The Electric State, a big flat battery (critic)
Ultimate soulless avatar of a copy of unattainable classics, the new SF film of the Russo brothers does not cause any particular emotion.
The Electric State : It is a nice title, which could be that of a rock album, or designate this moment when Bob Dylan goes to electricity as at the end of a perfect stranger by James Mangold. But before being a Netflix blockbuster, it was a Swedish artbook Simon Stålenhag published in 2018. The story of the roadtrip of a young girl and a robot in a parallel America, along the remains of a war between robots and humans. We are in 1997, in an alternative past where the carcasses of large machines rust on the horizon.
Like the previous two artbooks of Stålenhag (Tales from the loop And Things from the Flood), the story was born from images – but it remained secondary, almost accidental, as when the “emerging narration” occurs during a game of board game. Nothing prohibited the construction of real fiction around The Electric State : After all, it was only to bend down, as the universe of Stålenhag consisted in real and superb concept arts -all the gear to build a blockbuster, a real, a beautiful, a large.
Inevitably, the result is objectively not big since it arrives on Netflix, and will be seen with less attention than in a cinema. That said, the question of the format does not play so much since the result is particularly mollasson. And this despite a large dose of narrative additions of all kinds: apparently not convinced by the evocative simplicity of the original work, the writers have complexified the story by adding many characters with the narrative arcs that go with it. Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown, not bad) and her robot are therefore tracked down by a mercenary (Giancarlo Esposito, as usual), himself at the service of a Steve Jobs of cybernetics (Stanley Tucci, Uh … as usual) which submitted the planet using a network of virtual reality headsets allowing to control robots at a distance. Add to that a particularly tense sidekick (Chris Pratt, well … equal to himself), ex-soldier dealer of retro goodies.
This thick layer of masculinity is supposed to add narrative density, but only leads to an exhausting stack of banal ideas, almost all already seen elsewhere and in significantly better, of James Cameron (this robot foot which crushes the skull of another as in the prologue of Terminator 2) to Steven Spielberg (the infinite meta addition of references as in Ready Player One). The somewhat fun idea of the revolt of downgraded robots personifying the advertising icons of the USAs such as real American Godsevokes ultimately the intrigue of Toy story 3. Used strings, archetypes of scenario lessons that do not make the effort to harmonize or even want to provoke anything.
Nothing new excites in The Electric Statewhich seems to be only a product in confusing words: the film calls for the disconnection of the brains of small screens, totalitarian overwhelming content -all in the form of a Netflix streaming film. A symbol. Besides, this week, Amadeus Release in a 4K copy. Since its release, we have been a little bit of all musical biopics (and all the biopics) in the light of the masterpiece of Miloš Forman. And it was in 1984: that year, 4.6 million French people were going to triumph-like the Americans-in Amadeus at the cinema. But they were also going to see in number, always like the Americans, Ghosts,, Gremlins And Indiana Jones and the Cursed Temple To name only three films in the Top 10 in the 84 class.
Three films which are still one of the franchises constantly cited, copied, pumped and rejected in theentertainment Current -which constitute cinema horizons for the executives of studios that are too cautious about the idea of producing original content, which is not too serious because it is after all their role, but also the cinema horizon of current blockbusters, which is more serious because copying is not their function. This observation is not new, of course, but it is still as heartbreaking. We come back to Amadeusthis great story of the triumph of the narrative of the mediocre and the carpets on that of the geniuses intended to finish in the common pit.
The Electric Statefrom Anthony and Joe Russo, with Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Giancarlo Esposito … on Netflix now
