Number 37 | SXSW 2018 Film Review

Rear Window is my favorite movie of all-time. For all of the iterations of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Tarantino, there is still only the one film that forever remains the greatest. If you asked me to explain why, it could take hours. There is the nuanced character work from the vaguely sexist James Stewart and demure Grace Kelly, the “insanely bombastic before dropping to a subtle whisper” of a score by Franz Waxman, and finally there is the brilliantly executed direction of Alfred Hitchcock which produced one of the most exciting thrillers ever…without once having our lead character venture outside. I say all of that to explain that when a filmmaker claims their film “evokes Rear Window”, as South African filmmaker Nosipho Dumisa’s Number 37 asserts, they have a lot to live up to in my book.

Randal Hendricks (Irshaad Ally) is not a very clever thug. The opening minutes of Number 37 paint the picture vividly as he wrestles with his own common sense and ultimately elects to borrow from Emmie, a shady loan shark (Danny Ross), and then gets in sideways with a few gangsters who decide to break his back for retribution. And that’s just the opening few minutes.

With Randal paralyzed and relegated to a wheelchair while holed up in his broken down apartment deep in the dangerous side of Cape Town, his girlfriend Pam (Monique Rockman) gifts him a pair of binoculars to monitor the locals with. Besides his buddy Warren (who obviously carries a torch for Pam), we have a preacher and a vicious criminal named Lawyer (David Manuel). When Randal notices Lawyer has a bag of cash waiting to be snatched in his apartment, he uses his lady and buddy to take a few chances and make off the score of the century. All while never leaving the comfort of his own apartment.

Where Hitchcock offered a relatively safe aesthetic for our heroes, Nosipho Dumisa’s script is an unforgiving one. In fact, there are truly no heroes within. Randal isn’t some crippled do-gooder just trying to bring down Thorwald’s murdering ass. He wants the cash. Partly to pay his debt to Emmie, but mostly to prove to himself that he is as clever as he thinks he is. The problem is, he’s really not.

And therein lies the genius in Dumisa’s stab at Rear Window. While it would be fairly easy to simply replicate the setup of that film and just transfer the action to South Africa, Dumisa wisely elects to play off of fan expectations and deliver a movie that is willing to take more than a few chances. As both the tension and Randal’s desperate plots amp up, it becomes more and more difficult to ascertain who we really should be rooting for. Even Pam, the sole innocent in all of this, ultimately careens down a path a rational person would knowingly avoid at all costs.

And that’s the beauty of Number 37. These aren’t rational people, as most humans are not. As a species, we often tend to make illogical and selfish mistakes, and here it costs dearly. This is a film you should walk into with as little information possible, and just allow the savagery and intelligence to swallow you whole. Nosipho Dumisa has paid tribute to a classic, while simultaneously building something completely her own. Hitchcock would be proud.