The Sweet East

 

Sean Price Williams: The Sweet East (US 2023) starring Talia Ryder (Lillian).

The Sweet East [the title in France]

    US 2023. P: Marathon Street (US) - Jimmy Kaltreider (Executive Producer) /  Base 12 (US) - Craig Butta, Alex Coco, Alex Ross Perry.

    D: Sean Price Williams. Screenplay: Nick Pinkerton. Photography: Sean Price Williams. Production design: Madeline Sadowski. Editing: Stephen Gurewitz. Music: Paul Grimstad.

    Technical specs (IMDb): - 1 h 44 min - Color - 1.78:1 - Camera: Aaton XTR Prod, Zeiss Super Speed and Canon Lenses - Negative Format: 16 mm (Kodak) - Cinematographic Process: Digital Intermediate (4K, master format), Spherical (source format), Super 16 (source format) - Printed Film Format: 35 mm (Kodak Vision 2383) and D-Cinema.

    "Evening Mirror" (Paul Grimstad) perf. Talia Ryder. "Show Time" (Patrick Miller) perf. Minimal Man.

    C: Talia Ryder (Lillian), Simon Rex (Lawrence), Earl Cave (Caleb), Jacob Elordi (Ian), Jeremy O Harris (Matthew), Ayo Edebiri (Molly), Rish Shah (Mohammad).

    Languages: English, Arabic, Apache

    104  min

    Festival premiere: 18 May 2023 Cannes: Quinzaine des Cinéastes

    US premiere (limited): 1 Dec 2023

    French premiere: 13 March 2023 - sous-titres francais Stanislas Raguenet

    Viewed at Grand Action, Salle 2 Kelly Reichardt, 5 rue des Écoles, 75005 Paris, samedi le 15 mars 2024

Cannes Quinzaine : " The mental, social and political disarray of the United States, filmed like a game of hopscotch or a variation on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. High school student Lillian runs away while on a school trip and, through a series of encounters, traverses the spectrum of contemporary radicalism and madness, from white supremacists to Islamic radicals, from neo-punks to woke avant-gardists. At every leg of her journey, she comes into contact with hermetic worlds, whose citizens rant and rave to each other, blissfully ignorant of their neighbors. A story at the crossroads of a traditional fairytale, a picaresque narrative and 1970s New Hollywood. "

DIRECTOR Sean Price Williams. 

" This is the directorial debut of US cinematographer Sean Price Williams whom The New Yorker described as “the cinematographer for many of the best and most significant independent films of the past decade”. Sean has shot films for directors including Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip) and Josh & Benny Safdie (Good Time). "

" Sean collaborated on The Sweet East with screenwriter and notorious film critic Nicholas Pinkerton, with whom he shares a period of employment at the now defunct Kim’s Video Store in East Village, NYC. "

AA: Candide reinvented for Generation Z. 

Like Terry Southern in Candy, the director Sean Price Williams and the screenwriter Nick Pinkerton turn the protagonist into a woman. The film-makers refer to Alice in Wonderland, and there is a similar sense of the merveilleux in the cinéfantastique approach. But the movie resembles Voltaire more. The incredible turns of the picaresque coming-of-age adventure are based on reality. 

During her class trip to Washington, D.C., Lillian (Talia Ryder), finds herself in the middle of a pizzeria hold-up in which the attacker wants to expose a secret pedophile ring in the basement (but there is no basement). She is rescued by Caleb (Earl Cave) of an anarchist group which gets lost on its way to a demonstration. Lillian is taken along by Lawrence (Simon Rex), a literature professor who is a clandestine white supremacist and silent film aficionado. Lillian steals a bag full of money from Lawrence. Now hunted both by police and skinheads, Lillian is cast by a Black film-maker duo, Molly (Ayo Edebin) and Matthew (Jeremy O. Harris), to a film they are making. Skinheads massacre much of the cast and the crew. Mo (Mohammed / Rish Shah), a survivor, provides Lillian shelter in a barn that belongs to Muslim brothers of an Islamic community. She flees just as she gets noticed by the Islamists and, about to be frozen to death, is saved into a monastery. 

I love America, a country that has during the last decades become increasingly hard to understand. The title The Sweet East is apparently a ironic wordplay with The Wild West. It cannot get wilder than this nor crazier. It's about extremism, conspiracy theories, and living in bubbles. 

"E pluribus unum" (Out of many, one) is the motto in the Great Seal of the United States. But Lillian with her young and innocent eyes registers a widening split.

I appreciate the film-makers' refusal to take a partisan stand. The growing gap between progressives and traditionalists / reactionaries is a global problem. The progressives are isolating themselves in bubbles of the righteous and failing to connect with people who increasingly identify with populists.

I must see The Sweet East again to make up my mind about it. What is instantly clear is that it is an impressive achievement. I have not seen anything like it.

...

P.S. The Sweet East has been shot on 16 mm, but it has an experimental look consisting of various visual modes that look like mobile phone footage, postmodernist video age "electric dreams", surrealism, psychedelia (altered states of consciousness) and CGI backgrounds.

It would be interesting to compare Generation Z movies with Generation X films and earlier generation films. Dazed and Confused was made during the height of the Generation X film wave in 1993 but takes place in 1976 which means that it is about late boomers.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: PLOT FROM WIKIPEDIA:

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: PLOT FROM WIKIPEDIA:

High school student Lillian is on a class trip to Washington, D.C., when a local restaurant is attacked by an armed man who believes the establishment houses a secret pedophilia ring. She is led to safety by anarchist political activist Caleb, who brings her to a home where he lives with other dissidents. Caleb and his friends bring Lillian along to a protest, only to discover that they travelled to the wrong location. While there, she meets Lawrence, a far-right university professor and nazi sympathizer, who offers to let her stay with him at his home. She sends word to a friend that she is safe but does not plan to return home. She sees news reports that there is a police manhunt for her, with fears that she has been kidnapped.

While at Lawrence’s house, Lillian witnesses him meeting with a skinhead, who gives him a large duffel bag. Lawrence travels with Lillian to New York City, bringing the bag with them. Lillian convinces him to rent a Manhattan hotel room and undresses in front of him. The following day, she sends him to buy her nail polish. While he is gone, she searches the bag and finds it full of cash; she takes the bag and leaves. As she is fleeing from the hotel, she is stopped on the street by director Molly and producer Matthew, who want to cast her in a film they are making. She gets the part and begins shooting, striking up a flirtation with her co-star Ian, a famous actor.

Lillian is photographed by paparazzi walking with Ian, with the pictures published on the cover of a tabloid magazine. During the shoot one night, the skinhead arrives at the set searching for Lillian and the money; he and other skinheads open fire and kill many members of the cast and crew, including Ian. Lillian is rescued by crew member Mo, who hides her in a secluded barn on a property his brother Ahmad runs as an Islamic community. While she initially stays there for fear that the skinheads are still searching for her, she finds a newspaper that they have been captured by police, along with an assault rifle. She plans to leave, but is seen by Ahmad, Mo, and others. She pretends to be a neighbor looking for a lost dog that escape. She collapses from exhaustion while walking away.

She awakens at a monastery, where she is told by a priest that she was rescued from freezing to death and that the police have been notified of her whereabouts. Upon returning home, Lillian finds that her classmates are now living very different lives than when she last saw them. As her family is distracted by TV news reports about a terrorist attack at a football stadium that has left tens of thousands dead, she leaves the house and smiles into the camera.