Us is a 2019 mystery-thriller movie directed by Jordan Peele. When everything from earth to heaven will fail to answer the questions, console the sufferings; humans one day would look back to the metaphoric fictions of their predecessors — excerpts of their experience, philosophy, intelligence and dreams. Ishtiaque Foysol reviews the film
I
Alejandro Jodorowsky and Sion Sono, two masters of graphic violence, compared their prolonged blood stained brutalities along with bizarre sexual acts with non-blood shedding social human acts that defeated the previous ones.
Apart from these, some brain twisting films like Oldboy (2003), Noroi: The Curse (2005), I Saw the Devil (2010), Incendies (2010), The Wailing (2016) and Train to Busan (2016) are very much relevant to be referred here as they depict how social relationships, environmental pollution, revenge, war, faith and primitive human instincts have faded the grey line between good and evil, humans and monsters.Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ — unlike the 2017 debut film Get Out — starts with a presumably happy capitalist good morning with a harmony between black and white, middle and upper class. After unleashing ethereal background music and a few jump-scares the director unfolds a dark comedy with the metaphors of golfstick-scissors, ‘We all are American,’ ‘Find yourself here..,’ rabbits, and Jeremiah 11:11 that proves humans are the worst enemies of humanity.
II
‘Us and Them | And after all we're only ordinary men | Me, and you | God only knows it's not | what we would choose to do ...’ — Roger Waters (Dark Side of the Moon)‘Us’ is a political satire in combination with dark comedy that mocks capitalism and socialism as a mirror image. Although movie buffs may argue that the film was an immature satire of socialism, however, clarification of some powerful symbols and foreshadowing might soften their criticism.
According to Jordan, ‘..this movie is about this country. And when I decided to write this movie, I was stricken by the fact we are in a time where we fear the other. Whether it is the mysterious invader that we think is going to come and kill us, take our jobs, or the faction that we don’t live near that voted a different way than us. We’re all about pointing the finger and I wanted to suggest that maybe the monster we really need to look at has our face. Maybe the evil is us.’
The plot revolves around us and them, the doppelgängers or the ‘antagonists’, living in underground of USA ‘tethering’ our over ground activities. The Wilsons, a well off family, go on a vacation in their family lake house in Santa Cruz and met their rich friends the Tylers there.
At night, a family of Wilsons doppelgängers in red dress, attack them led by Adelaide Wilson’s double — Red.
A rebel red clarifies that the doppelgängers share a soul with their counterparts by tethering. Now they have come out from their underground livelihood to un-tether themselves from the others.
In the meantime, the Tylers are murdered by their doubles and millions of ‘tethered’ go on a rampage murdering their counterparts across the USA. The doppelgängers gradually join hands together to form a massive human chain resembling the ‘Hands across America’ held on Sunday, May 25, 1986.
III
Let us start with the rabbit foreshadowing. Rabbits are thought provoking creatures since Alice first ran after it. Soon they have become part of popular psychedelic culture who provoke experience the ‘not-experienced’, trippy things that need brain storming to get the depth.Those rabbits predict the audience about a hole full of ‘mad haters’ who are going to do something interesting and we must follow them to experience the show.
When Adelaide asked their doubles that what they were, Red replied, ‘We are…Americans.’ The answer from a rebel leader, dressed in red, brings a double meaning before the audience during the time US president Donald Trump is building ‘another wall,’ getting harsher on immigration rules and Bangladeshi born US ‘jihadi’ being caught by the authority.
Readers would have recalled the hammer march in ‘Waiting for the Worms’ by Pink Floyd that depicted a theme of neo-Nazi repression. The divorce of sickle and hammer — symbol of socialism — as metaphor of an upcoming violent movement can also be found in Kabir Sumon’s Majhrattire Chander Kaste (the sickle of a midnight moon).
Jordan Peele deserves appreciation for the comic representation of scissors vs golfsticks fight to pin point the present society’s abnormal discrepancy. The tethered doubles, dressed in red, represent revolutionary socialism while their course of actions — with dark humorous representation — mocks the doctrine ‘Social revolution is necessary in order to bring about structural changes to society.’
IV
Young Adelaide, detached from her parents in an amusement park, stands before the entrance of a mirror maze that reads ‘Find Yourself’ — a tricky representation of that Socratic mantra ‘Know Thyself’ that was also used in the Matrix part 1 when Neo met Oracle in the ‘matrix’.This foreshadows the movie’s central idea ‘meet your worst enemy into the mirror and sit tight what disaster it brings next.’
The opening scene of the movie — telecast of ‘Hands across America’ and forecast of a storm — also foretells the disaster to be brought by us.
The ‘11:11’ — found at least three times — is a palindromic binary representation of ‘male-female us’ is to ‘male-female them’.
Jeremiah 11:11, on the other hand, refers to the eleventh chapter of the Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.
In this passage god tells the weeping prophet Jeremiah, ‘Therefore this is what the Lord says: I am about to bring upon them a disaster that they cannot escape. They will cry out to Me, but I will not listen to them.’
This metaphor at the very beginning of the movie tells the audience that there are no protagonists or antagonists but a meaningless survival of the fittest unfits.
When Zora Wilson, Adelaide’s daughter, refuses to go into the sea with Becca and Lindsey, the Teylor daughters, they question her ‘why not’ — in a commanding voice that subtly indicates their attitude towards their ‘black’ neighbours.
There is also a dark comedy about our dependency on luxurious latest technologies (not well tested for all corner cases) and how those satisfy the foolish comfort of well-off persons.When dying Mrs Tylor asks her artificial intelligence home assistant Ophelia to call the police and she replies ‘Sure, playing Fuck the Police by NWA.’
This is an applaud worthy mockery towards the social creatures looking for ease, luxury and finding comfort in unreliable latest technologies that are yet to be tested useful in dire need.
Discussions on some other powerful symbols are not covered here, for example the scissor handles shape, glove on right hand and Rorschach ink spot on the poster et cetera have some deeper meanings and provoke deeper thinking about what we are.
V
The ideologies and beliefs across the world are passing hard time to prove them perfect against the backdrop of constant humane exploitations. Blame game among nations, countries, sects and religions left literally no time to know ourselves or identifying the true enemy.Silver bullets of social, political and humane beliefs have failed to penetrate the problem-named bull’s eye.
When everything from earth to heaven will fail to answer the questions, console the sufferings; human one day would look back to the metaphoric fictions of their predecessors — excerpts of their experience, philosophy, intelligence and dreams.
Those would either become a gospel or raw materials for a new system to save the planet earth and human species from extinction; if they survive until then.
Faquir Foysol
The review was published in New Age Youth on August 4, 2019
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