Delayed Reaction: The East

Premise: A private intelligence operative infiltrates an eco-terrorist group and comes to understand some of their beliefs.

 

Do you ever watch something and come away certain that you wouldn't like to meet the people behind it? It doesn't happen often for me. Beyond the fact that most films have so many hands in them that it's hard to really known the authorial voice, I'm aware that films often explore things the filmmakers don't believe themselves. Director/co-writer Zal Batmanglij and star/co-writer Brit Marling seem exhausting though. Apparently, the inspiration of this movie was a summer they spent practicing "freeganism" and living a money-less existence. That, the fact that they went to a prestigious school like Georgetown, and the little I could find out about how they grew up paints a picture for me of people I'd find tedious, which has soured me on the movie even more. Admittedly, that's unfair to the movie.

 

The bummer is that I've been looking forward to this movie for a while. I saw Sound of My Voice a while back and liked it. I thought it was intriguing. I liked the way it stayed open-ended about how legit Marling's character was. Like, she probably wasn't actually from the future, but...maybe she was. Then came The East with an even better cast and this secretive eco-terrorist group.

 

I finally get to The East and no part of the movie engages me. Granted, some of that is because Mr. Robot stole its thunder in the years since. I find it hard to believe that Sam Esmail hadn't seen The East before making Mr. Robot. It's a lot of similar rhetoric and style. My big issue with The East thought is that it always assumes I'm more on its side than I am. This group doesn't seem that alluring. In fact, they are pretty off-putting for much of the movie. I'm never sitting there in the movie thinking "Maybe this group has the right idea". Some of that is on me, I assume. I personally live pretty conservatively and privileged. "Freeganism" sounds dumb to me. Treating all corporations as nameless evil isn't as automatic for me. There's a good chance that, for the movie to work, I need to start at a 5 when I actually started at a 2.

 

Along those same lines, many of my problems had to do with Britt Marling in the lead role. Marling just plain reads like someone who would be in the East. I had a lot of trouble believing her as a corporate operative at the beginning. I spent the first half of the movie thinking she was a double-agent for the East pretending to be working for the private intelligence agency. And this colors the entire movie. Since Marling naturally carries herself like someone who would be in the East, the movie doesn't have to work that hard to convince the audience that she's buying into it. However the character she's supposed to be playing - buttoned up corporate type - would need way more convincing. In essence, the bad casting of the character leads to them not believing the screenplay has to be stronger. That's how you end up with that ridiculous scene at the end where she digs an apple out of the trash. Obviously, the point of that scene is to alert Patricia Clarkson to be suspicious, but the whole time, I was trying to figure out when the movie actually converted her from corporate shill to a dumpster diver.

 

I think some of the espionage stuff is pretty good. I love a good mission in which someone has to figure out what's going on and seeing how the moving parts all come together. Alexander Skarsgaard revealing that he knew the truth about Marling is always a good moment, no matter how unsurprising it is. A lot of the beats of the movie itself work for me on a general level. I think it's exceptionally hampered by casting Marling in the lead role. Switching her and Elliot Page would've worked better. I couldn't buy into any part of Marling's character's journey in the movie which got in the way of every other part of it.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend