Bugonia - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I was intrigued by this movie from the trailers. I like a good conspiracy theory movie and it seemed like it would have a comedic aspect as well.

I was wrong. It was a good conspiracy theory movie with a good dark comedy aspect as well. There's a big, huge, gaping, yawning difference between comedy and dark comedy. Good dark comedies are difficult to come by these days. It seems like they stopped writing those in the 90s. Maybe this is the return of them?

On one side we have the conspiracy theory guy and his cousin, on the other we have a high-powered executive going about her life. Yup. The conspiracy theory guy believes the high-powered executive is an alien and not one from a different country. An actual honest-to-goodness outer space alien.

I'm going to abbreviate going forward since there's a lot of words I don't want to have to keep typing them. Yes. I know I could abbreviate then search-and-replace but then I'd have to read the whole thing over to make sure it didn't replace things I didn't want replaced.

CG - Conspiracy guy
CGC - Conspiracy guy's cousin
HPE - High-powered executive

The CG is positive that his research shows that the ship from Andromeda will arrive in four days during the lunar eclipse. He's also positive that the HPE is from Andromeda and can get him a meeting with the royals on the ship to try to save earth.

CG is positive that the planet can only be saved with outside intervention. He plans on asking the Andromedans (nicely) to give that help. But first he needs to find one and have them bring him to the ship. The two live out in the county in a typical Midwestern style house and keep bees. They're big on the bees as an analogy for how life intersects, etc.

CGC is neurodiverse. He follows his cousin but isn't as on board with the alien theory. So he's asking questions about whether things are right or not, etc. Fun note - the actor who plays this character is also neurodiverse. He's also got great hair.

The HPE lives in a fancy modern house, does fancy rich person things, has a fancy new black SUV, and wears a fancy black suit (and black Louboutin shoes as demonstrated by a shot from behind as she walks, showing those famous red soles). She's got the big office with glass walls and there's a bit where she's telling her employees to leave on time unless they really have to stay late but she'd prefer if they leave on time unless they have work they want to complete. It's quite the rollercoaster of work-life balance talk.

The two of them come up with a plan to kidnap the HPE. The CG gives his cousin a shot to chemically neuter him (doesn't really, pretends to do it (I think)) so they're both immune to the physical wiles of the HPE, who's female. They also get a lot of an antihistamine cream, which is supposed to protect them as well. There's a lot of details in this movie that it's easy to forget some.

They plan it out and succeed in kidnapping the HPE. She puts up a darn good fight but ends up unconscious in her own SUV. The CGC is given the task of shaving her head, because the CG says they communicate with the ship through their hair. Big props to the actress because they did shave her head for real in that shot.

When they get her back to their house they put her in the basement, chain her down, and slather her exposed skin with the cream. No liberties are taken! Exposed means outside of clothing. The lotion streaks show and were part of what made one of the trailers interesting because it makes her skin look not quite human.

When she wakes up they tell her why they kidnapped her, as stated above. They want to use her to get onto the ship. She does a very good job of using all the negotiating and active listening techniques used in the corporate world to try to get them to let her go. Spoiler - they don't.

The day divisions are placecards showing the earth and counting down the days to the lunar eclipse. More on that later in the review.

The movie quickly skips over time so as not to get repetitive. It comes out that CG's mother is gone and there's a couple of times they show her floating like a balloon. CGC continues to ask questions. HPE is cooperating more in putting on the lotion herself.

CG has created equipment to determine if a person is an Andromedan or not. It's a jury rig that includes electrical pads. He straps her in, twists the dial, and watches the readouts. He keeps turning the dial and watching. He keeps turning the dial and watching. The house lights flicker. CGC rips the pads off, saying that he's going to kill her. The monitoring equipment shows a whole lotta things in red by this time.

