3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Landscape with Invisible Hand

2023, Cory Finley (Bad Education) -- Amazon 

Amazon has this weird pattern, where they will add movies to their roster, then after an undetermined amount of time, shunt it off to one of their subscription-services, or more accurately, remove access from Prime Video subscribers in favour of the consumer paying more for the additional subscription. Eventually they come back. I get the model with blockbusters -- convince people to join with "free" access to the recently released movie, such as Project Hail Mary, and then drop it for the other licensors to take over. But I don't understand how it works with long-released movies but I am sure there is an algorithm at play, a terribly designed, badly implemented algorithm. This one came and went, came and went, came again and I watched it.

Speaking of Project Hail Mary I cannot help but compare the aliens in that movie to the aliens in this movie. In Landscape with Invisible Hand the Vuvv have come to Earth from another galaxy and while the pretense is that the governments welcomed them due to the technological and economical advancements they offered. And yet its definitely an occupation ... or, maybe more accurately, a Colonization. In the Ryan Gosling movie, the aliens are not really any more advanced than Earthlings, but are entirely alien -- they would not do well in Earth cultures. When the Vuvv come to Earth, they don't give a hoot about the impact they have on the planet and its cultures; they just implement their changes, reap whatever benefits they can and ignore the negative effects. They do not have any empathy for the "lesser species". My comparison between Rocky's species and the Vuvv is more about descriptors (small weirdly shaped, live in dark rocky abodes), as we well know Rocky was very empathetic with his friend Grace but I cannot help but wonder whether a species with more technological advancements might lose that empathy... you know, like we do.

Our humans are Adam (Asante Blackk, This Is Us), a highschooler with a talent for outsider art, and his crush, Chloe (Kylie Rogers, Home Before Dark), whose family has just moved to town. Moved is too strong a term as they, being herself, her brother and her dad, are living out of the family car: homeless, jobless. Adam's own mother, a lawyer, is also without work and seeking a job, any job, but they still have the family home... for now. Adam tries to win favour with Chloe by offering her family the family basement, which does not go over well.

This opening has quickly established that while the Vuvv have offered Earth some offscreen benefits, the average person is not benefiting... at all. Unemployment and homelessness are the norm now. Vuvv efficiency comes with the cost of having to do things their way. But the Vuvv are partial to human melodrama and as Chloe and Adam begin to get close, she suggests they broadcast their "courting ritual". The Vuvv have provided a technology that allows a human mind to connect to a network, visually experience what is transmitted to them, but also return the transmission. Yes, Vuvv TV is just watching humans do human stuff and they really like "love".

At first it goes well. Adam is falling in love and the two are getting to know each other. They make money, a LOT of money, enough to keep the house payments going and eat real food, as opposed to the cheaply extruded blocks of essential proteins that the Vuvv provide to all humans. Except Chloe begins "producing" their relationship, and it begins feeling less real to Adam. And, it becomes pretty obvious to the Vuvv viewers. The two are dragged before a Vuvv executive and sued for faking their relationship. By then, it mostly was. Pay back all the money, or lose everything.

Shit gets weirder. Adam's mom Beth (Tiffany Haddish, Boosters LA), uses her lawyer powers to propose an alternative arrangement to the Vuvv executive. While they are asexual beings that bud instead of give birth, they still have an attachment to their .. offspring. Beth proposes a marriage between her and the offspring, who ends up taking the name Father. They get to experience the human family structure instead of just viewing it. Of course, they are oblivious to the hypocrisy about being upset at humans faking it while having no issue pretending this is all real; it just confirms their lack of understanding of everything human. But, why should they care? They are at the top of the food chain, societally speaking.

Adam doesn't do well with this, angry with his mother, with Chloe, with the state of the world. Chloe's dad, utterly emasculated by his homelessness and joblessness, still tortured by his own toxic masculinity, offers to become the "housewife" to Father's family unit, allowing Beth to keep the job she got at a local fast food joint. Adam and Chloe aren't on speaking terms, when the school is closed down. Everyone will now just "learn" (Vuvv indoctrination) via the mind-view technology. Adam is at wit's end and paints a massive mural of life since the Vuvv came to Earth, on the side of the school.

Our final act has Adam recognized by a Vuvv art critic as a power voice in outsider art, and is offered a residency and a galactic tour worth millions. Except, they need him to alter the art so as to depict the Vuvv as benevolent overseers, come to Earth to make everything better. Whereas everyone else has been making hard choices either to just get by, or to have a better life, Adam just says No. He abandons the money, the recognition, and in turn, the Vuvv just rip the side off the school and take it away.

The End.

This isn't a movie of grand changes, world altering realizations, or anything else so grand, usually found in alien movies. Adam doesn't "save the Earth", he doesn't even do much to help his family. There isn't a resistance against the alien dominators, just people who are impotently angry. This movie is a vignette into lives of some people under Vuvv rule. Exploration of the Human Condition is a phrase bandied about with broad gestures, but like Adam's art which is often primitive and would challenge many people on the idea of what "real art" is, or is not, this movie does have the things it needs to say, but also, in many ways, its just a weird alien movie.