Kelly’s The Box Pushes Moral Buttons

The film centers on the lives of Arthur (James Marsden, 27 Dresses) and Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz, My Sister's Keeper), a married couple living beyond their means in a 1979 Virginia suburbia with their bright child, Walter (Sam Oz Stone, Rock the Paint). The family has hit a financial rough patch; Arthur's application to become an astronaut has been denied by NASA, and Norma learns that the scholarship Walter receives at the elite prep school he attends will be revoked the following semester.

 

Worried about maintaining their lifestyle, Norma and Arthur begin to seek alternative means of financing it. Suddenly, as if it were the answer to their prayers, Arlington Stewart (Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon) shows up at the Lewis' doorstep with a mysterious box containing a red button and a startling proposition: if the button is pushed, the Lewis family instantly receives a payment of a $1 million, but the windfall comes at the cost of a stranger's death. 

 

This moral dilemma is the question that surrounds the whole film. Is the prospect of gaining substantial wealth worth the cost of a human life? 

 

The Box is based on a short story titled "Button, Button," which was written by the master of suspense and thrills Richard Matheson, the man responsible for the original storyline behind the box-office hit I Am Legend. The problem of converting a short story into a feature film poses many problems to a screenwriter and a director, and Kelly discussed these difficulties at length during a press conference for college journalists in which he, Diaz and Marsden participated. 

 

"The short story was something that I read when I was young," Kelly said. "It had a huge impression on me. I optioned it from Richard Matheson, and I spent many years trying to figure out how to expand it into a feature film, and here we are."

 

Though Kelly admitted he had many obstacles in creating the screenplay, the finished product brilliantly recreates the essential problem and dilemma of the short story and brings it to life in the director's characteristic cinematic style. 

 

Marsden and Diaz also had to prepare for roles that were outside of their comfort zones.

 

"All I have is me," Diaz said. "You try to understand what other people are going through even if you haven't gone through it yourself. You just try to get to feeling what you think it would feel like to be in that position, but you never really know. So as much as you want to feel that you're being somebody else, you're only working from your own toolbox and experience. So I would like to think that it's nothing of me in there, but really I can only contribute with what I have."

 

Marsden said he believes that every role attracts an actor by the little bits and pieces of his personality that he finds in the character. 

 

"For me, you wouldn't be responding to the material and to the story and to the character if there wasn't a part of you in that," Marsden said. "So there's always going to be a piece of you that is going to be inherent in your performance – or my performance, anyway."

 

Placing the storyline of The Box in the 1970s rather than in the present day is a creative, if somewhat strange, feature of the film. Kelly, however, said that he believes that this concept allows for a more realistic time frame in which the characters can operate. 

 

"It became a huge decision for me, or a necessary decision, to set it in the '70s because the concept of someone you don't know, which is inherent to the premise, doesn't really exist anymore," Kelly said. "You know with modern kind of social networking sites and Google satellite maps and all of the surveillance technology that we have today, I realized that if I set it in present day, I was going to have to write that scene where Norma sits down and Googles the name Arlington Steward."

 

Although the film is set several decades ago, the plot and central dilemma are issues that everyone today can understand and grapple with in these tough economic times.

 

"I think looking at our economic crisis right now, the film, I hope, feels like it resonates with the audience of today despite the fact that it's set in 1976," said Kelly. "These are things that we can identify with, and that we can see and realize that we all are trying to live a better life and to achieve a better life, but it's ultimately all about the things that we strive to possess and this lifestyle that we want to achieve."

 

Perhaps the most stunning aspect of the film is the director's exquisite ability to mold such an interesting and morally troubling storyline that tries to shake the inner consciousness of everyone in the theater. The Box does more than just propose a dilemma; it drags the viewers into the problem and places the button in their own hands, asking them to make the decision for themselves. 

 

This is the brand of filmmaking that we have come to anticipate from Kelly, and viewers should expect nothing less in his future cinematic endeavors.