The East (Zal Batmanglij, 2013)

[domino harvey]

First trailer for Brit Marling's latest co-writing/starring feature

[flyonthewall2983]

Minor annoyance, but IMDB said Brit played the character that Ellen Page is, and vice versa. That seemed to make more sense to me, for some reason.

[CSM126]

I dunno, Ellen Page: Terrorist sounds pretty awesome to me, but then again I'm a slavish fan.

[flyonthewall2983]

From the AV Club comment box

I just picture her detonating a cellphone bomb by calling it with a hamburger phone.

[warren oates]

Really wanted to like this one. In theory it's exactly my kind of movie. The East gripped me for about an hour, but then ran out of gas when it forgot to play by all the rules it laid out in its own opening (security concerns anyone?) and instead got bogged down in over-explaining everyone's backstory and flailing to out-do itself set-piece and twist -wise with a series of scenes that instead offer diminishing returns. There are a lot of good ideas and instincts on display, especially at the beginning -- authentic research, compelling writing, economical visual storytelling, good performances all around. But it really feels like the script could have used serious rewriting. Problems with thriller pacing and momentum aside, the worst of the bad writing involves the characters and how much less interesting or credible they become the more we learn about exactly why they're doing what they do. The concept is great and half the script is. The filmmakers are more talented than the end result. Worth seeing, but manage your expectations.

[warren oates]

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky nails what's wrong with The East:

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The movie essentially cancels out its anti-corporate message by falling back on conservative clichés about activism — namely, the idea that activists are all just rich kids angry at their parents. Insultingly, "The East" treats this "revelation" as if it were an additional layer of depth — that is, not only are The East activists, but they're activists struggling against their own friends and families! By rooting, for example, Izzie's struggle for clean water in daddy issues, "The East" effectively divorces itself from any discussions of the environment or corporate responsibility. It ceases to be a movie about activism, and becomes a movie about slumming brats; as a result, all of its third-act discussions of activist ethics — that is, where one should draw the lines for a cause — are meaningless.

[Brian C]

I don't really follow IV's reasoning. Because some of the members of The East are from wealthy backgrounds, the movie can't have a legitimate anti-corporate message? Because one of its members has family ties to a corporation, the movie can't really be about activism? Isn't he indulging in the very same conservative cliché that he decries with his "slumming brats" line?

[warren oates]

It's easier to follow if you've seen the whole film and read the entire review. To me IV's point is about zeroing in on how the storytelling fails by falling into the worst kinds of lame Hollywood emotional logic, whereby every character's motivation becomes ludicrously and almost mathematically "personal." As if having

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a rich daddy whose company spills poison into a stream, or rich friends who sold you and your third world patients bad drugs ought to make you more of an anti-corporate eco-warrior than, say, all of the other citizens of the world who are equally befouled by these crimes against nature and humanity.

The gold standard for environmental thrillers is reality's own If A Tree Falls... which didn't have any of this bad writing and didn't need it. The convictions of those characters were compelling enough without the larding on of lame backstory acrobatics to try and justify their turn toward extremism.

[Brian C]

It's easier to follow if you've seen the whole film and read the entire review.

I have and I did, matter o' fact.

To me IV's point is about zeroing in on how the storytelling fails by falling into the worst kinds of lame Hollywood emotional logic, whereby every character's motivation becomes ludicrously and almost mathematically "personal." As if having

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a rich daddy whose company spills poison into a stream, or rich friends who sold you and your third world patients bad drugs ought to make you more of an anti-corporate eco-warrior than, say, all of the other citizens of the world who are equally befouled by these crimes against nature and humanity.

To which I'd say that this is not true of "every character". It's not true of Marling's, as her character seems deliberately calibrated to have no pre-existing baggage at all. And it's not true of Skarsgard's, whose motivation for throwing in with this particular cause remains unclear up to the end. The doctor's motivations are personal but all too plausible (and when did the film mention that his "friends", rich or otherwise, sold him the drugs?).

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None of the other members besides Izzy are given a backstory one way or the other, and even her motivation is dicey - are her political views a result of her resentment of her father or the cause of it?