CG gets all kinds of apologetic because according to his readings she's part of the Imperial Court. He's seriously apologizing. But he doesn't let her go. Back into the basement as he figures out what to do. He's continuing to ask questions. But when he brought the HPE out of the basement to have a meal (suitably chained to the floor, as is her chair) he gave her a dress, with a name on the dress tag.

HPE puts some things together and remembers that CG's mom was part of a medical drug trial gone bad. There's a flashback to the settlement meeting and now we know that CG's mom is still around, just in a coma. Just. I know. But she's not dead, as it was rather implied.

Oof. Lots going on. Let's keep reviewing. This movie is following a fairly common conspiracy theory theme and there's dark comedy in the whole setup and execution of the plans. It's good.

CGC is getting increasingly bothered about the situation. The lunar eclipse is getting closer and CGC wants to go with the aliens. He wants to go away. CG rather dismisses that and talks around the situation, saying that of course he'll take his cousin with him when they go to the ship but the whole point is to fix earth and live there.

(There's a minor subplot with a police officer who used to babysit CG and still feels bad about something he did during that time, wants to make sure he's doing all right without his mother around, and ends up getting a shovel to the face multiple times later. It's not really part of the main plot but it's there so it's here.)

Every time CG goes into the basement to talk to HPE he has CGC hold a rifle on her. CG is getting more and more upset that HPE won't admit she's an alien. To be fair she does give in and say so but it's patently obvious she's trying another technique to get free. The lunar eclipse is almost happening.

Now I remember (thanks to Wikipedia) the purpose of the police officer-shovel interaction. It gets CG out of the house.

During that time CG is gone CGC goes into the basement to talk to HPE and finally asks her to take him away, that he wants to go away. She agrees that she will. CGC then puts the rifle under his chin and pulls the trigger. Oof. Didn't expect that one.

HPE is able to get the keyring from CGC's pocket and unlock herself. While searching for a way out she finds CG's lab. The lab has a lot of dissected bodies and notebooks. Oddly enough HPE doesn't run out screaming. She takes the time to read those notebooks.

CG comes back into the basement to find his cousin and HPE walking free. HPE uses CG's distress at everything falling apart to tell him there's a cure for his mother in her car. It's hiding in a bottle marked antifreeze. All he has to do is give it to her. He believes her, does it, and watches the predictable result of putting antifreeze into someone's IV bag. He's quite upset, as could be imagined.

HPE reveals she really is an Andromedan and details what they've been doing with earth since the age of dinosaurs. She's got that same air of control she tried to give in the beginning but now it's solid. It's a Christopher Reeves Clark Kent/Superman kind of change. She asks how many Andromedans he's found. He said two. She agrees to take him to the ship. All right then. The day of the lunar eclipse is upon us.

She drives him to her office (at gunpoint), wearing her rather wrinkled suit (she'd changed into a bathrobe for most of her time in the basement) and a wig he'd offered her earlier. She's got that panicked expression and body language as she takes him to her office. Various employees are surprised and glad to see her after her disappearance. She goes into her office, closes the drapes, and pulls out a wooden box that holds the control for the transporter in her office closet. The control is a calculator. When he questions that she tells him it has to look inconspicuous. Fair.

While she's "trying to remember the 58 number sequence" CG shows her that he's wearing a suicide bomber vest, just to make sure she doesn't try anything funny. This does not help her with trying to "remember the number".

She finally gets it, he has to go first since she's got the control, and he gets himself in the closet. The closet holds a couple more identical black suits, another pair of shoes, etc. He closes the door, she presses a key, there's a flash, and his bomb detonates. In true dark comedy fashion she's hit in the head with his head as it flies across the room.

She wakes up in an ambulance with a neck brace and tells them to take her back. Of course they refuse. She gets up, rips off the brace, and runs very fast back to the office. When she gets there she takes the control, gets into the closet, and there's a flash.

Before I continue I want to talk about the time reference place cards. The interesting thing to note is that the closer it gets to the day of the lunar eclipse the more the earth goes from round to flat. By the last card it's full on flat earth with oceans flowing over the sides.

