Rumours

The premise sounds as though it must invite a satirical reading, and there are many well-aimed ironic jabs at aspects of the leaders’ national character and the box-ticking rigmarole of modern politics. But directors Guy Maddin and brothers Evan and Galen Johnson – three beloved cult Canadian experimentalists – also poke fun at the notion that their intentions could be so clean-cut.

Rumours is a strange brew, but there’s a lot of fun to be had if you like its flavour.

If some viewers can still cling onto The West Wing as a comfort watch even now, there’s something to be said for the appeal of a text offering the total flip side in its portrayal of centrism’s capabilities, especially one as full of punkish spirit as this.

Rumours doesn’t quite maximise the potential of its incongruous encounter between the living dead and the great and good, or between urbane boardroom satire and psychotropic freakiness. What sustains it, though, are the performances, performed with relish by an ensemble cheerfully riffing on national stereotypes.

It’s still undeniably clever, buoyed by a great cast who know what to do with this sharp satire of world politics, but it feels a bit like a lark, a movie that is content with a chuckle instead of really biting its teeth into some of its complex subject matter.

It’s so funny for the first hour and last 20 minutes that one can’t help wondering what the hell happened with the 40 in-between––a frustrating, unfunny slog of a middle section that’s so hard to sit through it will unfortunately keep many from reaching the brilliant, bizarro finale.

The film is fun for a while, and it’s certainly the most commercial project that the experimental Canadian director Guy Maddin (Twilight of the Ice Nymphs) has delivered. But it’s also pretty tedious and not half as smart as it might have been. Plus it’s very lazy, and smug.

The low user ratings are understandable in this case , but do miss a clever film. The irony is that a parody of what world leaders in ivory towers cobble up for the normal folk is made with overdone Arthouse elitist style. But I did like the concept of the ancient grave dwellers (of Europe especially ) being disturbed by globalization etc. Even though I don't think movie elites and culture types are very in touch with how disastrous the global economy and mass migration actually is working out for actual European normal people . Still an interesting film along the lines of Traingle of Sadness .

The main creative force behind this film is Canadian director Guy Maddin, who's known for his surreal early-cinema, silent-movie aesthetic (his Wiki page). For this film, he's gone more modern and teamed up with Galen & Evan Johnson to create this bizarre send-up. It's set in Germany, as the members of the G7 gather to write a provisional statement. After considerable dialogue, they run into the dark woods where creepy 2000 year-old bog bodies and a giant brain appear. This isn't a horror film at all, but some sort an absurd parody with a few off-the-wall laughs. The star names are Cate Blanchett (the German rep) and Charles Dance (the US President with his usual British accent). The retention of his accent should give you a taste of the weirdness that permeates this picture. Other than the appeal of these actors, it's hard to figure why anyone would want to see this wacky, bizarre, arty satire, but it may appeal to certain cineastes.

Truly good satire needs a razor-sharp edge to succeed, but this latest effort from director Guy Maddin (in collaboration with filmmaking partners Evan and Galen Johnson) falls stunningly flat, resulting in a rambling, unfocused slog that somehow manages to mix messages and symbology that are simultaneously both cryptically understated and patently obvious. Set at a G7 summit in Germany, world leaders from the host country and their American, Canadian, British, French, Italian and Japanese counterparts (along with delegates from the European Union) hold their annual gathering to discuss the state of the world and pat themselves on the back for a self-congratulatory job well done (despite not possessing the requisite skills to accomplish anything meaningful or of substantive consequence other than keeping their nations’ respective seats warm). They smile their hollow smiles and make empty though allegedly profound observations about a variety of subjects, all while attempting to craft one of their famous joint statements (position papers that the American president openly admits no one ever reads). In this case, the communique is meant to address some kind of undefined global crisis, but it appears to be one with apocalyptic overtones. But, in the course of their “work” – an undertaking for which they’re far from qualified – they quickly find themselves in over their heads when the infrastructure around them begins to crumble, a circumstance made more ominous by the appearance of inexplicable apparitions and zombie-like bog creatures straight out of classic folklore and middle European fairy tales. One might think that this would make for an interesting premise in telling a surrealistically satirical fable about the state of contemporary world politics, but the execution here is so poorly carried off that it ends up amounting to little more than oh so much intellectual and symbolic **** (depicted here a little too literally and repetitively at that). To complicate matters, the narrative incorporates countless developments that go wholly unexplained, some of which presumably have to do with the symbolic emasculation of a prevailing patriarchal world in favor of an emerging female-directed paradigm, but others of which are just so enigmatically absurd that they defy description, explanation or purpose (there’s more of that **** again, only this time reflected in the nature of the picture’s screenplay elements). The overall result is a mess of a movie that, despite its gifted ensemble cast and atmospheric cinematography and production design, just doesn’t work, especially since the insights it’s trying to impart aren’t particularly new, revelatory or funny. We’re well aware of how inept many of the world’s supposedly astute leaders are these days, including the fact that they’re cluelessly engaged in little more than what amounts to unconscious acts of that aforementioned “self-love” (and self-aggrandizing ones at that), but do we really need a movie to remind us of that (especially one as shabbily made as this)? No thanks. If I were you, I’d duck out of this one and see what else is playing at the multiplex (or, better yet, skip it altogether).

O que tá acontecendo com a carreira da Cate Blanchett, gente? Uma sucessão de vergonha alheia. Aqui nada funciona, pagando de cult e com pitadas de humor político, ao inserir o sobrenatural o filme so vai ladeira a baixo, numa disposição de corpos de dar vergonha alheia.

This horror/comedy fails to significantly deliver at either in this meandering film that never does quite get up off the ground. There's a severe lack of tension due to the films inability to establish any kind of threat or urgency, and the script isn't witty or funny enough for it to work as a compelling satire either. Despite Cate Blanchett's star power this overall is a mostly forgettable film that leaves a lot to be desired.