And even still, you're making a huge leap when you say that the film asserts that these characters are somehow more legitimate in their eco-concerns than anyone else. This imagined pissing contest over who is and isn't a bigger eco-warrior just isn't in the film at all, and I think it's bizarre that you're choosing to read that into it. The film's eco-warrior mindset isn't nearly as "acrobatic" as your class-warrior mindset here.

[warren oates]

There are a couple of issues here to unpack. There's the question of whether this film has any skill or credibility in delimiting its characters' motives

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up to an including Sarah's goofy last minute speechifying turn at the elevators.

Then there's the matter of how and why the film foregrounds class so starkly in its characterizations.

The film definitely seems to want to make something out of class, as it proves so central to the stories of the East's three main characters.

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And of the ability of the East to operate at all, since it turns out they are being secretly bankrolled and housed in what they think is a squat -- good security move, btw -- by rich heir Benji who actually owns the property.

Start with doc.

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He's a doc, in part, because of his class privileges. His connections from his exclusive college gain him entry into both the practice of medicine and the world of the party where he and the group wreck his revenge on the company (the company of his friend's father -- again, security concerns?) It wasn't enough that the doc experienced global corporations preying on the third world sick. He took their medicine himself and was injured. But that's not enough either! The medicine killed his sister! Phew, glad we finally got enough motivation. Lucky for him he went to school with the son of the guy who did it! And he just happens to be invited to one of their parties!

Then there's Izzy, who's basically a poster girl for the Electra Complex.

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Her entire "jam" is a psychodrama meltdown, from the meeting with polluter daddy big bucks to his agonized interrogation and punishment. Once again, her privileged backstory provides both the means for the group's action and the (excessive and overwrought) motivation for it.

Finally, there's Benji.

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Forgive me if I'm misremembering, but if I recall correctly didn't his family perish in a boating accident related to a huge conglomerate's container transhipment? So he takes his big wad of inherited money and sets out to punish the corrupt and hegemonic global corporate world that killed his parents. Not unlike the origin story of a comic book superhero. Or of Spock's/Kirk's motivations in the first Abrams Star Trek. Benji's concealment of his wealth from the others, while they live in the squat they don't know is really the burnt out shell of his childhood mansion, is nothing if not precisely the kind of slumming IV talks about in his review.

If that's the case, then you've got a trifecta of major characters all with cartoonishly personal connections to corporate malfeasance.

I'm not sure the filmmakers have any coherent agenda vis-a-vis all the class stuff. It seems more like a byproduct of lazy mechanical screenwriting -- the easiest way to give the characters access to the worlds they wish to revenge themselves on while simultaneously "raising the stakes" by making it all so personal.

Compare that with the way motivation and class reveal themselves in the documentary If A Tree Falls, where the solidly working class NYC upbringing of the protagonist sets him up to be blindsided by his late-blossoming love of and care for the natural world. Where his move into environmental radicalism is motivated by his participation in and witness to the failure of more traditional and lawful forms of resistance and protest. Where the most prominent wealthy character in the film is his sister, an old-fashioned hardworking self-made capitalist, who doesn't share his politics but admires his idealism and fully supports his legal defense.

Or even to the characters in The Devil, Probably, whose sense of impending environmental doom has always struck me as one of the more authentic portraits of its type in the cinema.

[Roger Ryan]

...Not unlike the origin story of a comic book superhero...

Pardon me for "unspoiling" this spoiler line, but this is exactly what I found so disappointing about THE EAST: a story with great potential is squandered by the film presenting characters and situations better suited to a typical superhero franchise. By piling on the corporate baddies, the wacky cult-like activists and the conveniently easy-to-do revenge plots, the audience is excused from seeing any connection to real world issues.

The film would have worked a lot better...

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...with the focus on just one case of corporate malfeasance (instead of three or four) and by presenting the "eco-terrorists" as average citizens instead of deluded pranksters dancing around a campfire wearing masks in their spare time. I don't even want to get into the fact that Britt Marling's "Christian" agent is the only character who isn't corrupted or delusional.

