Former classmates at Georgetown University who now have worked together on three films, the others being “Another Earth” and “Sound of My Voice,” also somewhat paranoid works about the concept of doubles, cults, and causes bigger than one person, Marling and Batmanglij tackle big business here, considering the lengths dissenters would go to for their convictions. And so while this whole undercover setup is familiar to us as viewers, in light of our nation’s recent economic woes, the targets feel particularly poignant—big oil, big banks, big medicine. Why shouldn’t our problems be theirs, too? Why can’t they have a taste of our suffering?
The film focuses on Sarah (Marling, of “Another Earth”), a onetime FBI agent who has left the agency and now works as a corporate spy for Hiller/Brood, a mysterious Washington, D.C., company that assesses the risks facing multinational corporations; most of Sarah’s work will be going undercover and gathering information on would-be revolutionaries and dissenters so Hiller/Brood can report back to its clients. And so her frostily professional boss Sharon (Patricia Clarkson, of “One Day,” “Friends with Benefits,” “Easy A,” and “Shutter Island”) hands over her first assignment: Ingratiating herself with the new anarchist eco-terrorist group The East, learning what companies they plan to strike next, and bringing the intel back. Sarah can’t tell her boyfriend. Sarah can’t tell anyone.
With a pair of Birkenstock sandals shaved down to look worn, a ratty hoodie, and newly dyed blond hair, Sarah goes out into the world, venturing near the Mason/Dixon line, illegally catching trains, and diving into dumpsters for food. And soon enough (it seems too easy, really), she’s noticed by The East and brought into their collective. They live in a dilapidated mansion in the woods, they feed each other during group meals, and they play spin-the-bottle to pass the time. It would be just like summer camp, really, if they weren’t also planning attacks against company big-wigs (like crashing a party at a rich oil man’s house and dumping gasoline through his air conditioning system). Fun, fun, fun!
But Sarah is drawn to something in the group, and it’s not just handsome, charismatic leader Benji (Alexander Skarsgård, of “Battleship” and “Straw Dogs”), with whom she starts a fairly convenient relationship. Although other group members like the zealous Izzy (Ellen Page, of “Inception” and “Whip It”) accuse her of being a faker (“You smell like soap,” Izzy accusingly spits at Sarah), The East is finally an opportunity for Sarah to show off everything she can do: help plan The East’s complex schemes, or “jams”; leap from trees; attack men; pick handcuffs; do reckless, risky things with no punishment; lose herself in something. It’s like a “Lord of the Flies” paradise for her, so much so that her original mission, to collapse The East from inside, seems less and less appealing. Wouldn’t attacking the country’s corporate structure be so much more fulfilling?
For the most part, “The East” works very hard to even-handedly present their band of eco-terrorists; they may mean to do harm, but they have relatable reasons and understandable needs for revenge (Toby Kebbell, of “Wrath of the Titans,” “War Horse,” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” as a former med student who was poisoned by a company’s faulty antibiotics is particularly gripping). They’re certainly weird (that feeding each other at dinner thing also includes straitjackets, to teach East members discipline and trust), but Marling and Batmanglij write them in a way that makes them fully realized, not just tree-huggers with a dangerous gleam in their eyes.
The film stumbles, though, in assigning too-easy explanations for some of the ethical quandaries that begin plaguing our characters. Sarah’s Christianity becomes a simplistic way for her to vacillate between sympathizing with the downtrodden East and the perhaps-innocent corporation employees they’re targeting, and her religion becomes an obvious method for tracking her developmental arc in the film. That doesn’t mean Marling isn’t believable—she’s got a lot going on behind those eyes, and she’s excellent at giving seemingly blank stares that are actually loaded with meaning—but it’s the kind of easy choice that then plagues the finale of the film. The film goes from being practically objective to jarringly lopsided, and in trying very much to prove that there are shades of grey in any belief system or faith, political or otherwise, Marling and Batmanglij murk up the waters irredeemably.
Until then, though, “The East” is solidly written and tightly paced. It’s a disappointment that the conclusion fails to live up to the promise of the previous 90 minutes or so, but that only means it’s a good thriller, not a great one. Otherwise, Marling and Batmanglij know what they’re doing, and they do it well.
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