Just Don't Look

Branded(2012)

 Directed By Jamie Bradshaw and Aleksander Dulerayn

"Branded" follows in a long line of anti-corporate science fiction, but unfortunately it follows rather blindly.

 Many have complained that "Branded" is a text-book example of false advertising (ironically also the film's subject) since its trailers made constant use of vibrant mutating and indeed fascinatingly designed living brand-names that appear to be laying siege to a city in a cross between "They Live" and "Attack Of The Fifty-Foot Eyesores" from one of The Simpson's "Tree house Of Horror" episodes.

These creatures do not appear until about an hour into the film, and calling them creatures is a bit of a stretch.

They are real in so far as our protagonist can see them, and they create for him at least real responses in an equal mix of fascination and repulsion.

But they are in fact advertisements and nothing more. In one telling scene our hero, confesses his horrified discovery of the conspiracy by fast food companies to make fat sexy by sending a reality tv weight loss finalist into a coma so they can then push a cynical "be yourself" campaign at all their restaurants, and of realizing that products now shape humans toward their desires, to which his girlfriend replies, "Ok, but what are you going to do about it?".

A question that could have allowed the film to enter into some kind of dialogue with the real world, which it comes tragically close to.

Our hero decides or is lead by a rather clunky dues-ex-machina, to run negative attack ads for all the products he represents.

Vegetarian fast-food against beef, personal computers against cell-phones,Pepsi versus Coke,  etc.

This causes consumer confidence to drop in all products, and makes the masses of Russia (the third world country the villainous Max Von Sydow is using as an experimental testing ground) rise up and demand an end to advertising.

The people go about achieving this through with acts of terror and angry mobs of looters and rapists. But it works and Russia leads the world in banning ads.

Russia who according to the film produced the first advertiser, apparently none other than Vladmir Lennin in 1910 when he invented communism, its colors, slogans, etc.

It's true that Soviet artisans and marketing advisers were invited by general electric and American companies, who wanted to learn from them, but the idea that Russian communists invented advertising is an interesting but totally inaccurate one.

The film opens with a flash of famous names on screen of individuals who saw things no one else saw and changed the world, it sadly misses the opportunity to add they are also now all brand-names of a sort.

All ideas have to be sold, and all are in competition with each other and with other ideas in our minds. 

Instead of probing memetics, history, or philosophy the film contents itself to take swipes at fast-food and body image hysteria.

Like "Generation P"(which Branded burrows from liberally), "Branded" features a young intellectual who works at a kiosk after the fall of the Soviet Union, until by chance he becomes a wealthy marketing expert, who through a series of mystical visitations, becomes disaffected with modern capitalism and the alienation it creates. 

Similarities end there, where "Generation P"(short for Pepsi) fully integrates its mysticism, political, social, and economic philosophies into a plot both comically and intellectually satisfying, "Branded" loses track of its multiple ill conceived plot threads. 

The burning of the red heifer and the spy back story, hang so loose of the bones of the plot, they might as well not be there.

The performances do not tighten any of this up, as every actor seems to be running through rehearsals. 

Especially the central couple whose relationship is as thin as the ads they despise; they even have a child who appears as easily, as characters disappear in flashes of lightning (which also literally happens).

 "Generation P" shows us a world of interconnections that no longer correspond to simple ideological answers, and that was its point.

 "Branded" just insists advertising is evil no matter what product it sells.

Like the parasitical creatures growing out of our necks, our desires for products are unnatural and disgusting. 

Ads are demonic and marketers are the shepherd of the devil, and the closest thing to God hates them. 

Treating complex socio-economic issues in simple good versus evil terms is a doomed project from the start.

I appreciate the film for its bravery in at least being able to imagine a world without ads, however stupid and sloppy its execution in getting there. 

I sympathize, and do believe as Slavoj Zizek has often repeated, that it is easier for the masses to imagine the extermination of all life on earth than it is for them to imagine a world beyond our current modes of capitalism And communism. 

 So for having some Utopian balls I applaud "Branded", but all of the ideas and execution of the film in nearly every other way, could have used some additional thought in how best to market this utopia to the masses. 