[domino harvey]

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Another year, another superb adult film co-written and starring Brit Marling. I think those trying to read the film politically, from either side of the aisle, are missing the point. Namely, that extreme approaches to this issue, be they conservative white-washing and buck-passing (every corporation and Marling's employer) or liberal lex talionis (every member of the East save Marling), eventually cloud any positive milestone they could be achieving towards the humanistic final goal of helping not harming the land and the people. I don't see the ending then as a Superhero origin story as much as a restart/refresh/rethinking on the entire issue. Marling is the ideal informed citizen, and she makes the decision to do something about it the right way. Perhaps this reads as smug or self-assured, but I don't think so. I think this is a film that treats ideals as serious motivators, be they ingrained from experience or upbringing or just from continued exposure. But idealism of the kind practiced here by the East and protestors nationwide ultimately is self-serving and self-defeating. Marling isn't refuting the possibility of change, just the impossibility of the existing systems achieving it. The ending isn't a copout. It's a realization of the heretofore impossible. A miracle by any other name...

This is-- something I'm able to say for three straight years now, thanks to Brit Marling-- one of the best films of the year.

[warren oates]

Your spoiler tagged appreciation goes a long way toward describing the interesting film this might have been if its initially promising dramatic/thematic instincts didn't devolve after about 45-50 minutes into predictable and schematic second act inertia. And you don't seem to have read the other comments very carefully before misreading at least one notion I and others have bandied about -- "the superhero origin story" -- the idea of the East members' (doc, Izzy and especially Benji) cartoonishly direct and personal backstory connections/relationships with the corporate subjects of their revenge. That's the superhero origin story trope Roger Ryan and I were referencing. Nothing to do with Sarah.

And that's my biggest problem with the storytelling in this film. Its sins are so boringly Hollywood. At least the missteps in Another Earth and The Sound of My Voice are a little more earnestly Indie by comparison.

Since I'm not particularly prone to reading films politically, I would be curious to hear a more elaborate defense of how the politics of any of the characters in The East aren't really relevant, when everything about this films at every moment seems to be screaming otherwise.

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Or of how Sarah, just by virtue of tasting two exaggerated extremes herself, is somehow magically transformed by the film's final moments into "the ideal informed citizen."

I think this is a film that treats ideals as serious motivators, be they ingrained from experience or upbringing or just from continued exposure. But idealism of the kind practiced here by the East and protestors nationwide ultimately is self-serving and self-defeating. Marling isn't refuting the possibility of change, just the impossibility of the existing systems achieving it.

You sound like you're talking about an entirely different film. Like the documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation, for instance. Or even the not nearly as well-made Informant (Jamie Meltzer,2013), whose story was previously reported on This American Life and whose complex activist characters throw The East's caricatures into even sharper relief.

[domino harvey]

If you disliked Another Earth and Sound of My Voice, I quite literally don't know how to engage you in terms of what constitutes quality cinema and doubt we'd see eye to eye much on this or anything else except by accident. Nevertheless, if you are going to go about this via a series of perceived corrections, please note that I said reading the film politically was useless (ie either aligning it with your existent beliefs or ascribing it a set of beliefs), not the characters. Which is to say if you are trying to align it to either leftist or conservative viewpoints ("It's on this side," &c), you are missing the point, which is that very kind of compartmentalization and dismissal is what's standing in the way of real change. And sweeping aside all of the representational characters with the same action as you have done several times now is only reinforcing the very thing the film is rallying against. You are asking things of this movie it has no interest in providing because it is going somewhere different than you want it to go. A film on the subtle and varied nuances of an anarchist collective could never arrive at the conclusion this film reaches-- and I think where the East does arrive is powerful and effective on its own inherent merits.

[warren oates]

For the record, since I'm surprised you don't remember interacting in those threads, I hated Another Earth but liked Sound of My Voice, with some reservations. And I very much wanted to like The East on its own terms. It's just hard for me to see any traces of the powerful and effective film you're describing. Especially without any more details to back that up.

I said reading the film politically was useless (ie either aligning it with your existent beliefs or ascribing it a set of beliefs), not the characters. Which is to say if you are trying to align it to either leftist or conservative viewpoints ("It's on this side," &c), you are missing the point, which is that very kind of compartmentalization and dismissal is what's standing in the way of real change. And sweeping aside all of the representational characters with the same action as you have done several times now is only reinforcing the very thing the film is rallying against.

