MY HUSBAND,
THE CYBORG

"After her husband, Scott Cohen, unexpectedly decided to become a cyborg, director Susanna Cappellaro picked up her camera and started documenting." 

Say no more. I'm in.

That was my exact response when the team behind the documentary My Husband, The Cyborg sent this pitch and asked me to watch the movie ahead of its February 14 release. With a log line like that, how could I turn it down? Morbid curiosity immediately set in, and my imagination began spinning tragic tales of body modification gone wrong; a rapid loss of humanity; and an unsettling descent into madness.

My Husband, The Cyborg is filmmaker Susanna Cappellaro's directorial debut. It follows her journey as her husband, Scott Cohen, implants a vibrating magnetic device in his chest with the hope that it will unlock a sixth sense related to the earth's magnetic field and allow him to intuitively predict where he is in the world at any given moment.

Before I dive in, I'd like to praise the documentary as a whole. While not the most technically proficient film (the film was largely shot on an iPhone, and there are moments where subjects are out of focus and the background is in focus, for example) it is wildly successful at evoking strong emotion. Imperfections in craft make it feel all the more intimate, raw, real, and day-to-day. This isn't an artsy, manufactured documentary. It really is a true day-to-day documenting of events.

I'd also like to praise Maya Maffioli and Susanna Scarpa – the film's editors – for sifting through what must have been hours and hours of source material in order to pick up on emotional patterns and spin them into a coherent narrative. The result, in my opinion, does not paint director Susanna Cappellaro in a positive light, and I have to praise Cappellaro for being vulnerable and trusting her editors to tell the story that needed to be told. That's a brave commitment to vision. This documentary will inspire different reactions amongst audience members and generate discussion and debate. In that regard, I would say the film is a rousing success.

Now, the marketing materials would have us believe this movie to be some kind of real life Black Mirror episode: a story about a man who succumbs to the seductive allure of technology and blows up his life. Cappellaro herself references Black Mirror half way through the documentary, and I think that's what she was hoping she was going to get out of all this when she started filming. (Un)fortunately, that's not what came out of her years-long film project.

The movie is not at all a Black Mirror episode. Scott Cohen's journey to become a cyborg is a relatively mundane one. A device of his own invention, what Cohen "implants" in his chest is called NorthSense. Far from an Iron Man-style arc reactor, it's really just a compass that provides simple haptic feedback. When you're facing north, it vibrates. That's it. He got 4 piercings in his chest to hold the device in place – which he quickly learns is a bad idea due to pain and infection – and resorts to keeping it on his person through other more practical methods.

You see, Scott Cohen is not an idiot. The man founded The Orchard, a music distribution company, in the late 90s. At one point it was one of the fastest-growing companies in America. In 2012, Sony acquired a majority stake of 51% for roughly $100 million. They ended up buying the rest of the company in 2015 for over $200 million more.

Throughout the film, Scott repeatedly and openly states his aims. To him, NorthSense is a personal experiment. "I keep it covered up – shut up. It's nobody else's business. It's only for me." This was not a publicity stunt, and the documentary was clearly not his idea. Cohen, a vegan of more than 25 years, has some deeply personal and passionate internal values and pursues them vigorously, but never publicly. He's well spoken, but not a flashy orator. He's not terribly charismatic. He's not a rebel. In fact, coming from a culturally Jewish household, he's deeply concerned about his parents' opinion of him (a major plot point in the film). Cohen is doing this for data, and data alone.

"I want to become technology – not just use technology – so that I can have a greater sense of the world," Cohen explains.

Cohen is more focused on training his mind than modifying his body. When the body modification portion of the process proves cumbersome, he pivots and adapts. The constant haptic feedback is infinitely more valuable to him than some sort of implant. He's trying to see if he can train a human brain to sense the earth's magnetic field the way other animals do. And real science, as it turns out, takes a long time and is actually pretty tedious and boring.

"I'm doing it not because it's extreme but because it should be natural. That it should be normal and average."

From the outset, Cappellaro is deeply critical of Cohen's new journey. Early in the movie, she says: 

"One of the first differences that we found is that I am all for using the senses we have, and I don't think we use our senses... we don't really focus on things." 

Cappellaro becomes increasingly more irritated throughout the film at Cohen's boring, repetitive, and annoying behavior. She hates that he spins in a circle whenever he enters a new room. She hates the constant vibration in his chest. She hates that he can't swim anymore. And she hates that the infection from the voluntary implant prevents her from having physical closeness with her husband. Not just sex, but basic hugs.

When he shares important feelings with her, she shuts him down ruthlessly and treats his deep thoughts like they're weird, strange, and stupid. When they're with company, she openly makes fun of his unique dream – the thing he wanted to keep private. When he begins to retreat and disengage after nearly a year of being routinely mocked, she regularly grills him for "changing" and not wanting to be close to her.

Perhaps most alarmingly, her contempt for Cohen becomes so intense that she begins to disregard his physical safety and doesn't even pick up on pain cues. In one wildly awkward scene at a party, she pretends to reach out quickly to touch Cohen's infected chest and he panics and flinches, shrinking away in pain. 

He patiently reminds her that it hurts and not to touch him.

She then reaches for his chest again. 

Confused, Cohen (again) patiently reminds her that he has an infection and an implant and is in serious pain. She then proceeds to jeer at him, lunging for his chest repeatedly as a visibly aggravated (but – again – incredibly patient) Cohen bats her hand away and grits his teeth, trying not to lose his temper. If I was in a similar situation, I don't think I would have had Scott's patience for this kind of outright disrespect and reckless behavior. It's a clear violation of his personal space and jeapordizes his safety.

It was in this moment that I realized Cappellaro had become so obsessed with technology – Cohen's technology; her iPhone; and the internet that would eventually watch this story – that she had transformed into someone else. She was no longer the woman at the beginning of the film who was all for using the natural senses she had. Instead, she had lost sight of the human being right in front of her. She had lost the ability to hear him when he spoke to her. She couldn't feel him when he was in pain. She had gone mad.

At one point, Cappellaro interrogates Cohen again. She criticizes him for not being supportive of her documentary. She claims he's ungrateful that she's making a movie all about him. Rather astutely, he replies: "You're making a documentary about you. I just happen to be in it."

As critical as I am of Cappellaro in this film, I'd like to point out that this film represents select moments in time over several years and is not representative of their marriage as a whole. The couple is still married, and they still love each other. 

I'm grateful that Cappellaro committed to her vision and finished this work and released it into the world. What we get is a cautionary tale about the importance of seeing someone for who they truly are, even when major dynamics change in a relationship. It doesn't matter if it's a spouse's change in political opinion; physical ability or disability; a new religion; dietary restrictions; or becoming a cyborg. If you allow yourself to become myopic; if you lose your willingness to understand; if you constantly focus on the negative; if you treat others' deepest desires and fears and dreams with contempt and hostility; you run the risk of losing your humanity. 

That's something far scarier than becoming a cyborg.