What will life on Earth look like in the future, where humans are alive but no longer in power? Landscape With Invisible Hand — by Corey Finley (Thoroughbreds, Bad Education) Directed, based on MT Anderson’s young adult novel — depicts a depressing, dryly humored society crumbling at a steady pace. Small aliens known as “Vuvv” landed and wrecked the economy, leaving most people either underemployed or completely unemployed. The rich have abandoned the planet to live “on it” with aliens, while everyone left on Earth is looking for what’s left of money, land and food. Rather than monstrous beings with terrifying lasers and military power, the Vuvv are tiny bureaucrats with no sympathy for the poverty their soulless business practices create.
Adam (Asante Blackk) and his family are basically squatting in their own big house, scraping by. His mother Beth (Tiffany Haddish
) is an unemployed lawyer whose husband has disappeared and understandably has scars on her shoulders. His younger sister, Natalie (Brooklyn McKinzie), is hopeful and trying to grow produce in their empty pond. And his father (William Jackson Harper) went to work in California and never came back. With all of this swirling in his mind, Adam deals with it through his artwork, depicting his life. His work is playful and imaginative, not concerned with reflecting reality. He finds his first muse when he meets Chloe (Kelly Rogers). The Landscape of the Invisible Hand
BOTTOM LINE Answer tough questions with care.
Venue:
Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
(Premiere)
Cast:
Asante Blackk, Kylie Rogers, Tiffany Haddish, Josh Hamilton, Michael Gandolfini, Brooklyn MacKinzie, William Jackson Harper
Director/Screenwriter:
Corey Finley
1 hour 45 minutes
Adam is so captivated, in fact, that he invites Chloe, her brother (Michael Gandolfini) and father (Josh Hamilton) to move into his basement so they won’t be out on the street. The tension between the two families seems like a small price to pay for young love at the end of the world. Adam and Chloe’s chemistry is sweet and fun, with Adam being the more sensitive of the two. He longs for a return to normalcy in a society that no longer has time. But Chloe, increasingly concerned for her family’s survival, brings Adam into a business arrangement that greatly heightens the stakes in their relationship.
Their alien overlords have no sex or romance in their society, so they’re obsessed with human dating. So, as a way to make money, Chloe and Adam start “courting broadcasts,” where they show their love to alien audiences in space. It’s like turning their lives into an unscripted sitcom; improvisation is essential. For a while, it worked—the novelty of it all brought joy to their relationship. The money that came in fed their family and things seemed to settle down. But soon Adam finds himself in trouble, as do turbulent life situations.
What begins as a polite, slightly tense cohabitation relationship quickly devolves into class conflict, with underlying racial influences mostly left unaddressed. The film is so afraid of speaking out that Chloe’s family is a little racist that it ultimately avoids any chance to address the very real issue of white people being uncomfortable with black success and prosperity. But even so, its absurdity is obvious. It’s the end of the world, and the white family still feels threatened by the money the black family once had. So there’s no hope of working together or merging the two families in any meaningful way. Maybe that’s not a flaw in the story — it’s just that it doesn’t matter how things go.
Landscape With Invisible Hand is more interested in the broader question: how does one become an artist? This question has become increasingly urgent as business leaders take more and more control over the arts. Adam is going through an accelerated version of what writers, filmmakers, and artists are currently working on. As companies merged and jobs disappeared, those with artistic minds were encouraged to either sell or change direction entirely.
Finley is good at making sci-fi premise seem trivial and mundane; Invasion’s calm is unbelievable. Vuvv is no different from the affluent class we already have now – they use technological advancement as an excuse to quickly destroy empathy. It is a blunt indictment of the brutality of capitalism, which constantly demands that we pay a price for our freedom. However, the film never quite adopts a darker tone, and whenever things start to get tough for Adam, it’s whimsical. The drama of abandonment and heartbreak is played out faithfully, and it feels more like a show break than a genuinely emotional moment.
Even so, Blake’s eyes were full of emotion, and his melancholy filled the screen. Another major selling point of the film are Adam’s paintings, which unfold beautifully to show the passage of time through his point of view. In many ways, they are the liveliest parts of the movie. They show us a perspective that can easily get lost in a society that values technological advancement over human expression.