I don't think anyone above is trying to pigeonhole the film based on his personal political beliefs. I'm certainly not. But you've completely lost me in the next few sentences. I really don't get where this is going. Are you asserting that this film's ultimate goal is some kind of transcendence of its own grotesquely exaggerated oppositions (political and otherwise)? Yet one that could only be accomplished through these seemingly (and only seemingly) simplistic reductions but that's actually way more profound than it would have been, if, you know, instead, we'd maybe have gotten, I don't know, that staple of good storytelling worldwide for millennia now -- rounded characters with believable motivations?

[Sonmi451]

Count me among this film's detractors. As a fan of Marling/Batmanglij's previous work - and something of a libertarian socialist - this was obviously one of the most anticipated films of the year for me, and I found it disappointing on almost every level. While I do tend to read films politically, I actually agree with domino that it is virtually useless to do so in this case, but only in the way that the film is almost grotesquely apolitical. Seeing this virtually back to back with Assayas' Something in the Air, it really illustrates just how out of their depth politically and narratively Marling and Batmanglij are. While clearly not a defense, here's a decent critique of this film from the left (just skip ahead to the second part).

[knives]

I hate to get into semantics, but what the hell is a libertarian socialist? That seems a contradiction in terms.

[Sonmi451]

Only in the U.S., where the term libertarian was bastardized and conflated with the insane cult of Ayn Rand. Historically, and in Europe and elsewhere, the term was basically synonymous with anarchist.

[knives]

Anarchism is completely different from libertarianism and in which case why not use the correct semantic term considering you are living in the present where libertarian's definition is one of capitalism.

[Sonmi451]

Come again? This is my field of study; so no, no it's not. Anarchism is completely different from the U.S. version of libertarianism, as I said. For your edification. Or read anything by Murray Bookchin.

[knives]

Wikipedia is not a valid source and much as you wouldn't confuse a classical liberal with a neo-liberal using libertarian for antique phrasing is just silly.

[Sonmi451]

I provided the wikipedia article for a primer on the subject (something wikipedia is often quite effective for). I then also provided you with the name Murray Bookchin, one of the great political thinkers of the late 20th/early 21st century. You must not be reading what I'm writing, because I'm telling you it has nothing to do with "antique phrasing", it's an entire school of thought, and it's currently in use virtually everywhere except in the U.S. The U.S. brand of libertarianism is much akin to what would be called anarcho-capitalism elsewhere. Now this digression has, I'm sure, gone on long enough.

[domino harvey]

Using offended/slighted/disappointed leftists to make the argument that the film is in some way deficient due to its ultimately apolitical stance is not particularly convincing, especially given how uncharitable the film ultimately is to their causes. The filmmakers are not "out of their depths" because they've arrived, via a competent and clearly constructed narrative, at a conclusion you disagree with. Hmmmm somehow I sense this is going to be one of those contentious films that magically renders a thread's discussion unreadable!

[Sonmi451]

Certainly, I did not mean to give the impression that I thought they were out of their depth because they arrive at a conclusion I disagree with; I think they are out of their depth because they mischaracterize a movement that they are realistically attempting to portray (be it intentionally or unintentionally), and because they are incredibly naive politically, which - I think - warren and roger have shown. I would say though that there are no "apolitical" solutions to the problems this film admirably tries to shed some light on.

[knives]

I provided the wikipedia article for a primer on the subject (something wikipedia is often quite effective for). I then also provided you with the name Murray Bookchin, one of the great political thinkers of the late 20th/early 21st century. You must not be reading what I'm writing, because I'm telling you it has nothing to do with "antique phrasing", it's an entire school of thought, and it's currently in use virtually everywhere except in the U.S. The U.S. brand of libertarianism is much akin to what would be called anarcho-capitalism elsewhere. Now this digression has, I'm sure, gone on long enough.

And anarchism is not a capitalist thought (hence it traditionally being considered to the left of socialism). Now if you were to say libertarianism is an anarchist equivalent for capitalists that would be fair, but that would still put it into opposition with socialism making the term not viable. It's bad semantics. I am not solely referring to objectivism which is what you seem to be condescending to me. It is not necessary to view someone else with contempt during a discussion.