Taphephobia (from Greek taphos, meaning grave; and phobos, meaning fear) is the medical term for the fear of being buried alive. Those of us who have read the master of macabre Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado or the self-explanatory The Premature Burial would have had a second-hand experience of this terrifying situation. But in Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés’ single-character, single-setting, tour de force, Buried (2010), for Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), the prospect of being buried alive is not a crooked literary concept, but almost a cruel certainty.
One day in October 2006, Paul wakes up in complete darkness. All he could remember was that he, alongside his other truck-driver friends—all of who work for Crestin, Roland, and Thomas (CRT), an American company—were ambushed while delivering kitchen supplies. While Paul was fortunate enough to escape the gunfire—to which most of his companions succumbed to—after he regains consciousness, he finds his current situation anything but lucky.
Paul finds himself gagged and bound inside a wooden coffin, just large enough to accommodate enough oxygen to keep him alive, with absolutely no clue of who put him there, and why—a predicament reminiscent of Oh Dae-su in Korean filmmaker Chan-wook Park’s masterpiece Oldboy. While Dae-su had been imprisoned by unknown assailants in a room for 15-long years with only a television as his link to the outside world, Conroy finds that his kidnappers had left him behind a Blackberry, a Zippo, a pen, a flask, his medicines, a torch, his wallet (emptied), and a satchel.
After he realises that his cries for help are falling into deaf ears, Paul, with the help of his Blackberry, tries to figure out a way to wriggle out of his nightmarish situation. As any American would do in a similar situation, his first call is to 911. But since he is in a different country, he finds little help from that source. So, he calls the FBI next. And thus begins his earnest quest to get outside help, any help.
In the meantime, someone calls him and tells him in broken English that he has till 9pm to arrange for $5 million as ransom. With the phone’s battery, and the oxygen inside the coffin running out as fast as his own life, the stakes just got higher for Paul. After all, he is only a truck driver. Even though he had, somehow, conveyed his ‘situation’ to the US Department of State, and to his own company, what were the chances they would find him, when he, himself, has not even the foggiest idea of where exactly in Iraq he has been buried underground?
An individual trapped in an apparent hopeless situation is an age-old trope in cinema. However, what elevates Buried from others belonging to the same genre is the treatment. For the entire 95-minutes’ running time, the camera does not emerge, even for a second, on to the surface, thereby making us, the viewer, very much a part of Paul’s claustrophobic existence. Reminiscent of Kubrick’s experimentation with only natural light in Barry Lyndon (1975), the only source of light in the film are the ones that Paul uses—a blue mobile screen, the yellow flame of the Zippo and the torch, and the eerie green of glow torches.
Just like the letterings of the opening credits that break apart and bubble up, and the geometric lines that obstinately move down to form the first letters of the various crew members, Paul’s efforts at emerging out of the wooden casket seem to be bogged down by forces way beyond his control.
Like any other human being in his place, Paul undergoes an entire gamut of expressions—fear, anger, panic, frustration, hope, and despair. As an individual who has a history of anxiety attacks, Paul knows that his biggest ally and his biggest enemy are one and the same—himself. He gathers his wits, just when things appear to be hopeless, and tries to make the best of the meagre resources at his disposal.
Let’s face it, we have seen drivers emerging out of similar no-way-out scenarios unscathed (here’s looking at you, Jason Statham), but Paul is no superhero (ironically, though in his next film Ryan Reynolds will play a superhero, the Green Lantern). So, as he waits for the head of the Hostage Working Group (HWG) in Iraq to locate him by tracking his cell connection, he takes resort to his survival instinct to stay alive till the rescuers arrive. But, things are about to get worse for Paul.
Cortés’, who alongside directing, has also edited this edge-of-the-seat thriller, while staying true to a Hollywood-set template has steered clear of clichés. For instance, there are no villains of the piece. The film does not take sides. We learn from the head of the HWG that in a country torn apart by war, kidnapping is the ‘only functioning business’. (There is a wonderful tête-à-tête between the captive and the captor, when the latter exclaims: ‘You terrified? So, I am a terrorist?’)
What makes Paul’s experience equally harrowing for us, the viewer, is the fact that just like him, we only get to hear the people he speaks with over the phone. Just like him, we have to take their words at face value. Just like him, we do not get to see what the FBI or the HWG are doing to get Paul out.
A solo character, single-setting film is a unique challenge. No wonder then, such films have been few and far between—the few examples include Daniel Bourla’s astonishing The Noah (1975), Robert Altman’s seminal Secret Honor (1984), the recent Sam Rockwell starrer Moon (2009), and this year’s Oscar-nominated 127 hours by Danny Boyle.
What makes Buried by the 37-year old Cortés out-of-the-box is that he decided to film it in-the-box—in its entirety.
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