Marty Supreme represents everything that is wrong with America right now. He is a trickster, a liar, an immoral fraud and a sore loser.
Does he remind you of anyone?
When he is comprehensibly defeated by a deaf Japanese table tennis champion Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) he throws a tantrum and demands a rematch implying that he was cheated out of victory. It’s hard not to think of Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election result at this point.
How are we supposed to respond to a character who is so self-centred, selfish and manipulative? Are we meant to admire his attempted power grabs and his single-minded pursuit of wealth and fame?
In Britain in the 1960s, films noted for their ‘gritty’ realism were labelled ‘kitchen sink’ dramas. These were mostly set in the industrial north and featured working class characters striving vainly to overcome the drabness and narrowness of their lives. Films like A Kind of Loving (John Schlesinger, 1962), This Sporting Life (Lindsay Anderson, 1963) and A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961) are good examples. The Britishness of such titles meant that they were received with a certain level of scepticism or ridicule by American audiences. Pauline Kael mocked the manner in which British film critics had a tendency to “salivate when they hear the tinkle of class distinctions.” Making a tenuous link to these films, I’ve noticed a recent trend in American cinema for what I like to call ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ (EBTKS) movies. In this category I would place Eddington (Ari Aster), Weapons (Zach Cregger), Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky) and One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson). The latter is far and away the best of a bunch of comedy-dramas that contain veiled but non-specific critiques of Trumpism. They cover topics like rampant consumerism, conspiracy theories, eco-terrorism and survivalist motivated criminality. The filmmakers seem to subscribe to a belief that if enough mud is thrown at socio-political problems some of it may stick. Invariably, however, they merely induce a level of anxiety that is never satisfactorily satiated. The impression that remains is that they depict a world falling to pieces without there being any obvious means of remedying the situations. They are in this sense all disaster movies. The latest EBTKS movie I have seen is Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You. In this, the awesome Rose Byrne plays Linda, a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She is a therapist and mother to a daughter with a serious, though unexplained, medical condition. She is isolated and overwhelmed in both roles and has to contend with domestic drama, unsympathetic health workers and voices in her head that lead her down self-destructive paths . Her husband is no help. He is literally heard but not seen giving advice on the end of the phone doing work that he clearly regards as more important than her daily battles. The accumulation of calamities speak volumes about the accelerated lifestyles that are regarded as the norm in the modern world. EBTKS films are about chaotic lives in turmoil that make me think of Koyaanisqatsi (Goddfrey Reggio, 1982), a film made long before technology made aliens of us all. The title comes from a Hopi word meaning “life out of balance” and the images contain vivid warnings of what happens when the pace of life reaches an extreme point at which human beings can no longer handle the pressures. This coupled with a heedless disregard for limits of the world’s natural resources is where the world is right now. By the side of these movies, the British new wave titles seem almost quaint so may just as well have been beamed in from another planet. What connects the two genres, however, is that they focus on narratives of individuals seeking the ways and means to break free of indeterminate shackles that become tighter the more one struggles to escape.
The Mastermind directed by Kelly Reichhardt (USA, 2025)
In the BBC Mastermind quiz show which first aired in 1972 the catch phrase invented by original question master Magnus Magnusson when the time buzzer sounded was “I’ve started so I’ll finish.”
In Mastermind, the movie, the feckless anti-hero JB (James Baline Mooney) played by Josh O’Connor starts something he has no idea how to end.
I like the premise of this film which I take to be a study of alienated manhood and the drawbacks of a society founded on rampant individualism.
O’Connor was apparently cast because, unlike so many male lead actors, he does not have a gym-toned body. Kelly Reichardt wanted him to look unexceptional because, although this is a heist movie, it’s a million miles away from the world of Ocean’s Eleven.
In pre-internet days ‘The End Of The World Is Nigh’ was the warning slogan of religious nutcases on many city high streets.
I imagine nowadays there are plentiful versions of the same message to be found in social networks. For the most part these placard-carrying, rapture-dreaming, doom-mongers of the past were harmless enough and dismissed as objects of ridicule.
Given the state of the planet right now, maybe it’s time to wonder whether they were onto something after all.
The thrust of ‘The Rise of End of Times Fascism’ by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor certainly supports the view that the end of days are closer than ever. These two women warriors’ have studied the rise of the far right in Trump’s America and come to the conclusion that “the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world.”
Taylor is a new name to me but I hold Klein in such high esteem that I know she is not one to make such a dramatic claim without good reason. If anyone can be trusted to fact check it is her. Watch her eloquently explain her treatise in measured tones in a short interview for Democracy Now to understand that she is not bent on scaremongering without just cause. The evidence she and Taylor put forward is both comprehensively damning and scary as shit.
Their thesis is as simple as it is chilling. The end times are a logical and pre-planned conclusion to the capitalist model which so brazenly divides the world into winners and losers. The super wealthy have built their fortresses and bunkers knowing that catastrophes are the inevitable consequences of the policies Trump-Musk and their allies are pursuing so cynically. As Klein and Taylor write “The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”
The scale of the task to turn this around is huge. I’m sure am not alone in constantly feeling that it is insurmountable. But if there is a takeaway from Klein’s recent mind-expanding dialogue with ANOHNI, it is that we cannot let hope die without a fight. We cannot allow AI to replace human creativity, or stand by and accept that profits come before morality. If we do either then the end truly is nigh.
Going into specifics about what action can and should be taken is not easy. Klein and Taylor don’t have all the answers but they are sure as hell posing the right questions. I am full of admiration for their courage in raising their heads above the parapet. Their rallying cry may be vague but it is an urgent one: “we will need to build an unruly open-hearted movement of the Earth-loving faithful.”
On February 13th, Tilda Swinton was awarded an Honorary Golden Bear for her lifetime achievement at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival. Her brilliant Acceptance Speech should be watched repeatedly and shared widely.
The timeliness of her impassioned plea for humanity is evidenced by the fact it came the day before JD Vance’s tirade spreading hate and scapegoating immigrants at the Munich Security Conference . As Tilda said: “it has perhaps never been more pressing to consider to weigh with reverence and maturity what sovereignty means to humans.”
She cleverly avoided naming the latest mob of enemies to freedom and human rights. Any caring person should know who they are. Her speech is also rooted in a firm belief that “Cinema can inspire a civilized world”.
There is always more than one side to a story. As Tilda points out, movies are great at showing this. She doesn’t give examples but Akira Kurosawa’s Rashômon (1950) sets the benchmark here. It is also demonstrated in the more recent Japanese movie Monster (2023) directed by Hirokazu Koreeda where we see the same dramatic events from the perspective of worried mother, a teacher and a young boy.
Without patiently and compassionately considering all points of view there is a very real danger that the world’s agenda is set by blinkered extremists as if no other possibilities exist.
To imagine no country and a brotherhood of man may be idealistic but hope must lie in the dream that such a Lennon-esque vision will endure long after “greed addicted governments” and “planet wreckers” are confined to history. Tilda imagines “a borderless realm and with no policy of exclusion persecution or deportation” and why ever not?
Isn’t being human meant to help those in dire need rather than create more barriers to liberty?
