168. British film director Steven Knight’s film “Locke” (2013) based on his original script/story: Amazing script forged from what could also have been a superb one-act play with a great performance

T here is something special when a director writes his own original script. And Steven Knight’s Locke is special, if an astute viewer evaluates what it offers. The title reminds one of the 17 th century British philosophers, John Locke. John Locke postulated his ‘theory of mind’ that built the early concepts of ‘identity’ and ‘self.’ Locke felt that our minds at birth were without ideas or blank slates (or tabula rasa) and that our mind’s subsequent knowledge was derived from experience through sense perception. K night’s film Locke is about another unrelated, contemporary fictional Locke, whose full name is Ivan Locke. This Ivan Locke, the only person the viewer gets to see in the entire film, is an unusual human being. Ivan Locke is a successful technocrat—a senior civil engineer responsible for overseeing the construction of skyscrapers. Ivan Locke is a principled, devoted family man who is on the verge of laying the concrete foundation of the tallest skyscraper he...