Jun 1

Jun 1 FILM REVIEW: "The Sweet East" sows sublime chaos in the Disunited States

The Sweet East is the most recent of modern cinema’s attempts to understand the absurdity of contemporary socio-politics. Sean Price Williams (cinematographer of Good Time and other assorted 2000’s cult classics) opens his directorial debut with a little time to acclimatise to the visuals, the writing, and the zany Human grossness of The Sweet East’s high-octane craziness. This window is your opening to learn the film’s language in all its unforgiving absurdity – sort of like the spiel they give at the start of a roller-coaster. Once assorted limbs are in the cart, and the coaster car leaves the station going backwards, it becomes clear that guessing the film’s destination is wasted energy.

Resisting the film’s ceaseless stimulation subjects you to disorientation and the banality of excess, but rolling with it allows the unstoppable pace of the film to carry you far across a greater breadth than conventional structure has space to contain. The issue, delight, question, and answer of this film boil down to trust. With The Sweet East (and films like it), your trust in the director’s intentionality is the primary measure of how much there is to gain from watching - this is the hinge point of the viewing experience.

If the fact that something’s being said is bought, The Sweet East becomes a jigsaw puzzle of subjectivity. For a medium that often degrades itself and implicitly the audience by oversimplifying the experience, explaining everything an audience should feel, think, and believe (ex. the modern trend of synoptic movie trailers), Williams’ respectful withholding is refreshing. The audience is brought back into the experience – allowed to be more than a bum on a seat or a ticket sale. We are given a platform, to judge the subject matter from different angles.

The key I found and the lens that made the whole tapestry click was tuning in to Williams’ use of contrast. Every character is desperate to assert themselves, with every breath, to force their essence into and onto the world around them in a desperate bid to be made real by the response of those around them. Identity, art, politics, The Sweet East is populated with what feels like a million individualists explaining their own messianic, myopic autobiography to one another using whatever thinly veiled externalisation is on hand. The relentless self-advertising is what makes our protagonist such an important and compelling anchor for the barrage of dialogue. Lillian is the so-desired mirror that every one of these characters has been seeking, to them feel powerful, yet ultimately, she holds the power.

By this metric, the tragic insecurity of the characters becomes comic, and as Lillian bounces along and rises through the madness, it becomes clear that silence – giving folks the space to wear themselves out – is the real power. It’s compelling, novel, and fills the brief pauses in the film’s propulsive narrative with a crackling suspense. From this perspective, the film is terrific. If you’re wondering about the technical stuff: shot on 16mm, this film is visually a treat, and in the experienced hands of Price Williams, there’s nothing to worry about cinematically. Audially, the corporeal score seamlessly fades in, out, and pops with quirk and crackles with malice throughout it all – but the pervasive use of irony makes it tough to know if the occasionally distracting discordance is intentional or not. This would be my only minor gripe.

Ultimately, it is hard to deny that this film says a lot. Divisively so, and initial audience responses reflect this. The film invokes religions from both East and West, politics across the whole polarity, and satirises anybody who falls into focus. If it’s more than you can chew, maybe that’s just an apt reflection of the world we’re living in. Go check it out, and decide for yourself.