And not in a good way.
The movie is written by Nick Pinkerton, who I’ve never heard of before but is apparently associated with the Red Scare Pod in some way. The movie is a mumblecore surrealist comedy loosely based on Alice in Wonderland, where the main character travels through different parts of the United States and meets different characters. It’s got some funny parts and it held together well enough in the beginning but it starts to drag by the second vignette and really starts to broadcast where it leans politically.
The main character essentially acts listlessly throughout the entire movie and calls things and people ableist slurs. While other characters are supposed to…I guess represent different political positions in the US? I don’t really know what the point was meant to be, but the vibe is “caring about things is dumb”. There’s four main vignettes which boil down to the following:
spoiler
-
A group of anarchists that never actually profess any political beliefs besides not working and eating food from the garbage. The main anarchist character is immediately shown to b a sex pest and the group then goes out to a field to fight Nazis that aren’t there. (This is the only representation of the political left in the movie)
-
An academic Nazi who takes in our main character and lets her live in his house. He is given ample time to espouse his ideas and does not attempt to sleep with the main character which is shown to be a big deal. She lives with him as a tradwife for some time, and is like happy with it I think? But eventually runs away
-
Two New York film makers who are making a period piece. Sorry I really don’t know what this one was trying to say it just felt random, but the film shoot ends when Nazis shoot everyone.
-
An Arabic guy who saves the main character from the shooting, but oh no! It turns out he’s locking her away to be his wife and also he lives in a terrorist training camp.
And then finally the writer of the movie shows up as a Catholic monk to save the main character and talk about miracles for some reason.
Maybe I don’t get it because I don’t really vibe with this kind of art. But genuinely this movie was pretty boring and it feels gross when you know the politics behind it. I will give them credit though, I was anticipating a TERFy joke the entire movie and I didn’t catch one.
Post Script: Reading the Letterboxd reviews for this are making me mad because everynoe is saying the Academic Nazi is hot, I’m losing my mind