Cate Blanchett Wants You to Laugh at Politics in ‘Rumours’

Cate Blanchett poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film "Rumours" during the London Film Festival on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in London. (AP)
Cate Blanchett poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film "Rumours" during the London Film Festival on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in London. (AP)
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Cate Blanchett Wants You to Laugh at Politics in ‘Rumours’

Cate Blanchett poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film "Rumours" during the London Film Festival on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in London. (AP)
Cate Blanchett poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film "Rumours" during the London Film Festival on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in London. (AP)

You’d be hard pressed to find an upcoming film weirder than “Rumours.”

The biting commentary on the emptiness of political statements and the performances politicians put on starts off as a straight political satire focusing on the G7 world leaders, but then slips into a world of slow-yet-terrifying zombies; a mysterious, giant brain found in the middle of a forest with unexplained origins; and an AI chatbot bent on entrapment.

It goes from provocative to absurd within a few short scenes, with the G7 leaders no longer the subject of criticism, but the butt of the joke.

And that’s kind of the whole point, according to its star and executive producer, Cate Blanchett.

“We’re all in such a state of heightened anxiety and fear with what’s going on with climate, what’s going on with the global political situation. We feel like we’re on the precipice of a world war and there’s a lot of people in positions of power who seem to be relishing that moment,” Blanchett told The Associated Press.

She plays a fictional chancellor of Germany named Hilda Orlmann, the host of the conference who's more focused on optics than action.

“I think the audience will come to it with a need for some kind of catharsis. And because the film is ridiculous and terrifying ... I think they’ll be able to laugh at the absurdity of the situation we found ourselves in. I think it’s a very generous film in that way,” she said.

The three directors, Guy Maddin and brothers Evan and Galen Johnson, said they wanted the film to feel like it had a “generic wash of political disrespect” and to include some resonant critiques, but they didn’t want viewers to feel like they were leaving a lecture hall as they walked out of the theater.

“I’m preachy enough when I talk to people. I don’t want to make a movie that’s preachy, you know? I just favor movies that aren’t that. That just hit me with a little mystery of ... ‘What are you doing or seeing? What am I experiencing?’” Evan Johnson, who wrote the script, as well as co-directed, said.

As for the more absurd plotlines, Maddin said he and his collaborators share “a compulsion to come up with an original recipe.”

And original it certainly is. In its straightforward opening act, leaders from the Group of 7 meet for their annual summit and try to draft a provisional statement for an unnamed crisis. Then, as the evening goes on and they struggle to string together a couple, meaningful sentences, they find themselves abandoned and subject to attack from “bog people,” or well-preserved mummified bodies from thousands of years ago. Hijinks — and hilarity — ensue from there.

Nikki Amuka-Bird, who plays the fictionalized British Prime Minister Cardosa Dewindt, said that while reading the script, she kept asking herself, “What’s happening?” But the ridiculous plotline — including the apocalyptic invasion of zombie-like “bog people” — was only part of the reason why she took on the project.

“This kind of total courage to genre splice in this way takes away any kind of apprehension or fear you might have about it because their (the directors’) tongues are firmly in their cheeks the whole time,” Amuka-Bird said. “It’s a really imaginative exercise and it’s just fantastic to work with directors who can be that bold and take chances like that.”

The cast is rounded out by a starry ensemble: Roy Dupuis is a melodramatic Canadian prime minister, Charles Dance is an American president with an inexplicable British accent, Denis Ménochet is a paranoid French president and Alicia Vikander makes an appearance as a frenetic leader from the European Commission.

The title of the movie, Blanchett said, is meant to invoke the revered Fleetwood Mac album of the same name, which was made at a time when the bandmembers were reportedly “all sleeping together and bickering and breaking up,” she said.

“What was surprising about it is you think, ‘OK, this is a film about the G7,’ but it’s like a sort of a daytime soap opera with these sort of trysts and liaisons and petty squabbles,” Blanchett said. “It was such an unusual way to look at the mess we’re all in and the leadership that’s led us here.”



