ATROPIA

Welcome to Atropia: Hailey Benton Gates’ glimpse behind the curtain of one of America’s ripped-straight-from-the-silver-screen military training programs. Gates welcomes us to Fort Irwin National Training Center, a subset of the Californian desert upon which remote landscape and nearby Hollywood craftspeople intertwine, devising sets transportive to the biggest war zones of the annum. Today, Fort Irwin doubles as the cold plains of Russia. In 2006—the year in which the feature’s set—it lay dressed as Iraq.

So begins the narrative, as a new class of American soldiers rumble into their new camp, primed for a few weeks of training before being sent off to the ‘real thing.’ From the outside, the idea seems logical: throw the soldiers into every worst-case-scenario, role-play death, destruction, terror plots, such that the soldiers ‘experience’ as close to real conflict as one can. Hired actors—most, in this film, of Iraqi descent—round out the tableau, playing into danger, stereotypes, as they fabricate the many scenarios that might await. Firing machine guns filled with blanks; staging massacres and bombings; injecting the mechanized scent of burning flesh into the scene, simply to enhance the immersion: no scenario is overlooked, no detail, overturned.

Fayruz (Alia Shawkat) wants to be a real actress. An onscreen auteur, an ingénue. To her, though Atropia may not be her calling, it’s a paying position, a notch upon her resume—and a place where, given the right opportunity, her performance may break out. Though consistently overlooked by the casting agents who employ her—Tim Heidecker, Chloë Sevigny, relaying orders from a luxury tent outside the makeshift stage—Fayruz remains convinced that if she continues to act at the pinnacle of her abilities, eventually, recognition may arise. It’s trivial, to her, that her fellow actors look down upon her eagerness, positing their time within the training grounds—lovingly referred to as “The Box”—as little more than a necessary means to make a living. No, if Fayruz keeps her eye upon the prize, then one day, she believes, all will finally proceed to plan.

Opportunity awaits upon the arrival of an unexpected A-lister: a well-known actor, whose surprising turn plays into this man’s particular comedic strengths. Though in his scene, he steals the show, it’s not Fayruz who catches his eye—but one of her contemporaries, whose (very real!) injury convinces the actor that she, not Fayruz, is the strongest in the bullpen. So, return to the day-to-day of Atropian life, Fayruz must, fighting to maintain that stubborn hope that somewhere, out there, something closer to a dream might emerge from this reconstruction of a nightmare.

What Atropia has going for it, above all, is its high-concept premise. ‘Hollywood executives and craftspeople mock a reconstructed war zone, in the attempt to train emerging soldiers for true battle’: it seems the stuff of legend; a premise that, as aforementioned, appears rife for the silver screen, and compel, it certainly does. Alongside a zippy logline arises a heaping scoop of situational irony, providing the basis for excellent anti-war satire. IIt is here in which the film is the strongest; in particular, each smattering scene set outside The Box provides a gasp, a chuckle; quick-witted training videos, backhanded lines of dialogue, craft a scenario from which audiences cannot look away.

Unfortunately, where the film begins to falter is in its dueling identities. About a third of the way into its runtime, the film begins to oscillate, sacrificing the sharpness of its satire in an attempt to elevate an unexpected romance. Bafflingly, so much of our leads’ central relationship blossoms off the page, such that the audience is left with little basis to understand why romantic-prospect Abu Dice (Callum Turner) appeals so much to Fayruz, nor she to him. Now, yes, one does eventually come to relish tender moments of their romance: a scene in which one likens a sensual bath to the scrubbing of a dirty dish is easily a standout moment; coupled missions provide bonding opportunities, a thrill as the two steal moments outside the tableau. That said, the imminent whiplash of ‘enemies-to-lovers,’ underlain by a relatively-unexplored, and thus difficult-to-adore, figure in Abu Dice, coalesce into a central pillar of the film that, when held up to any scrutiny, ultimately crumbles.

This forks into two related consequences: one to do with depth of character; the other, with faltering pace. Though Fayruz herself is quite the enjoyable lead to follow—her fierceness, undeniable, un-dwindling spark, coalescing into a firecracker figure—much like her romance, when the guise of ingénue is peeled away, she begins to come off as little more than shallow. Fayruz is an actor with big dreams, unrecognized by the masses—yet one never discovers why she feels such compulsion to remain in Atropia, especially as her participation has driven a wedge between her largely-disapproving family. Why, one wonders, is her family so disapproving? Do they see her participation as an insult to their Iraqi heritage? Do they believe she’s simply wasting her potential? Why, to her, does Atropia appeal so—romance aside, what is there to outweigh the costs? Delving into any one of these inquiries might enhance the depth of Fayruz’s character, while also strengthening compulsion of the film’s locale—and thus, of course, the project as a whole.

Abu Dice, on the other hand, ends up presented as even more intensely ill-defined. A one-off remark clues the audience into a deep longing to return to overseas service; later, a never-mentioned wife appears, a hint towards the presence of a family. Yet Dice is all-too-willing to disregard his wife, failing to display much fondness, even, in the brief scene she appears. The wife’s very existence dissolves a great proportion of audience sympathy: if Dice is all-too-willing to cheat on his loving spouse, if he fails to show but a hint of remorse, can he truly be the ‘perfect man’? What, about him, compels as a romantic lead? In presenting such a disinterested affect, audience perception becomes imminently sourced. It doesn’t get any better from there: by the time one reaches the film’s ending, a bitter taste is left in one’s mouth; though perhaps conclusively ‘realistic,’ the manner in which their relationship comes to a close is in no way satisfactory for a film that, throughout its latter half, posits itself as, well, a romance!

Minor nitpicks further pepper the film’s later moments: visual flashbacks to Dice’s time in Iraq feel unnecessary, particularly as they interrupt some of the film’s most poignant glimpses of emotion: fragments that, perhaps, might hold more weight, were we to linger on the character’s micro-expressions to perform storytelling functions, as opposed to snapping back to stock footage of another time. That said, Gates’ flashes of restraint are seldom a detriment; in certain circumstances, her careful directorial choices lead, instead, to nuance. Take, for instance, a late-second-act reveal of Fayruz’s pregnancy; a lack of explanation, there, non-answers, deliver more than a true response ever could, lending strength, maturity, to the extended sequence. It’s a delicate balancing act that Gates performs: one that doesn’t always pay off, yet here, certainly succeeds in smaller doses.

If only the latter half were not so inherently choppy. Atropians act out assignments, as if in montage: where, one wonders, is the set-up, the transition between each new mission, particularly as the roles, the goals, appear to be switching on a dime? If only the characters were increasingly defined: a romantic lead, fleshed out to the necessary minimum to propel the genre throughline. With minor tweaks, Gates’ narrative could easily be elevated to a stellar feature—particularly since, in its present state, the setting is so solid. As a satire, Atropia launches onto the independent-feature scene with fascination, irony, and grace: a surefire success in the making, one that stands out among its Sundance peers. It’s simply the romance elements that falter; and since the feature cannot, at the end of the day, decide which of the genres it should be—or, alternatively, attempts to straddle a precarious, perhaps ill-defined, line between the two—Gates’ debut feature loses just a hint of its innate strength. Do not, however, let that deter you: Atropia, the setting, remains worthy of the silver-screen treatment, and when focused on that element, the eponymous film reaches great success. The highs are high; and the bag, though mixed, remains a fascinating addition to the cinematic canon.