Humanity Bureau REVIEW
“In the near future, after economic catastrophe and climate change came famine, the great migration and the civil war.”
This is a movie starring (is that the right word for this actor these days?) Nicolas Cage that is marinated in anti-Trumpism. It is clear that the movie was put together as a low-budget protest piece against a variety of Trump’s more distasteful policies (or imagined policies) or character traits (or imagined character traits). Its supposed to be a futurist look into the end results of a Trump presidency (nuclear war, irreversible climate change, border fences that are designed to kill asylum seekers, and an aggressive attempt to eliminate anyone who is deemed more “taker” than “maker”). It is a fugitives fleeing oppression story that winds up looking something like The Sound of Music without music and without a happy ending.
The characters all come off as somewhat contrived but maybe the producers were afraid that too much subtlety would obscure the message. The main protagonist (Noah Kross) has a name that only barely disguises itself as a reference to “the person who saves humanity from impending disaster.” Like Noah and Jesus, he becomes aware of the coming disaster just in time to tell the world about it so that they can save themselves (if they will listen). The antagonist is a man by the name of Adam Westinghouse. I find this particularly delicious. His last name is an obvious reference to an American corporation founded in 1886. The first name, Adam, would suggest that this evil villain is a powerful corporation with all the powers of a person (the great evil of the Progressive left). How appropriate in the movie that he wears an eye patch, looks like a pirate, seeks to repress the truth (even if it means killing struggling mothers of orphaned children), and maintains his own swimming pool for himself in a world where the poor can get no water. If only they had thought to name his superior “Monsanto” or “Walmart.”
Given that the premise of the film is an American government that promises to take its struggling masses to “New Eden” when in reality, they simply take them to be cremated, it is particularly interesting that there is a character in the film who has a German accent, is named Adolph, and who helps the fugitive family to escape to safety in Canada (I cannot help but assume that the director intends for us to see in the film’s main characters a personification of Joseph helping Mary and Jesus escape from Herod). I suspect that the point is that not even Germans named Adolph would act like this American government is acting.
There is a moment in the film where Noah and Rachel (the boy’s foster mother) are talking about what they should tell the boy about who he is and who his actual father is. Cage’s character wonders if he is ready to hear the truth. One suspects that the screenwriter and producer see their message as a prophetic one. “Here is where the Trump administration is taking us,” they seem to say. “Best get over the border to Canada while you still can.”
There is a scene where the evil Adam Westinghouse is swimming in his pool and he invites one of his lieutenants to dive in and join him. The man fears he might drown, having never seen so much water before we imagine. “The trick is to hold your breath before you go under” Westinhouse says. Ironically, this may be the message of the movie to those in American that it assumes are about to suffer under an organized Trumpian attempt to eliminate those who have need of welfare (Rachel Weller is, after all the name of the single mother who has been determined unworthy of continued citizenship – Rachel, if you did not know this, is Hebrew for a female sheep). The final credits roll to a song entitled Done the Math by the band, The Headstones. The lead singer is none other than the actor who plays Westinghouse in the movie. The final words of the song are “I won’t just try to hold my breath and make it through.”
Well, every day
I feel consumed
From one day
to the next
The best I can do
And every day
I feel unglued
Well, I won't just
hold my breath
And try to
make it through
I've done the math
I've done the math
The call to action is clear: “Revolt now while you still have a chance or prepare to be sent to Buchenwald or Auschwitz’s.” The final scenes of the film portray a society in the flames of rebellion stirred up by the secrets that Noah Kross has exposed. A protestor aims his gun at a Humanity Bureau agent. Fade to black. “When I was a boy, I couldn’t wait for summer vacation” and then an image of a boy under water holding his breath about to resurface.
Question for Comment: In the history of revolution, it has always been a fear of what a tyrant was about to do rather than the knowledge of what they had done that has sparked violent opposition. Take the American Revolution for example. Patrick Henry does not drum up the resistance movement by citing the Tea Act. He asserts that the Tea Act is only a precursor to what is coming. “The King and Parliament,” he insists, have as their ultimate goal the enslavement of the colonies in view. It is not about a nickel here and a dime there to pay for the French Indian war. It is about human enslavement.” In a similar way, this film attempts to draw a picture of just where the trump Administration is heading as a means of inspiring resistance to what is actually doing. How is this strategy likely to be effective or counter-productive to an opposition movement?
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