Review - The Sweet East
Directed by: Sean Price Williams
Written by: Nick Pinkerton
Starring: Talia Ryder
Running Time: 104 minutes
Rating: 3/5
Political satire is always a tricky subject to nail down into movie form. So much of it can depend on timing, and satirizing recent events. If you try and plant your flag on something, by the time your movie comes out many years later, it can feel dated even before its released. This film does a decent job at capturing a time and the general angst of the political landscape over the past few years.
The Sweet East is a satirical black comedy from Sean Price Williams directing, and an original screenplay from Nick Pinkerton. It follows a young girl name Lilian while on a high school field trip to the nations capital. She is separated from her group during a bizarre incident at a pizza parlor that is being held up at gun point by a conspiracy theorist . After escaping she is sent on a kaleidoscopic roadtrip up and down the east coast of America. Crossing paths with, anarchist protestors, white supremacist college professors, and independent film directors. Lilian must survive these seemingly endless gauntlet only piece together a wild and weird portrait of America.
I wont lie, it took me a bit to get fully on board for the ride that is this movie. It follows a roadtrip structure with a handful of stops along the way. It has a very aggressive and anarchist bent to its characters and their situational comedy. So at first it wasn’t clear if the movie was going to stuck in its fairly morose and stern opening.
Once it gets in the flow of bouncing around our lead from character to character, it gives way to its more comedy, where its tone can fly more freely and comfortably.
Shot on handheld grainy 16mm, this movie feels very nostalgic for the look of times gone by. Which is a fun dichotomy to it exploring politics of the recent. It isn’t concerned with actual news and actual politicians for the most part. But wants to explore caricatures of people on the fringes of various political activist groups.
The cast is having fun while also exploring the various distillations of our current American political spectrum. Talia Ryder plays Lilian and is our guide through this sweet east. She is very mercurial character who gets to play up her very assured naiveté and manipulate and fool everyone she meets. The stand out performance is Simon Rex as a college professor who is secretly part of right wing extremist group. Rex feels very at home in playing another talkative slippery manipulator.
Pulling notes from other picaresque Americana stories such as ‘Fear and Loathing Las Vegas’ or ‘Easy Rider’ it successfully keep the pace going for its brief runtime. The movie for the most part doesn’t take itself seriously, which is definitely to its advantage. It’s why the opening section really didn’t land well because it was trying to lampoon some serious situations quite plainly. While it does have something to say about the naive grandeur of American politics at play currently, it is more about observing these foibles, rather than having a distinct take or stance. And thats ok. It wants to show how crazy it may feel out there, without offering a solution. Because, what could be the solution at this point? This is a look back, but only looking back so far.
