Film details:
Director:Zal Batmanglij
Screenplay:Brit Marling, Zal BatmanglijProducer: Ridley Scott, Brit MarlingCast:Brit Marling,Alexander Skarsgård, Ellen Page, Patricia Clarkson
Country and release date:USA, January 2013
“We are The East.
We are your wake-up call.
We hide nothing from you.
We are you.
We are those mornings when you escape your boring jobs and run in the open air.
We are the moment you kiss someone for the first time and they kiss you back.
We are your sleepless nights.
Those nights when you stare at the ceiling and ask, is this it? Is this my share of life?
We are those nights.”
When The East was released in 2013, it attracted little attention in Turkey, although it had been an opening-night film at the Sundance Film Festival. Films that criticise the system through their subject matter generally don’t get much attention around here, for reasons I don’t quite understand. Sarah Moss is a federal agent working for a private security company. The company provides protection for VIP clients, and Sarah works as one of its VIP protection officers. One day, the head of the firm calls Sarah in for a special assignment: she is to infiltrate“The East,”a group labelled a terrorist organisation, gather the necessary intelligence and help bring it down. But the longer Sarah spends among these people, portrayed to the public as terrorists and hunted relentlessly by the security forces, the more she begins to realise that things are not what they seem.
To almost everyone watching, it is clear that The East is not really a terrorist organisation but a struggle for justice begun by people who cannot remain indifferent to multinational corporations and the harm they cause to nature and human beings. Yet throughout the film, even though Sarah sees this, she cannot quite bring herself to join them. You feel the truth of the idea that even when you show people inside the system both its failings and the struggle against it, they still will not—or cannot—turn away from what is wrong. For years, people have talked about the claim that today’s globalised world is controlled by a handful of multinationals, and that disease, war, poverty, many of humanity’s disasters and injustices blamed on fate result from these companies’ manoeuvring through governments. Today, a small minority hostile to concepts such as capitalism and globalisation protest against this systematic injustice in various ways. They refuse to be pawns in the profit-and-loss calculations of a privileged few who make up 2% of the world’s population. This is precisely where The East catches the viewer. We see that this group, treated as terrorists, is actually an ecological anarchist collective. Its aim is not to change the system itself, but to expose to millions of people the corporations, and the individuals working within them, that have knowingly harmed and destroyed nature and the lives of thousands or millions. Of course, the film becomes chaotic at this point, just as life does. We see that when people get the opportunity, they may not stop at exposing wrongdoing. Justice becomes uncertain and changeable once power is in their hands. It makes you examine yourself. At the same time, you understand why those who rule the system are so afraid of crowds, why they support and exploit the media with everything they have, and why they constantly impress the need for security on society. They know that one tiny spark could become a blaze, leaving them unable to haul their fat bellies out of their comfortable seats. They want the crowds to be afraid. Be afraid, feel helpless, don’t trust each other, don’t trust anyone—trust the system. The system will protect you. The state will protect and look after you. The state’s truth is your truth. Don’t question anything; we will do the questioning for you. Just trust those in charge and follow them.
If you have a dissenting streak, and have developed the ability to look at the world beyond narrow windows and thick walls, The East has a great deal to say to you. Do watch it, and keep it in your collection.