Rumours (2024, dirs. Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin)

by Jack Martin | Dec 6, 2024

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 104 mins

UK Distributor: Universal Pictures

UK Release Date: 6 December 2024

WHO’S IN RUMOURS?

Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Roy Dupuis, Denis Ménochet, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rolando Ravello, Takehiro Hira, Zlatko Burić, Alicia Vikander

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Evan Johnson (director, writer, producer, editor), Galen Johnson (director, producer, editor), Guy Maddin (director, producer), Liz Jarvis, Lars Knudsen and Philipp Kreuzer (producers), Kristian Eidnes Andersen (composer), Stefan Ciupek (cinematographer), John Gurdebeke (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

The world’s leaders gather for an unusual summit during a global crisis…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON RUMOURS?

How many world leaders does it take to screw in a lightbulb? That’s not the set-up for a joke, by the way. This rhetorical question instead goes along with the themes of Rumours, as directed by the trio of Guy Maddin and brothers Evan and Galen Johnson (with a script by Evan). The film suggests that our elected heads of state could prove less effective than a chocolate fireguard in a major global crisis, let alone being adept enough to screw in a lightbulb, which the filmmakers convey through the strangest lens possible for a narrative that is already leering on the edge of Wonderland-like nonsense.

But while the commentary about the overall ineffectiveness of self-serving politics is somewhat accurate, and more than a little obvious, Rumours ultimately has a difficult time conveying it through this strange gaze. If anything, the film could have gone even further in its weirdness, as its strangely reserved execution undercuts its sharper tongue too much for it to leave the impact it hopes to have.

The film takes place during a G7 summit at a remote woodland location in Germany, with its chancellor Hilda Ortmann (Cate Blanchett) hosting her six contemporaries: the President of the United States, Edison Wolcott (Charles Dance); British Prime Minister Cardosa Dewindt (Nikki Amuka-Bird); Canadian Prime Minister Maxime Laplace (Roy Dupuis); French President Sylvain Broulez (Denis Ménochet); Italian Prime Minister Antonio Lamorte (Rolando Ravello); and Japanese Prime Minister Tatsuro Iwasaki (Takehiro Hira).

They are all meeting to draft a statement in response to an undivulged global crisis, but the pleasantries are interrupted when they suddenly find themselves alone with nobody else within immediate sight, surrounded by heavy fog and seemingly endless forests. As if things couldn’t get stranger, they are confronted by the likes of zombified corpses that had previously been unearthed after centuries underground, an AI designed to lure paedophiles (and thus requires someone acting like a nonce to communicate with it), and a giant brain the size of a hatchback car that has driven Celestine (Alicia Vikander), the Secretary-General of the European Commission – and one of Maxime’s many lovers – to Swedish-language madness.

The hook, though, is that throughout all these weird encounters, these world leaders have absolutely no idea what to do, or even how to respond. They all aimlessly wander to and from one bizarre thing after another, bickering and arguing and even banging like they’re potential victims in a teen slasher movie, while offering no concrete solutions that will benefit others, least of all themselves. In fact, some of them – such as Charles Dance’s elderly and noticeably British-accented American President – spend most of the time dozing off or having to be carried around in a wheelbarrow due to their own inactivity, and even then, they’re of little to no help when the time comes for them to act. These people are, indeed, pretty useless, especially as elected officials entrusted with the wellbeing of the countries that they all represent.

Evan Johnson’s script makes little effort to guise the real-world counterparts that are being lampooned here – it’s pretty obvious who this film’s versions of Angela Merkel, Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau et al are all meant to be – and there is mild enjoyment in watching these caricaturised figures bumble their way through this increasingly apocalyptic scenario. However, of the seven central characters only Roy Dupuis’s Maxime feels like the most rounded person out of the lot and is promptly given the most formidable arc, whereas everyone else is mostly stuck as one-note archetypes or, in some cases, barely registering at all as characters. This leaves you a bit cold as to who they’re meant to be other than thinly veiled parodies of actual world leaders, and therefore aren’t quite as interested in them as we perhaps ought to be in order for the satire to properly land.

Evan’s combined direction with brother Galen and Guy Maddin leans much more into the fanciful oddness of the script rather than fill it with any real substance. Characters tend to speak in highly descriptive and overly poetic terms, which not only foregoes the basic “show don’t tell” rule of the visual medium, but also gives the film a slight pretension, which is undoubtedly what it’s aiming for given the high-and-mighty attitude of these fictional world leaders but doesn’t fit alongside the more out-there imagery.

Speaking of, the film oddly takes little advantage of numerous concepts, barely explaining such things as that giant brain or the mud-soaked corpses that have risen up to do little other than stand around and attempt masturbation (many, as we learn early on, appear to have been castrated before death). Of course, not everything has to be given a firm explanation in movies like this, if only to preserve the mystery of it all, but in this case, Rumours keeps things a bit too close to its chest, thereby denying the viewer a satisfying experience in this nonsensical landscape, which just comes off as annoyingly artsy than genuinely deep and complex.

By the end, you feel as though you’ve gone on a whole journey for almost nothing. Except, of course, for the fact that our most trusted politicians might well be utterly useless in the gravest of circumstances, let alone at changing a lightbulb.

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON RUMOURS?

Rumours struggles to establish its commentary on the ineffectiveness of world leaders due to an overreliance on surreal imagery and unfulfilled concepts, rather than establish its characters and atmosphere in order for the satire to land better.