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Review 24: The Flick by Annie Baker

The Flick
My first play of my 100 Book Year is the Pulitzer prize-winning The Flick from American playwright Annie Baker. Oof, that almost sounds like the opening to Wikipedia article. But instead of rewriting it, I’m just going to reference that fact and turn this intro into solid gold through the lazy medium of apparent self-awareness.

ANYWAY, it centres on three people working in a run-down little cinema in Worcester, Massachusetts. It’s the first I’ve read / seen of Annie Baker, but it’s apparently very representative of her style: lots of small, apparently mundane conversations by everyday people, that are vehicles for big overall emotional shifts.

This gives a lot of space for nuance, which I like, and goofball humour, which I like even more. Imagine all the crummiest jobs a minimum-wage cinema attendant might have to deal with, condensed into a few short interactions. It could be depressing, but Baker makes it hilarious.

Plays are different to novels in that novels have the luxury of being able to spell out their themes and thoughts across a longer expanse, whereas plays have to cover a lot of ground in comparatively few words. So this has actually stuck with me more than some novels, as I continue to mull over what Baker is expressing in Flick. I’m also as cultured as non-bio yoghurt, so I could have got this all wrong. But my interpretation is that this is, at its heart, a play about honesty and authenticity.

You have Avery, a young university student who believes that analogue film is the only true medium of film. He’s obsessed with it, and acts as a neat counterbalance to his colleagues who, frankly, couldn’t give a lukewarm hotdog whether the film is projected analogue, digital or into space. He is plagued by his own worry that he isn’t authentic even in his love of this, and certainly not in the world.

Then you have Rose, a green-haired projectionist. I’ll confess to a silent internal groan about the hair colour, which has become something of a lazy way to signal that oh my god, this girl don’t play by no mainstream rules! She’s off the quirk-o-meter! in popular culture. But actually this plays right into Baker’s exploration of honesty. Rose projects (pun blissfully intended) a strong image to cover a weak sense of self.

And finally there’s Sam, a mid-thirties ex-metalhead who thinks he’s in love with Rose. But he doesn’t even know her, and it seems like maybe he’s just acting out an idea of being in love with her.

The theme that ties all of this together is, ultimately, the inauthenticity of film itself. People don’t really act like they do in films (apart from actors, who literally act like they do in films), but we’re drawn to treat it as a guide on how to act anyway. We covet the beauty of film-stars, use film to explore the way we should morally behave, even though it’s too simplistic and compact to ever really represent the full ethical spectrum we have to negotiate, and too prone to black-and-white responses.

This is all just my interpretation though. In a way, that’s the best thing about the play. All of this is unspoken, and left to the audience to piece together, so if you want to put time into it, you’ll get a lot out of it. As well as scatological jokes-a-plenty. And who could resist that? Not this guy.

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This is my twenty-fourth book review of 100 to raise money for Refuge, the domestic abuse charity. If you liked this review, or just want to help out, please donate on the link below!

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