The American New Fascist Wave at MIFF
The American New Fascist Wave at MIFF
Sean Price Williams' directorial debut THE SWEET EAST wants you to know that being a Neo-Nazi is not the worst thing you could be.
All I knew of Sean Price Williams before reading some deranged comments he made directed at the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes (blaming unions for how the bosses have tyrannical control over access to healthcare in the United States), was that I substantially enjoyed his cinematography on a handful of Safdie brother and Alex Ross Perry films.
I agree with Richard Brody that Williams is “the cinematographer for many of the best and most significant independent films of the past decade.” Williams is one of the sharpest at maximising the visual and thematic effects of lighting. His often handheld, flowing shots immerse audiences by intensely examining human faces and the drama they are caught inside.
So when I bought a ticket to Williams’ directorial debut at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), I expected a mildly reactionary, visually arresting film, that was more annoying than anything else, given its plot synopsis. I found THE SWEET EAST was less mild millennial reaction, more plainly pro-America, “post-ironic” vitriol. Rubes who wish to embody this seductive subjectivity will claim diagnosing it as such “proves their point”, but I digress.
Writer Nick Pinkerton (who, after a quick peek on Instagram, I now see is a friend to fascist podcast host Dasha Nekrasova) has set himself the task of Making Points via “a picaresque journey through contemporary America, undertaken by a young woman granted access to the strange sects and cults that proliferate in this country by a series of gatekeepers eager to win her over.” This really isn’t a bad concept for a film.
Exploring the cascading sociopolitical crises of the United States from the eyes of a roadtripping female highschool senior could have delivered ample humour, inventiveness and insight—even criticism. But Pinkerton (an ironic name for a fascist guy, it must be said) is uninterested in sincerely grappling with social or political reality, for fear that this would only reinforce the audience’s “seriousness” regarding such things.
Williams admits as much:
“There’s very much a political element to it [...] The world has the easiest time saying America is a problematic, fucked-up place, and I feel so differently about it. Part of our mission was to let no one look non-foolish, including filmmakers, because part of the problem [in our discourse] is that everyone takes themselves so seriously. I love the idea of making a conversation with our movie.”
This reflex to satirise people trying to understand or (in the eyes of Pinkerton and Williams) even worse, daring to take a position on concrete conditions of life in America, is a hallmark of snide, aloof elitism. Clearly, Pinkerton and Williams believe that engaging “seriously” in “the discourse” would be restrictive, forcing them to work merely with the literal and precluding them from employing imaginative scenarios.
Recent work by Boots Riley, Paul Schrader and Claire Denis upset this pathetic notion. Riley’s television show ‘I’m A Virgo’ makes far greater use of its costuming, miniature models and greenscreens. Besides, it’s much funnier. Schrader’s MASTER GARDENER (an accompanying MIFF 2023 feature) also centres a Nazi character, but explodes the static surreality of the political moment that THE SWEET EAST is situated in, opting for hopeful hyperreality. And Denis’ STARS AT NOON bears a fascinating similarity in plot, with a strikingly superior grasp on the shared thematic matter. All three films are visually enchanting where THE SWEET EAST is deliberately grimy for grime sake.
The film wastes no time impressing on us that our protagonist Lillian (Talia Ryder) is, first and foremost, a sexual object who supposedly draws great manipulative powers from her awareness of this. It is made clear there will be no interest examining Lillian’s condition. Instead the filmmakers use her fetishised White Lolita status as a key to open doors to grievances they itch to air. The first of which swings open when Andy Milonakis conducts a Pizzagate terror attack on a bar where Lillian and some anarchists find themselves.
Lillian is plucked from her school trip by a predatory young anarchist named Caleb (Earl Cave) who eyed her from across the bar, using the madness to sweep her down the precise child trafficking tunnels Milonakis was screaming about. It’s no sooner than they have escaped to the anarchist squat (yes, they pick garbage to eat) that we discover Caleb has rich parents, and he exposes himself to Lillian unsolicited. The next day, the anarchists take Lillian to conduct an anti-fascist bashing of Neo-Nazis who they fail to locate–though Lillian slips off to the Neo-Nazi meeting instead.
This is where Lillian meets Lawrence (Simon Rex), a devout, loquacious middle-aged Neo-Nazi who works in academia. Pointedly, the film treats Lawrence with the most deference outside of any character but Lillian, who is never once satirised. Indeed, Lawrence is allowed to talk and talk, freely espousing a sophisticated Neo-Nazi credo (sanitised of its genocidal race science) in flowery vocabulary, for a third of the film’s 104 minute runtime. In this White Supremacist worldview, Lillian’s disaffection is due to the decaying dominant (liberal) ideology which apologises for its crimes with snivelling literature like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.
To overcome this oppression, White Americans must raise their consciousness, throw off any shame, and realise they are the world’s truest custodians of hundreds of years of Western Culture. Initially leeching on to Lawrence for easy money and board, Lillian gradually grows fond of his elaborately justified American Nazism. Countless rolling scenes depict Lillian at her happiest in the film, experiencing a childlike ‘Alice in Wonderland’ freedom to the ceaseless sound of Lawrence’s propagandising (the anarchists—standing in for “the left”—are never allowed “beliefs” let alone this drooling charity).
