In Locke, writer/director Steven Knight’s compelling tour de force, there are four central metaphors.
(1) Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy), who’s driving through the night to London, is a Construction Manager. Literally, he’s to supervise the pour the next morning for a massive concrete construction. But he has other constructions to manage. He has chosen to skip that job in order to attend the birth of a baby from his one-night stand with Bethan (Olivia Colman), a plain, older woman with whom he once briefly worked. He also has to manage his marriage. His wife Katrina (Ruth Wilson) on news of that infidelity bans him from home. He has to deal with their two sons’ concerns, first with the televised soccer game he was to share, then with their sense of their broken family. Most essentially, he has to manage himself, the son (i.e., construction) of a philandering hippie father who abandoned him before birth. He addresses his dead father through the rear-view mirror. Ivan’s virtuous choices here prove him nothing like his father. Far from a philanderer, Ivan’s one infidelity was when after two bottles of wine he tried to give the lonely Bethan “her last chance of happiness.”
(2) Ivan creates both in concrete and in flesh. His embittered wife claims he loved his buildings more than his family. Certainly he holds himself in fierce responsibility for both. He is passionate about concrete. “It’s delicate as blood.” Even after Ivan is fired he takes every step to ensure the pour will succeed, delicately handling his colleague Gareth (Ben Daniels) and his substitute, a drunken Donal (Andrew Scott). But if concrete is delicate as blood, the flesh is a bond like concrete. That’s why Ivan abandons everything else to attend the labour of a woman he barely knows. The child is his “fault,” his responsibility. Concrete or flesh, both need to be strong but both can be flawed. While a concrete construction may not survive a fault the flesh can recover. As Ivan’s son describes the spectacular goal, the scorer Crawford, long considered “a donkey,” ran a solo that parallels Ivan’s drive. Perhaps Ivan was an ass with Bethan but on this drive he scores because at great risk he does what he recognizes he should — not to be like his father..
(3) The film’s technical challenge — showing us only the hero — establishes the isolated human. We see Ivan, what he sees, where he is, but everyone else we only hear; we don’t see them. Of course no-one can be isolated. As per John Donne, “No man is an island.” Not even on the motorway. Or the off-ramp to which Ivan ultimately repairs to hear his new child’s wail. The shots of vehicles in the night, their headlights abstracted into lily pads floating on the darkness, establish the society of isolates. As his relationships crumble Ivan feels reduced to just himself and his car. But this dramatically isolated figure is hardly by himself. Far from it, is the point of the narrative strategy. Ivan has all kinds of connections to other people, not least to the thousands who would be endangered if the mammoth concrete building proved imperfectly based. Then there are the people on his phone.
(4) Those voices represent Ivan’s lifelines, his connections beyond himself. Like the baby’s umbilical cord around its throat “The lifeline is a noose.” His father’s bad example compels Ivan to attend his bastard’s birth at whatever cost. He owes the unknown Bethan what comfort and support he can provide. He owes his family whatever they will allow him to give. He owes the concrete project his care. From each of these lifelines he has drawn life and purpose. Each is now exerting a strangling pressure on him.
The license on Locke’s Mercedes starts with Adio. It’s an incomplete Spanish goodbye and Portuguese for “I postpone.” Both fit. Ivan gets his surname from John Locke, the 17th Century British empirical philosopher whose best known works dealt with the limits on human understanding and the importance of basing government on a social contract. There are those strangling lifelines again.
(1) Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy), who’s driving through the night to London, is a Construction Manager. Literally, he’s to supervise the pour the next morning for a massive concrete construction. But he has other constructions to manage. He has chosen to skip that job in order to attend the birth of a baby from his one-night stand with Bethan (Olivia Colman), a plain, older woman with whom he once briefly worked. He also has to manage his marriage. His wife Katrina (Ruth Wilson) on news of that infidelity bans him from home. He has to deal with their two sons’ concerns, first with the televised soccer game he was to share, then with their sense of their broken family. Most essentially, he has to manage himself, the son (i.e., construction) of a philandering hippie father who abandoned him before birth. He addresses his dead father through the rear-view mirror. Ivan’s virtuous choices here prove him nothing like his father. Far from a philanderer, Ivan’s one infidelity was when after two bottles of wine he tried to give the lonely Bethan “her last chance of happiness.”
(2) Ivan creates both in concrete and in flesh. His embittered wife claims he loved his buildings more than his family. Certainly he holds himself in fierce responsibility for both. He is passionate about concrete. “It’s delicate as blood.” Even after Ivan is fired he takes every step to ensure the pour will succeed, delicately handling his colleague Gareth (Ben Daniels) and his substitute, a drunken Donal (Andrew Scott). But if concrete is delicate as blood, the flesh is a bond like concrete. That’s why Ivan abandons everything else to attend the labour of a woman he barely knows. The child is his “fault,” his responsibility. Concrete or flesh, both need to be strong but both can be flawed. While a concrete construction may not survive a fault the flesh can recover. As Ivan’s son describes the spectacular goal, the scorer Crawford, long considered “a donkey,” ran a solo that parallels Ivan’s drive. Perhaps Ivan was an ass with Bethan but on this drive he scores because at great risk he does what he recognizes he should — not to be like his father..
(3) The film’s technical challenge — showing us only the hero — establishes the isolated human. We see Ivan, what he sees, where he is, but everyone else we only hear; we don’t see them. Of course no-one can be isolated. As per John Donne, “No man is an island.” Not even on the motorway. Or the off-ramp to which Ivan ultimately repairs to hear his new child’s wail. The shots of vehicles in the night, their headlights abstracted into lily pads floating on the darkness, establish the society of isolates. As his relationships crumble Ivan feels reduced to just himself and his car. But this dramatically isolated figure is hardly by himself. Far from it, is the point of the narrative strategy. Ivan has all kinds of connections to other people, not least to the thousands who would be endangered if the mammoth concrete building proved imperfectly based. Then there are the people on his phone.
(4) Those voices represent Ivan’s lifelines, his connections beyond himself. Like the baby’s umbilical cord around its throat “The lifeline is a noose.” His father’s bad example compels Ivan to attend his bastard’s birth at whatever cost. He owes the unknown Bethan what comfort and support he can provide. He owes his family whatever they will allow him to give. He owes the concrete project his care. From each of these lifelines he has drawn life and purpose. Each is now exerting a strangling pressure on him.
The license on Locke’s Mercedes starts with Adio. It’s an incomplete Spanish goodbye and Portuguese for “I postpone.” Both fit. Ivan gets his surname from John Locke, the 17th Century British empirical philosopher whose best known works dealt with the limits on human understanding and the importance of basing government on a social contract. There are those strangling lifelines again.
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