The Box
Director Richard Kelly
Starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella
Rated PG-13
Release date: November 6, 2009 (wide)

Richard Kelly‘s third film, The Box, is based on the short story Button, Button by Richard Matheson which later became a segment on an episode of The Twilight Zone. If you know nothing about the movies that Kelly has written and directed then you watched The Box because it has Cameron Diaz in it and you thought it looked interesting you will have the same reaction to it even if you’re already familiar with his movies and knew what you were getting in to. If you are part of the latter group, you know that reaction because you’ve been here before.

Living in fairly affluent Virginia suburb in 1976, Arthur (James Marsden) and Norma Lewis (Diaz) appear to be living the American dream. They have a nice house, good jobs, their son seems well behaved, and they even have a pre-midlife crisis Corvette. All is well in the house of Lewis, but things are starting to unravel behind the scenes. Norma finds out the discount program her job offers for their son’s private school tuition will be discontinued. The same day, Arthur finds out that he has been rejected from the astronaut program; something we get the impression everyone thought was a foregone conclusion.

Bad days happen to people all the time but they rarely come with such a quick chance for a way out. That chance comes in the form of a mysterious man named Arlington Steward (Frank Langella). He is well dressed, well spoken and sincere, even if he is missing half of his face. His offer is simple. Press the button inside a box that was curiously delivered to their house that morning and receive $1 million cash. Doing so will solve their newfound money problems, but it will also cause a person somewhere in the world that they don’t know to die. They have 24 hours to decide.

Kelly spends the first half hour planting the seed. We briefly see the couple in their respective professional lives, we see the things that would negatively impact their financial situation unfold, and we see them struggle with the decision to push the button. Never once did the notion cross my mind that they would NOT press the button, but Kelly shows us their vetting for a precise amount of time that earns the tension he has created. It is time well spent because it helps sets the tone for the entire movie. An even simpler decision plays further into that hand.

For as subtle as it is, the decision to set the movie in 1976 gives him the biggest return on his investment. If the story were set in present times, the “What would you do for a million dollars?” construct wouldn’t carry the same resonance. Our current culture is brimming with sensationalism that has devolved into little more than fodder for primetime television. The sadness behind that idea is that it makes it seem as if our moral fiber has withered into a contest to see who would do what for the biggest bucket of money. We’ve all sat around and had that conversation. Would you do this or would you do that for a thousand, million, billion dollars. I have no doubt that if there was a game show called The Box with the same rules, almost every idiot on there would push it until their fingers bled. But the 1970s weren’t as steeped in greed as we are now. Setting this story during that time creates an atmosphere that carries the movie when it starts to go off the rails about halfway through.

Trying to quantify your understanding for a Richard Kelly film is pointless because one, you don’t, and two, if you don’t let it bother you so it doesn’t really matter. His success lies in his ability to make his stories interesting beyond their pretention. I most certainly can’t make sense out of every little piece of the story but it doesn’t remove you completely because of its primary suppositions. For all of its second act science fiction wizardry, The Box is a movie that raises some pretty basic moral questions. What would you do for money? Can you distance yourself from the consequences of your actions? Does the motivation behind your action justify the results?

After you’ve seen it, the real question becomes, can you enjoy and appreciate a movie that you don’t fully understand? This week I went back and watched Kelly’s other films, Donnie Darko and Southland Tales , and had the same “What the hell?” moment most people did when they watched them. I didn’t like them any more or less than I did the first time around, but it definitely put me in the right mindset to see The Box.

As much as Kelly might want this to have the widest appeal of all his movies, I don’t know that he’s ever going to fully get there without sacrificing his vision. I hope he never does because it is imaginative beyond comprehension, but it comes with a price. To say this is his most accessible film to date is not entirely untrue, but it doesn’t mean people unfamiliar with his work won’t be turned off by it. He’s never going to have it both ways. Let’s hope he doesn’t try because I’m still intrigued, even if I don’t always understand.

And there’s the rub.