The politics of the American military invasion of Iraq have shifted in the last two decades. The current president, for example, has decided it would be preferable to lie about always being opposed to it than own up to supporting it at the outset like so many others. Making an effective satire of a topic that boasts a broad, bipartisan consensus condemning it can be a challenge, but Hailey Gates is up to the task in her debut feature “Atropia.”
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Those looking for a simplistic condemnation of Bush-era jingoism may find the film evasive, but Gates never wastes her time preaching to the converted. Since few people still need convincing that the Iraq War was an ill-considered decision, her critique focuses not on a simplistic binary of the conflict. It’s sociological, rather than political, in nature. “Atropia” indicts a wider series of structures that enable the manufacturing of consent for American military excursions. Her perspective is clear, even if it’s difficult to reduce into a slogan: war is a business – show business, to be specific.
The military-industrial complex of which Eisenhower warned morphs into a chimera by the 21st century with the entertainment industry joining forces to protect American cultural might. “Atropia” unfolds in the real-life setting of Medina Wasl, a training facility in the Mojave desert meant to replicate the dusty villages soldiers might encounter in the Middle East. The compound leverages its proximity to Hollywood to bring in top-of-the-line technicians in everything from hair, makeup, costume, production design, and pyrotechnics to make the experience more than a glorified LARPing mission for the men in uniform.
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The only thing they can’t seem to get, however, are great actors. Alia Shawkat’s Fayruz could care less about laddering up to the larger strategic objective of battle readiness. This aspiring thespian refuses to let her Iraqi heritage make Medina Wasl her career ceiling. Her conflicting feelings about aiding and abetting the destruction of her ancestral homeland take a backseat to her professional ambitions when a famous actor appears to prepare for an upcoming role.
But Fayruz proves willing to take an even greater risk for a personal flame. She’s already gone off-script to jockey for a more visible role in the latest scenario, trading privileges and contraband like she were in a war zone herself. (Amputees get paid more, so she’s behind there as well.) But everything changes when a vet fresh from Iraq, Callum Turner’s Tanner, enters the story to assume the role of insurgent Abu Dice. Fayruz is headstrong enough to not let anything get in the way of achieving her new objective, be it the top military brass (the dry duo of Tim Heidecker and Chloë Sevigny) or the imminent arrival of the baby she’s pregnant with.
“Atropia,” not unlike the military campaign in which it’s set, is not immune to some mission creep. It can be a little uneven in stretches, yet the project never goes entirely AWOL. Gates leverages the organically offbeat chemistry shared by Shawkat and Turner, former co-stars from “Green Room,” to help their madcap adventures feel natural within the rest of the film. Their rom-com-reminiscent antics are silly, but the odd couple amounts to more than just an amusing diversion from the real subject at hand. Their disposition helps to expose just how ridiculous everything else is, too.
Only a twisted scholar of early-aughts minutiae could repurpose a Donald Rumsfeld quote into a sincere speech delivered in the throes of romantic vulnerability, and that’s exactly what Gates does. Her film goes beyond surreal stylings and enters the realm of the hyperreal as the extent of the exercise becomes even more apparent. “Atropia” uses Fayruz as a stand-in for a country where a simulation of conflict becomes the dominant method for understanding and experiencing the world around them. It’s a form of detachment from the messiness that allows the war to exist in a psychologically comfortable box that’s easily compartmentalized.
Gates is not skewering a bygone era – in part because the machinery of warfare cosplay still exists – so much as she’s illustrating the point when any distinction between reality and fiction broke down in the country. “Atropia” makes for a twisted funhouse mirror that reflects the authentic American character: implicating all and sparing none for participating in a mass national delusion. Whether participating with noble or nefarious intent, the impact is still the same.
Trying to clarify the fog of war is a patently paradoxical task, Gates successfully argues – and she can prove the assertion within the grand satirical framework of the script or in a wry comic detail derived from the immediacy of a scene. For what is patriotism if not another form of performance, derived from a script everyone understands even if they don’t know their lines? If this wasn’t so hilarious to contemplate in “Atropia,” it’d be just plain horrifying. [B+]
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