The East: Brings Us A Study In Consumerism and Authenticity | A Review

"But if we hurt people, aren't we just as bad as they are?"

I ndependent filmmakers Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling make philosophical films that make you want to ask questions, and examine your own life.  In "Another Earth,” they made us think about our actions and the consequences, and the hope of redemption.  In "The Sound of My Voice," Batmanglij and Marling wanted us to consider the possibility of time travel.  Their stories are thought provoking and they sometimes don't care too much for the rules of storytelling.  In "The East," they have honed their narration skills to much finer point.  The story that "The East" gives us is a look at anarchy, anti-consumerism, and a modern day look at extreme corporate activism.  The film stars co-writer Brit Marling, Alexander Skarsgård ("Battleship," "Straw Dogs"), Ellen Page ("Juno," "Inception"), Toby Kebbell ("Wrath of the Titans," "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time"), and Shiloh Fernandez ("Evil Dead," "Red Riding Hood").  "The East" runs about 2 hours long, is rated PG - 13, and has some interesting characters who we want to care about.

S tarting a movie with a threat, sets the mood immediately and strikingly. What it doesn't tell you is that "The East" builds up the espionage quickly, but evenly.  The film opens up with a scene of an oil-drenched beach and a seagull covered in the goo.  Ellen Page voices over a threat to the corporate eco-terrorist of the world.  The scene changes to hooded terrorist breaking into a nice home in a house in the Hamptons and pouring oil into the vents of the house as a message to the owner, a CEO of a big oil company.  Sarah (Marling) works for an exclusive private spy firm, Hiller-Brood, whose clients are the big corporations.  Sarah (her undercover name) gets a prime assignment from her boss Sharon (Patricia Clarkson), the head of the firm.  The assignment is to infiltrate an anarchist group called The East.  After Sarah has studied the anarchist cell, she prepares to leave for her undercover assignment.  She tells her husband that her assignment is in Dubai.  After her husband (Jason Ritter) drops her off at the airport, she ditches her clothes and luggage, hits the road, and takes off for parts unknown as a homeless drifter.  Her goal is to find those who will help her find the anarchist cell. After some bullying by some rail yard detectives (bullies), she is picked up by Luca (Fernandez) and is given a quick lesson on freeganism.  Yes, that is where you go dumpster diving for food that restaurants must legally dispose of, but is still good to eat.  Sarah is brought to the group seeking medical attention (she cut her arm as a ploy).  Once in the group, she continues her spying and gaining intel on the cell. 

"Why is it self-righteousness goes hand in hand with resistance movements?"

T he different characters that we meet have some interesting backstories.  There is Doc (Kebbell); he’s the group’s medic and a victim of a pharmaceutical company that makes the antibiotic drug Denoxin.  The drug causes the victim to not recognize their own faces, have tendons snap, seizures, and brain damage.  Then there is Izzy (Page).  She is one of the most radical of the group, and the most cynical.  Her crusade against an industrial plant that dumps arsenic into the local water is both heartfelt yet cruel.  She wants to stand up for those who can't.  The leader of the group is Benji (Alexander Skarsgård).  He claims that the people with him are not his followers.  He is both a charismatic figure and a tortured one.  He first appears in the film after about the first 20 minutes looking like a Christ figure, as he is thin with long brown hair.  Despite of what Benji says, he is the cult's leader.  There are others in the group that adds to the dynamic of the film.  Also in the group are Thumbs (Aldis Hodge) as the moral compass of the group, and Tess (Danielle Macdonald) who is the group’s computer hacker.  The activist’s goal is to commit three "jams" or acts of eco-terrorism on three major companies.  Their methods are simple, an eye for an eye.  After each jam, the group loads a video to YouTube announcing what they have done.  Tess encrypts the video so that the FBI can’t track it back to the originating IP address.  Izzy makes the announcements.

