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Rating:
(The review contains spoilers for the episodes).
Black Mirror could not continue to be the wellspring of ideas it was in its first three seasons. There was indeed a lot at stake, perhaps too much compared to the time devoted to it. It is fair, then, that with its fourth season, Charlie Brooker's dystopian masterpiece takes a different direction. Rather than introducing new technological gimmicks, these six episodes cleverly and ruthlessly explore the human psyche's consequences linked to the new possibilities of technology. What remains with the viewer is not so much a picture of new hyperbolic possibilities, but rather a more or less chilling vision of human attitudes, the small pettiness, the great cruelties of which humans are capable in the face of the prospect of their existence's failure.
And it is this perspective that makes the new season perhaps the most humanly touching, closest to the daily feelings of any person: from the unfortunate computer genius who takes revenge through a simulation in a cybernetic reality, to the anxious mother who wants to know everything about her daughter's life, to the career woman who is willing to do anything to preserve her little idyll, to the man who wants to preserve his prematurely deceased wife's consciousness. Many common feelings populate the new dystopian fresco, perhaps no longer as original as in some past exploits, but capable of imposing new terrible reflections on what humans are willing to do to preserve what they have precious or to achieve a status of greater satisfaction, a more imperative assertion of themselves.
The first episode, USS Callister, almost identically echoes the terrifying idea of the 2014 Christmas special: the "cookies" this time are used for a video game that will allow its creator to vent his daily frustrations. In the absence of significant conceptual novelties, the episode is appreciated for its complex structure, for the exciting confrontation between reality and the virtual world, for the schemes that the victims of this perverse game will conceive to escape such a sentence.
And this fertile idea of the cookies returns in the last part of the concluding chapter, Black Museum, when a death row inmate must endlessly relive the pain of the electric chair. Or when a mother's consciousness is forced to endure in the expressionless body of a stuffed monkey. The concept of eternal life, eternally damned, which burst in with White Christmas, has interesting reiterations that, although not adding anything, further reformulate the concept of human wickedness.
The idea of absolute control and censorship imposed at the cerebral level, which had already emerged in a couple of episodes, returns with a different angle in Arkangel. Again, technologies familiar to loyal viewers but declined from a different perspective, in this case, an educational journey. The girl, subjected to the strict control of an incompetent mother, will become a teenager, with all the imaginable problems.
The control over memories that had already led to devastating outcomes in The Entire History of You returns with no less effectiveness in Crocodile. Again, the reiteration is not sterile, both thanks to the very elegant staging, with suggestive landscapes and refined shot compositions, and due to the different and more serious situation it intercepts. As mentioned, the human soul is probed more deeply, putting the protagonists always before a crossroads: fairness, respect, and justice on one side, self-assertion, dominance, control on the other. So, it's not so much the technological novelty introduced, often illustrated in no time at all, but it's human perversion that is decisive for the expected disastrous outcomes.
A different view, no less disturbing but particularly fresh, is proposed in Hang the DJ. A life lesson, a treatise on man and the limits he imposes in the realm of sentiments. Or better yet, the analysis of how expectations and aprioristic perspectives alter and actually determine the development of affective relationships. All within the now-classic nesting doll scheme that the series has pleasantly accustomed us to. This time it is not so much a dystopia, on the contrary: it is an almost utopian vision, of an instrument so complex that it contains entire worlds and lives within itself, to function perfectly.
The wildcard of the season is represented by Metalhead, which is also the most stylistically marked episode. Black and white, a single protagonist fleeing from a small and straightforward but relentless robotic dog. And it's precisely in the simplicity of the storytelling that lies its deadly strength. After a desperate 40-minute chase, the final twist comes with the motivation for it all, the object of desire for which three people risked their lives. The linear effectiveness of the metal dogs is terrifying precisely because it is silent, lacking ferocity, methodical, and above all, driven by frivolous reasons.
The season finale once again echoes the structure of White Christmas, with three different episodes narrated by one of the protagonists. If the one with the stuffed monkey and the one with the death row inmate recall previously proposed themes, the theme of the first story is much more interesting and novel. A particular contraption allows a doctor to feel his patients' pain. The consequences are predictable and once again indicate that it's not the technologies that are inadequate and perverse, but man.
Thus, a season of consolidation, both conceptually and morally, as well as aesthetically, directionally, and in terms of acting. With the obligation to always propose new inventions lifted, the series can also focus more on the care of details. All episodes are profound, meticulously finished, more refined and polished than previous ones, which could rely on more disruptive ideas. Even the quality of the actors is generally higher.
A crucial point must be reiterated: if before technology was almost always a carrier of the soul's perversions, regardless, this time the perversions are almost entirely human. That is, the tools can even be used for good purposes, but it is always man who bends them to his deviant goals. Due to sociopathy, control mania, ambition, incontinence, or simply because a state of happiness can't last long. And perhaps this last one is the most venomous spur: arm yourself with technological gimmicks works, but only up to a point. The human soul is too fickle and soon gets tired, of anything.
7.5/10
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