“The East:” freeganists on the march

AT THE MOVIES

David Begelman 

Like Robert Redford’s 2012 “The Company You Keep,” Zal Batmanglij’s 2013 “The East” loses the ball somewhere along its 116-minute length. The former film dropped it when it came to exploring in depth the sometime conflict between the law and individual conscience. The latter film wanders away from the promising challenge of addressing why people become transformed in different circumstances.

Both films depict events in the lives of political activists. In the Redford movie, the central characters are a group of anti-war protesters long in the tooth, whose past activities resulted in the death of a bank official. In Batmanglij’s film, they are a group of anarchists whose “jams” involve the self-professed goal of punishing the corporate polluters of the commonwealth. And we’re not mincing words here. On one occasion retribution amounts to poisoning a group of industrialists at a party; on another, it means forcing an entrepreneur and his wife into their own creation: a pool of toxic industrial wastewater that has already infected an entire town.

The contrarians in “The East” live in a commune and, as in all insular cultural enclaves, develop rituals that seem to be on the somewhat dotty side. These include an inane love fest involving a spin-the-bottle game, or a dinner in which the participants come to the table in straight-jackets, feeding each other with long wooden spoons held in their mouths. On another occasion, they assemble in the woods adorned with strange masks. It’s as if their tiny civilization were destined to undergo mutated life forms, Darwinian style.

Batmanglij and Brit Marling, who is also the lead character in the film, wrote the screenplay. In preparing for it, they both spent two months in 2009 engaging in “freeganism,” or the habit of eating food discarded by others in order to celebrate the virtues of a penniless existence. At one point in the film, Marling’s character illustrates the practice by taken a bite out of someone else’s throwaway fruit.

 Marling plays “Jane,” a woman who lives a quiet, bourgeois existence with her boyfriend, Tim (Jason Ritter). But she also doubles as Sarah Moss, an undercover agent for a private intelligence agency headed by “Sharon” (Patricia Clarkson). The latter is as smoothly calculating a boss as you’re likely to see on any intelligence circuit. Her agency is dedicated to rooting out “terrorist” enemies of the commonwealth, like the group Sarah has infiltrated. Subsequent conflicts between the two are sparked by her transformation as a member of a group she starts to feel might have a point. Among her accoutrements are a crucifix, regalia and capabilities any well-appointed secret agent should possess. These include a microchip that can be swallowed and then vomited up to be retrieved, as well as dandy a set of karate skills you’re likely to encounter in any Tokyo dojo.

Moss’s personal transformation involves a growing ambivalence about her role as an agent for the powers that be. Maybe this is to be expected, since public statements by Batmanglig and Marling register political distaste for multinational corporations, especially the pharmaceutical industry. More than anything else, “The East” is a depiction of Sarah Moss’s ever-shifting sympathies as she grapples with the complexities of a role that sees both sides of the moral equation. Yes, the polluters are doing bad things; but is murdering them the proper way to address the grievance?

Moss more often than not is depicted as a bystander to the action of others, watching it unfold as though inner parts of her were going in different directions. The last half of the film abandons the moral narrative altogether, and devolves into a cops-and-robbers chase in which anarchists are chased hither and yon by skillfully coordinated F.B.I teams.

Needless to say, the compelling issues raised in the film are in no way resolved through having Sarah fall in love with the anarchist Benji (Alexander Skarsgard) or having Sharon remain as impervious to human feeling as she seems to be.

The talented Canadian actress Ellen Page stars as “Izzy,” a disenchanted member of the clan, with an ax to grind against her wealthy father. It’s quite a come-down from her engaging portrayal in Jason Reitman’s 2007 “Juno.” Roman Vasyanov’s cinematography is polished. Sometimes it seems almost too good for a narrative that is, alas, too often mismanaged.