Rumours

 Zombies attack world leaders at the G7 summit.  This isn't exactly accurate.  In Rumours (2024), the zombies, few and far between, are more of a nuisance to the heads of state.  Off-screen, however, the world has apparently come to an end in a fiery apocalypse:  the Canadian prime minister says that the "sky is on fire and the sea has turned thick and black."  No one answers the phone.  A chat-bot designed to entrap sexual predators is the sole survivor of the disaster and, needless to say, not much help to the desperate politicians.  Broadly speaking, this states the premise of Guy Maddin's film co-directed by Evan Johnson (who, with his brother Galen, also wrote the screenplay).  Rumours is a Dadaist exercise and resists all plausible interpretations. I think it has something to do with conspiracy theories, bureaucracy, and the human impulse to soldier on by turning a blind eye to catastrophe -- but I'm hesitant to ascribe any particular theory of meaning to the film.  The movie is gorgeously produced, but only intermittently interesting and, although it's very funny, the humor is situational, witty, and not laugh-out-loud.  Despite it's absurd narrative, Rumours is reasonably restrained:  it plays things straight once the premise is accepted.  Unlike most of Guy Maddin's other pictures, the film is lusciously shot in color and edited according to classical Hollywood paradigms. The movie relies upon some considerable star power in its principal actors, Cate Blanchett as Hilda (the German chancellor), Alicia Vikander as Celestine, a hapless "unnumerated member of G7" representing, I think, the European Union, Charles Dance who plays the role of the American president, Edison Wolcott (inexplicably speaking in the sort of plummy British accent familiar to audiences from Masterpiece Theater), and the unbelievably handsome, sturdy, and Byronically romantic Roy Dupus representing the Canadian prime minister.  These parts require the actors to intone florid, jargon-laden speeches, much of it gibberish, of course, suitable to the bureaucratic agenda at the Summit.  There is a lot of impressive dialogue, although this also is rather hard to interpret -- intentionally hard, I think.  Madden's films usually are shot on what seems to be distressed film-stock:  his movies typically look like examples of half-rotten, mostly lost celluloid salvaged from the archives of German expressionist and Soviet silent cinema.  Rumours, by contrast, is lensed in beautiful, soft-focus technicolor, set in a lush forest (apparently filmed in Hungary), and features nocturnal landscapes foaming with fog, apocalyptic vistas with columns of cherry-red smoke rising over the placid woods, and pastoral imagery -- the film is set on the grounds of a palace said to be in Saxony with ornamental gardens, a classical gazebo on a point of land, and a big somber lake.  There are many big, expressive close-ups of the film's stars.

The Canadian prime minister, Maxime, seems to have been involved in sexual affairs with several of the female heads of state.  In the first half of the movie, he slips away to have sex on a dewy, flower-covered meadow with the German chancellor.  Melodramatic sub-plots are implied but never really developed.  (The Canadian prime minister is having trouble in bed with his wife -- causing someone to suggest attempting "non-sexual physical affection.")  When the film begins, the G7 meeting is mostly complete.  All that is required is for the members to agree upon a "provisional statement" for general publication.  The seven heads of state adjourn to a tholos, a round gazebo at the edge of a lake for a "working supper."  On the way to the gazebo, the Helga shows the other participants an archaeological site where a bog body has been disinterred from the peat.  The acid in the bog has dissolved the bones in the corpse which is coiled like a broad brown ribbon in the bottom of  the pit.  Someone asks about gender and the archaeologist in the hole remarks that the corpse is wearing "his penis on a string around his neck."  At the gazebo, the politicians gossip and try to write the "provisional statement."  Maxim, the Canadian PM, gets distracted by recalling problems with his wife Heloise and writes down some ideas on that topic.  (He is avoiding contact with a woman named Cardosa, also representing the EU, with whom he had an earlier affair."  There is talk about assuring everyone access to "sleep tanks", whatever those are, and Maxim says that "it's better to burn out than to fade-away", citing Neil Young, a fellow Canadian --  Cardosa says that she approves of the sentiment as being "very rock and roll."  Another minister says that they need to avoid the trap of "procrastination pit stops."  The French president is making progress on his contribution to the "provisional statement" -- he's working with Tatsura, the Japanese leader.  (The heads of state have been assigned groups to work on the statement a bit like a writing exercise in 9th grade).  But the Frenchman's notes blow away.  He pursues them into the woods and, in the darkness, falls into the open grave where the corpse of the bog body is reposing.  The bog body seems to attack him although it's not clear whether this is just his imagination.  He returns shaken to the gazebo.  The attendants serving wine and food have vanished.  It's now night and howling sounds come from the dark forest.  

