a propósito do filme THE EAST
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1869716/?ref_=sr_1http://www.onearth.org/article/the-east-movie-reviewThe East’ Explores the Ethics of Environmental AnarchyBy Jocelyn C. Zuckerman
May 31, 2013
There’s a scene in The East, a film out today in limited release, in which the young corporate spy played by Brit Marling sits among half a dozen hippies at a rustic dinner table, each of them stiff-backed in a straightjacket. Bowls of what appears to be chunky tomato soup rest in front of the diners, who are members of an anarchist collective. A big brown spoon protrudes from each bowl.
Marling’s Jane Moss, the newcomer, has been instructed to dig in first, but after clenching the spoon between her teeth and clumsily trying to convey the liquid to her mouth, she gives up in frustration, eventually succumbing to slurping, Fido-style. Her tablemates, a motley crew of twenty-somethings in facial hair and flannel, bend toward their own bowls and begin to silently clench their mouths around their spoons, skillfully filling them with soup and lifting them to the mouths of the individuals seated next to them.
Jane, who has left her conservative skirt suits and schlubby boyfriend back in the city in order to infiltrate the collective -- known as The East and suspected of carrying out anti-corporate terrorist acts -- looks on at the soup-eaters with a mixture of admiration and disgust. Who are these people?, her intelligent eyes seem to ask. Free-thinking visionaries? Or just a bunch of unhinged, unwashed, lunatics?It’s a question that will resurface throughout the film, which was co-written (with Marling) and directed by 33-year-old Zal Batmanglij, whose first film, Sound of My Voice, made him a darling of the Sundance set, according to the New York Times. The East wants us to think about the nature of resistance movements and the counter-culture in general, and to consider the legitimacy of a mentality that demands an eye for an eye. The film opens with images of a habitat ravaged by an oil spill, inter-cut with video footage of a luxurious mansion being vandalized by a similar-looking black ooze. “It’s easy when it’s not your home,” the voice of Izzy, an anarchist played by Ellen Page, tells us as we witness the environmental catastrophe and the retribution it has inspired. “But when it’s your fault, it shouldn’t be so easy to sleep at night.” When it comes to defending the earth (and its less-fortunate denizens), just how far should a person go?
A sort of low-tech thriller -- the spy gadgetry runs to paper clips and dental floss -- the film is also a love story and coming-of-age tale. From their base in an abandoned mansion, the dumpster-diving members of The East plot their actions, known as “jams,” against the corporate despoilers of the world: an international pharmaceuticals company peddling dangerous antibiotics, a coal company that knowingly pollutes the water. In her role as spy for the darkly named private intelligence firm Hiller Brood, Jane (known to the group as Sarah) eventually comes to appreciate the rhythms of its off-the-grid, communal way of living, and in the process falls for Benji (Alexander Skarsgard), its charismatic leader. Having entered the scene scraggly-haired and wild-eyed -- a menacing, Charles Manson type -- Benji eventually reveals his cleaned up (and movie-star handsome) side. (The various undercover-style jams provide the actors repeated opportunities to play dress-up.) As with much of what she encounters on this mission, Jane’s initial wariness of Benji fades as she comes to understand his point of view.
The scenes are gorgeously lighted and art directed -- the film looks like something out of an Anthropologie catalog -- but many of the details strain credibility. (Where did these unemployed squatters get all those fancy clothes, not to mention the straightjackets?) And though The East features some fun plot twists (and fine acting), too many of the scenes feel like they’ve been included mostly for their picturesque take on the group’s freight-train-riding, square-dancing way of life. Others -- the ritual bathing of Sarah in the lake, the game of spin the bottle -- border on just plain embarrassing. There are several speechy moments meant to underscore the movie's themes: contemplating a jam against the coal company, Jane asks, “But if we hurt people, aren’t we just as bad as they are?” On the issue of food waste, she says, “The system is broken, and the evidence is in the trash.” (Here she reaches into a garbage bin in the sterile high rise that houses Hiller Brood, fishing out a half-eaten apple and biting in as her scandalized boss looks on.) But with so much going on, the environmental takeaways tend to get a little lost.
Maybe that doesn’t matter so much. In the end, The East is a movie by and best suited to young people, twenty and thirty-somethings in the throes of figuring out how to live their lives. Unlike films with a more tightly focused environmental theme -- Michael Clayton, say, or Erin Brokovich -- it’s a meditation on the limits of our convictions, on how far we’ll go to defend what we believe, or, in giving it up, cede to the new people we’ll become. The movie closes with music from the band The National. “Tonight, you just close your eyes,” frontman Matt Berninger sings, “and I just watch you slip away.” The words feel less like a reference to either of the men in Jane’s life than to the newly politicized operative herself, to her old identity slipping away, as she navigates toward whomever she’ll decide to become.
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Jocelyn Zuckerman is OnEarth's former articles editor and the former executive editor of Whole Living and deputy editor of Gourmet, where she won a James Beard Award for feature writing in 2002. She is also an adjunct professor at the Columbia Univer... READ MORE >
