Rumours: Up in Smoke

I will not deny, it’s a funny movie - it plays with irony and political cynisicm, and has a lot of jabs to send toward the neoliberal insitutions we are soon to witness crumble into the sea. The ineffectual and fluffy words of our World ‘Leaders’, and the metaphor of humans in place of symbols.

The film follows the leaders of the G7 as an increasingly absurd (and symbolic) series of events happen, showing the ineffectitude and general blasé attitude of major western countries to the problems they seek to solve.

Yes, the film is heavy handed in it’s pursuit; No, you don’t end up resenting it for doing so; absolutely, you will have a good, cathartic laugh.

But, as a member of the inheriting generation, I have to say - i’m done with these doomerist endings, even if they’re only symbolic. I’m done with the doomerist hopelessness-maxxing. Around 3-5 films come out a year that do this, and each of them think they’ve really hit the mark, but they have not. They’ve simply taken to the medium of film a thought that some 18 year old said on TikTok 4 days ago.

I’m sure for the older generations of critics, this message and approach works. However, the irony is that the film ends up doing what the film is lambasting - creating fluff in place of solutions. Film is an amazing medium for imagining solutions, so if a film (even metaphorically) ends in smoke and no fire, I find it hard to justify it’s existence.

This is the dreaded ‘pointing’ film I always critique - if you are a filmmaker given resources, time and energy to create something that will be seen on the global stage, I believe it a misuse of this exceedingly (and increasingly) rare opportunity to take all those resources and simply make a film that points to an issue and says ‘Thing Bad.’

Very few people get to make films on this scale, and very few of them get to make films about politics, and so I find the doomerist approach to be an extension of this hopelessness vortex the film is depicting in these G7 leaders. The ending was beyond frustrating to an otherwise incredibly interesting and profound setup.

Furthermore, the film didn’t grapple at all with BRICS in any tangible way, which I read as being by omission; so many other things were quite blatantly addressed, so when something felt subtle, I assumed it wasn’t actually there.

So, as a political girlie and a film girlie, I can reccomend it only on it’s comedic merits. Beyond that, the film has very little new to say about anything. The audience it’s for will never see it, and the audience that is watching likely had this conversation over Dinner, on Twitter or through TikTok a couple years ago.