Michael J. Tresca reviewed:
Exam
A Modern 'No Exit', This review is from: Exam (DVD)
"The Exam" is a minimalist single-room film that could easily be a one-act play. When one of the characters name-checks Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, we know where this is going. For those not familiar with Sartre's play, three characters show up in the afterlife expecting to be tortured in hell, only to discover that they are stuck in a room with each other. Hell, they eventually conclude, is other people. Director Stuart Hazeldine flips the script: Hell may be other people, but it's the path to Heaven.
Instead of three characters we have eight. They are there to take a test in what can only be described as the world's worst job interview. It starts with some terse instructions from the Invigilator (Colin Salmon) about the rules: 80 minutes, one question, and they are not to talk to the Invigilator (watching on security cameras), the armed guard, spoil their paper, or leave the room. To break any of the rules is to be immediately disqualified and tossed out into the real world, which from the dialogue of the interviewees appears to be an awful place suffering from a pandemic.
The film breaks the characters down, "Reservoir Dogs"-style, into archetypes by color. There's the unctuous soldier/gambler Brown (Jimi Mistry), the icy Blonde (Nathalie Cox), the noble Black (Chukwudi Iwuji), the scheming Brunette (Polyanna McIntosh), the analytical Dark (Adar Beck), the hyper-aggressive alpha male White (Luke Mably), and the unresponsive Deaf (John Lloyd Fillingham). There's a ninth character, the guard (Chris Carey) who is perhaps more important than all of them. He takes the role of the bellhop in No Exit, a mannequin that seemingly has no purpose but is as much a part of the room as the furniture.
Nothing in "The Exam" is an accident. Every item on screen is relevant. Like No Exit, there's a paper knife equivalent that is presumably there for some other purpose but, because of humanity's basest instincts, is ultimately used for violence. "The Exam" spins conspiracy theories with glee and allows its interviewees to dive down the rabbit hole. There's nothing on the sheet, so how do you beat the exam? Does winning constitute beating the abstract concept of the exam itself, or just defeating all the competitors? Do you even have to? Is there even an exam?
"The Exam" is as much nightmare as it is scathing critique of the business world as its cutthroat worst. Or at least, that's how it seems until the very end, when it becomes clear that this is all for a more noble purpose. It is a "harrowing of hell" that has a more complete (if less existentialist) ending than Sartre's work. And that's okay. As a sci-fi film in just one room, it manages to spin more drama out of 80 minutes and eight people than most big-budget movies.
Instead of three characters we have eight. They are there to take a test in what can only be described as the world's worst job interview. It starts with some terse instructions from the Invigilator (Colin Salmon) about the rules: 80 minutes, one question, and they are not to talk to the Invigilator (watching on security cameras), the armed guard, spoil their paper, or leave the room. To break any of the rules is to be immediately disqualified and tossed out into the real world, which from the dialogue of the interviewees appears to be an awful place suffering from a pandemic.
The film breaks the characters down, "Reservoir Dogs"-style, into archetypes by color. There's the unctuous soldier/gambler Brown (Jimi Mistry), the icy Blonde (Nathalie Cox), the noble Black (Chukwudi Iwuji), the scheming Brunette (Polyanna McIntosh), the analytical Dark (Adar Beck), the hyper-aggressive alpha male White (Luke Mably), and the unresponsive Deaf (John Lloyd Fillingham). There's a ninth character, the guard (Chris Carey) who is perhaps more important than all of them. He takes the role of the bellhop in No Exit, a mannequin that seemingly has no purpose but is as much a part of the room as the furniture.
Nothing in "The Exam" is an accident. Every item on screen is relevant. Like No Exit, there's a paper knife equivalent that is presumably there for some other purpose but, because of humanity's basest instincts, is ultimately used for violence. "The Exam" spins conspiracy theories with glee and allows its interviewees to dive down the rabbit hole. There's nothing on the sheet, so how do you beat the exam? Does winning constitute beating the abstract concept of the exam itself, or just defeating all the competitors? Do you even have to? Is there even an exam?
"The Exam" is as much nightmare as it is scathing critique of the business world as its cutthroat worst. Or at least, that's how it seems until the very end, when it becomes clear that this is all for a more noble purpose. It is a "harrowing of hell" that has a more complete (if less existentialist) ending than Sartre's work. And that's okay. As a sci-fi film in just one room, it manages to spin more drama out of 80 minutes and eight people than most big-budget movies.
