Rumours is a very bizarre film and yet it may also be one of the most normal, commercial films Guy Maddin has ever made. The eclectic Canadian filmmaker proudly hailing from my home town of Winnipeg has often lived in the surreal and the avant-garde -especially on recent films like The Forbidden Room and The Green Fog. But Rumours, which he co-directed with Evan and Galen Johnson, the same collaborators who teamed up with him on those and other short films, is not some experiment on recreating lost silent films or making up details of his own biography. And yet it is still a very curious film to parse, not least because -though its plot is more conventional- it deals in the terms of international politics, lambasting the current world order and organization.
It is a very Buñuel kind of a movie -which is to say its style of absurdity is not unlike The Exterminating Angel or more particularly The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie -also about a collection of very rich and powerful people getting ludicrously bogged down while trying and failing to complete a simple task. Madden and the Johnsons set their sights slightly higher though by focusing on a meeting of the leaders of the G7, trying to draft a dignified statement in light of a vast unspecified international crisis, and proving mostly incompetent in the process.
The crisis, though unnamed, is clearly existential in the context of this slightly surreal take on the world in the background of a private retreat in Berlin, in which these national leaders , driven by ritual platitude and their own self-images, are distracted by personal issues and eventually find themselves lost in the woods as a fog overtakes all that they can see and they wander aimlessly for rescue.
There is some caricature of real-life counterpart figures at play, such as Cate Blanchett’s Hilda, Chancellor of Germany, with a very Angela Merkel kind of poise and reservation; or Charles Dance’s U.S. President Edison, frequently tired and seemingly drained a la Joe Biden (albeit with a later revealed intelligent cunning and fierceness not recognizable of any U.S. President in the past forty years). And there are certainly some strong aspects to Roy Dupuis’s Prime Minister of Canada Maxime -the closest to a lead character of the ensemble, whom the directors put a lot of attention on- that resemble the stereotypes associated with Justin Trudeau, such as a relentless sentiment towards (perhaps shallow) virtuousness, and his, for lack of a better phrase, ‘himbo’ energy (also interestingly, Maxime is stated to be roughly going through a separation, though the script could not have been written before Trudeau’s own marital troubles late last year).
But more engaging than any surface-level resemblances are the personalities and relationships between these people who happen to be considerably gravitational figures on the world stage. They are quite swiftly revealed to be trivial people. Maxime has a flirtatious relationship with an uninterested Cardosa (Nikki Amuka-Bird), the U.K. Prime Minister, while Hilda is hopelessly infatuated with him. Antonio (Rolando Ravello), Prime Minister of Italy, idolizes Edison and is fiercely loyal to him when the latter is incapacitated. And if you think at all that there is any symbolism between these figures, their petty traits, and the nations they represent, that notion is indeed floated by who else but the President of France, Sylvain (Denis Ménochet), as their situation becomes more surreal and inexplicable. Maddin and the Johnsons do intend some broader comment on international relations, how these states as entities relate to each other -you can pick up on some curious sliver of it in most scenes- but their larger target of satire is more direct, even among the incredibly strange and supernatural things they start witnessing. It is the egos and useless manner of the people in power themselves, especially in moments of crisis.
They’re just a weird bunch of humans at the end of the day, way more concerned with the appearance of statesmanship than actual action. And of course we’re all left to suffer for it. One of the reasons we don’t know exactly what the international crisis they’re meeting over is, is because they don’t really discuss it. They do their obligatory photo ops and then meet in an elegant patio to focus mainly on the wording of their joint statement, making sure to drop in meaningless terms like “bilateral” or “sustained growth”. The moment that unexplainable things start happening, and strange figures begin showing up in the woods, they blame it on nebulous “protesters” -apparently their mutual greatest fear. All of it illustrative of how little faith these cynical directors have in world leaders broadly; a prediction that in an apocalypse they as people would be completely unprepared. And true, they make their way through such extreme entities as zombies, masturbating tree spirits, and a giant brain in the forest, tended to by Celestine (Alicia Vikander), the Secretary-General of the European Commission and of course another old flame of Maxime’s -but at each juncture, they are clueless, yet desperate to mask their cluelessness.
And this giddy absurdity is paired with aesthetics that, as per usual from Maddin, draw heavily on the colour and compositions of silent cinema. In the darkness of the forest, light often emanates from centre-frame, a glow resembling that of tinted celluloid -emphatically unnatural- cascading through several shots, especially the most uncanny like the giant brain. Techniques that move the movie effectively from an almost grounded place into the world of the eerie and unsettling. It is especially those strangest of silent films -works of German Expressionism, supernatural pieces like Häxan, and even the spectacle shows of Georges Méliès- that Maddin and the Johnsons evoke most strongly. The movie looks distinct for these choices, and singularly unnerving -as the very style evokes the same undercurrent thread of old powers rising up and taking back their world. By the end, we are unsure if there are any humans left besides the G7 leaders, and the movie's captivating and concerted atmosphere reflects that.
The film's statement is made clear in its end, once more ridiculing the notion of empty diplomatic decorum in the face of genuine broad chaos -something we can all presumably sympathize with, that impatience with government leaders who care more about the image of propriety than concrete action. Maddin and the Johnsons’ dismay comes through perfectly, and it is again curious that in this and so much of the movie around it they choose to centre Maxime, representative of their own country that, as the movie acknowledges, was a late and somewhat awkward addition to the club. And their portrait of Maxime, and by virtue Canada more broadly (and again, perhaps even Trudeau specifically) wavers in the veracity of its caricature, being at times a mockery of shallow diplomacy and at other times a real leader and noble protagonist. This is a very Canadian movie; in other respects, but particularly in this dual nature of its self-image. We do want to look cool but at the same time are very aware that we are not.
Rumours was in part shot in Winnipeg and I was fortunate enough to see it there, on a visit to Maddin's home turf. And I was proud to see it with an audience that seemed to mostly appreciate its uniqueness. The satire may be a bit nebulous at times, and there are other unresolved issues to the film, including Vikander's pretty thankless part for an actress of her stature, and, though it is lampshaded once, the bizarre fact of Dance's U.S. President speaking with a British accent and associated terminology throughout. Still, around these less excusable unexplained choices is a wealth of curiosity, as the film effectively skewers its targets with both pointedness and style. And bleak though it may be, it is perhaps closer to a genuine image of apocalypse than many of us realize.
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