Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for F9.
André Breton, a French writer considered to be a chief architect of the artistic movement known as"surrealism,“defined his philosophy and art as surrendering a conscious control of expression in favor of tapping into as pure an expression of the unconscious mind as possible. The “superior reality” is how Breton talked about one’s unconscious mind, and in his 1924"Surrealist Manifesto,“he spoke explicitly about wishing to make the dream state, often “reduced to a mere parenthesis,” the entire sentence. “I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, asurreality, if one may so speak,” stated Breton in his manifesto. “Surrealist art,” thus, is the attempt to use our conscious tools of expression (I decide to make a paint stroke on a canvas) to communicate our unconscious dream states (to communicate what my brain sees without an active decision).
Surrealism has since been explored in film, an art form full of expanded technological (i.e. conscious) choices that one can use to express these unconscious thoughts with unprecedented fidelity. Notable masters in surrealist film includeLuis Buñel(Un Chien Andalou),Alejandro Jodorowsky(El Topo), andDavid Lynch(Mulholland Drive). These artist’s works have been so influential on film as a whole, that surrealism, or a kind of “pop surrealism,” has filtered its way into mainstream cinema without any of the unattainably erudite connotations that often surround such artistic movements; thinkSalvador Dalícollaborating withWalt Disneyon a short film,Tom Greenusing major studio clout and money on the dream logic comedy pieces constructingFreddy Got Fingered, or Spider-Man falling into a hallucinogenic exploration of his greatest nightmares in the MCU’sFar From Home.
We now have a new benchmark of surrealist film. A truly unconscious-feeling piece of avant-garde cinema disguised as a globe-trotting action blockbuster. A disseminator of untethered dream logic that rivals, and may even best, the works of Lynch and beyond.
I’m talking aboutF9. And I promise you I’m not joking.
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F9is, of course, the ninth installment in theFast & Furiousfranchise. We’ve all watched the series transform from its humbly contained beginnings into explosions of broadly appealing action extravaganzas. It would be lazy, and inaccurate, to call a slide into physics-defying set pieces a slide into “surrealism.” TheMission: Impossibleseries has made a similar, ever-broadening shift without even dipping its toe into the uncontrolled musings and discursions found in theFast & Furiousseries. I’m callingF9the end of a slide into surrealism because it strips away any pretenses of conscious logic, any attempts at corporeal explanation. It’s tugging on the thread of a sweater until you find the cosmos of the human mind underneath. It’s acceptance.
In some ways,F9is positioned as a homecoming of sorts, from the refocused attention on “the family” (i.e. no moreDwayne Johnson) to the return of multiple film helmerJustin Linand his beloved character Han (Sung Kang). But homecomings are supposed to feel safe, even predictable. Nothing aboutF9could be predicted by anyone except a group of artists able to directly transmit their raw dream feed onto the screen (Lin co-wrote the film alongsideDaniel CaseyandAlfredo Botello; experimentally attuned provocateurs, one and all). Nothing about it feels safe; much like our strongest dreams, somewhat familiar symbols and signifiers are mish-mushed into a kind of paste that gets at a kind of terrifying truth you can never remember when you arise.
Cardi Bshows up in the movie for a second. Casting a charismatic, popular performer as a splashy cameo in a splashy blockbuster feels like a very safe, predictable choice. Her scene, which feels like it lasts 30 seconds and 30 years, shoves Dominic Torretto (Vin Diesel), a group of female assassins, and Leysa (Cardi) into the back of a truck. Dom seems to know this character we’ve never met, his trademark eyes-closed smile conveying a kind of sleepy, discombobulated recognition. The two engage in conversation, in which Leysa rambles out backstories about their relationship, what these other women are to her, and a significant plot point about the MacGuffin. These words are clearly meaningless to Leysa, by virtue of her frantic tempo and her lack of emotional connection. DPStephen F. Windoncovers this scene messily, while editorsGreg D’Auria,Dylan Highsmith, andKelly Matsumotochop any typically human conversation into reflections of refractions of fragments. The scene ends without any acknowledgment that it ended, the brain of the picture free to follow its whims to whatever it stumbles upon next. We never see Cardi B again. If someone told me this scene didn’t actually exist, that I blacked out and started dreaming right then and there, I would believe them.
Let’s talk about the return of Han for a moment. The actual plot mechanics of how a guy we all saw blow up in a previous film comes back alive feel as though they might come from the unconscious recesses of a pop culture fanatic (like you or me). They’re saturated in pop culture bric-a-brac, all tropes and images and impulses flowed together purposelessly. A charismatically shady spy (Kurt Russell) talks of magic tricks and new identities, a budding martial arts master (Anna Sawai) turns tragedy into combat, a neon-soaked lone-wolf snipes nameless goons from his perch. These are the starts of ideas, the first thoughts a brain has when left to wander in the realm of cinema, of genre, of storytelling. Here, these floating tendrils are presented as the substance unto itself, the purest form of human expression, uninhibited by human refinement.
