Based on Raymond Carver’s short story “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?”, filmmaker Henry Chastain’s The Idea tells a cautionary tale about personal privacy and the entitlement to know the exact details of another person’s life.
For months, a woman (Melora Walters) has kept the same nightly routine, including one that is highly unusual. She sits in her bedroom, eyes glued to their next-door neighbor’s window, waiting for the show to start. Soon her husband (Dar Dixon) arrives for the show. Right on cue, their neighbor steps out of his house in his goofy getup and creeps up to that very same window. Then all three of them watch a woman inside get undressed. She has no clue she’s playing to a full house. When she’s done, the man slips back inside as if nothing happened.
The neighbor creeps across his yard at night toward a glowing window in The Idea.
“For months, a woman has kept the same nightly routine, and it’s a highly unusual one.”
With the show over, the couple wonders out loud why they keep doing this. The wife swears that one of these days she’ll tell that woman exactly what she thinks of her. But the lights across the street click off, and the two go back to the rest of their night. After dinner, she finds her home crawling with ants. Yes, the ants are important to the story.
I love odd little tales with a message that sneaks up on you once the credits start to roll. The Idea is a bit of a mystery box. My mind starts with “What is happening?” “This looks interesting.” “Oh, my God.” Then “What? and, at the end, “I get it.”
The tale is inspired by the need people have to follow a complete stranger’s life on social media and become so engrossed that we demand to know everything that is going on. The fun in film is just watching a story play out and chewing on it for a while.
"…Then all three of them watch the woman inside get undressed."
