“Inside” (2023) is about Nemo (Willem Dafoe), an art thief, who gets trapped in a Manhattan penthouse when the plan goes sideways. Greek director Vasilllis Katsoupis makes his fictional feature film debut, and writer Ben Hopkins helped flesh out Katsoupis’ idea, but Dafoe improvised the entire film in chronological order.

I was planning to see “Inside” before I got the assignment because Katsoupis’ provocative idea of setting up a survival adventure film inside an apartment in one of the most crowded cities ever is brilliant. An apartment is meant to be habitable, but in this context, Nemo may as well be in the middle of the ocean on a sinking ship. In 2000, most of us were trapped in our apartments and found it challenging or blissful, but imagine not having running water, a dwindling supply of food, which is a generous use of the word considering that Nemo finds rotting foods and condiments, and wildly fluctuating temperatures. His only source of contact is with a pigeon and fish or with people through the flat screen television or a huge wooden door, but they are oblivious to his presence.

The tension between his location, a luxurious, minimalist, technological cutting-edge apartment with people outside, and the contradiction of his predicament, isolation with no way of getting out or getting things in, provides the suspense. Nemo is relatable and aspirational in the way that he handles the situation and survives, but it also can be a frustrating movie because of the story’s contradictions. There is also the tension of wanting to be caught as a criminal only to be placed in a different kind of prison. Which prison would be preferable for Nemo: this apartment or a jail?

Complaints about “Inside” seem to fall into a couple of categories: disbelief that no one discovers Nemo and the way that Nemo uses the art. I love a bleak, hopeless movie so I am happy that no one finds him even though it strains disbelief. I can buy it because if the penthouse is designed to be soundproof and climate controlled, but the controls malfunctioned, then Nemo’s only hope was the return of the owner. If the owner is that wealthy and famous, he does not have one house and may not return to the penthouse except for a couple of days per year at most. There should be someone who comes by to feed the fish. I do not think that this film is literal, which explains why these points were not issues for me. 

Nemo is an unreliable narrator, and his perception should not be trusted. By watching how he perceives his environment, the audience is learning about Nemo, not his surroundings, so if the logic does not work, blame Nemo’s flawed human mind. He believes that he treasures art above everything, but the way that he interacts with art contradicts his claim. I was hoping that Dafoe would turn to the camera and say, “I’m something of an artist myself.” Nemo lies to himself about his values and his actual self. He only relates to art in how useful it is to him thus his profession. He does not wear gloves or treat things with care. He sacks the place without hesitation from the first moment that he realizes that he is trapped. It is not a gradual unravelling and a sacrifice of preciousness to survive. He starts hacking away at that ornate, thick wooden door. For me the most careless moment was how he just walks across the pool of water without hesitation. I would not do that because I would not want to be wet, track water on the floor or would try to keep it clean for as long as possible because I would want the space that I am stuck in to be as clean as possible.

“Inside” feels like a nightmare wish fulfillment—achieving the high life and only having art, no people. Nemo’s actions indicate that he wants money, and everyone must make a living, but he claims that he would save art. He gets the lifestyle that he claims to want, but it is a one-way road to death. Part of the kitchen is locked, but there is nothing of value inside except dog food and a few other items. The image of eating caviar on moldy bread is just one of many sardonic moments of making himself at home in a lifestyle that is not nourishing. Much of what Nemo imagines that he wants is not what he needs. It evokes the phrase “white sepulcre”-a gorgeous tomb. Nemo gets to make that choice—what would he save in a fire, and he forgot to include himself. It is a tragedy. At some elusive point, he has died, and we are just watching the echo in his mind until he is no longer visible on screen.

I wish that I was more familiar with the artists and the work featured in “Inside.” I would welcome a film analysis from someone who is and how it enhances the plot. Leonardo Bigazzi curated the art featured in this film and are the only true costars whom Dafoe interacts with. Bigazzi is a curator at the Fondazione In Between Art Film. The target of the heist was Egon Schiele’s work, but twenty-four other artists have their work or replicas appear. There is an enormous canvas of a black man in overalls relaxing at the lower right edge on a golden-brown geometric shape, but most of the canvas is blue with the same golden brown as diagonal curved lines as if floating on the ocean. There is a photograph of aircraft passenger stairs crowded with brown skinned men looking at the camera, but with no plane to board. There is a photograph of the apartment owner (Gene Bervoets) next to his daughter (Aca von Voigt) and a huge hound inside the same home that Nemo is trapped in. There is no woman in the portrait, and the owner appears much older than the father of a child of that age would be. The home shows no traces of a child living there. They look blankly at the camera and stand far apart. There are paperweights of moldy oranges. The art in this home is cold, isolationist. The art becomes indifferent witnesses to Nemo’s predicament. In contrast, the hidden Polaroids reflect a human side to the owner missing in the décor as if being human was pornographic.

If my overactive, horror loving imagination takes control, I would theorize that Nemo, encased in glass and steel, has become the art, an installation, performance art, especially considering the isolationist theme of the art work, and perhaps the home is working as it is designed. By the end, Nemo starts making his own art, an altar to the screws that he loosens in the ceiling, that appears to echo the symmetry of a painting with a white canvas and green dots. The owner is an architect based on the Pritzker medal, and he may have designed that building for this precise purpose. While “Inside” is a character study about a man trying to survive, the space reflects the character of the absent character, the homeowner. Is Nemo’s desperation a feature, not a flaw?

Without Dafoe, “Inside” would not work. His existence is a work of art, and no one else could make people sign up for a one location, one man show for 1 hour 45 minutes. If you are a fan, he is fascinating to watch unravel.