The CongressThe more appealing a trip into a wonderland of fantasy becomes, the harder it is to come back. The Congress is a fantasy film that begins with a fictionalized version of actress Robin Wright (playing herself), at the end of her career. She is accused both by her agent, Al (Harvey Keitel), and less delicately by Miramount studio head, Jeff Green (Danny Huston), of having burned too many bridges and run from too many choice roles. However, Jeff asserts that the "structure" of an actor-driven Hollywood is dying--that its future will be found in crafting virtual likenesses of actors like Robin, to which Miramount will retain exclusive rights. After Robin commits to this insane idea, the world firmly descends into madness, and reality becomes subjective.
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Directed by Ari Folman, The Congress takes cues from films like Being John Malkovich in how it depicts the dream factory of Hollywood as being mere inches from the edge of inescapable and all-consuming surreal fantasy. The Congress is a film which is steeped in irony, like how the lead actress plays a version of real-life actress counterpart. Hollywood biopics have historically been commercially successful and critically acclaimed, suggesting that audiences crave the opportunity to step into the shoes of someone famous and know them on an intimate level. Even though The Congress depicts Robin as "herself", her life is less desirable; her son, Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee), has been afflicted with Usher syndrome, rendering him deaf and blind by degrees. Jeff compares Robin to Grace Kelly, citing how her celebrated role as Buttercup in The Princess Bride represented the promise of another superstar until she became difficult and avoided essential roles, as though she didn't really like acting. Jeff's offer to own her likeness in perpetuity--forcing her contractually to never act again--sounds a lot like slavery, and she spits at his offer when it is first placed before her. Yet this indignation is the first step in the death of her acting career--a vehement denial that her vocation could be taken from her, one which is followed by bargaining and ultimately acceptance. This first part of The Congress establishes who "Robin Wright" is and what she values: family, integrity, and choice--values which are alien to consumerist overlords like Jeff and his confederates at Miramount. Like death, the transition away from reality is an inevitability--regardless of Al and Jeff's coercing--and Robin's conscious participation is ironically the first step in her giving up the control she has over these values. She not only loses touch with her family--first her daughter, Sarah (Sami Gayle), and then Aaron as time goes on--but also her choice to deign from participating in the madness which transforms the world, which has a lot to do with her celebrity resurrection as a virtual actress. By taking part in Miramount's crazy scheme, she justifies its despicable research into new and more immersive forms of entertainment, which have more in common with recreational drugs than movies. (One of Robin's friends is a gifted cinematographer, whose job is essentially reduced to the role of a motion capture technician.) Robin is not alone in her "collaboration" (a word Sarah uses to highlight her fascistic side)--if one looks closely, it's a caricature of Tom Cruise she's speaking with in Jeff's cockroach-ridden office in the future. This post-reality Robin has even been turned into a popular scifi heroine--made into a superstar cliche instead of an intelligent actress--forced to perform in a series of banal space operas that rip off classics like Dr. Strangelove; she even said that she didn't want to do scifi in the first place...
The question of what is true is always at the heart of The Congress. When Al tells his story to Robin in the scanning dome about how he became an "agent" at the age of ten, it is designed to tug at her heartstrings. Does he tell her this because he truly cares about her, or is it a convenient way for her feelings to be captured by the machine for the sake of the product she is to become? Twenty years later, she drives her Porsche into the desert to attend the "Future Congress" (from which the film gets its name, taken from the novel "The Futurological Congress" by Stanisław Lem) at the hundred-story tall resort headquarters of Miramount-Nagasaki. She is given an ampoule to inhale, which is her ticket into a mass hallucination; following this, The Congress turns almost exclusively into an animated film. Robin starts seeing Jeff as a jackbooted Nazi, arresting and then executing her in the name of the Miramount Police. By the time Robin tries to pull the attendees out of their stupor at the rally when the next evolution in Miramount's product line is unveiled--turning her into a "substance" that can be ingested and absorbed--it is already too late, and the place explodes into chaos. She crosses paths with Dylan (voiced by Jon Hamm), the project head of the "Robin Wright Division", in the midst of this psychedelic revolution, who confesses that as he has researched her obsessively, he began to fall in love with her. But Dylan has never met her, and only loves the superstar that he has read about; worse, he was responsible for placing her likeness in the embarrassing scifi dreck she detests. Yet Dylan represents her only link to reality after she is subjected to cryostasis