Next we see her rising out a pool of goo, with people in very bulky knitted jumpsuits helping her out. They're not speaking English. They say they couldn't contact her because they'd cut off her hair. Turns out she's the Empress and they've been experimenting on various people from earth, with no success for the future. She decides, while wearing a bulk knitted beehive beanie, to end the experiment and pops the bubble over a model of the flat earth.

The movie closes with scenes of dead people everywhere. They just dropped where they were, whatever they were doing. Guess that pesky problem of people destroying earth got settled after all.

Enough about what happened in the movie. Time for some observations.

I liked this movie. I felt it started to drag a little during the "tell me you're an alien" repetition but it wasn't enough to draw the movie down. When she said she was Andromedan it all made more sense. When she was admitting to being an alien she never said Andromedan, as he demanded she do. She just said "OK. I'm an alien!" in hopes of being let go. She said it after getting free and reading his notes.

The movie had dark comedy moments scattered throughout like treats and tidbits. The set was exactly what you'd expect to see in a family home, right down to the random stuff in the basement and the fire pit outside. That normality contrasted with the perceived absurdity of what was going on.

CG listens to conspiracy podcasts while riding his bicycle throughout the movie. He's got things he worked up at home, including what he says the Andromedan ship looks like. He made that detector, that turns out to darn well work. He's been hunting, and finding, Andromedans to refine everything.

That switch from conspiracy theory to "he was right!" is sudden and rather unexpected. The whole movie leads you down the rabbit hole but you don't expect to find the rabbit. In the transporter scene you see a yellow flash before the bomb goes off. When she uses it, there's a yellow flash. Either she knew the bomb would detonate or she was honestly going to take him to the ship we won't know. But she did activate it, as she said she would.

My movie buddy is a big fan of this director and knew what kind of twists they put into their films. He said he envied me going in cold so I could experience everything as it happened. I'm not sure I want to dig into the director's film library or not. I enjoyed this but I don't know if it's completely to my taste ongoing.

The character development was good all around. The CG is suitably unhinged. The CGC is suitably pulled along for the ride. The HPE is suitably scared for her life, until she's not. The whole movie pivots when the CG comes back after killing his mother and finds an actual real royal Andromedan in his basement, and she's asking the questions now.

I can't really nitpick anything except that bit of drag about halfway through the movie and what seems to be the pointless story with the police officer. It might have been for exposition. They never say what the police officer did while he was babysitting so that one is left up to the imagination. I still say having him in the movie was for the sole reason of having him ask if they'd seen her car since they were near-ish and on a main-ish road, and to get killed when he hears the gunshot when CGC does his thing to himself.

This isn't at all subtle when it comes to being about climate change and all that stuff. The bee decline is real so by having them have hives the discussion flowed naturally into that and how people have that same hive instinct that makes them easy to control. That was one of the things CG accused the HGE of during a basement discussion/rant.

I don't need to watch it again. It was good. It wasn't great. It doesn't have rewatchability since I know the twist ending. That's a problem with twist endings. Once you know there's a twist, the only reason to watch the movie again is to see if there were clues to the twist you missed. I'm not interested enough to look for things I might have missed because I think I got the two big clues - her saying Andromedan only after finding the experiments and her truly using the transporter on CG.

Nuremberg - My Take (Spoilers x 2)

 

Normally I review the fun and fluffy movies. I like those. But this is one of those movies that I wanted to get into and talk about. It's my blog and if this isn't a topic you want to read about feel free to read other movie reviews or other material here. I know this topic isn't for everyone.

This is going to be a double feature, because I read the source book after seeing the movie. I'll keep the movie review to the movie and use the book section to show any differences. And yes, there are differences.

Movie Review

The short form review is that this is a movie people should see. It's well done and it shows a part of history that we need to keep remembering. It's not a typical "Nazis are bad" kind of thing. Yes. We all know how it ends. Good storytelling is all about how you get to that ending and this is mostly good storytelling.