Lillian eventually takes the money and runs, leaving Lawrence in the dust and making off with a major bag of Neo-Nazi funds. Only for the filmmakers to bring Lawrence back at the conclusion of the following act, for an extended apology of sorts, where they acknowledge how callously Lillian has treated this kind, gentle, passionate man.
“[When the screenplay was] written in early 2017, there was obviously a great deal of chitter-chatter about the renascent right, or the alt-right, but more than that, this was something that I had seen in a couple of people in my own life who had sort of drifted in that direction, and I wanted to unpack some of that. In one case, a very–in some regards–intelligent and sensitive person had gone down a certain rabbit hole that I found extremely sad.”
Where the leading anarchist is a rapey, violent, thoughtless fraud, Lawrence is the heart and soul of THE SWEET EAST: oozing sincerity, perfectly rational and the most restrained with respect to his Lolita fantasy for Lillian. With this sole moment of tenderness and moral conscience, the filmmakers are intentionally bursting the bubble of their own suffocating “irony” to land an emotional gut punch.
Drifting again, Lillian finds herself preyed on by Molly (Ayo Edebiri) a Black lesbian film director and her assistant Matthew (Jeremy O. Harris). Shifting from adoration for the Nazi to its disdain for all else, THE SWEET EAST treats its queer Black creatives as exploitative, self-serious pseuds, who conspicuously wear afros that you’d find on a Black Panther in the 60s. Molly, like Caleb, sexually harasses Lillian after signing her onto a production. Matthew is a stereotypically shallow and, it is implied, artless gay man.
Having met on set during this ill-fated tenure as a screen actor, Lillian only escapes the tyranny of the New Black Creative by being smuggled away by Mohammed (Rish Shah). Here she is imprisoned in an attic on a ranch run by Mohammed’s brother, which turns out to be a gay Islamic terror cell. Mohammed, hoping to sleep with Lillian, insists the Neo-Nazis who came to collect stolen money from her remain a threat, long after he knows they are in custody.
Finally, Lillian manages to escape yet another cult, but this time the jig is up, and she’s sent back to her family home where they together witness a mass terrorist attack on television. Stepping outside for a cigarette, a similarly aged female relative asks Lillian what she was doing while she was thought to be missing from her school trip. The answer from Lillian is “doing my own thing” (not pornography, which her relative suggests she is “pretty enough” to do).
The suggestion here is that this dissassociatedness is radically enlightened on Lillian’s part. By refusing to be “victim” to the shock and awe of American capitalism, Lillian has mastered the false maturity Pinkerton clearly aspires to. To be a victim is to care. Not caring and just loving your own Perfect White Ass is the smartest, coolest, most patriotically American thing you can do, according to THE SWEET EAST. To think some will insist this film has wit!
This overt fascistic screed was welcomed with avid applause from a typical Bobo Melbournian crowd at my screening. To some reading this, that solipsistic self-satisfaction resonated with these people will come as no surprise. Here, hostility to engaging genuinely with art and the world is a badge of honour. I certainly expect no less from male dirtbag millennials, who put on “irony poisoning” to deflect from their futility. “Everyone except me—a normative white man with no real beliefs—is a highly strung freak” is the prevailing ideology in these milieus. This is a movie very much by and for such individuals (possibly the MOST for them).
Such is the explicit project of THE SWEET EAST: to at once validate the resentful apolitical liberalism of its captive scuzz audience, and negatively polarise this discontent to the right. “You are right to think and feel this way,” it says, “keep going”. I was struck by the affirmed reaction of the audience at my screening—Pinkerton and Williams’ comforting pats on the back worked. If you’re anywhere between 20 and 40 years of age and living in Melbourne, you are overwhelmingly likely to have people susceptible to this spiteful thought around you. After all, their cinematic manifestos are welcome at our peak festival.
It is also a blatant attempt to cut against what the filmmakers no doubt view as stifling Woke Moralism around what is acceptable in cinema, and open up space for a Fascist New Wave. At a time where independent cinema is struggling to renew itself within degraded economic conditions, a jaundiced, self-fashioned American Cinecitta is developing to conduct right wing polemics. It is a sorry sign that one of America’s best independent filmmakers in Alex Ross Perry would produce such a film.
I suppose it should not be surprising, given the names attached, that a film festival would screen what looks on its face to be a refreshing piece of indie irreverance. But you don’t need to be the most discerning viewer to intuit what is really being said—the movie constantly literalises the message. The protagonist’s inexplicable obsession with using the slur “retarded” makes it all self-evident (especially if one is familiar with the associations of the filmmakers).
That easily recognisable right wing ideology would be presented to festival-goers without shame is a stark reminder that no matter how effete and liberal the facade may be, many people in the arts do not know or care about anything.
And they hate nothing more than people who do.