Empires, as a rule, do not exist in the plural, for each empire conceives of itself as sovereign and total. In practice, this solipsism has largely been subordinate to territorial exigencies: kings recognize other kings, and even where they do not do so explicitly, they employ rhetoric that, for all purposes, tempers dubious ambition. Politically, empires settle for de facto status, delimiting their share of the known world; metaphysically, all that is known should be theirs, and all that is yet unknown will, upon fulfillment of this order, naturally come to light. Such are the moral and religious empires which, through Manichaeism’s postulates of good/evil, light/darkness etc., assert their necessary existence and providence.
So what do we make of a film that calls itself The Empire, styles itself in the sci-fi register, and abstracts from it a tale of two besieging opposites locked in mortal but eternal combat? Tempting though it is to read Bruno Dumont’s Star Wars spoof as mere parody writ French, its parodic elements do not abide by everyday standards of humor, not even, as it were, in the Francophone imagination. The Empire’s nakedness is at once seductive and unsettling; its imperial canvas unfurls over earthly, provincial territory — along the Opal Coast in northern France — while the emperor, or emperors, contest the fate of the universe virtually unseen. There are two main factions in this showdown: the 0s, root of evil and bringer of nothingness to humanity, and the 1s, beacon of virtuous, humble good. In Christian eschatological fashion, the 0s have grafted onto a human baby (whom they address, reverently, as the Wain) the sum of all future evil. His father, Jony (Brandon Vlieghe), assumes caretaking duties while the sentinels of virtue, comprising Jane (Anamaria Vartolomei) and her apprentice Rudy (Julien Manier), plot to slay the beast before it ruptures all of creation’s belly.
Dumont is no stranger to the vagaries that constitute what we loosely term the human condition, and his oeuvre has, from the starkly realist The Life of Jesus to the absurdist pastiches of Li’l Quinquin, attempted to articulate their stubborn fickleness. With The Empire, something more radical emerges. At its heart is a profoundly idiotic narrative of ontological good and evil duking it out with no real consequence; even as spaceships disturb the seaside peace and cosmic storms wreak havoc on property, no one really gets hurt — and no one, not us nor the characters themselves, really cares. But is The Empire merely keen on trolling its audience? That certainly works as a formal rebuff of the cinematic lack of imagination, found so pervasively in tentpole heroisms: whether lightsabers or CGI cathedrals, moral stakes increasingly turn to pomp for their validity. Yet precisely because its ostensible caricature plunges us face-first into the world’s banal rurality instead of safely distancing our scorn from its object, satire alone cannot explain, let alone justify, Dumont’s reckless undertaking.
Something more akin to gentle resignation, instead, infuses the film’s gala of medieval reenactments and recycled space operas — a recognition that moral action, for all its human urgency, is fettered by pat categorization. The Empire is deliberately overstuffed with parallels and fertile analogies, and its incessant talk of conceptual binaries threatens to explode all meaningful interpretation. Two sides state their truth unabashedly; two cities — the papacy of the 1s and the monarchy of the 0s — vie for theological supremacy; two lovers indulge their baser instincts by divorcing their bodies from their souls. And amidst all the mess, two gendarmes wade through the countryside air, thick with delusion. Are these the fools, who witness the apocalypse uncomprehending, or do the ecstasies we imbibe in aligning ourselves with tenuous morality indicate a certain naïveté? With its grandiose pronouncements and blatantly unflattering performances, The Empire might be taken as a post-ironic critique of human meaning, for which cynical laughter and sincere benediction are one and the same. “We fuck, that’s all,” Jony tells Jane. “Life goes on.”
DIRECTOR: Bruno Dumont; CAST: Anamaria Votolomei, Lyna Khoudri, Camille Cottin, Fabrice Luchini; DISTRIBUTOR: Kino Lorber; IN THEATERS: March 7; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 50 min.
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