The East Is A Cast Of Emerging Talent

When former FBI agent Sarah Moss (Brit Marling) is dropped of at Dulles Airport by her boyfriend Tim (Jason Ritter), she doesn't head toward security or her departing flight to Dubai. She exits the airport instead, hails a cab, and heads to a hotel where she immediately dyes her hair and changes her clothes.

The day before, she had been selected by the private intelligence firm Hiller Brood to go deep undercover and infiltrate an underground activist group. The group, The East, targets the corporate executives of companies that its members have found guilty of humanitarian or environmental exploitation.

The movie opens up with the group breaking into the home of an oil company executive and pouring oil into the ductwork. Apparently an act of retaliation for a coastal spill, the oil slowly seeps out of the vents, covering everything in its wake. While never shown, it's implied the executive might have been covered too, an event that attracts the attention of Hiller Brood clients.

A terse psychological thriller that takes aim at emotions and ethics. 

The theme of the movie is relatively straightforward as a modern take on whether the ends justifies the means. But where producer/cowriter/actress Marling and director/cowriter Zal Matmanglij find their footing is in exploring the familiar. The East has many cult-like characteristics and ritualistic activities similar to those in their last film, The Sound Of My Voice.

Moss finds The East by transforming herself into a vagabond traveler and eventually joining rail-riding drifters. She suspects one of them is a member of The East, but he turns out to be an undercover federal agent. She sees him flash his badge when the pack is caught by railroad police.


He flashes as Moss intervenes on behalf of the most vulnerable looking drifter, Luca, whom the railroad police rough up while escorting him off one of the boxcars. Ironically, the unassuming man she saves is a member of The East. He helps her escape and offers to take her someplace for medical attention.

The members of The East are suspicious and divided when Luca brings Moss to their secret squat in the woods. While the group's leader Benji (Alexander Skarsgard) seems open to accepting her into the group, the outspoken Izzy (Ellen Page) is not. They only agree to let her stay two nights to recover.

Instead, Moss is recruited to take another member's place in what the group calls a "jam." In this case, one of the members uses his connection to infiltrate a government contract signing party for a pharmaceutical company.

The member, Doc (Toby Kebbell), has evidence that the drug company is marginalizing the extent and severity of the side effects of the antibiotic that the company intends to mass produce for the military. The jam includes spiking champagne with the antibiotic, secretly forcing members of the executive team to take the same risk they find acceptable for servicemen and women.

This jam and others cause Moss to question the ethics and morality of her job to protect what the group considers corporate criminals. It becomes especially difficult as she gets to know and trust other members of the group. Some of them, it seems, have been personally affected by corporate cover ups and negligence. The is one especially pointed scene when Moss tells her boyfriend during a brief reunion that she felt like she was living in a foreign country, but now coming home feels like a foreign country too.

The East By Zal Batmanhlij And Brit Marling Jams 7.2 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

This time the duo had a bigger budget to bring their vision to life and it shows, but the movie would have done better without the eco-terrorism moniker that reviewers adopted. Eco-terrorism films tend to cool audience interest, making the moniker somewhat of an injustice.

While environmental crime is on the group's radar, The East is more in line with being a corporate vigilante cult as opposed to green police. Despite landing somewhere between commercial and independent, The East reinforces the abilities of Batmanhlij and Marling to entertain our heads.

The East was released early for high definition purchase on iTunes. You can also order The East [Blu-ray] on Amazon (Sept. 17). The movie can also be ordered from Barnes & Noble. For more on Batmanglij and Marling, see the previous review of their work.

Listen For The Sound Of My Voice

There is something immediately creepy when investigative journalist Peter Aitken (Christopher Denham) and his girlfriend Lorna Michaelson (Nicole Vicius) arrive at the house. They pull into the garage and are greeted, before their personal possessions are removed and they are asked to wash.

They are willingly blindfolded. Their hands are cuffed with tie-wraps. And they are driven to a remote location to see who they came for — Maggie (Brit Marling), a cult leader. Two years ago, she tells them, she woke up underwater in a bathtub that was not her own. Without any recollection, she was cast out on the streets.

Maggie is from the future. She lived in 2054.

The film builds around who Aitken and Michaelson are as much as their work to dig deeper into this mysterious cult. Aitken isn't a professional investigative reporter but a wannabe. He is a substitute teacher. Michaelson, his girlfriend, is an former addict. She eventually pulled her life together about the time they met.

In the initial days as they begin to infiltrate the Los Angeles-based cult, the new recruits are frequently separated, spontaneously tested, and subjected to blood tests. All of it is designed to protect Maggie, who is allergic to everything. They need to protect her because when things go bad, she will take them away to safety.

When the couple cannot find a way to record Maggie, Aitken attempts to smuggle a camera in by swallowing it. They not only want to capture Maggie, but also the wispy qualities of her voice that prompt people to a neat hypnotic state. Sometimes she is nurturing and other times she is the insistent parent.

As the film pushes forward, it becomes increasingly claustrophobic as the investigators are slowly taken in by their subject. For the rest of the initiates, it is easier. All of them are taken in by the promise of hope.

The film continually pits the question of whether Maggie is a con artist to the audience as much as the investigators. One of the disciples takes Michaelson out shooting in the woods. Maggie resists singing a popular song from the future, only to sing a song by the Cranberries. She also makes a big show about needing oxygen in the introduction, but lights a cigarette during a private session with Aitken.



Although the film is restrained, the vibe gives it an ominous tension as it becomes clear that the hopeful investigative journalist didn't pick his mark. Maggie picked him. She is especially interested in a little girl who happens to attend school where Aitken was teaching. The film is unsettling. The acting solid. The ending unforgettable.

A brief about director Zal Batmanglij and co-writer Brit Marling. 

Brit Marling recently had an independent hit with Another Earth, a science-fiction drama that touches on one girl's desire to find her alternate self on a parallel Earth who didn't make the same tragic mistake she did. It was while working on Another Earth that Marling met Zal Batmanglij, who received a special thanks credit on the earlier film.

Batmanglij originally had a dream similar to the opening of the film. When he told Marling during a writing session, she started building onto it. From there, they took turns telling the story until they had a script. Shortly after, they opened up a production office inside Marling's bedroom.

Incidentally, if you never heard of Batmanglij (despite his well-received short, The Recordist, in 2007), you might have heard of his brother. Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend) wrote the music for it. The film is a brilliant piece of independent work, from start to finish.

Sound Of My Voice Registers At 9.2 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

Although minimalistic by design and budget, Sound Of My Voice is a milestone in the careers of Batmanglij and Marling as well as a great exercise in storytelling. As co-writers, they successfully pull back the curtain slowly and methodically without ever being tempted to insert any overt "indie" cinematography or pretentiousness into the film.

Sound of My Voice (Blu-ray) is available on Amazon. The film was also released for download or rental on iTunes. You can also order Sound Of My Voice from Barnes & Noble. Batmanglij has already finished his next film, The East. He co-write the new work with Marling too.