"It's easy when it's not your home easy when it's not your life.  The place where you sleep. Your kids, your wife. But when it's your fault it shouldn't be so easy to sleep at night. Especially when we know where you live.  Barry Redmond, CEO of Lorex Oil, 2641 River Road, East Hampton. You dumped fifteen million barrels of crude into the Atlantic. We don't care how rich you are. We want all those who are guilty to experience the terror of their crimes. Because it shouldn't be so easy to get away with murder. Lie to us we'll lie to you. Spy on us we'll spy on you. Poison our habitat we'll poison yours. We are The East and this is just the beginning. We will counterattack three corporations...in the next six months for their worldwide terrorism.”  ~ Izzy

M arling's character, Sarah, is complex.  She prays and listens to Christian music.  She lies to her husband about her work.  She has her own sense of morality and a certain sense of naivety wrapped within a hard shell of a ambition and confidence.  She is deft at spy craft, she keeps her wits, yet she later succumbs to her feelings about the group and their cause.  She doesn't necessarily agree with their methods and finds herself in the middle of this conflict between the hard right of the corporations and the far left of the anarchist cell.  Sarah sees the utilitarianism of Sharon and her spy firm, and the radical excess of The East.  About a little more than half way through the film, we find her deep in conflict.  She starts to see the inauthenticity of her own life, while she works for the morally corrupt corporations that destroy our world.  Most importantly, she sees how we as individuals support the inequality that consumerism, and therefore capitalism, which allows the rich to benefit at the expense of the labor and suffering of others.  She sees the humanity in the group, and the possibility that she can make a difference.  The group is portrayed as a bunch of fun loving hippy types who feel self-righteous in their cause.  Batmanglij and Marling spent some time in 2009 with an anarchist cell learning their mentality about corporations, consumerism, freeganism, and bathing in a river with a group, thus giving them insight that became the ideas behind this script.  Ellen Page's role is smaller, yet one of the most potent.  As in "Juno," she is a fireball.  She is forceful, smart, and determined.  She later becomes a driving force for Sarah.  There is a scene in the film that is symbolic and foreshadows a later event.  The scene is where Thumbs finds a dead deer in the woods.  A "thrill kill" (kill for sport) that the group doesn't want to go to waste.  The group elects Sarah to cut open the deer so that they can take the meat.  However, Sarah cuts too far and cuts the intestine, crap spills out.

W hat is poignant about the film is that it brings to the foreground events that we know are going on in the world today.  The government is spying on us; major corporations protect themselves by printing the side effects in small print, and deny that they pollute our water.  In light of Wikileaks and the Edward Snowden incident, "The East" makes a statement.  Marling and Batmanglij's films tend to build the suspense and the drama, but they leave a lot to the imagination when they conclude their films.  I think they do a better job at bringing the "The East" to a conclusion.  As I said before, they tend to leave much to the imagination.  In "The Sound of My Voice," they give you the punch line in the last few moments of the film, and then before you can process what you just saw -- fade to black.  In "Another Earth," the ending is more of a quiet moment of reflection and for some, may have been a letdown.  "The East" is worth watching if you care about global warming, privacy issues, or just about any of humanity's problems.  For me, it was a revelation, which leads me down another level of awareness.

Just remember,

"Those side effects are listed on the side of the bottle.  That is how they rape you in broad daylight."

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The East Preview

Movie Data

Genre: Action, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Year:  2013

Staring: Alexander Skarsgård,Brit Marling,Ellen Page, Toby Kebbell, Shiloh Fernandez

Director: Zal Batmanglij

Producer(s): Michael Costigan, Jocelyn Hayes, Brit Marling, Ridley Scott,Tony Scott

Writer: Zal Batmanglij, Brit Marling

Rating: PG-13
Release Date: 6/23/2013
Running Time: 116 minutes

The East ~ Production Stills

Based on the concepts of "Freeganism"  an anarchist group called "The East" is targeting a multinational corporate pharmaceutical that is causing deaths of their users due to the side effects of the medications.

Writer  Brit Marling ("After Earth," "The Sound of My Voice") and director Zal Batmanglij ("The Sound of My Voice") based the concepts behind their anarchist group 
on the idea of Freeganism and the idea to avoid spending money on products that exploit the world's resources, contribute to urban sprawl, treat workers unfairly, or disregard animal rights.

Here is what t is about :

The East, a suspenseful and provocative espionage thriller from acclaimed writer-director Zal Batmanglij and writer-actress Brit Marling, stars Marling as former FBI agent Sarah Moss.  Moss is starting a new career at Hiller Brood, an elite private intelligence firm that ruthlessly protects the interests of its A-list corporate clientele. Handpicked for a plum assignment by the company's head honcho, Sharon (Patricia Clarkson), Sarah goes deep undercover to infiltrate The East, an elusive anarchist collective seeking revenge against major corporations guilty of covering up criminal activity.   Determined, highly-trained and resourceful, Sarah soon ingratiates herself with the group, overcoming their initial suspicions and joining them on their next action or "jam." But living closely with the intensely committed members of The East, Sarah finds herself torn between her two worlds as she starts to connect with anarchist Benji (Alexander Skarsgård) and the rest of the collective, and awakens to the moral contradictions of her personal life.".