I didn't know this was based on a book until I saw it in the opening credits. The characters in the movie are based on real people. This is not - and I repeat not - a documentary. A number of reviews are nitpicking things like language, knowledge of events, etc. If you're a purist, you're going to have the same issues. Accept it or not.

The main character here is Hermann Göring. Second to him is who is probably meant to be the main character Dr. Douglas Kelley as the psychiatrist who's in Nuremberg prison to make sure all the prisoners are mentally fit to stand trial. Russell Crowe takes over this movie, which casts a shadow over Rami Malek. Rami tries and does a decent job of holding up his end of the story, I'll give him that.

But on to the movie itself.

The opening is great. It's also historically accurate. Hermann Göring surrenders to an American force, and tells them to get his luggage out of the car. After that things slow down considerably.

There's debate over what to do with the captured German high command. The prevailing attitude is to just shoot them and be done with it. But US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson wants more - he wants legal justice. Of course there's no precedent for it and this is where the movie bogs down. These parts are interspersed with what's going on in the prison so it makes for uneven pacing.

The "how do we do this and make legal history" part has to be slow, because it was slow. In short, the justice has to convince the US command, then get the rest of the allies on board. No one thought it would work. Heck, even he had his doubts. The Russians were the last to give in and at least make a show trial of it. This kind of thing simply can't be exciting. It can't. It's necessary to set it up but it's more the times when it's safe to take a bathroom break.

The trailer scene with Colonel Burton C. Andrus saying "Welcome to Nuremberg" has to do with the prison, not the trials. The movie expands on that by telling them the conditions of their imprisonment (bleak) and that they don't get any special privileges as captured officers under the Geneva Conventions because they aren't captured officers. The rather smartly done methods to prevent suicide are explained as well.

The battle of wits between Göring and Dr. Kelley, and the battle of everything between Dr. Kelley and prison commander Colonel Burton C. Andrus take up the slack.

Note here - Colonel Burton C. Andrus is not a pleasant man. Not at all. He's the one who sets the rules at the prison and he's not at all hesitant to enforce them or make new rules as needed. He's not happy about having the psychiatrist there since he sees the prisoners as being held until they're found guilty. But he'll follow his orders.

Where the movie falls flat is trying to show why Göring and Dr. Kelley would become friendly-ish, not that they did do it. The movie makes a reference to the prisoners wanting to talk and Dr. Kelley is more of a neutral listening board than anyone else there. Actually, he's the only one they're allowed to talk to more or less. But they do this to build up how much Göring is a smart opportunist and someone that is going to be a problem to corner in the trial.

Another psychiatrist is brought in to examine the prisoners and there's friction between the two doctors. The new one is immediately talking about how he's planning on writing a book about this and eventually Dr. Kelley admits he's been working on getting the material for one too. There's a tentative agreement to write one together. The new doctor brings in the conflict of someone who's there for the opportunity to talk to the famous Nazis while he still can, while Dr. Kelley is shown as someone who cares for what he considers his patients.

Dr. Kelley warns the justice that he's not going to win against Göring. He's also been asked/told to share anything the prisoners say that will help him win. This brings out the ethical dilemma of Dr. Kelley vs Colonel (I think that was his rank at the time) Kelley. It's pointed out that since his command has been reading his reports there is no violation of doctor-patient confidentiality. Seems he didn't think of that one.

He gains, and then loses, Göring's trust. First by not telling him that his wife and daughter were arrested, then by passing along what he meant to do at the start of the trial. So it's not just sitting out there - his wife was arrested in connection with art theft and the daughter was sent to "the nuns" since she didn't have any parents to take her in. Dr. Kelley lied about it, the other psychiatrist brought it up as a casual aside with a smarmy "Didn't he tell you?".