The film struck a nerve in its depiction of gelatinous ravenous monkey's on our back, but sadly never truly advances beyond the scene where our hero discovers the conspiracy and his girlfriend asks him as if exhausted at his naivete, "ok, but what are you going to do about it?". 

Neither his character nor any other in the film can provide a more nuanced idea than Paul Anka's jingle/maxim from that classic Simpson's episode, and the direction that DVR's are now naturally pointing us toward in our age of information overload, "just don't look."

Danger Comrades! Danger!

Tumannost Andromedy(Andromeda Nebula) (1967)Directed by Yevgeni Sherstobitov

Andromeda Nebula is a confusing soviet sci-fi film, about interplanetary travel, "tantra" (no not the fun one), and burly square jawed men who resemble Alex Ross paintings. There are at least two story lines as far as I can tell. One is about a crew of explorers searching for something (probably some kind of space fuel) and becoming stranded on a distant planet thanks to their captain's hubris. Once on the planet they do battle with a spectral smoke monster who can only be fought off by using light. The captain is a stern and serious man and the object of a fellow shipmates affections. But what time has man for love when there are smoke monsters about. The romance which I assumed was obligatory at first actually made metaphorical sense to the film as a whole later and contributed to an odd sexual tension that underscores all the male and female interactions. Meanwhile back on earth the head of the Astro-travel guild (who I believe is also leader of the Earth) ponders ways to make travel instantaneous by altering the nature of time. To this end he sends one of his top scientists to Tibet to do. The future is a communist utopia, where in the first and near final scenes young people affirm and dedicate their lives and "desire" to the cause of labour. Like the captain the head of the guild is a strong man of action type, but he is in love with a woman as well. A woman who refuses to marry/sleep with him until the Captian's ship returns. Likewise the captain will not give in to his feeling so long as he is on a mission. Then there is the word "tantra" appearing again and again (when the smoke monster appears they can "feel it [their] spines"), which I think is the name of the ship, and seems to be the only thing that will allow everyone to get what they are after. The caption get's escape for himself and crew, the girl get's captain, the head of the guild get's the earthbound-girl, and the earthbound girl get's to stop worry about the Captian's ship. And everybody has a sexy good time. I'm sure much of my difficulties came from he fact that the subtitles I had were not the smoothest transitions, making lines of dialog appear more oblique than perhaps was intentional. There is a late in the game "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" memory wipe scene, that sums up some of the themes of the movie nicely. The notions of giving yourself to life's uncertainties, even if it means suffering, having loyalty and determination being more important than personal pleasures and practicality, and ultimately wanting to hold onto love for a person (or "ideaology) even if it hurts you to do so. It is surprisingly emotionally engaging in a film that had been so flat and stiff for the most part. Even if my translations were laughable at times. I would have given up much earlier, were it not for another unprecedented sequence involving Lotte Reiniger style silhouette animation. The scene involves a cosmic dance of at first a single woman, and then several women doing ballet in deep space (or else some weird/awesome random performance art?)I think this scene was supposed to represent some group or alien species who lived outside of "The Great Ring" the collective of intelligent planets to which Earth belongs. If so the dance seems almost subversive; the dance being one of the most beautiful parts of the movie (worth struggling through the rest for). As expected the men who observe "the dance" scoff but not after watching for a few moments in silence. "Andromeda Nebula" had great set designs like space ship which includes a full gym and swimming pool. The plot is largely incomprehensible with some occasional philosophical musings to fill out of the hollow core. So incomprehensible perhaps even the actors at times were dozzing off.

This is the type of film that would be mentioned in a Viktor Pelevin novel, and used as a spring board to generate myriad discussions of sex, time, the soviet regime, and the meaning of life. Unfortunately Pelevin did not right this, and it's not as good as all that. I can't recommend it for anyone looking to watch a "good movie", but if your in the right mood it's ocassionaly fascinating and ocassionaly cinematically exciting. I could have this movie all wrong though, so much can be lost in translation.