An absurdist glimpse at workaday life inside one of many very actual, very unusual U.S. navy coaching grounds the place role-players simulate overseas battlegrounds in an effort to put together our troops for his or her time within the discipline, Hailey Gates’ “Atropia” is hardly the primary American comedy set through the Iraq Warfare, which was one thing of a horrible farce unto itself. Nicely-trodden territory as this could be, nevertheless, it’s been a very long time since beloved masterpieces like “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” and Larry the Cable Man’s “Delta Farce” first put their stamp on the sub-genre, and the years passed by have made it attainable for Gates’ characteristic debut — expanded from her 2020 Miu Miu quick, “Shako Mako” — to go additional by means of the trying glass than even Oliver Stone’s “W.” ever may.
Working example: One early sequence in “Atropia” is constructed round a cameo by a particularly well-known film star who — in actual life — as soon as starred in a Very Severe movie in regards to the psychological trauma of being stationed in Tikrit. Like most of Gates’ scattered and schticky new satire, the sequence in query feels prefer it needs to be rather a lot funnier than it’s, and but as you watch [redacted celebrity] LARP by means of Atropia in preparation for an upcoming function, the meta-textual wrinkle of his casting refracts even probably the most slapstick jokes right into a wild infinity mirror of kinds.
As soon as upon a time this actor embodied Hollywood’s thought of an Iraq Warfare-era soldier, however his display persona has developed to the purpose that his presence alone now looks like a punchline. Right here it makes for probably the most self-reflexive gag in a film in regards to the ouroboros of producing consent. “Atropia” is decided to poke enjoyable on the hopeless disconnect between America and the fact of the wars fought in its identify, a niche that it explores with oodles of screwball power and sufficient wit to maintain at the very least 90 of its 104 minutes, but additionally one which it maps with none clear sense of the place it’s going or what form could be shaped by stringing collectively all the pins it drops alongside the best way.
Or is it only one pin caught in 1,000 completely different locations? For all of the number of its “M*A*S*H*”-like shenanigans (the movie is devoted to the good Joan Tewkesbury, a two-time screenwriter for Robert Altman in addition to Gates’ maternal grandmother), the overwhelming majority of them boil right down to the identical notion: America has develop into too solipsistic to do something however play itself. Enter: Fayruz (Alia Shawkat), an Iraq-ish striver who got here to California within the hopes of turning into a well-known Hollywood actress. As an alternative, she wound up in “The Field,” taking part in an Atropian DVD vendor or a bomb-making chemist who the troopers may discover in the event that they sweep a sure room of the set (it’s all very Donald Rumsfeld meets “Sleep No Extra”).
Fayruz doesn’t converse Arabic very nicely, however she understands it fluently, which she hoped may give her a leg up on the opposite members of the solid. Sarcastically, it’s the amputees who appear to get all the juiciest components (lots of the eventualities contain a detonated I.E.D.), although Fayruz can also be upstaged by a proficient Mexican colleague who’s so good at crying on command that nobody appears to care that she wails in Spanish. The Military talks a giant sport about Atropia being as reasonable as attainable (it even comes with its personal competing TV networks, Field Information and a pretend Al-Jazeera), however “The Truman Present” it ain’t. If something, the buzzing vests the troopers must put on over their fight uniforms make the entire expertise really feel like a sport of laser tag on a Hollywood funds.
In fact, Atropia is supposed to be much more immersive than a movie set (the props division is pleased with their pungency, which incorporates the power to create the odor of burning flesh), however Gates’ movie rapidly grows bored of the scripts that Fayruz and her co-workers are supposed to carry out. Even Fayruz’s large display desires appear to fall by the wayside, as her plan to interchange Atropia’s bootleg DVD market along with her appearing reel — launched within the first act — isn’t revisited till a non-joke of a button after the tip credit. True as it’s that such navy simulations have been created with the express hope of seducing Hollywood to movie on them and/or mannequin its warfare motion pictures on Atropia’s imaginative and prescient of actuality, Gates solely pokes enjoyable at how America casts itself till she will get distracted by a cinematic fantasy of her personal.
Like so many satires based mostly on true occasions, “Atropia” fails probably the most primary take a look at of its worthiness: It by no means feels extra very important or fascinating than it might be to look at a documentary on the identical topic. Credit score to Gates, she had totally supposed to make one till the Division of Protection denied her the entry she wanted. Fairly than throw the newborn out with the bathwater, she pivoted to a scripted comedy, which quickly got here to contain a love story at Shawkat’s request.
Shawkat is terrific in “Atropia,” layering each joke and/or lie she tells with the lament of a second-generation immigrant promoting out her previous (“We’re serving to a gaggle of youngsters to invade our homeland in a greater means,” she confesses at one level), and it’s a testomony to how nicely she threads that needle that Fayruz’s Atropian rom-com works in addition to it does. What begins as a flirtation with rebel chief Abu Cube — a personality performed by a white American warfare vet who’s itching to be redeployed (Callum Turner) — quickly develops right into a hyper-silly base romance worthy of a French intercourse farce. Each of them are determined to go to Iraq, and each of them have disappeared too deep into the roles that America has supplied. Solely considered one of them has a fetish for the fetid stink of porta potties, however the different one has their bizarre kinks too.
It’s all amusing sufficient by itself phrases, nevertheless it’s additionally among the many least trenchant or rewarding of the numerous completely different locations that “Atropia” may take its premise, and each new wrinkle that Gates introduces to it — together with a “Badlands”-esque subplot involving a raid on some new recruits and a thematically overbearing go to to the plaster canals of the Venetian lodge in Las Vegas — solely takes the film additional away from the fact it’s attempting to play in opposition to. Different threads tie themselves into related knots, or would if “Atropia” gave them sufficient materials to take action. Tim Heidecker and Chloë Sevigny have some enjoyable because the glorified camp counselors answerable for the roleplay, Jane Levy is a blast because the Field Information reporter searching for a giant scoop, and there’s a constantly gratifying character who capabilities as a human iPod, which is one thing that extra motion pictures may use.
Be that as it could, precisely none of what occurs contained in the Field is a fraction as fascinating because the Field itself, and the sobering footage that Gates cuts into the motion — a lot of it taken from Iraq documentaries like “Gunner Palace” — is simply too clumsily launched to have the sobering impact it’s so desirous to exert on this materials. If “Warfare is God’s means of instructing Individuals geography,” because the Ambrose Bierce quote reads at the beginning of the film, then maybe the flicks have develop into Individuals’ means of instructing the world what they’ve discovered. “We’re all simply set dressing,” one of many characters in “Atropia” says. However on this specific film, the set has extra to say than any of the individuals attempting to behave their means out of it.
Grade: C
“Atropia” premiered on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. It’s presently looking for U.S. distribution.
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