KIMI: Why, Robot?
Stephen Soderbergh‘s KIMI isn’t a pandemic movie, it’s a post-pandemic one. The world has clearly moved on and normalized death in KIMI but its central character Angela (Zoë Kravitz) is still feeling the brunt of the effects of what ravaged the world over the last two years. This presents some interesting creative choices that Soderbergh employs to shift our perspectives from Angela inside her apartment to the world outside of it. It also presents a problem in the movie’s stakes where it tries to be a cross-breed between The Conversation and Rear Window but breaks the rules of those movies at its own lazy convenience.
KIMI, What’s Good about this Movie?
The mental after-effects of frustration and paranoia that came as societal symptoms of the pandemic are illustrated well here. Soderbergh’s style is highlighted through his conscious fluctuation of space between ourselves (the camera) and Angela whereby shifting the movie’s sense of restlessness. The other central “character” in the movie, a voice-command system called KIMI – essentially an advanced version of Siri and Alexa that uses actual humans working around the clock to modify its code to patch any inconsistencies in its customized responses – is shown in a close up answering a question from Angela. Angela then moves from her kitchen to the adjacent living room and the camera sweeps around KIMI clockwise 180 degrees and into focus on Angela in the background.
This sequence particularly stuck with me because it highlights a key point about domestic spaces and the centrality of technology within them in the 21st century – that our lives essentially revolve around the technology we use and it becomes a foundational pillar of our human connections in a time where we simply cannot see each other as often as we would like. Angela is one of the people who work on KIMI’s code. She has a very cool tech set up inside of an apartment that should cost upwards of a million dollars. Who cares how she affords it… the significant thing about this space is that Soderberg uses it to juxtapose the way that Angela feels more open and comfortable at home than she does outside.
KIMI, What’s Not So Good About This Movie?
Angela is racked with anxiety and she doesn’t go out often. She texts with a cute guy who lives in the building opposite her but when they decide to meet up for tacos she simply cannot get herself to open her front door and step outside. What’s causing this anxiety has something to do with her previous job, but this isn’t something that Soderbergh develops. He lets Zoë Kravitz be somewhat of an enigma, maintaining a stoic, arms-distance personality that is both understandable but uniquely frustrating to everyone in the film – even when she invites her pseudo-boyfriend over for sex it’s executed in a routine mechanical fashion. This is someone who is definitely not ready to “return to normalcy”.
Yet, the movie’s script, written by David Koepp, is quick to break its own stakes and rules in a way that seems haphazardly patched together and Soderberg seems willing to let his direction be guided fully by it. For all the conscious decision-making with camera movement and technical flourishes in its simulation of helplessness amid pandemic, they are all still employed in the service of a story that, after the halfway mark, ruthlessly charges from one scene to the next leaving behind every psychological dilemma established before it. I initially felt like KIMI was off to a slow start and then “got going” once Angela hears a muffled murder occurring via KIMI’s recording system in a stranger’s home, but really the first half is where Soderberg gets to play around and we get to imagine how morals collide with paranoia. Instead, the second half places these ideas back in the periphery and reduces them down to just habitual behaviors like using hand sanitizer.
KIMI, Let’s Wrap This Up
KIMI derails a scintillating premise with a routine thriller that is on its surface efficiently executed but belies the clever psychological one-woman play that preceded it. Overall it definitely gives off the feeling of one of Soderbergh’s pet projects like The Girlfriend Experience or High Flying Bird, both of which I would consider in the same wheelhouse as KIMI but much better. This latest effort doesn’t offer much new or exciting in terms of its built-in socially-informed stakes and Soderberg hands over his directorial prowess to a script that demands its unexceptional narrative needs be met over the visual playground that such a premise can offer.
Have you seen KIMI? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below!
KIMI was released for streaming on HBO Max on February 10, 2022
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