But the most surreal detail of Han’s return doesn’t come from Han himself. As Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Mia (Jordana Brewster) investigate the whereabouts of our missing hero in Tokyo, they have a brief conversation about a potential signal given by Han to indicate his presence. This interaction is lensed in a lingering two-shot, paced a little too long within the edit; all the better to get sucked into the awkward, slippery, run-on sentence spoken. It’s a line, which I won’t be able to transcribe verbatim until I have the technology to replay it 10 times in a row, that feels like the attempts to describe a dream after the fact, full of the impressions of cause and effect without the actual intentions therein. It ends with the idea that a Mexican flag will show us where Han is. About two seconds after the line, the camera follows our characters' gaze onto the Mexican flag, which is literally feet away from the place where these two suddenly remembered this detail and spoke it out loud in an inhumanly hazy recitation of dream logic.
It’s the unconscious brain recognizing the raw feeling of desire, then giving the dreamer that thing immediately. It’s pure. It’s bugnuts.
Most of the sincerely strange moments of the film occur without an authorial comment — because for an author to comment on their strangeness would take a conscious decision, whichF9is blissfully uninterested in. One exception occurs, though, in a subplot I have not stopped, and likely will never stop, thinking about.
Basically,Tyrese Gibsoncomes right up to the edge of realizing he’s a character in aFast & Furiousmovie. His Roman is in the middle of realizing his own indestructibility. He’s convinced he and the family, having gone through eight films worth of ever-increasing episodes of physics-defying danger, are invincible, are superheroes. While his surrounding characters, especially Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), routinely remind him of the absurdity of this philosophical awakening, his surrounding world seems eager for this revelation, supporting his thesis at every turn.
An early setpiece finds a tankfalling directly on top of Roman. Like, I cannot stress this enough, it’s so clear that he has been smushed and killed by a falling tank, with Lin and Windon lensing the moment unambiguously. But lo and behold, Roman just kinda walks into frame from behind (?) the tank, looking dazed and confused. The visuals of the tank-falling moment absolutely do not support the conclusion that it missed him. It is never explained how he survived. What other conclusion is there? In this “am I an immortal stuck in a surrealist narrative?” subplot, the film crackles with an electric tension I’ve never seen before. It’s one of the purest depictions of lucid dreaming, of realizing you’re in a dream and beginning to consciously/unconsciously control it, I’ve ever seen (and I’m includingWaking Life, literally about lucid dreaming). I wasbeggingfor Roman to draw the conclusion.
At least, I thought I was begging. But it must’ve been a conscious thought. My unconscious mind did not want, nor need this to happen. So it didn’t, and I’m glad it didn’t. Instead, when Roman and Tej modify a janky muscle car into a goddamn rocket ship to blast into goddamn outer space, Roman stares at the cosmos of his human mind. He no longer fights the idea that his conscious mind is trapped in an unconscious limbo. He accepts it. He finds it inspiring. Both sides of his mind are fused inextricably, achieving that “surreality” Breton wrote about so many years ago. When Tyrese Gibson saw the earth and the earth reflected into his janky helmet, I wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.
If you’ve made it this far and still think I’m being in any way cheeky or campy, I implore you again, don’t. The experience of watchingF9for the first time, of being submerged deeply into a committed, sincere, and unvarnished surrealism is one that melted my conscious brain, one that made me feel like I had done nothing but dream, one that paradoxically fused “reality” onto “dreams” and vice versa. To write about this sensation is an inherent betrayal of surrealism, given that I’m awake, lucid, consciously deciding which word to use next. But to make a film is also an inherent betrayal of surrealism, given that it’s nothing but a series of conscious decisions. Somehow, someway, the makers ofF9decided not to decide, chose to express what’s unchooseable.
At one point, Dom plunges into water, drowning. His brain, firing unconscious synapses in that final sleep of death, flings him through a dream sequence of his entire life. This uncontrolled collection of “stuff” results in boundaryless vignettes of raw emotion, of experiences collapsing onto each other, of a memory’s pulsing vibe triumphing over any sense of intellectual finessing. Dom is shown watching all of this, giving us that eyes-closed smile, recognizing and absorbing what his brain’s doing without his hands at the wheel. He “awakens” from this fugue state by the image of Letty at the water’s surface, a halo-feeling light glowing around her face, the film churning a familiar face into the uncontrollably emotion-driven conclusion that they have achieved some higher plane of enlightenment.
It’s nonsense; therefore, it’s meaningful.
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