The Sweet East

The view challenges, the heart tempts, the circumstances urge - the coward runs away: Yankee has recently awakened and turned his favorite genre, the road movie, into a tool for self-criticism of his own life project. The neurotic man (that is, the majority white so-called "normal" subject) has reached the end of his historical journey and, as he has so often realized, lacks the courage for the ultimate fulfillment of his desire. It is therefore finally deservedly left by the roadside of history. Tomorrow belongs not necessarily directly to women, but at least not to men (and if the future were at least half as beautiful as Talia Ryder, Jordan Peterson, the prototype of a fighter for male historical supremacy, who must take antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills...) would certainly dare to enter it, for example, as the archetype of today's North American defenders of old conservative orders. The Sweet East, just like this year's Beau Is Afraid, brilliantly shows male weakness and inability to fulfill their role, while Tom Cruise still probably managed to produce the appropriate reaction to Nicole Kidman's "Fu*k" in Eyes Wide Shut. Contemporary American heroes can no longer do that - whether it is shown to us through the surreal introspection of the male soul in Beau or, on the contrary, negatively through the fate of a girl whose vicissitudes are fundamentally shaped by male incapacity to achieve what they want for their cultural-political self-delusions... Fortunately, American cinema is partly getting rid of its Hollywood self and offers at least in these two cases films that are not afraid to step at least a little off the beaten track of cinematic storytelling. (16.07.2023)