Much of the scenes in the series The patient, available on disney+ as of November 30, they take place on a single stage with their two characters looking at each other. Joel Fields and Joseph Weisberg’s script strives to create a sense of imminent danger, but also of intimacy. The strangest combination results in an almost theatrical staging on a terrifying premise. What would happen if a murderer tried to understand the limits of the psychiatric and emotional nature of his urge to kill?
The question is answered through fear. At the same time, the search for what is essential that makes us human, as opposed to the predatory instinct. Doctor Alan Strauss (an extraordinary Steve Carell) must face Sam (Domhnall Gleeson) in a duel of intelligence and intellectual resistance. But not only to delve into the inner darkness of the latter. Also to avoid dying at the hands of Sam, a serial killer who decided to find an explanation for his cruel nature.
From the first chapter, The patient makes it clear that the course will be brutal and precise. Sam kidnaps Alan and chains him in the basement of the house where he lives. Then he makes the most unique and terrifying request. He needs you to “heal” him and stop him from continuing to kill in terrifying ways. Let him do it with all the tools at his disposal. It is a race against time. Sam will kill again very soon. The victim could be on the street. But most likely, Alan will pay with his life for any faltering or inability to understand the psyche of his captor.
The patient
Much of the scenes in the Disney+ series The Patient take place on a single stage with its two characters looking at each other. Joel Fields and Joseph Weisberg’s script strives to create a sense of imminent danger, but also of intimacy. The very strange combination results in an almost theatrical staging on a terrifying premise. What would happen if a murderer tried to understand the limits of the psychiatric and emotional nature of his urge to kill? The question is answered through fear. At the same time, the search for what is essential that makes us human, as opposed to the predatory instinct. Doctor Alan Strauss (an extraordinary Steve Carell) must face Sam (Domhnall Gleeson) in a duel of intelligence and intellectual resistance.
When the patient is a criminal
The apparently twisted but linear premise is actually a brilliant exploration of psychological tension turned into suffering. At the same time, a vision of the macabre that feeds on the inner shadows of ordinary life. As production, The patient it has the enormous capacity to encompass the most fearsome elements in a rarefied and pessimistic atmosphere.
“It is possible that he will not survive,” Alan reasons terrified. Of course, he knows what he’s up against. Sam is a criminal, but also a creature bordering on dehumanization. Between the two, his aggressive drive for murder is the manifestation of a voracious and unpredictable point inside of him.
The most curious thing in The patient it’s that the gory nature of Sam’s experiences settles to the periphery. The script plays with the idea that the character goes through the inner tension of guilt and anger, but beyond the screen. During the story, He’s just a pale, uptight man who needs to be heard.. Which even demands Alan’s full attention with a desperation bordering on obsession.
Caught in the jaws of a monster
At the other extreme, Alan knows that he can only save his life if he is able to build a bond with this criminal who delights in cruelty. One, also, aware of himself and the responsibility of his actions. The intellectual battle between the two is much more than an idea that manifests itself in elaborate lines.
It is a substantial perception about good and evil, linked by the need to be understood. Sam aspires for healing, but not for redemption.. the script of The patient In fact, he avoids moral judgment and emphasizes the condition of the tension of darkness that suffocates his character.
For this serial killer who needs to be “cured” guilt is not an option. Nor is it a condition of transgression that goes through a clearer perception of the intellectual and psychiatric rupture that he suffers.
Gleeson’s Sam doesn’t kill for pleasure, but out of rage. Because of the effective, direct and desperate need for a certain order around them. In The patientIn order to survive, Alan needs to understand that balance, that borderline point between the shadows and reality through which his kidnapper travels.
The pain, the fear, the blood in The patient
One of the points of greatest interest in The patient it’s that it avoids any common ground with the usual stories about serial killers. In none of its chapters are there direct explorations of police searches, crime scenes, or what happens beyond Sam’s story. On the rare occasions when it is mentioned, the perception is immersive, dangerous and scary. The murderer speaks about himself with the eloquence of anger, dissatisfaction and an increasingly dark existential void. But at the same time, discover the multiple layers that surround his murderous drive.
For Sam, murder is no ordinary act. Nor is it a perception about your personality or behavior. It is an event on the fringes of his life, taking him into a macabre space in which he gives free rein to his grotesque impulses. In turn, little by little, Alan understands the cat-and-mouse game tailored to a twisted experience in which he is trapped.
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The fissure of reality — the conception of the human — from which his captor contemplates him. The argument of The patient He then focuses on the lethal bonds that unite the hostage and the man who holds him captive. He details them until the nature of evil—that spectral abstraction that hangs over Alan like a threat—is fully manifested. Perhaps the most powerful and well-constructed point of this splendid narrative oddity.