Rumours

Last night I decided on a double feature at the Broadway designed to make me laugh and cry.  I started with the post-apocalyptic political satire Rumours but it wasn't as funny as I thought it would be.  Chancellor Hilda Ortmann of Germany (Cate Blanchett), President Edison Wolcott of the United States (Charles Dance), Prime Minister Maxime Laplace of Canada (Roy Dupuis), President Sylvain Broulez of France (Denis Menochet), Prime Minister Cardosa Dewindt of the United Kingdom (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Prime Minister Antonio Lamorte of Italy (Rolando Ravello), and Prime Minister Tatsuro Iwasaki of Japan (Takehiro Hira) meet together for a G7 summit in order to draft a provisional statement about a global crisis.  As they struggle to articulate coherent thoughts about the unnamed crisis (one suggests that they begin with the date) they discover that all of their aides have suddenly disappeared and they face a series of increasingly bizarre threats, including the sudden appearance of the deranged Secretary-General of the European Commission (Alicia Vikander).  They are eventually able to cut and paste (literally) a statement together composed of meaningless buzz words and they deliver it as the world burns around them.  I really loved the commentary on how world leaders tend to focus on the optics of a problem rather than how to actually solve it (unfortunately I think this is an accurate depiction) and I laughed out loud at how incompetent they are when attacked and at all of the revelations of inappropriate behavior in their personal lives (the Prime Minister of Canada is sleeping with all three of the women).  However, some of the humor is really out there (zombies and a giant brain) and it doesn't always land even if the cast is game for anything.  I enjoyed this enough to recommend it but not everyone will appreciate the surreal tone.