“Searching” presents a unique experience by presenting the entire film within the confines of a computer screen. While this innovative approach offers a fresh perspective on storytelling, and is often successful in its attempt, it also imposes significant limitations on the audience’s ability to connect with the characters potentially undermines the protagonist’s credibility, and adds a level of disbelief for those who are very technologically literate such as younger viewers. The inherent constraints of the digital medium, the portrayal of the main character’s proficiency in navigating the digital landscape, and the need to be understandable by a cross-generational audience leads to hiccups in an otherwise thoroughly entertaining and fresh cinematic medium.
I believe that the film’s reliance on the computer screen as the primary storytelling device creates a sense of detachment between the audience and the characters. Unlike conventional films where viewers are immersed in the physical world inhabited by the characters, “Searching” keeps them at arm’s length, observing the action unfold through a series of digital interfaces. There are some ways that the filmmakers worked to overcome these limitations, with the intro montage being particularly successful, by showing a series of emails and home videos uploaded to the internet they are able to quickly engage us in the lives of these characters while still remaining within the screen. On the other hand, there are times where I felt that being locked within the screen was a detriment to the story; most prominent in my mind are when David went to the lake and the only perspectives we got were first a kind of strange gps shot of his car going from his home to the lake, followed by an awkward facetime call to the detective where he talked vaguely about what he found and when they forced in the existence of a funeral live-streaming service just so we would get a shot of David confronting the detective. I believe that both of these scenes, and a few others, would have been infinitely more engaging if we were with David, in those spaces and able to experience the emotions he was feeling alongside him rather than from a distance (in the case of the lake scene, we don’t even get to see his immediate reaction). Additionally, there were several times where it felt strange to be viewing David through the lens of his camera even when he wasn’t really on a facetime call or anything similar, and the necessity of nearly every call in the movie to be a video call just so we could both see and hear the actors added an additional dimension requiring a degree of belief suspension. I understand that the filmmakers were committed to this medium of storytelling, but that being said, I don’t feel like it would inhibit the story or the experience to switch between a normal storytelling method where we are physically in the scene with the characters and the computer screen.
The sense of detachment and requirement of belief suspension is even further exasperated by the portrayal of the main character, David Kim, and (again) the limitations of the medium. While he is portrayed as a loving father, the nature of the film requires him to know essentially nothing about his daughter’s life, as we need to be able to understand her friends and social life almost solely through methods such as phone calls and text messages. While at convenient times he seems quite technologically proficient, there are many times when it feels like he is simply bumbling through the digital landscape, which serves to undermine his competency as a credible protagonist, makes it even harder to emphasize with him as he comes off as a generally ineffectual detective who simply stumbles into the right answer, and also makes for jarring moments when his typical lack of technological knowhow clashes with times where the narrative requires him to understand something important quickly. David typically moves the mouse and windows around the screen at a snail’s pace, which is understandable because the audience needs to be able to follow every move. He doesn’t understand basic concepts, like the existence of stock image models or live streaming, so that the film can explain them to any audience member who doesn’t know. Perhaps this comes down to a generational divide, and I am biased in my existence as a member of my generation, but I can’t help but feel that while it may be a boon for some viewers, the need to comply with these limitations makes a less engaging and believable experience for others.
Speaking of the relationship between these limitations and the lived experience of the viewers, several people in class also pointed out something that I felt while watching, which was that the portrayal of the internet in the movie is not very true to life. For example, the live streaming site keeps a thorough catalog of past streams, including viewer count and chat logs, which only the very biggest sites of that variety do (and only starting to pop up around the time this film released) so that the father would have that information available. Additionally, the daughter’s tumblr was oddly focused on her photography and included no references to any of her other interests, something that is possible but extremely unusual, and I can only assume was done either because of a lack of understanding of that culture or because of a desire to focus the information on screen. The latter seems more likely to me, and again adds to the ways that the limitations of the form and the need to be approachable by a cross-generational audience add a barrier to the investment of many viewers who, like myself, may have found the experience unrelatable, confounding, and, at times, even frustrating.
– Hunter
Intermittent Mechanism 