Mr. Robot

Elliot’s gift — or curse — lies in the fragmentation of his inner world into several shelters. From time to time, his disorder seizes control of his body and hands it over to other “personas”, including a distorted image of his father, his inner child, or his mother. At the command of unseen forces, these personalities in his troubled mind replace one another, and with them, Elliot’s behavior becomes distorted as well.

The neurotic, drug-addled hacker speaks directly to the viewer — calling them a friend, gazing trustfully into the camera, and blatantly lying. Yet it is precisely this kind of lying that gives the narrative coherence and emotional honesty. The protagonist quite literally edits a home chronicle out of fragmented memories and current events, embellishing the raw material for greater dramatic effect.

Even a novice director knows that an audiovisual narrative must move the audience — evoke empathy or disgust. To stir at least negative emotions, for they are better than plain emptiness. In “Mr. Robot”, Elliot serves as both director and editor, but he pays special attention to editing, reinventing the very text of reality.

The protagonist can always return to the past if he recalls an episode from childhood. Or he might show the same situation several times, each with variations. Better yet — he’ll splice his favorite TV show into the story and drift off into a musical. He manipulates the frames of his life as he pleases, changing the timing, adjusting the tone, or hiding entire scenes from his friend–overseer.

Clarifying his material on the fly, Elliot combines characters like toys scattered across the floor. These figures are deep personalities with their own virtues and flaws, and additional drama is built around them. But as soon as the silent observer grows accustomed to them, they are cruelly swept off the board.

As entire seasons pass by, Elliot shifts his focus from exploration and editing to an obsession with reinventing the past. He strives not merely to change everything he once did, but to rewrite his very essence and his memories of others — to hack and reprogram from scratch the ideas of Sam Esmail, the show’s own creator.

At first, the creator and his character work together, guiding the observer’s attention and pursuing a common goal — to tell the story so convincingly that no one notices the deception. In other words, Sam Esmail and Elliot recreate the “realistic” magic of cinema with smoke, mirrors, and editing.

But the more time the director and his fictional editor spend together, the more apparent their separation becomes. Over time, Elliot becomes aware of his own influence and gains confidence that he can step beyond the boundaries set by Sam Esmail and the geometric confines of the television screen.

Looking beyond the edge, he realizes that his life depends on the viewer. The moment the viewer looks away, the hacker-editor ceases to exist. The narrative brings Sam Esmail himself into the story, who, with regret, utters the phrase: “Goodbye, friend”, — and administers a fatal injection. Now the protagonist is free from all constraints. Then the observer, too, is asked to leave — so the story may come to an end.

Editing, like text revision, is an iterative process. When returning to already assembled or written material, one can always stumble upon rough spots, mistakes, and gaps in meaning. In such cases, the author sits down to work again — to take a fresh look, reduce the level of chaos in the rough cut, and bring the result closer to the original vision.