Two weeks ago U.S. President Barack Obama admitted in bizarrely colloquial terms that “we tortured some folks.” Rumours of the CIA’s illegal treatment of al-Qaida captives have long abounded but Obama’s statement as Al Jazeera put it represented “some of his most expansive comments to date” on the subject. Incidentally it also hurled Stress Position into a realm of phenomenal cultural significance.
The disturbing premise of Stress Position initially comes off as straightforward. Two close friends bet each other $10000 that they can psychologically torture one another into submission. They’ll take turns; one will be trapped in a warehouse while the other orchestrates the persecution. There’s three rules to the contest: no permanent physical damage no severe pain and nothing illegal. But Stress Position isn’t just another torture porn debacle.
That’s because it was actually real. A.J. Bond — the Vancouver-based director writer and actor — is friends with co-star David Amito. Neither knew what the other was going to inflict; the antagonism would be entirely real.
“I was looking for a low-budget idea that I could work on and began to research the American ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques” says Bond. “Once Dave and I started discussing what it would be like to be tortured it very quickly polarized into this competitive a little bit obnoxiously entitled talk about who could survive. That’s when this almost reality TV kernel began: two white guys who want to get tortured.”
One of the more notable elements of the film aside from the unorthodox premise is Amy Belling’s crisp cinematography; every shot within the sterile Kubrick-honouring set was precisely framed converging with Dan Werb’s unnerving drone-ish soundtrack to create a profoundly cramped experience for the viewer. And while the torture sequences were all surprises there were moments when they’d be re-shot for the best angles and frames.
“That’s where the filmmaking-as-torture thing comes in” says Bond. “Not only did we really torture Dave for this contest but in the process of repeating takes over and over we tortured him even further and he was complicit with that torture in a weird way. We really lost track of what was real in the edits because I honestly can’t remember whether we used the first real take or the contrived re-creation in the second take.”
It’s that sense of reality-bending that keeps Stress Position cemented in the mind even days after viewing. During the 21 consecutive days of filming in the North Vancouver warehouse Amito actually began to believe that Bond was evil and would set traps around the set when he was resting; Bond notes that it took some time to patch that up. In fact when it came to Amito’s turn to be the torturer he refused forcing Bond to script his own suffering.
“It was like me torturing myself literally in ways that would be tough for me to handle” says Bond. “That part of the torture was a little bit more contrived but with Dave we really did try to surprise him with things. Because it was Dave — and I didn’t want to waterboard Dave — I thought I would come up with tortures that don’t seem like torture at first like tickling or kissing or ways to get under his skin.”
Stress Position is unquestionably a chilling view bringing up — along with the overt theme of torture — questions about oppression the buried subconscious and filmmaking. It’s a solid sign of the film’s brilliant derangement that Bond’s next project Wisteria about a woman lost in the wilderness of Northern Canada while being followed by a creepy kid is described by him as more “enjoyable” to watch.
