Directionless apocalypse

I love post-apocalypse stories. When I first started reading Harlan Ellison, one of my favorites of his work was A Boy and his Dog, which is set in America, post-nuclear disaster. One of my favorite films at a young age was John Carpenter's Escape from New York. When I first started running RPGs, my favorite setting was Gamma World. It's safe to say that I'm a child of the Cold War. So, when I heard that there was a film on Netflix that was really popular and that fit those themes, I was definitely interested. Unfortunately, that film was Leave the World Behind and it was a failure on so many levels that it's just about arcing toward the sublime.

Every science fiction premise needs some level of suspension of disbelief. You have to be willing to accept the conditions that make up the world in question, whether it be the talking plants and fusion rifles of Gamma World or the island of Manhattan as maximum security prison of Escape from New York. The basic premise of Leave is that a cyberattack has crippled the power grid of the eastern seaboard of the US and all of the problems that ensue following that, including many that have little to do with a fairly believable scenario like that one, like sonic weapons transmitted over the entirety of Long Island and herds of deer trying to send a signal about this impending doom that's approaching. I mean, those things could be part of our suspension, as well, if they weren't from a different level of sci-fi than simply Con Ed in New York being hacked. But that's where you wonder how this script might have benefitted from a firmer hand that kept it going in a coherent direction, rather than the scattershot approach that later takes hold of it and squeezes hard enough that all of its elements get splattered in random directions, to the denigration of cast and audience.

First off, if a cyberattack did take down enough of society to cause chaos, how (and why) is it that this one section of Long Island was spared? Was it because they didn't want to try to shoot all of the nighttime scenes by candlelight? Or so they could still have a functioning coffee maker in the house so that you'd know people would last two days instead of becoming instantly homicidal? I mean, part of the basis of most adventure stories is that the circumstances in front of us are just slightly different so that our heroes have a chance to do heroic stuff. So, fine. Our characters have power where all of New York City, visible across the river, does not. But then we discover that it may be beyond just power grids, in that satellite networks are down, so that planes and ships no longer have functioning navigation systems. But, of course, they still have functioning engines and ways to turn them off or keep them running, so why are ships beaching and planes crashing? And why is the latter only happening 18 hours after the initial shutdown when one of our heroes is walking on the beach? Said hero, G. H. Scott (Mahershala Ali) is an investment banker with high enough contacts to know one of the Illuminati who has offhandedly warned him that this disaster is coming. Scott, of course, dismisses the idea of the cabal that rules the world but also repeatedly reinforces the idea that such a thing exists. So, which is it? If writer/director Sam Esmail was trying to avoid the historical racist implications of that theory, he wasn't doing such a great job of it. Instead, he veers right into hitting us over the head with the overt racism of Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts) when confronted with Scott and his daughter, Ruth (Myha'la) returning to their home which the Sandfords have rented. I mean, yes, the problem of inherent racism drives a large portion of American cultural relations and politics, so you don't really have to be that heavy-handed with said message. Amanda is borderline shrewish when conveying her distrust of the Black people in the house (their house, which she clearly doesn't believe because, you know, they're Black...) with her children.

Yeah, I can't believe how dumb this is, either.

But then we have all of the other more obvious story points that simply don't mesh with our aforementioned suspension. Why does Archie's (Charlie Evans) lyme disease take hold overnight and become worse than any version of that disease ever seen? If it is even just lyme disease, why do they think that a couple pills from local survivalist neighbor, Danny (Kevin Bacon), will solve his problem? Why do the local deer seem intent on gathering around just their house and not others? Why do flamingos show up in a Long Island swimming pool? Are these the surrealist components that are supposed to make us as confused as the characters? Why do Amanda and G. H., completely at odds over the situation and their respective identities, suddenly fall into each others' arms and consider cheating on their partners with each other in the space of 48 hours? Why would a man as wealthy as G. H. ever play ball at the local YMCA? There are so many little things detached from reality here that it's difficult to believe that one person wrote it and, if that is the case, whether that person has been outside their home to interact with actual humans anytime in the past few years. Is Esmail an isolationist/survivalist? Even the seeming in-jokes are off key. We see a trashed house with a sign of the previous owners hanging loose that says the home was owned by The Huxleys. If that's supposed to be a reference to Aldous Huxley, I'd have to ask why, given that this is a disaster film. Huxley is best known among his fiction works for Brave New World; a society under total control, not one that is falling apart. Archie walks around wearing an "OBEY" shirt from They Live, which is about the subtle control of society through subliminal advertising, not its collapse from a systemic breakdown.

