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Canadian trio Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson take aim at the Group of Seven in this sinister attack on world leaders who are all talk and no action.
Depending on who you talk to, the world is either in crisis, on fire, at war, or frankly just teetering towards a well-deserved final verdict. That’s it. So what can be done to save it? Of course, it’s a carefully worded interim statement from world leaders who currently own both gas canisters and lit matches, but it’s not brimming with great ideas for the future. The powerlessness of rhetorical politics and symbolic diplomacy, best exemplified by the G7, an intergovernmental forum obsessed with expensive meetings that could have been via email, is strangely but relentlessly skewered in Rumors. There is. The stuffy G7 summit turns into a dark, muddy, and strangely isolated zombie apocalypse.
As comedic subgenres go, political satire often approaches the ironically clever rather than the wildly hilarious. But “Rumours,” the third full-length collaboration between veteran Canadian experimentalist Guy Maddin and brother duo Evan and Galen Johnson, is a welcome exception, with a wide range of self-paced gags, flippant surrealism, and sharper It mixes topical criticism with consistent belly laughs. The result may premiere outside of competition at Cannes, but it’s sharper and more entertaining than the larger reflections on world affairs in the festival’s most prestigious section, and far more than the filmmaker’s previous work. should gain a lot of mainstream exposure. (Bleecker Street releases the movie “Statesside.”)
Of course, the film’s biggest draw is Cate Blanchett, who gives a devilishly funny performance as Hilda Ortmann, the summit’s plucky-looking hostess. The German chancellor has much the same hairstyle and taste in tailored blazers as Chancellor Angela Merkel, but with much less gravitas. This time, Germany will welcome the leaders of the other six G7 democracies (the US, UK, France, Italy, Japan, and Canada, which is repeatedly mentioned with self-deprecating disbelief) for a weekend of spree. , it’s time for food and superficial political discussion. In their luxuriously isolated country mansions, they don’t even have to look at the common people whose best interests they supposedly represent. A gazebo was specially built for this occasion. What could go wrong?
The tasks in front of them are small tasks that keep them back time and time again. It’s the umbrella term “global crisis,” which they don’t really know exactly, and the joint drafting of a statement that sounds constructive but cleverly lacks specificity. As they brainstormed the issue over a rich multi-course dinner, concerns raised included, in no particular order of importance, global warming, bilateral control, and “non-sexual physical affection.” These include staunchly defending the Olympic Games, and changing the timing of the Olympic Games every three years. Every fourth builds Western Europe’s largest sundial. The theme of this year’s summit, Hilda helpfully reminded everyone, is “Regret.” It wouldn’t hurt to add this very meeting to the list, and that’s before things get even creepier.
For the purpose of a rather unpleasant photo shoot, German troops dug up an Iron Age corpse (fleshy, damp and eerily preserved) from the undulating ground, only to discover that this archaeological act turned into liquid. As they follow the politicians into the surrounding forest, which seems to have sparked an uprising of leached ancient remains, their servants mysteriously disappear. Within minutes, a high-stakes survival quest involving some of the world’s most protected people turns into a dangerous survival quest shrouded in dense evening mist, and the film’s visual language becomes a terrifying language of horror. will change to Stefan Čupek’s cinematography succumbs to exaggerated explosions of fire and haze, while the tense twittering of Christian Eidnes Andersen’s melodramatic score keeps our emotional investment in the proceedings at bay. Rich and disproportionate.
The shadow of death doesn’t stop these not-so-great seven from worrying about more trivial matters. Canada’s plucky, man-sporting Prime Minister Maxime Laplace (Roy Dupuis) is on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to the country’s numbingly boring “concession scandal,” not to mention his British counterpart Cardoza. – His romantic relationship with DeWinto (Nikki Amuka-Bird) has also disappeared. , they continue to claim that they can complete the statement by the time they crawl out of the woods. French President Sylvain Bourlaise (Denis Menoche) is obsessed with writing a “psychogeography of cemeteries and burial customs,” and Italy’s uncouth Prime Minister Antonio Lamorte (Rare Rich Rolando Ravello) forgot to bring his cell phone, while venerable president Edison Wolcott (Charles Dance) forgot to bring his cell phone. I can’t seem to stay awake. Or explain why he speaks with a cut-glass English accent.
Walcott’s unaccountable Britishness is complemented by a number of flippant absurdities that Evan Johnson’s highly quotative screenplay (from a story by all three directors) effortlessly maintains while building a larger caricature. This is one of the best jokes. The collective weakness and outright stupidity of the seven main characters, all sharp individual comic works, but collectively a hydra of destructive hot air of a weakened modern democracy, a hydra of the destructive fever winds of a weakened modern democracy, rather form a frustrated protest against our elected elites who are tinkering with the Earth). Shows foul-mouthed emotions that get burned and show coordinated behavior without ever getting there.
While you can see flickers of real-world caricatures in the ensemble (a little Joe Biden here, a little Emmanuel Macron there), that’s not exactly the point of the exercise. As our laughter turns to groans, the Rumor points out that replaceable and ineffectual leaders can disappear overnight – that a broken global power structure will remain immobile. That means it’s still there.
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