’s young Gen-Xers and my Millennials, whose entire adult lives have been spent in a cynical context: rising income inequality, worsening climate change, loss of old notions of financial security, ever more extensive documentation of everything we do, and so on. Life seems to keep getting freer and more comfortable, but there’s still a persistent sense that it can all be upended if you step too far out of line. Grow up poor, or didn’t get into a good college? The deck is already stacked against you. Get fired from a job, or get a bad review from a past employer? That’ll follow you around for the rest of your career. Make one mistake on the road? Say hello to a massive deductible and jacked-up premiums. Have trouble with rent, or get a bad review from a landlord? Good luck finding another decent place to live. Fall behind on student loans or credit card payments? You’ll be paying for it the rest of your working life.
It’s not as bad as all that, of course; heck, the world is probably more forgiving now than it ever has been in human history. And yet it’s hard to shake the feeling that, as in Locke, there’s very little latitude for any kind of major screw-up.
And a movie manages to explore such deep and tricky themes in just 85 minutes, showing only a guy in a car—all the while keeping you riveted from minute to minute? Knight, Hardy and their collaborators outdid themselves. ◊
© Harrison Swan, 2019
[i] My favorite example is the 20th-century French writer Georges Perec, who wrote a grammatically correct, 300-page novel without using the letter ‘e’—then wrote another one using only ‘e’ and no other vowels. You don’t even have to be familiar with the language; just look at any paragraph of regular written French and you’ll appreciate how mind-boggling that is.
[ii] Pretty interesting, if you’re interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_time_(media)#Film_and_television
[iii] Examples taken, if you’re interested, from this internet list of movies carried by a single actor. I’ve only seen a few of them, but they all look interesting, even if they aren’t all masterpieces like Locke: https://brightside.me/wonder-films/14-movies-with-only-one-amazing-actor-248910/
[iv] For the rest of this good review: https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Locke-review-Tom-Hardy-on-the-open-road-5445558.php
[v] Good, insightful reviews are just great: https://www.vulture.com/2014/04/movie-review-locke.html
[vi] Most of these fun facts about the production found in this informative review: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-locke-review-20140425-story.html
[vii] More good reading: https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2014/05/08/locke-lets-tom-hardy-face-tell-story/kdAjKyGTu44ryyimshk02J/story.html
ReWatch List 