following the revolution, emerging into a world that has become fully immersed in a chemical existence, with few outliers resisting this state of pure fantasy. Dylan also represents the worst kind of devil; he is charming, convincing, and even sympathetic. Dylan--even unconsciously--seduces Robin into accepting the boundless freedom of this brave new world, where anything is possible, and where concepts like war and even the ego have been quelled. This is escapism in its most distilled form; Robin steps back from the edge of fantasy to see the world for what it really is after this "revolution of the mind"--a sickly ghetto where drugs deprive humanity of freedom, despite proclamations that Miramount has unlocked the key to mastering free will. There are examples, however, that suggest that everything in this surreal realm exists solely in Robin's imagination. For instance, people like Dr. Barker (Paul Giamatti)--Aaron's former doctor--have fled to remote blimps in the sky to avoid the madness of the world below; when Robin visits one of the blimps, she is guided by an aircraft that is a replica of the kite Aaron played with. These echoes from Robin's past create a lingering doubt that everything after the scanning process has been a lie--a fantasy crafted by Robin's subconscious to cope with her intense stress. Her envisioning of a world where everyone has become a victim of the studio system may be a delusional fantasy she embraces to escape the harsh reality that her acting career ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Recommended for: Fans of a vibrant fantasy film that combines vivid animation with fictional interpretations of people, creating a madhouse version of reality. The Congress challenges ideas about what entertainment is designed to do for its audience, and what role the performer has in how their likeness is used to entertain that audience.
The question of what is true is always at the heart of The Congress. When Al tells his story to Robin in the scanning dome about how he became an "agent" at the age of ten, it is designed to tug at her heartstrings. Does he tell her this because he truly cares about her, or is it a convenient way for her feelings to be captured by the machine for the sake of the product she is to become? Twenty years later, she drives her Porsche into the desert to attend the "Future Congress" (from which the film gets its name, taken from the novel "The Futurological Congress" by Stanisław Lem) at the hundred-story tall resort headquarters of Miramount-Nagasaki. She is given an ampoule to inhale, which is her ticket into a mass hallucination; following this, The Congress turns almost exclusively into an animated film. Robin starts seeing Jeff as a jackbooted Nazi, arresting and then executing her in the name of the Miramount Police. By the time Robin tries to pull the attendees out of their stupor at the rally when the next evolution in Miramount's product line is unveiled--turning her into a "substance" that can be ingested and absorbed--it is already too late, and the place explodes into chaos. She crosses paths with Dylan (voiced by Jon Hamm), the project head of the "Robin Wright Division", in the midst of this psychedelic revolution, who confesses that as he has researched her obsessively, he began to fall in love with her. But Dylan has never met her, and only loves the superstar that he has read about; worse, he was responsible for placing her likeness in the embarrassing scifi dreck she detests. Yet Dylan represents her only link to reality after she is subjected to cryostasis following the revolution, emerging into a world that has become fully immersed in a chemical existence, with few outliers resisting this state of pure fantasy. Dylan also represents the worst kind of devil; he is charming, convincing, and even sympathetic. Dylan--even unconsciously--seduces Robin into accepting the boundless freedom of this brave new world, where anything is possible, and where concepts like war and even the ego have been quelled. This is escapism in its most distilled form; Robin steps back from the edge of fantasy to see the world for what it really is after this "revolution of the mind"--a sickly ghetto where drugs deprive humanity of freedom, despite proclamations that Miramount has unlocked the key to mastering free will. There are examples, however, that suggest that everything in this surreal realm exists solely in Robin's imagination. For instance, people like Dr. Barker (Paul Giamatti)--Aaron's former doctor--have fled to remote blimps in the sky to avoid the madness of the world below; when Robin visits one of the blimps, she is guided by an aircraft that is a replica of the kite Aaron played with. These echoes from Robin's past create a lingering doubt that everything after the scanning process has been a lie--a fantasy crafted by Robin's subconscious to cope with her intense stress. Her envisioning of a world where everyone has become a victim of the studio system may be a delusional fantasy she embraces to escape the harsh reality that her acting career ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Recommended for: Fans of a vibrant fantasy film that combines vivid animation with fictional interpretations of people, creating a madhouse version of reality. The Congress challenges ideas about what entertainment is designed to do for its audience, and what role the performer has in how their likeness is used to entertain that audience.