Rumours (2024)

December 16, 2024 9:15 PM

The leaders of seven wealthy democracies get lost in the woods while drafting a statement on a global crisis, facing danger as they attempt to find their way out.
posted by TheophileEscargot (9 comments total)

Mildly amusing but it seemed like pretty weak satire. The G7 leaders are depicted as well-intentioned but disconnected and in love with their own vapid words. In a world of Donald Trump and Giorgia Meloni they seem to be implausibly nice rather than satisfyingly exaggerated.

I have a vague theory that the best satire uses a magnifying glass not a telescope. That is, you can best satirize things that you're close to, things that you want to love. George Orwell's "Animal Farm" is a great satire because of his own sense of betrayal, and through living through a failed revolution. Ralph Ellison's satire of The Brotherhood in Invisible Man is similar: he intimately knows the reality of what he's satirizing. It's hard to effectively satirize something distant from your own experience. This feels like telescope satire: it's intellectual chuckling not slow burning rage.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:16 PM on December 16, 2024 [4 favorites]

I feel like the word "absurdist" should come up somewhere when talking about this movie. This was genuinely absurdist, in a way that I was kind of shocked to find in a major motion picture. Like, how did this get produced and released with this script?

I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, but you do need to be prepared for a decidedly non-standard movie. There is no explanation for anything. Plot line are proposed and abandoned. The idea that these characters are a metaphor for national character is brought up and then discarded. There's many long minutes of patter about the drafting of a nebulous speech. Long speeches are made with nebulous meaning. There's a sort of constant, slow froth of inane action, discussion, and digression.

I'm not saying this is a bad movie, and there's several little bits of pleasing humor in there. But I thought it was much more an experimental tone piece than the linear comedy that the trailer makes it out to be.
posted by Balna Watya at 11:20 PM on December 16, 2024 [1 favorite]

Good point, I've tagged it as "absurdist" now. I think maybe I would have liked it more knowing that going in. I kept waiting for some kind of plot to develop: for them to all turn into bog people, or the bog people to be a menace, or the bog people to be a solution to the crisis, or them to start getting picked off one by one. But there isn't really a plot at all.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:39 PM on December 16, 2024

Guy Maddin film in 'Absurdist' shocker!

From the comments here I assume people haven't seen much of his past work over the last decades (maybe someone should add a guymaddin tag to the post? There are Fanfare threads for The Forbidden Room and My Winnipeg, at least... haven't seen this one yet but the trailer made it seem quite a bit more mainstream than his usual!
posted by remembrancer at 5:34 AM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]

Charles Dance playing a US president and refusing to even attempt an American accent is a weird choice.

I watched half of this on vacation and forgot about it. I should finish it, I guess.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:21 AM on December 17, 2024

Needs Guy Maddin tag (and maybe a Pride of Winnipeg tag). Co-directed with the Evans brothers (He also did Green Fog and Forbidden Room with them). And yeah looks totally mainstream so I have concerns.
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:54 AM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]

Thanks for posting this found somebody new to enjoy. Liking what I have witnessed so far, The Green Fog looks interesting not sure where to start though !
posted by OneCrateGuy at 10:46 AM on December 17, 2024

Thanks for posting this found somebody new to enjoy.

My Winnipeg is probably easiest to digest. Then maybe Forbidden Room or Cowards Bend the Knee. I have a soft spot for Saddest Music in the World, but it can be a bit...disorienting.

I havent seen Green Fog yet, but will rectify that soon.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:24 PM on December 17, 2024

Start from the beginning - Tales of the Gimli Hospital.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:16 PM on December 17, 2024