Movie Review: 'Eddington' Is a Satire About Our Broken Brains That Might Re-Break Your Brain

 This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)
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Movie Review: 'Eddington' Is a Satire About Our Broken Brains That Might Re-Break Your Brain

 This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)

You might need to lie down for a bit after "Eddington." Preferably in a dark room with no screens and no talking. "Eddington," Ari Aster's latest nightmare vision, is sure to divide but there is one thing I think everyone will be able to agree on: It is an experience that will leave you asking "WHAT?" The movie opens on the aggravated ramblings of an unhoused man and doesn't get much more coherent from there. Approach with caution.

We talk a lot about movies as an escape from the stresses of the world. "Eddington," in which a small, fictional town in New Mexico becomes a microcosm of life in the misinformation age, and more specifically during the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, is very much the opposite of that. It is an anti-escapist symphony of masking debates, conspiracy theories, YouTube prophets, TikTok trends and third-rail topics in which no side is spared. Most everyone looks insane and ridiculous by the end, from the white teenage girl (Amélie Hoeferle) telling a Black cop (Michael Ward) to join the movement, to the grammatical errors of the truthers, as the town spirals into chaos and gruesome violence.

Joaquin Phoenix plays the town sheriff, a soft-spoken wife guy named Joe Cross, who we meet out in the desert one night watching YouTube videos about how to convince your wife to have a baby. He's interrupted by cops from the neighboring town, who demand he put on a mask since he's technically crossed the border.

It is May 2020, and everyone is a little on edge. Joe, frustrated by the hysterical commitment to mandates from nowhere, finds himself the unofficial spokesperson for the right to go unmasked. He pits himself against the slick local mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who is up for reelection, in the pocket of big tech and ready to exploit his single fatherhood for political gain. At home, Joe's mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell) spends all day consuming internet conspiracy theories, while his wife Louise (a criminally underused Emma Stone) works on crafts and nurses unspoken traumas.

Joe's eagerness to take on Ted isn't just about masking. Years ago, Ted dated his now-wife, a story that will be twisted into rape and grooming accusations. Caricatures and stereotypes are everywhere in "Eddington," but in this world it feels like the women are especially underwritten - they are kooks, victims, zealots and the ones who push fragile men to the brink. But in "Eddington," all the conspiracies are real and ordinary people are all susceptible to the madness.

In fact, insanity is just an inevitability no matter how well-intentioned one starts out, whether that's the woke-curious teen rattled by rejection, or the loyal deputy Guy (Luke Grimes) who is suddenly more than happy to accuse a colleague of murder. Louise will also be swayed by a floppy-haired internet guru, a cult-like leader played with perfect swagger by Austin Butler.

The problem with an anarchic satire like "Eddington," in theaters Friday, is that any criticism could easily be dismissed with a "that's the point" counterargument. And yet there is very little to be learned in this silo of provocations that, like all Aster movies, escalates until the movie is over.

There are moments of humor and wit, too, as well as expertly built tension and release. "Eddington" is not incompetently done or unwatchable (the cast and the director kind of guarantee that); it just doesn't feel a whole of anything other than a cinematic expression of broken brains.

Five years after we just went through (at least a lot of) this, "Eddington" somehow seems both too late and too soon, especially when it offers so little wisdom or insight beyond a vision of hopelessness. I wonder what world Aster thought he'd be releasing this film into. Maybe one that was better, not cosmically worse.

It's possible "Eddington" will age well. Perhaps it's the kind of movie that future Gen Alpha cinephiles will point to as being ahead of its time, a work that was woefully misunderstood by head-in-the-sand critics who didn't see that it was 2025's answer to the prescient paranoia cinema of the 1970s.

Not to sound like the studio boss in "Sullivan's Travels," trying to get the filmmaker with big issues on the mind to make a dumb comedy, but right now, "Eddington" feels like the last thing any of us need.