Dir. David Slade
Lewis Carroll has Alice enter Wonderland in two ways - through a rabbit hole, or through a looking glass. Two versions of the same process, taking place in two different books. These processes have entered the lexicon of our language, as synonyms for the feeling of entering into a topsy-turvy, confusing world. In Carroll's novels logic is reversed, little makes sense, and magical, impossible creatures like Jabberwockies, Jubjubs, and Bandersnatches roam the land.
In Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Stefan (Fionn Whitehead) loses his mind within the labyrinthine process of programming a chose-your-own-adventure video game, titled Bandersnatch. Choices loop, intertwine in unexpected ways, and in some cases cannot be avoided at all, restricting oneself to a single path. Within the film itself, the actual act of Stefan's programming is not dwelt on substantially. We do not see much of the decisions he is programming into the game, only the paths written upon countless pages of paper, and brief, basic 2D simulations of a 3D maze. This is because the actual process of accounting for player choice is done by us, the viewers, or should it be players?
It is debatable as to whether Bandersnatch constitutes a film or a basic video game. Full motion video (FMV) games have been around since the 80s and 90s, like the infamous Night Trap, and have even had a resurgence lately in games like Her Story and Late Shift. FMV games were themselves only video extensions to text-based computer games like The Hobbit (referenced within Bandersnatch) or Zork, themselves parallel extensions to classic chose-your-own-adventures books, of which the fictional Bandersnatch is adapted from. Video game developers have since ditched the actual video component, instead rendering the story within a game engine, to great success in examples such as The Walking Dead or Life is Strange. To a player of such games, FMV or not, the 'gameplay' or viewing experience of Bandersnatch is familiar, where multiple choices are presented at specific moments within the narrative, potentially changing events substantially, cosmetically, or not at all.
It is via this gameplay process that we the viewers experience what Stefan is going through, and in Bandersnatch, writer Charlie Brooker has overtly tackled what some video game developers have not, that being the actual maddening process of chasing the trail of multiple choices to their conclusions. We do not need to focus on the actual choices Stefan programmes via his ZX Spectrum into the Bandersnatch video game, as the meta nature of choosing Stefan's actions, from the minute (what cereal to eat for breakfast) to the substantial (jumping to his death) acts as the most direct way of conveying the themes of the narrative related to choice and more importantly, its absence.
The absence of choice felt by the fictional Bandersnatch author Jermome F. Davies (Jeff Minter) led to him feeling compelled to brutally murder his wife, as he felt that fate was dictating his actions, not his own free will. This lack of free will is expressed via the 'White Bear' symbol, where two branches converge to one. This symbol predates the film, stemming from the White Bear episode of the show, another narrative where past choices were of key importance, haunting the protagonist and sealing them in a looping, maddening personal hell. At a key moment in Bandersnatch, Stefan cries to us, the controllers of his actions for a sign. The choices presented to us depend on our previous actions, even here reinforcing the theme of the past dictating the future. The most amusing combination pairs the logo of Netflix, the viewing platform Bandersnatch is viewed upon, with the White Bear symbol.
Either explanation is cryptic to Stefan, and the 'Netflix' route ends in a meta joke to the viewer about boring choices, and the arbitrariness of their choices. However even this can branch, into either an over-the-top fight scene for our amusement, or more poignantly, a scene where even actor Fionn Whitehead is fictional, and is himself struggling to reconcile which choices have been written (or programmed) for the script, and whether he is himself or his character.
Chasing one branch where Stefan follows famed programmer Colin (Will Poulter) results in his character explaining his theory on parallel dimensions, time being a construct, and the nature of mankind being programmed and controlled. This allows the viewer (provided they've also discussed Stefan's childhood history with his therapist) to, in one scene, have Stefan ponder Colin's words, and choose to travel through a mirror, back into the crucial childhood scene which sealed the fate of his mother's life (Fleur Keith), alongside his own. This literally evokes Through the Looking Glass, here having the mirrored surface act as gateway to the crucial moment where a young Stefan (A.J. Houghton) either delayed or did not delay his mother by looking for a stuffed rabbit. The first of the main five endings I received, apparently the rarest according to Netflix themselves, was to choose, as young Stefan, to go with his mother immediately. However, in typical Black Mirror fashion, the twist is that Stefan's mother will delay for the later train regardless, this being the train that will derail and kill her. By choosing to go with his mother, Stefan removes himself from the maddening process we have been inflicting upon him, and is killed alongside his mother as a young boy.
Also in typical Black Mirror fashion, this bleak ending is one of the kinder ones, as it leaves Stefan free of our control, his adult body dying in the present day within the therapy room, a representation of the aborted timeline he has rejected. Here, the title of Black Mirror comes into play. In terms of the show, Brooker has referred to the show itself acting as a dark mirror to what paths society could go down. Another interpretation, due to the show's focus on the perils of technology, is that when we stare into a blank, black computer/phone/TV screen we see a distorted, dark mirror image of our faces. However in terms of Bandersnatch the dark mirror which allows Stefan to travel within his mind to his own past acts in a meta nature, surprise surprise.
With full knowledge of all potential endings, from the mundane - Stefan working on a mediocre game due to mismanagement, to the extreme - murdering his father and chopping his body into pieces, the 'Train' or 'Mirror' ending is the one where Stefan takes control of his own fate. Instead of falling prey to the madness like Jerome F. Davies and lashing out murderously, Stefan's best true ending is to accept that some branching pathways do funnel to one event. He chooses to die with his mother, calling into question whether the entire film was some parallel timeline in the first place. One ending path even questions this, suggesting that Stefan may have been the subject of a program and control experiment, where his memory of the key event is false and implanted by shadowy scientific actors. This seems to be the 'traditional' Black Mirror interpretation, but could just as easily be endemic of conveying the paranoia Stefan has fallen to in reaction to our omnipotent control.
We then are the villains of the piece, and the beauty of the narrative is that the punishment for our cruel actions is to experience what Stefan experiences. The process of restarting the film on Netflix, viewing or fast-forwarding to each choice, over and over again, with some choices locking endings, looping back, or changing the choices presented is slowly maddening. We can, and do, go a little loopy as the Netflix program itself changes presented choices depending on those already experienced, thus even making guides online unreliable. Just like the game within the film, the programming fights back and has ideas of its own. In that sense, it's a beautiful, chaotic interactive art piece, where the deeper into Wonderland we go, the more our own mind fractures in keeping track of these events. The Black Mirror becomes literal, the screen we watch and interact through, just like Stefan and his ZF Spectrum as he programmes, becomes the portal, the transportive black mirror through the malleable construct of time and free will.
The White Bear symbol could not be more important here, as it's purpose goes beyond easter egg, and contributes to this maddened state. In that episode, the plight of the protagonist was a punishment for her past actions, where she was viewed through the cameras of a willing audience, who actively interacted with the event of her punishment. Crucially however, in that episode, all interaction was done distantly, whereas in Bandersnatch the showrunners and filmmakers have succeeded in making that interactive process direct. But, like the FMV games of old, that interaction is limited by the practicalities of programming, scripting, and here, filming. Future explorations of the interactive film genre may be freed by further advents of technology; possibly Virtual Reality, which Black Mirror has already commented upon. For those future endeavours, the lessons of Bandersnatch should be considered, specifically in how the meta process of interaction can leave the viewer with a deep sense of empathy. The act of interacting isn't just a theme of the film, it is the film.
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