Produced by Scott Free Production and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures is due out May 31, 2013

Related

The East Preview

Movie Data

Genre: Action, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Year:  2013

Staring: Alexander Skarsgård,Brit Marling,Ellen Page, Toby Kebbell, Shiloh Fernandez

Director: Zal Batmanglij

Producer(s): Michael Costigan, Jocelyn Hayes, Brit Marling, Ridley Scott,Tony Scott

Writer: Zal Batmanglij, Brit Marling

Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 116 minutes

Release Date: 6/23/2013

The East Preview Trailer 1

From the writing team of Brit Marling ("After Earth," "The Sound of My Voice") and Zal Batmanglij ("The Sound of My Voice") brings us a thriller titled "The East."

Here is what t is about :

"The East, a suspenseful and provocative espionage thriller from acclaimed writer-director Zal Batmanglij and writer-actress Brit Marling, stars Marling as former FBI agent Sarah Moss.  Moss is starting a new career at Hiller Brood, an elite private intelligence firm that ruthlessly protects the interests of its A-list corporate clientele. Handpicked for a plum assignment by the company's head honcho, Sharon (Patricia Clarkson), Sarah goes deep undercover to infiltrate The East, an elusive anarchist collective seeking revenge against major corporations guilty of covering up criminal activity.   Determined, highly-trained and resourceful, Sarah soon ingratiates herself with the group, overcoming their initial suspicions and joining them on their next action or "jam." But living closely with the intensely committed members of The East, Sarah finds herself torn between her two worlds as she starts to connect with anarchist Benji (Alexander Skarsgård) and the rest of the collective, and awakens to the moral contradictions of her personal life."

Produced by Scott Free Production and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures is due out May 31, 2013

Movie Data

Genre: r Action, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Year:  2013

Staring: Alexander Skarsgård,Brit Marling,Ellen Page

Director: Zal Batmanglij

Producer(s): Michael Costigan, Jocelyn Hayes, Brit Marling, Ridley Scott,Tony Scott

Writer: Zal Batmanglij, Brit Marling

Rating: R

Inception: Through the Memory Darkly

"True inspiration is impossible to fake"

Every day we wake from our beds with the warmth of the sun kissing our cheek and we sit up and stretch.  We head to the bathroom to brush our teeth, and then at some point we realize that we have not woken up at all.  We are still slumbering away in our dreams.  Philosophers from Plato to Descartes have questioned reality and the dream world for thousands of years.  Christopher Nolan brings these questions and drops it on our doorstep and then steps back and laughs.  Like the Greek Myth of Theseus and Ariadne, sometimes the myths just don't make any sense, oh well.  What Christopher Nolan does in Inception, is walk the fine line between madness and sanity, between greatness and confusion.  The ultimate concept of that permeates Inception that one must take away from this film is trust.  As the characters must trust each other when entering the dream world, the audience must trust the world that Nolan creates on screen will not crumble before our eyes leaving us in limbo.  Nolan is not above a prank or two.

Inception is a Science-Fiction Action film starring Leonardo DiCaprio ("Shutter Island"), Joseph Gordon-Levitt ("3rd Rock from the Sun"), and Ellen Page ("Juno") as dream weaving con artists that work directly through a person's dreams.  Dreams are like a prison, either you are breaking in, or you are breaking out.  Like the WW II film the "Great Escape" from 1963, members of the team is brought in for their specialty.  DiCaprio plays Cobb, the mastermind of this organization; Levett is Cobb's right hand man Arthur, in charge of security and fact checking.  Page is the architect Ariadne, like the daughter of Minos; she holds the secret of escaping the maze of dreams.  Tom Hardy ("Star Trek: Nemesis"), Eames, is the Forger, both in the real world and the dream world.  Rounding off the team is the chemist, played by Dileep Rao ("Drag Me to Hell"), as the creator of dream inducing drugs that keep the dreamer sedated until woken at the proper time.  Ken Watanabe ("The Last Samurai," "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant") is along for the ride is as Saito, the corporate executive who is insistent on keeping a rival energy company from becoming a monopoly.