All of this confusion and lack of direction is reinforced by the melodrama of both the cinematography and the score. The camera did repeated close-ups during dramatic moments, just in case we couldn't figure that out, and then wide pullbacks and spirals from above when action was happening. The score was the stereotypical orchestral crashing whenever a plot point was revealed or a realization was made by any of the characters; often multiple times in the same scene. The whole storytelling approach was amateurish, at best, and didn't convey the idea of a major production that would be carrying the heft of a film with the above listed stars, as well as Ethan Hawke. But, then, Hawke was almost insipid in his contrast to his abrasive wife, Amanda, who was presented in a thoroughly wooden performance by Roberts, which likely wasn't helped by the boilerplate dialogue she was given. Her first lines, when she wakes her husband to announce that they're taking a last-minute vacation and why are spoken like she's reading from a book of middle American homilies about modern society. And, of course, the worst thing about the whole presentation is that it reinforces the conspiracy theories that are rampant today, by suggesting that there may be some kernel of truth to them, if people would only pay attention. What those theories also carry are the racist overtones of anything similar to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is kinda how this feels when you see the upper middle class White family having their vacation disrupted by all of the surrounding events (and Black people!)

It's just trash, beginning to end, and in no way worth your time or attention.

The difference between two stories we've seen before

I was looking forward to seeing Maestro, Bradley Cooper's latest film about the life of Leonard Bernstein. Larissa objected, thinking that she would find it too slow, as there's a lot to talk about in Bernstein's complicated life. Then we found out that it was a Netflix production, so we can watch it whenever, so that problem was solved. But we had already decided to see Fallen Leaves instead. The latter is a Finnish production about two average people leading fairly downtrodden lives who discover each other by chance and try to make contact, but keep stumbling over themselves, their lives, and other obstacles. It's a very simple story but it's effectively told and fairly entertaining. Indeed, it was done so well that it won the Jury Prize at Cannes this year, proving yet again that stories don't have to be complex, as long as they're well-written and well-acted and aren't predictable Hollywood boilerplate.

Ansa (Alms Pöysti), a grocery store worker and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), a metal reclaimer, meet up at a bar on karaoke night, having been dragged there by their respective friends, Liisa (Nuppu Koivu) and Huotari (Janne Hyytiäinen.) There's a brief spark between them that they kind of grudgingly acknowledge and then make plans to meet again to see if it becomes a fire. Unfortunately, Holappa is a functioning alcoholic and Ansa isn't the surest person in social situations, so they end up missing each other in a variety of ways (mostly caused by Holappa.) The story doesn't get any more complicated than that, aside from the brief looks into Liisa and Huotari's perspective on life and relationships and the difficulties that our two leads have in remaining employed. It's basically a story about modern life and middle age. Of course, life in Helsinki is probably much different than it is in modern America, so there's not a lot of interaction with phones or the Interwebs or any of the other things that might suffuse wealthier societies and the process of people trying to hook up (My knowledge of modern Finnish culture and society is admittedly quite limited.) But the story doesn't really need all of that, either, since most of it is just an examination of how Ansa and Holappa are looking at life and whether they're willing to trust what it and each other are telling them.

There's a bit of a Coen Brothers air to the production overall, especially when it involves Huotari, who is easily the funniest character of the cast, as he tries to convince women, in general, and then Liisa in specific that, despite his gray hair, he's not actually that old and anyone who suggests that he is must be trying to pull a con. It's like Republican projection but far less sinister and far more amusing. But there's also some of the plaintiveness and resigned attitude that often pervades Coen stories, alongside the determination and willingness to keep forging ahead that is also a frequent feature of their characters. It also doesn't finish with a pat ending but leaves it open to question as to whether the relationship we've been trying to see established for the 81 minute runtime will actually be a positive one. That uncertainty, like everything else about this film, is just like life and can easily be understood and absorbed by an audience willing to see real people do real things.

That is, of course, a contrast to Maestro, which I started to watch last night. This is just the latest version of La La Land; a movie by Hollywood and for Hollywood that is solely concerned with Hollywood and the little tragedies within it that are only really relatable to those inhabiting it. In this case, the New York City musical scene stands in for Tinseltown. In the same way Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone tried to convey the horrible struggle of being an aspiring actor, Maestro takes us one step further and tries to convey the incredible anguish of being an enormously successful composer and conductor. Admittedly, Bernstein's life was more complicated by being a gay male in a period when such a thing, even among creative types, was far less acceptable than it is now and I think this is the angle that most occupied the thoughts of writer/director/star, Bradley Cooper. But the first hour of it plays out as a brief survey of how difficult Bernstein's life was on an emotional level when on every other conceivable level it clearly was not. This was not an aberrant personality like Oppenheimer trying to relate to the people around him. This was the extraordinarily popular and, again, successful Lenny Bernstein enjoying life with both his beard and the men he had on the side.

