In 'Rumours,' the G in G7 stands for 'gonzo'
Guy Maddin delivers a scathing horror satire about our fearless leaders
“Rumours” is a relatively restrained film for Canadian director Guy Maddin, in that the giant glistening brain the size of a Yugo doesn’t appear until a full hour into the film.
Maddin is a cult favorite for films like “The Forbidden Room” and “My Winnipeg” that distort and remix elements of classic cinema into bizarre and hilarious avant-garde creations. Think of the crew of the sunken submarine in “The Forbidden Room” surviving by breathing the bubbles in pancake batter, or the renegade senior-citizen hockey team The Black Tuesdays in “My Winnipeg.”
“Rumours,” though, channels the experimental filmmaker’s gifts into a scathing but straightforward satire of politics, of clueless, arrogant world leaders who think a looming apocalypse can be averted – or at least crisis-managed – by a carefully-worded joint statement.
“Rumours” takes place at a G7 conference at a castle in Germany, where the leaders of the free world gather to wave confidently for the cameras and then go behind closed doors to do – something. In this case, they’ve come together to craft a “provisional statement” in response to an unspecified crisis. “It’s not summer camp,” one leader says, but it becomes quickly clear that these leaders of the free world are like teenagers at summer camp.
The Chancellor of Germany (Cate Blanchett) lusts after the hunky Prime Minister of Canada (Roy Dupuis), but his heart is still broken after an affair with the Prime Minister of England (Nikki Amuka-Bird). The President of Italy (Rolando Ravello) fanboys over the President of the United States (Charles Dance) who for some unexplained reason is British. When the seven fondly recite an old statement they issued, it’s like kids singing a campfire song.
Interrupting this adolescent geopolitical reverie is the discovery of the grave of a prehistoric “bog person” on the grounds of the castle. The nerdy President of France (Denis Menochet) notes that the corpse seems to be that of a village chieftain, executed by his own people for not delivering the goods. The foreshadowing there seems to be lost on the world leaders.
As night falls, the sky turns an eerie purple, and the leaders start hearing strange sounds in the woods. When they try to contact their entourages, there’s no response. Confused and a little frightened, they start tromping through the dark woods, hunting for signs of civilization, woefully inadequate to the task of actually surviving a real-crisis.
Maddin and his collaborators Evan and Galen Johnson (Evan wrote the screenplay) expertly combine the comedic and ominous in “Rumours.” The woods seem genuinely threatening, especially in that eerie light, and it seems the bog people may be rising from their graves to take their revenge. But the nervous squabbling among the G7 is genuinely funny, and the film sprinkles in delightful absurdist touches, such as a copy of “Incumbent Life” magazine that the Canadian P.M. pages through.
A short cameo by Alicia Vikander as a European Union official, scrabbling through the woods in her pants suit babbling in Swedish about that giant brain, encapsulates the funny/unsettling vibe of “Rumours.” It reminded me a lot of Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy “The Dead Don’t Die,” where the real horror came not from the zombies, but at how hapless those in charge seem to be in the face of existential threats.
Oh well. They can always put out another strongly-worded statement.
“Rumours” opens Friday in movie theaters. In Madison, it will play at Marcus Point and AMC Fitchburg 18.