• Everything I’ve read talks about Julia Roberts- and she’s great here- but Esmail is the show-stopper. He looks like a real talent- some long lively tracking shots (especially the first and last hour of Homecoming). He fractures the film in creative ways with obsessive compulsively arranged mise-en-scene and set design—interjecting overhead shots that almost make it look like a doll-house—nods to Wes Anderson, Ari Aster’s Hereditary (which obviously couldn’t have influenced Esmail), Soderbergh, Welles, Ozu and Pakula)
  • Birds and fish reoccurring in the visuals
  • Bobby Cannavale has a great long take introduction on the phone
  • Paranoia meditation- Pakula’s Klute, The Parallax View, All The President’s Men trilogy
  • Piano dissonance in the score
  • Changes aspect ratio in time ratio sequences (Grand Budapest)
  • The detail in the mise-en-scene, carefully arranged furniture, rows of workout balls, vending machines, cuts again to meticulously arranged overhead shots
  • Telephoto lens and slip screens—nots to The Conversation and De Palma- 70’s filmmaking
  • Piece of the music echo’s Mia Farrow’s “la la la” singing in Rosemary’s Baby and nobody did paranoia better than Polanski
  • Rows of vending machines, form- goes back to same themes triggering memories and giving you the feel of a dark conspiracy- fruit
  • Overhead empty shots while escaping are great—eerie
  • The spiral staircase office set piece is a dazzler- Esmail uses it again and again
  • ceiling as mise-en-scene
  • Parts, especially episodes 4-7 get wordy—poor Stephen James in a few of the scenes (and he’s excellent overall- it’s not his fault there are unnecessary redundancies galore). I’d love to see this in 120-150 minutes
  • Like any thriller (I already mentioned De Palma which is essentially saying the same) there’s a lot of Hitchcock here but the systematic subjugation (mostly through mise-en-scene) makes me think more of President’s Men or Repulsion overall—clearly some Manchurian Candidate with the brainwashing
  • Long-form television with great central set piece makes me think of Fassbinder’s World on a Wire (1973)
  • A clear nod to Vertigo and Hitchcock is the zoom-in, track out shot used when Roberts hears the Pelican noise (this is also famous in Jaws of course)
  • I’m a little unsure of what to do with some of the musical sampling- there’s the piano from Coppola’s The Conversation, Barry Lyndon, music directly from these and All the President’s Men– I mean I have nothing against sampling whether it’s from these greats, Beethoven, Tarantino does with Morricone in almost all of his work and it works—but there’s already so much here that nods to these films—it’s a lot
  • Rows of cubicles shots that are not only gorgeous but visual narrative guidance
  • Details- the DOD guy – Shea Whigham with the wildly chewed nails
  • Formally and structurally- I do not love that in episode 9 they go back to Roberts’ initial job interview for the first time. It’s bad form
  • Lighting as mise en scene episode 10 Cannavale after presenting to brass
  • R/HR border- could see it being in the back half of my top 10 of 2018