Full credits
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Premiere)
Production company: MGM, Plan B, Annapurna Pictures
Cast: Asante Blackk, Kylie Rogers, Tiffany Haddish, Josh Hamilton, Michael Gandolfini, Brooklyn MacKinzie, William Jackson Harper 2017
Director/Screenwriter: Cory Finley
Producers: Jeremy Kleiner, Dede Gardner
Executive Producers: Brad Pitt, David Kern, MT Anderson, Megan Ellison, Tiffany Haddish, Gabby Shepard
Director of Photography: Lyle Vincent
Editor: Louise Ford
Visual Effects Supervisor: Erik-Jan De Boer
Production Designer: Sue Chan
Music Composer: Michael Abels
Set Design Teacher: Lynne Mitchell
Costume Designer: Tanja Caldwell
Casting: Ellen Lewis, Kate Sprance 1 hour45 minute
THR Newsletter 45
Corey Finley
1 hour 45 minutes
Adam is so captivated, in fact, that he invites Chloe, her brother (Michael Gandolfini) and father (Josh Hamilton) to move into his basement so they won’t be out on the street. The tension between the two families seems like a small price to pay for young love at the end of the world. Adam and Chloe’s chemistry is sweet and fun, with Adam being the more sensitive of the two. He longs for a return to normalcy in a society that no longer has time. But Chloe, increasingly concerned for her family’s survival, brings Adam into a business arrangement that greatly heightens the stakes in their relationship.
Their alien overlords have no sex or romance in their society, so they’re obsessed with human dating. So, as a way to make money, Chloe and Adam start “courting broadcasts,” where they show their love to alien audiences in space. It’s like turning their lives into an unscripted sitcom; improvisation is essential. For a while, it worked—the novelty of it all brought joy to their relationship. The money that came in fed their family and things seemed to settle down. But soon Adam finds himself in trouble, as do turbulent life situations.
What begins as a polite, slightly tense cohabitation relationship quickly devolves into class conflict, with underlying racial influences mostly left unaddressed. The film is so afraid of speaking out that Chloe’s family is a little racist that it ultimately avoids any chance to address the very real issue of white people being uncomfortable with black success and prosperity. But even so, its absurdity is obvious. It’s the end of the world, and the white family still feels threatened by the money the black family once had. So there’s no hope of working together or merging the two families in any meaningful way. Maybe that’s not a flaw in the story — it’s just that it doesn’t matter how things go.
Landscape With Invisible Hand is more interested in the broader question: how does one become an artist? This question has become increasingly urgent as business leaders take more and more control over the arts. Adam is going through an accelerated version of what writers, filmmakers, and artists are currently working on. As companies merged and jobs disappeared, those with artistic minds were encouraged to either sell or change direction entirely.
Finley is good at making sci-fi premise seem trivial and mundane; Invasion’s calm is unbelievable. Vuvv is no different from the affluent class we already have now – they use technological advancement as an excuse to quickly destroy empathy. It is a blunt indictment of the brutality of capitalism, which constantly demands that we pay a price for our freedom. However, the film never quite adopts a darker tone, and whenever things start to get tough for Adam, it’s whimsical. The drama of abandonment and heartbreak is played out faithfully, and it feels more like a show break than a genuinely emotional moment.
Even so, Blake’s eyes were full of emotion, and his melancholy filled the screen. Another major selling point of the film are Adam’s paintings, which unfold beautifully to show the passage of time through his point of view. In many ways, they are the liveliest parts of the movie. They show us a perspective that can easily get lost in a society that values technological advancement over human expression.
Full credits
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Premiere)
Production company: MGM, Plan B, Annapurna Pictures
Cast: Asante Blackk, Kylie Rogers, Tiffany Haddish, Josh Hamilton, Michael Gandolfini, Brooklyn MacKinzie, William Jackson Harper 2017
Director/Screenwriter: Cory Finley
Producers: Jeremy Kleiner, Dede Gardner
Producers: Jeremy Kleiner, Dede Gardner
Executive Producers: Brad Pitt, David Kern, MT Anderson, Megan Ellison, Tiffany Haddish, Gabby Shepard
Director of Photography: Lyle Vincent
Editor: Louise Ford
Visual Effects Supervisor: Erik-Jan De Boer
Production Designer: Sue Chan
Music Composer: Michael Abels
Set Design Teacher: Lynne Mitchell
Costume Designer: Tanja Caldwell
Casting: Ellen Lewis, Kate Sprance 1 hour45 minute
THR Newsletter 45
Music Composer: Michael Abels
Set Design Teacher: Lynne Mitchell
Costume Designer: Tanja Caldwell
Casting: Ellen Lewis, Kate Sprance 1 hour45 minute
THR Newsletter 45
Casting: Ellen Lewis, Kate Sprance 1 hour45 minute
THR Newsletter 45
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