Rumours (2024)
Directed by: Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin
Premise: Leaders of the G7 gather at a wooded retreat to work out a draft statement addressing a global crisis. Their work is interrupted by strange and supernatural phenomena.
What Works: Rumours is a very strange film and it earns some kudos simply for its weirdness. The film’s sense of humor is absurd in the manner of online comics with a hint of the satire seen in television programs such as Veep and South Park. Given the film’s strangeness, the actors deserve some credit for going along with this. They commit to the material and Cate Blanchett and Nikki Amuka-Bird and Roy Dupuis get a lot of the best moments. However, the strongest aspect of Rumours is not the supernatural weirdness but the administrative comedy as these leaders try to put together a statement. This running gag satirizes the way in which governments create meaningless and ineffectual word salad that is supposed to be profound.
What Doesn’t: Rumours is intended to be an absurd comedy but even absurd comedies have to make sense. Rumours is incoherent. The leaders of the G7 gather for no stated reason. We’re told there is a crisis but the nature of that crisis is never revealed. The ambiguity may be the point but there is no goal for the characters. Everything is so vague that the comedy is too generic. Rumours includes a lot of subplots as these world leaders pair up to tackle different aspects of the joint statement and there are preexisting relationships such as a past romance between the Prime Ministers of Canada and the United Kingdom and the friendship between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Italy. The interpersonal moments and subplots between these people are indecipherable. There is no set up and pay off and nothing comes of anything. The Secretary-General of the European Commission (Alicia Vikander) shows up in the middle of the movie. She’s talked about earlier but the character enters and exits the story abruptly without revealing anything. The supernatural phenomena is never explained. It’s probably supposed to represent something but there’s not enough context to make sense of it. The politicians have been left alone in a vestibule without any of their staff—which itself is absurd—and everyone at the retreat disappears. It’s never clear what’s going on and the film isn’t building toward a reveal. The incoherence of Rumours might be forgivable if any of the comedy worked but this film isn’t funny. There are moments of humor but the overall viewing experience is tedious and frustrating.
Bottom Line: Rumours is weird for its own sake and the movie isn’t very funny nor does it have anything to say about politics and government. It comes off as a collection of vague ideas instead of an intelligible story or even a coherent joke.
Episode: #1021 (November 3, 2024)