The Bourne Identity: Why Action Films Need Real Characters
On Jason Bourne and the importance of identity
With the recent release of The Beekeeper (2024), it became starkly apparent how important character is for an action film; without caring about someone, there exists no sense of peril. Tension evaporates when we do not identify with our protagonist. This has become a prevalent issue of the genre: character development is frequently sacrificed for the sake of more action. Because of this, one of the predominant weaknesses in bad action films is that neither time nor attention is dedicated to developing character.
There are many superlative action movies which succeed particularly due to the devotion to character. Despite all the pulse-pounding action, The Raid 2 (2014) is really a story about a cop trying to survive undercover so he can return to his family. Seven Samurai (1954) thrills, not because of lavish set pieces or well-choreographed action, but because we deeply care about the seven men who put their lives on the line for the greater good. Meanwhile, Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) resonates as we come to love the relationship between a boy and his cyborg in a frightening, uncertain world.
Outlining how a protagonist will develop over the course of a narrative is arguably the most important job of a writer; without change, the audience will probably feel unfulfilled. While there are exceptions to this, delineating how, where, and why a person undergoes an element of personal transformation is instrumental to a story’s dramatic arc – even in an action movie.
This is perhaps best exemplified in The Bourne Identity (2002). An enigmatic American, whose bullet-ridden body is rescued from out of the Mediterranean Sea, has no memory of who he is. Unfortunately for him, he soon discovers that he is no ordinary man – his past is following him. Hans-Georg Gadamer once said that: “History does not belong to us, but we belong to it.” This very well could have been taken as the thesis for the film; how is our sense of self defined by our past?
As the title suggests, the first installment in the Bourne franchise has a preoccupation with identity, and while the film features a number of exhilarating action scenes, the movie itself is surprisingly meditative in tone. For large portions of the story, we sit with Jason as he struggles to piece together his past. Exploration of the narrative’s themes such as memory and trauma become the priority of director Doug Liman. Perhaps most importantly, character dictates plot, not the other way around. As a result, the journey on which we embark with Jason is never aimless; rather, it becomes a purposeful mission for our protagonist to better understand himself.
From the first moment we meet Jason Bourne, we can see that he is a troubled character. There is a panicked, febrile desire to understand who he is. The possibility that his memory will never return to him terrifies him. Unfortunately for Jason, he doesn’t have a lot of time to work it out: he is being hunted. As his journey through the entire movie is essentially a process of identity formation, employing a psychoanalytic reading of the story illuminates his central interior conflict.
Freud proposed a tripartite split of human consciousness: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id represents our instincts and primitive urges, while our superego acts as our sense of ethics, our moral compass which helps to integrate our id in socially acceptable ways. To mediate between these two mind processes, we have our ego. The ego provides us with an understanding of our behaviour: through knowledge of our personal history, we can connect past events to our present actions and future deeds, coalescing them all into one narrative of who we are. By being rooted in the memory of ourselves, our ego acts as a connective piece of our mind that explains our thought processes and our subsequent undertakings. In other words, our ego helps us answer the question: why do I do what I do?
Freud’s Iceberg Model of the Mind delineated where these mind processes (roughly) start and stop. According to this model, our ego dominates our conscious mind along with part of our super-ego. The other half of our super-ego exists within our unconscious mind, along with the entirety of our id.
Bourne’s confusion stems from the fact he is almost entirely functioning on id and a diffuse superego. His ego, generally the loudest part of one’s mind, has become completely erased. For this reason, he doesn’t understand why he assaults police officers, scans a building for emergency exits, or memorises the license plates of cars outside a restaurant. He is a high-functioning machine without knowing what he is programmed for, a weapon that has become self-aware. His super-ego informs him that what he is doing is wrong, but his id uncages itself without permission. This creates a complex, three-dimensional protagonist: he acts out his id like a villain, yet experiences the guilt and moral dilemmas of the hero. If he is ever to reform his personality and resolve his existential crisis, he needs to discover his past.
This journey of self-discovery can also be seen to mirror psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s approach to identity development. He writes on the crisis that is incurred by identity diffusion, a state in which a person does not possess or has not developed a meaningful sense of identity. Normally, this is a state experienced by adolescents: in the throes of teenage angst and battling social pressures from both peers and adults, it is a period of intense emotional conflict and anxiety. However, as Jason Bourne has had his ego involuntarily expunged, he has been thrown back into this state of existential uncertainty: it is not only the question “Who am I?” but also “Who was I?” and “Who will I become?”
This brings us to Erikson’s concepts of identity moratorium and foreclosure. Identity moratorium is described as the stage of a person’s active search for identity; in this respect, the entire plot of the film could be described as Jason’s identity moratorium. Once this journey is completed, it results in identity achievement. However, a danger in this process is that of identity foreclosure: finishing this search too soon. This almost happens a couple of times in The Bourne Identity: horrified by what he has discovered of his past, Bourne wishes to forget everything he has learned: “I don’t care anymore, I don’t want to know who I am.” He is also prescribed an identity by his intelligence agency superiors: “You are U.S. government property.” He must both complete his journey of self-discovery and reject the imposed identities put on him by others.
In this, director Doug Liman ensures that the action of the film is a direct result of a character’s desire for growth and enlightenment. There isn’t really a MacGuffin – everything in the plot is spurred on by his backstory and his intent to uncover the secrets of his past. It is for this reason that all of the action feels meaningful and, as a result, incredibly thrilling: everyone tasked with eliminating him is essentially an obstacle to his character development, one he must overcome with fists, pens, and an old Mini Cooper.
Liman integrates other thematic interests into Bourne’s search for identity as well. Most notably, this includes the past and our memory; indeed, both are intimately connected to our understanding of who we are. As George Santayana once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This adage is frequently misunderstood to be commenting on our knowledge and remembrance of historical atrocities, but Santayana is instead providing edification on how personal progress is made: interior development can only be obtained by understanding our past, along with an impression of what other options are open to us in the future. This describes the culmination of Bourne’s character arc fairly aptly.
The themes are also explored symbolically in a way few action films do. Particularly, in every film of the original Bourne trilogy, there is a shot of Jason looking into the mirror. Mirrors have often been understood as symbolic of a split psyche, providing insight into the internal turmoil of a tormented character. This is best exemplified in The Bourne Supremacy (2004) when Jason returns to the hotel room where he committed his first assassination: as he looks into the bathroom mirror, the angle presents two reflections, commenting on the plurality of selves that exist within us – how can he ever truly know who he is?
Indeed, the very first shot of the rebooted franchise showcases Bourne lying in the Mediterranean Sea, an obscured image of a man cast adrift. It is emblematic of how his identity has become vague and concealed, how his sense of self is lost somewhere in the vast reaches of his mind, and the stormy waters he will have to traverse if he is ever to find himself again.
All of this character development and thematic exploration have a great impact on the amount of emotion we have for the protagonist. By involving us in his search for self, the action is thrilling, and enriching, but poignant as well. In this, The Bourne Identity not only provides an interesting perspective on how identity becomes interrelated with memory and trauma but also how such a bedrock of character is a fundamental aspect of creating meaningful action.
