NEW YORK — Some people find faith. Others seek solace in family, friends, or Oprah Winfrey. But when writer-director Benjamin Dickinson faced a self-described “series of spiritual crises,’’ he turned to his passion, filmmaking, to exorcise his demons — a decision that he says, half-jokingly, amounts to “a form of very expensive therapy.’’
In 2008, Dickinson had become worn-down from the daily grind of directing television commercials and corporate projects to fund his creative ambitions. At a crossroads, he fled New York City to spend several months with an older aunt and uncle, both academics, at their home in Berkeley. There, he wrote the screenplay for his debut feature, “First Winter,’’ a post-apocalyptic allegory about the crumbling of modern civilization.
His follow-up film, “Creative Control,’’ which opens in Boston on Friday, was inspired by an existential crisis Dickinson went through several years ago spurred by a tumultuous breakup. He and his ex-girlfriend had lived together, and the experience was particularly painful.
“It’s what would have been a divorce a generation ago,’’ he says, leaning back in his chair at the Manhattan offices of Magnolia Pictures, on a recent afternoon.
The alienating effects of technology felt especially potent for Dickinson while navigating the rupture of his relationship. He got his first iPhone in 2008, just a few months after it had been introduced. “Cut to four years later, and the use of it has become ubiquitous in my life,’’ he says. “And a lot of that breakup was negotiated over text message. I mean, the important moments happened in person. But text messaging is such a facile way to be cruel and hurtful. You can say things over text message that you could never say in person when you’re looking at the person across the room. So that was a new experience.’’
The ways that increasingly rapid technological advances are altering society intersected with Dickinson’s breakup and his return to working as a director of commercials for clients like Google, Ford, and BMW. After burning through the savings he made on corporate jobs to finance his first feature, Dickinson once again found himself “completely broke’’ and needing to make money.
“I think the film was born of frustration and the pain of the breakup, and then working in advertising. That environment can be very toxic for me. And all of it kind of tied together with the technological anxiety.’’
Set in the near future and shot in widescreen black-and-white, “Creative Control’’ captured the Special Jury Prize for Visual Excellence at South by Southwest last year. The film centers on tech-addled, hipster ad exec David (played by Dickinson himself) and his psychological unraveling after he’s tasked with developing a marketing campaign for a pair of high-tech augmented-reality eyeglasses — a kind of advanced version of Google Glass.
As his relationship with his yoga instructor girlfriend Juliette (Nora Zehetner) stagnates, David finds himself drawn to transfixing co-worker Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen), who’s dating his fashion photographer best friend Wim (Dan Gill). At first, Sophie responds drunkenly to David’s romantic flirtations. But using the Augmenta prototype’s image-capture features, David creates a life-like simulation of Sophie that sends him down the rabbit hole of sexual and romantic illusion. As David’s obsession with Sophie spirals out of control, the line between reality and his constructed fantasy blurs and threatens to disintegrate.
The film functions as a fable exploring the isolating effects of the digital world, in which people hide behind screens and online personas. And after his own relationship split apart, Dickinson also began to see how desire is abstracted and commodified.
“I realized how much of desire is really constructed, as opposed to emerging from an actual biological drive,’’ he says. “I started thinking, well, that’s kind of how pornography works and actually how Instagram and these dating sites work.’’
Considering the personal inspirations for the film, how closely aligned is David to Dickinson’s own personality? The filmmaker agrees that “David emerged from me just exaggerating all my worst qualities and removing any sense of spiritual dimension,’’ he says. “If I really had all 100 percent of my self worth tied up in status and work, I would be a drug addict like David, absolutely.’’
The film has a wry sense of humor and sharply skewers some of the worst excesses and preoccupations of the Brooklyn hipster. Still, the characters are meant to be taken seriously. “You’re invited to laugh at them,’’ Dickinson says. “But I think their problems are familiar enough that it doesn’t seem like we’re completely at the zoo.’’
As part of the marketing campaign for the Augmented Reality eyeglasses, David enlists the help of techno-shaman visionary Reggie Watts, played by the experimental musician, stand-up comedian and “Late Late Show’’ bandleader himself, to show the company the power of its glasses in the hands of a creative genius. In a phone interview, Watts admits that his character is a heightened version of his own “weirdo-artist’’ personality.
Dickinson had directed several music videos for Watts, and the two have been friends and collaborators since. For Watts, “Creative Control’’ “shines a light on a subject in a way that I haven’t seen yet, which is how social technology can affect personal behavior. We get to see someone’s private associations with the technology and how it influences him and affects his already addictive nature and his troubled relationship with his girlfriend.’’
Dickinson credits Michelangelo Antonioni’s ’60s trilogy “L’Avventura,’’ “La Notte,’’ and “L’Eclisse’’ as a key inspiration for his film’s preoccupations with the loneliness and anxiety of modern life. Indeed, David and Juliette’s antiseptic glass-walled condo seems to underscore and even enhance their growing tension and alienation from each other. “There’s these huge glass high-rises going up all over Brooklyn. What does that mean to live in a glass case? It’s like you’re on display. It’s a public display of wealth. But it’s also the opposite of the Brooklyn brand, which is all about do-it-yourself products and art and locally sourced food.’’
So did making “Creative Control’’ turn out to be good therapy for Dickinson’s breakup-induced spiritual crisis? “It’s been extremely painful,’’ he responds, cracking a smile. “But yes, it’s also been great therapy. And someone else paid for it, which is awesome!’’
Christopher Wallenberg can be reached at chriswallenberg@gmail.com.