The dignitaries, led by Helga, decide to walk through the woods to a ferry that will take them across the lake to a nearby highway.  Some sort of crisis has brought the heads of state together at the Summit, but it's now thought that things are worsening and, perhaps, there are protesters or terrorists hiding in the woods.  In the forest, the politicians find a bog body hanging in a tree -- it urinates on them.  More reanimated bog corpses are, apparently, masturbating around a fire -- the ejaculation of their semen causes an explosion.  A giant brain, said to be "the size of a hatchback" is discovered in a clearing.  A woman from the Summit, seemingly another European Union representative, appears to have gone mad -- she's found behind the brain working on her contribution to the provisional statement.  The heads of state think she is speaking an iron-age language but it's just Swedish.  Later, she burns herself alive on the pyre of the enormous pink brain.  The French minister's femurs have dissolved (just like the bones in a bog body) and, at first, he is carried through the woods by the hunky Maxime.  Then, the politicians cart him to the edge of the lake in a wheelbarrow that they find in the ghoul-haunted woods.  The American president succumbs to despair and asks to be left behind.  Fortunately, the rather feckless Italian prime minister,, Antonio, has filled his pockets with salami from the buffet table and he is able to share the meat with the other, increasingly famished, politicians.  After more adventures, the politicians get a call from a seven-year old child who has been left behind at the chateau.  But she turns out to be chat-bot devised by the G7 ministers to entrap pedophile sex traffickers -- there is no real child at all. (This motif relates to the far-right contention that heads of state are all pedophiles, something that Helga seems to begrudgingly admit.) The G7 leaders conclude that the world had ended.  They find some bags of swag that include candies and snacks, mylar space blankets, and other party favors including potassium cyanide pills that they can use to commit suicide.  Despite the increasingly dire situation, Maxime, the Canadian prime minister, finds some scotch tape and puts together a draft of the "provisional statement".  With the other politicians clad in wind-swept cloaks of mylar, he delivers a rousing speech from the terrace of the chateau, reading the 'provisional statement' that he has cobbled together.  It's dawn and the sky is full of sinister columns of smoke.  A couple of twitching bog body zombies listen to his words.  We see the flags of the seven countries go up in flags in shots inserted into Maxime's peroration.  He proclaims that there will be no more "procrastination pit stops," that "there shall be equal access to sleep tanks," that "non-sexual physical affection" shall be the order of the day and that it's "better to burn-out than to fade away."  He concludes his speech by saying:  "I know you're afraid; I'm afraid too.  Death is all around us.  But we will carry ourselves fearlessly into the dreadful inferno that awaits us all."

When the huge brain is discovered midway through the picture, someone asks whether "this is some kind of allegory?"  I don't really think so.  The influence most obvious on this picture is Luis Bunuel's The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel -- both films involve groups of petty bourgeois merchants, politicians, and criminals who persist in their vices and pleasures (a dinner party in both cases) in the face of absurd calamity.  The same theme is apparent in Rumours:  the doomed heads of state steadfastly persevere in producing their "provisional statement" which is ineffectual gibberish as a zombie apocalypse destroys the world around them.  (I sense that the film may be delayed response of some kind to the COVID pandemic).  There is a weird sort of grace, even heroism, in ignoring the end of the world in order to deliver a statement of economic goals to a public that has wholly ceased to exist except for decomposed, gurgling zombie.  Rumours is not really a Guy Maddin film -- it's more restrained, dense with dialogue, and shot like a conventional horror movie (the German chancellor keeps telling people that they have to "stick together" and not wander off into the dark woods.)  Maddin's influence is most evident in the strangely melodramatic dialogue that is delivered without any apparently irony.  There's a shot near the end of the film in which the Italian minister, Antonio, decides to "disguise" the semi-comatose French leader in his wheelbarrow; Antonio puts a few twigs and branches over the man's chest and face.  The image of the Frenchman shot through a flimsy mesh of twigs is something right out of Maddin's first feature, the wonderful Tale of the Gimli Hospital.  (I was happy to see that among the dozen or so production companies involved in Rumours -- most of them German -- the province of Manitoba and its film and music association are prominently mentioned.  Maddin and Johnson, of course, are residents of Winnipeg.  Apparently, some of the scenes were shot in Winnipeg.)