In contrast to Fallen Leaves, this film doesn't seem like life. It feels like a Hollywood depiction of life that few in the audience would ever be able to relate to. If the first hour had spent more time on the wider scope of Bernstein's life, instead of long shots on the faces of his male lovers feeling rejected when he marries Felicia Montealegre Cohn (Carey Mulligan), I might not have gotten so bored and disappointed that I turned it off. In some respects, that's a bit of improvement, since I could only make it through 15 minutes of La La Land before leaving the room. Obviously, there are a lot of ways to look at the lengthy life of an extraordinarily talented figure who had an enormous impact on 20th century music and continues to do so today (West Side Story was just remade by someone as notable as Steven Spielberg, as just one example.) But Cooper decided to take the overwrought approach that doesn't really explore the length and breadth of that impact, but instead decides to bring it all down to the emotional angle that plays up how trying Bernstein's personal life was. In a way, it's kind of like a very removed version of Fallen Leaves, but it simply has no way to make the personal connection that the latter film does because it's too preoccupied with the sense of its own tragedy. As someone who has tried to produce creative works for my entire life, I can tell you that I'd have given a lot for my life to have turned out as tragic as Bernstein's. (Obviously, I would've had to have had even a minor fraction of his talent.)

Maybe I'm wrong about the overall film, since I only made it through the first half, but I'm not sure that I'm willing to sacrifice the other hour of my far less interesting life to find out whether Cooper's vision changes. I'd rather see stuff about more relatable people. It's not that Bernstein wasn't presented as human, which is my frequent complaint about characters. He most certainly was. It's just that what he experienced is relatable to so few other humans that the message seems lost in its own attempted majesty. That's the difference between stories, even ones that we've seen a thousand times in various forms, that try to talk about life and those that imagine that their very removed life is somehow normal for the rest of us.

Searching for meaning

I'm not a Nicholas Cage fan. My favorite film of his is the one where he's drinking himself to death (Leaving Las Vegas.) The rest of his work is somewhere between competent (The Color Out of Space) and higher-end trash (Gone in 60 Seconds, etc.) So hearing Dream Scenario described in the trailer as "Nic Cage at his very best!" was not exactly a selling point for me, unless we were talking about something akin to LLV. Dream Scenario kinda gets there at points, but still not with enough tragedy or emotion to really hit that level. Or, in all honesty, to sell its own story in the first place.

Nominally, it's about Paul (Cage), underachieving science teacher (That's your cue Breaking Bad fans) who suddenly becomes a bystander in thousands (millions?) of people's dreams. Given the nature of our interconnected society, he instantly becomes famous when his story is released to the Interwebs, courtesy an old girlfriend looking for subject matter for her blog. Life begins to go awry from there, but we never really depart the stiflingly mundane life that Paul has built for himself and which he sees no route to proceed from except via his long-unwritten book. Paul is not an appealing character, lacking even the basic sympathy or mild wit that someone like Walter White exhibits in the beginning of his story. Instead, Paul's utter lack of ambition and inability to self-examine is used as a lever by which to portray the sudden rise of "normal" people to fame through modern social media and all of the downfalls that can accompany that status when your life is suddenly exposed to the attention of millions of people who would otherwise have ignored you. Paul, of course, is the most ignorable of people, appreciated by no one but the dean of his small college (Brett (Tim Meadows)) and his wife, Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and then only reluctantly, it seems.

There's nothing to engender sympathy about Paul's situation, which is the usual approach in situations like this and perhaps that was writer-director, Kristoffer Borgli's, intent to escape that typical angle; a move that I would normally applaud, especially when trying to tell a story that delivers a message about modern circumstances. But the message ends up being muddled because we find ourselves why we're bothering to watch this at all given that, again, Paul is so uninteresting as to be basically repellent to not only everyone around him in the film, but those watching it, too. There's some interest generated by the phenomenon itself (Jung was right-!) and why it's only happening to Paul, but pretty soon that's kind of shuffled to the side in the interest of delivering the "deeper" message about fame and all of its foibles. There are, quiet honestly, better ways to go about this and with far more interesting characters to do it with. Do you really want your audience to reach the point of disdain for your main character by the end of the film without him having done one interesting thing the whole time? I could watch any reality TV trash for two hours and get the same result. Even the almost-but-not-quite sex scene, set up to be a flashpoint which predictably fizzles, doesn't engender anything in the viewer except a question as to why they're still sitting there watching this.

Suffice it to say that I didn't "get it." I mean, I understand the point that Borgli was trying to make and sympathize with the idea, but it didn't sell me at all. I basically felt nothing but contempt for everyone in the film, to one degree or another, and not just because the person onscreen most often is an actor that I don't particularly appreciate. Maybe you could take the time to watch this on some streaming service if you're interested in oneiromancy about the world as a whole, but I wouldn't blame you at all if you didn't bother.