Stupidity is International

Iron Sky, the "Nazis on the Moon" farce currently in theaters, is not for children. It has no nudity, and while there is significant violence, much of it is absurdly over the top or otherwise ridiculous. Still, there are scenes of bloodshed, and there is language and issues that I would never have exposed my 12-year-old to.

There were two women in the rows ahead of Omaha and I, and they had brought, between them, four children: a boy and three girls, seven years old through ten years old.

The women were wearing the unpatterned dark-brown hijab of sub-Saharan Islamic cultures, and both their accents and command of the language led me to conclude they were probably Sudanese immigrants-- Seattle's had quite a few of those recently. For all the supposed "immigrants are more pro-family than locals" memage, those two women were clearly either badly misinformed about what kind of movie they were taking their kids to (it was a late night showing, too!), or their sense of what's appropriate for their kids is way different from mine.

Probably a little bit of both.

SIFF's "Turn Off Your Cellphones" warning

Seattlites Only: If you ever see a mature audiences film (not a porn film, but one meant for adult sensibilities) at SIFF's Uptown Theater, be warned: the "turn off your cell-phone" ad at the beginning of the film is, well, I won't give it away, but it's rather shocking, in a giggle-inducing way.

Iron Sky [movie, review]

Omaha and I went to see Iron Sky last night. If you're not familiar with Iron Sky, here's the premise: in 2018, the last Nazi base, hiding out on on the dark side of the moon, captures an American moon mission returning after 50 years, discover that the world's technology base has advanced far further than they'd anticipated, and decide to launch the Fourth Reich's great invasion of the Earth.

It's a farce that would make Mel Brooks sit up, hit himself in the forehead and shout, "Oy! Why didn't I think of that?" except that, in order to avoid offending any more than absolutely necessary, there are no Germans and no Jews in the film at all.

Instead, Sarah Palin (never named, but there's nobody else that woman could be) is President, the Nazis engage in experiments to invite a black man into the Aryan race-- this is much funnier than it sounds-- and the plot centers around an ad agency trying to figure out how to sell Sarah's re-election bid.

There's too much fun that doesn't deserve to be spoiled. The UN General Council scenes are especially hilarious, but the movie is a giggle from beginning to end.

Oh, and if James Nicoll is paying attention: the Nazis are so powerful because they've mined Helium-3 out of the Moon.

Iron Sky, themes and messages

Every comedy has a tragedy at its heart, and every movie worth reviewing has a message to sell. Iron Sky, the "Nazis on the Moon" farce in theaters, is no different.

At its heart, Iron Sky is a serious meditiation about the values that make people humane, about Dieselpunk values vs. Cyberpunk values, and about the banality of power.

Like all such comedies of small people caught in the middle of massive power, in the end great personal barriers are surmounted over the awareness that those very barriers are irrelevant, even harmful, when faced with the real threats to one's beliefs and values. The heroine of the film, despite having been born in the mid-1970s and brought up in the Nazi Moonbase, is convinced that the Reich was unfairly pushed off the Earth because it's message of "healing humanity" was somehow too much for the evil Alliance. She learns of the Reich's real message when she visits Earth, and from there her own character growth emerges.

The Nazis are still Dieselpunk fifty years on. They have a primitive form of fusion power, but their computers are still the size of rooms and their anti-grav involves massive machines with giant chains and pistons-- and the idea is that both the huge scale of their flying saucers, and the minescule eggshell scale of the world's space force, are both inappropriate for human beings. Human muscles cannot power the first; human minds cannot comprehend the computers at the heart of the second. The film closes on the heroine determined to rebuild along her ideals, but the problem of scale remains.