Starring: Cate Blanchett, Rolando Ravello, Charles Dance, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Roy Dupuis, Dennis Menochet, Alicia Vikander
Distributor: Universal
Runtime: 118 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2024
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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The leaders of seven wealthy democracies get lost in the woods while drafting a statement on a global crisis, facing danger as they attempt to find their way out.
Esoteric and exotic are two words that come to mind while watching films by a Canadian director Maddin. While he does have narrative and character development, his interest seems to be on the different kinds of impact films can have. His work is praised by critics. But, the average audience is bewildered.
While Rumours is probably the most accessible of his films, it still seems to have bewildered many of the public. To many, this seems so absurd a narrative, that they give up on it.
The basic plot, however, seems fairly direct. A meeting of leaders of the G7 takes place in a castle in a German forest. The seven leaders meet for lunch, served in a pleasant gazebo. There are discussions, personal interactions, conflicts, and then they’re become stranded, lost in the forest at night. But, what happens to them in the forest, exposing of the limitations of their characters, the threats of impending apocalyptic doom, certainly takes them and the audience on unexpected paths.
The film does have the advantage of having Blanchett in the central role as the German Chancellor, accented English and all. The other central character is the Canadian, Dupuis, the most complex character of them all and he is given the final rhetorical declarations. The rest of the cast are strong character actors, including Dance as the ageing, prone to nod off, American President (and, just as it was a to explain his very proper British accent, he is cut off and we never know). Menochet dominates his scenes as the large and intellectual French president. Amuka-Bird is the UK Prime Minister.
The film might be seen as a political drama. However, the expose of the limitations of each of the leaders, leads to a satiric approach. The task for the leaders that we watch is their preparation for the communiqué, something like a school project among them, small groups, stating the obvious, truisms, platitudes. And then there are many farcical situations, some comedy. And, the three directors have though had an interest in conventions of horror films – so, excavations of 2000-year-old corpses, zombies, sex-obsessed, cavorting in the forest, and an AI program that is a perverse controller, and an overlarge-sized brain out their among the trees.
When asked to indicate an approach to appreciating Rumours and its satire, a review suggests itself. What if the leaders of the G7, meeting there at the gazebo, all nodded off like the American President and had a communal nightmare. This would be the nightmare, cut off, lost, the very human limitations made all the more manifest, their being manipulated as the world seems to be going to its doom – and, rhetorically, standing there on the balcony, proclaiming some kind of hopeful G7 statement that might transcend the doom. Which means that both the leaders and we ourselves as the audience are often bewildered.
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