Held in a trance by the visual effects, during the first act, it is near the end of the first act, that the story starts coming together.  Saito (Watanabe) wants Cobb (DiCaprio) and team to plant a thought into the mind of the heir of the Fischer Energy Conglomerate.  The thought, the inception, that Saito wants Cobb to plant into the mind of Robert Fischer ("Sunshine's" Cillian Murphy), is the thought of breaking up his father’s corporation, and create his own destiny.  How the team accomplishes this mission is complex but not very confusing, and like the maze of the Minotaur, Ariadne is there to help us weave our way out of the maze.

Incredible Passive Income!

The beginning of the film is jumps from scene to scene and from one concept to another with little explanation at first but eventually the pieces of the puzzle start coming together.  Cobb and team typically steal intellectual property directly from a person's mind by joining the victims in their dream, and tricking those victims to divulge their secrets.  Plots within plots, dreams within dreams, each time the story goes deeper Cobb must explain to Ariadne how the dream world works and how to navigate it.  Not as straightforward as the Matrix, there is no virtual reality, but the deep virtuallity of dreams.  Good stories have good plots, but they also have solid main characters; characters with flaws.  Like Teddy Daniels, DiCaprio's character in "Shutter Island," and Leonard, Guy Pearce's character from Nolan's Memento -- the lead character suffers from the guilt of a tragedy that leads to his wife's death.  In Inception, Cobb suffers from guilt as he lives on the edge of madness and his visions of regretted pasts.  The guilt that haunts Cobb from the first scene to the last is the death of his wife.  Like characters from the TV series "Lost," while traveling though time need a constant, something to hold their sense of reality together, otherwise they would die.  Inception characters need a constant as well, which comes in the form of a totem.  A totem is a small item that only the owner knows how it works.  DiCaprio character's is a top, that if it never stops spinning, then he knows he is in a dream.  Page’s totem is the bishop in a chess piece, and Arthur's is a loaded die.  Arthur (Levett) is the man behind the scenes pushing the buttons, and supporting the characters and his cast members, I liked Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this role as it gives him the opportunity to show off his diverse set of talents.

Creating an M.C. Escher like visual effects nightmare, Christopher Nolan defies physics and our sensibilities.  This is where the trust comes into play; Nolan takes us deeper down the rabbit hole of dreams leading us directly to where Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra ended up in Richard Matheson's "What Dreams May Come."  DiCaprio’s dream-wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), come together in the madness of limbo, forgetting the difference between madness and sanity, between dreaming and reality.  Nolan, is pulling the best elements of a James Bond film (snow chase from "The Spy Who Loved Me"), adding the dream state (Matrix), and city towers rearranging themselves ("Dark City").  While explaining the concept of inception, director Nolan also gives us a lesson on advertising, reminding me of Don Draper and Roger Sterling brainstorming an advertising idea with a client, eventually allowing the client to believe that the concept that they proposed was their clients all along.  Han Zimmer's driving score adds additional layers of depth and emotion driving the suspense as the characters rises from the depths of their dreams toward the conclusion of the film.  Leonardo DiCaprio is getting older, and his once baby face recedes into maturity.  Since the day he played Howard Hughes, he showed the world that he is ready for mature parts, and solidifying that fact with the "Departed," "Shutter Island," and now "Inception."  Ellen Page adds her usual spunkiness to the team, and is there to make sure the audience is kept informed.  Ken Watanabe as Saito brings a sense of dignity to the film that without him the team would lack.  Tom Hardy is excellent in his role as Eames, forging alternate identities, and the third level of the dreamscape.  Dileep Rao's Yusuf the chemist character, although small, but performs it well.  Double Negative's visual effects are stunning and mind-blowing, enough said.

I mentioned at the beginning that "Inception" has elements of a Greek Myth, and that some things just don't make sense, there is one question about the story that bothers me.  How do they  achieve synchronous dream state, or is this something like "Nightmare on Elm Street" -- where one character's dream ties them all together?  Don’t let this thought or the many questions dissuade you from seeing this film on the big screen.  There are many things in life that are not explainable, but then again that is the wonder of it all.

Related

Interstellar: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Interstellar: Nothing In this Solar System Help Us
Interstellar: This World Is A Tragedy
Interstellar: Christopher Nolan's Wrinkle In Time

Movie Data

Genre:  Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller 

Year:  2010

Staring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine

Director: Christopher Nolan

Producer(s): Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas

Writer: Christopher Nolan

Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 148 minutes
Release Date: 7/16/2010

Original published on Associated Content on 7/18/2014