There's a little scene where Dr. Kelley confronts the prison commander about this, saying "It's not who we are". Later it turns out the commander agreed and worked to have them freed. Adds a touch of humanity to the commander.

There was a suicide by someone who was determined to do it. Given the method anyone could have done this and even after they tightened up the surveillance it could have been done. It just took someone with courage and determination.

The second loss of trust is when Dr. Kelley tells the justice that Göring is going to read a statement before the trial truly starts. When he's asked to enter his plea he starts and one of the tribunal judges shuts him down saying they'll only be able to make statements before sentencing. To be honest that's a bit of a stretch in blaming Dr. Kelley because it's more procedural than anything and none of them wanted to be subject to hearing pre-trial statements from all the defendants. But they made it a betrayal.

Anyhoo. The American justice is running as primary and uses the mountain of documents as his prime material for the trial. Turns out, Göring is a slippery son of a bitch and catches him up on the foundation of his prosecution. The British barrister steps up and rescues him, forcing Göring into an admission that he was doing more than following orders and did know more than he was saying he knew.

Note - they used actual concentration camp footage in the movie trial. It's tough to watch and they didn't spare the horror of what happened. They showed a little too much, in my opinion. It went from gravitas to gratuitous. Not to say that it wasn't horrible, just that they chose to use too much footage. Pacing again.

By the time the trial starts Dr. Kelley has been kicked out of the military for talking to a reporter and only stuck around for the opening of the trial, most likely at the behest of the American justice since I doubt just anyone could get into the courtroom. He forced his way in to see the American justice rather than leaving after being told he was discharged, and told him that he's not going to win using his strategy, then gave him all his notes to use anything there to help him in the trial. Obviously it didn't help him, but if the British barrister read them it did help him. They give him back his notes after that scene in the trial.

I won't leave you hanging, although it was tempting. Early in the movie Dr. Kelley asks Göring why he joined the party. He said he saw Hitler talk above a beer hall and what he said made sense, that he gave hope to Germans after the Treaty of Versailles. He joined immediately. The British barrister got Göring to admit on the stand that he'd still follow Hitler, if he could. That was him admitting that he did know what was going on and was a part of it, which he'd done a very good job of slipping out of in the American justice's questioning. Dr. Kelley took the credit for it, saying he knew that Göring would never betray Hitler.

The movie skips over the trials themselves. The high point was tripping up Göring and the movie didn't need anything after that.

Since it's history I can say that Göring was able to suicide by cyanide capsule just before his execution. This was a real wrench in the works because he was the prize and he took his own way out. They had a brief "what do we do now?" moment then went ahead with the rest of the executions. All the bodies are shown in a cart being taken away. It's not said in the movie but I'll tidy it up here. They were cremated and dumped in the local river to prevent future monuments. 

They do show one execution by hanging and it was done more to follow a narrative and for shock value than to add anything to the story, in my opinion. It also shows that whoever was doing the execution didn't know how to properly be a hangman, as the records do show. But I digress on that point.

In the end this is a movie about Hermann Göring, not Dr. Douglas Kelley. The Academy is going to have a really tough time dealing with how to reconcile what I think is an award-winning performance by Russell Crowe with who he portrayed. I also don't know if he'll be presented as a lead or supporting actor. Regardless it will be interesting to see what they do with him.

The movie ends with Dr. Kelley on the promotion circuit for the book he wrote and drunkenly saying how the Nazis weren't different from anyone else, that everyone has the same capability in them to do these things, that fascism sneaks up on you, etc. His views are not popular. This was before the experiments that show he was right about situation and people doing terrible things to other people if they're ordered/allowed to.

The timing on releasing this movie and the themes are very much timely as to the current situation in America. They go a bit heavy handed on that one without going off script too much. While it's true that the real Dr. Kelley said these things it's far too coincidental that they're part of this movie as well. Funny how a movie about how Nazis are bad uses some of their propaganda techniques itself.

The Book

If you're not into the minutia of the Rorschach Test then this book is not for you. There's a scene in the movie of Dr. Kelley performing the test on several prisoners but for fuck's sake does this book go into how much he absolutely loves the test, who else loves the test, who's a proponent of the test, the history of the test, how the test works, where the test should be used, etc.

The short version here is that Dr. Kelley used the Nazi prisoners as lab rats to try to find a way to identify evil via psychiatry. Most of what he did was not to deal with the prisoners' mental status for trial but for his own research for the book he fully intended to write from the beginning. He did get closer to Göring than any of the other prisoners but Göring was also the most well-known and therefore most marketable prisoner. And to be honest he was the most interesting of the bunch.

The book spends more time on various prisoners and what their mental states were, or at least what he perceived them to be. When the new doctor showed up, that doctor gave different interpretations. Which led to Colonel Andrus being sick of them both. Other psychiatrists and psychologists of various Allied nationalities also had their chances to talk to and examine the prisoners. It was a veritable revolving door of mental health professionals at that prison.

Colonel Andrus deserves a bit more explanation than just being a hard-ass. He was a career military prison administrator who didn't fool around. His job was to enforce discipline and that's what he did. In Nuremberg the prisoners weren't allowed to talk, were on a rigid schedule, were subject to thorough cell searches often, and he would rotate mealtime seating to prevent cliques and potential disruptions. Anything that interfered with the efficient running of his prison was dealt with. For the record he did help Göring's wife and daughter but by having the daughter brought to where her mother was imprisoned, not by getting them freed. The movie got it half right.

The movie had Dr. Kelley taking letters back and forth between Göring and his wife/daughter. This didn't happen. Not at all. Dr. Kelley had no real interest in anything but the prisoners and what he could get from them while he could.

Dr. Kelley asked for transfer once the trial started. He'd gotten everything he could and wasn't interested in the trial itself. He wasn't discharged. He got promoted before leaving the service and went into private practice.

When he left Germany he took all his notes, his souvenirs (he was getting prisoners to autograph copies of their books, that he looted from a local library), and copies of the other doctor's notes. The other doctor was upset about all this. He had to find employment and was kind of full of himself, thinking that his role at Nuremberg had more weight than it did back in civilian life. He also did work on his book but it wasn't a success either.

He had a lecture circuit and settled into criminology since it was something new and he felt that he had a unique insight into it, due to Nuremberg. He milked that for as long as he could and sometimes longer. He settled into teaching and lecturing police departments on using testing, such as the Rorschach Test, on new recruits. He kept those roles for most of his life.

He did talk about how there was no real difference between the Nazi command and anyone else. That's a true thing. He lectured on it. He believed it. And later, after his death, the famous Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgrim experiment proved him right that people will do terrible things if they're given the opportunity to do so.

Dr. Kelley committed suicide, taking cyanide. Kind of ironic but that's what he did. It wasn't a capsule but for some reason he had it in his house.

The book paints a very different picture than the movie. Dr. Kelley is not a likeable person. He was in an unhealthy marriage and was an uncaring, abusive parent. He was out for fame and did whatever he felt he needed to do to get it. The fact that the other doctor's book, and subsequent second book, did do well was probably another reason he took the paths he did.

The book also doesn't paint as pretty of a picture of Göring either. The book has him as more of a petty tyrant who needed constant approval rather than the scheming and composed temporarily inconvenienced man the movie portrays.

The myth that the bodies were cremated at Dachau, which was then torn town, is just that - a myth. They were cremated at a local cemetery. The ashes being scattered in the local river was true and the reason of not wanting a central focus for future neo-Nazis was true. It's why Hitler's bunker is a parking lot. They really did do their best to remove centers for potential martyrs.

I did try to find a way to read the book the real Dr. Kelley wrote but that's in various rare book libraries since it didn't sell well and the publisher didn't print all that many copies. If I could have found it to read I would have, just to contrast it with the movie and this book. But alas, it's not to be.