THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES: Heart In The Right Place, Wrong Approach

It’s 12:15AM.

The once frantic New Year’s Eve party is well on the decline, most party-goers have ventured off, some have passed out or are making out and several lively people remain. You sit in the corner, slowly nursing a beer as you look around at the barren, once thriving party room. A drunkard, earlier the life of the party, now obnoxiously drunk, swaggers over to you. You thought he was hilarious before, but now he’s too drunk, his breath smells but he’s still coming after you. He slides his hand on your shoulder, trying to be on your level and whispers, “What’s up man”. You know he’s drunk, but you did like him so you let him continue. “Not much, how you holding up?” You quietly reply.

“Did you know the Twin Towers were taken down the government!” he angrily slurs. “Oh no” you realise, “he’s going into the 9/11 conspiracy crap”. To wrap this hypothetical scenario up, this experience is exactly like watching The Emperor’s New Clothes, the Michael Winterbottom directed documentary detailing Russell Brand‘s personal quest against the worldwide economic gap between the higher class people and the lower class. An extension of Brand’s popular Youtube Series The Trews, which acts as a platform for Brand, to expand upon his new political persona, shedding his mainstream Hollywood comedian role and focusing on the state of British politics. More specifically, the economic problems such as the disparity between the rich and the poor, with Brand attempting to bridge the two with his popularity.

A Little From Column A, A Little From Column B

Directed by Michael Winterbottom, who moreso seems to be there in order to maintain and structure Brand’s rambling approach into something more coherent and entertaining for a wider audience, the film’s Michael Moore-esque “every-day man against the machine” documentary is funny in parts and highlights some alarming issues, but ultimately does end up feeling like a Youtube series put onto a movie screen, with not much theatrical shine added.

The Emperor’s New Clothes is a film that, much like its leading protagonist, has its heart in the right place. Brand obviously is quite passionate about the worsening economic gap and the negative effect this has on the working class population (where he was raised in) and this is an issue that shouldn’t be brushed off. The problem with the film, though, is that it’s at times quite condescending and very erratic in its approach: sometimes quite funny, at times insultingly basic in how it approaches its audience. Due to Brand’s mainstream fame thanks to Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the spin-off to that, Get Him to the Greek, which cemented him briefly as the wild party-boy of Hollywood, he has a wide appeal to the younger generation, which I feel this film is aimed most towards.

Older audiences may find the film slightly derivative and the facts/issues addressed will be seen as nothing new to an older generation who is aware of the poor financial situations occurring worldwide. Also, they might’ve seen other documentaries which have attempted to talk about the same situations or done this approach towards tackling social issues before, with many elements of this film borrowed from Michael Moore (the famous truck/megaphone gag from Fahrenheit 9/11 is lifted directly onto this film, with Brand basically replicating it), Nick Broomfield and Louis Theroux, with his fearlessness of tackling the issues and targets head-on.

Home-Branded

The film lacks a real structure, coming across a series of sporadic sketches in-between a lot of soapboxing, where a lot of facts and a menagerie of different suggestions are thrown out in order to inform the audience. But, whilst this is an okay approach, without a baseline to hang this on, due to the long running time (107 minutes) the film starts to drag and get quite repetitive, which starts to turn the audience as it gets to the point where you have to say, ‘Alright, I get it!’.

The sketches, which mostly comprise of Russell Brand trying to contact the CEO’s responsible for the 2008 Economic collapse and other similar economic blunders, go from funny to kind of mean. Funny sketches include Brand attempting to climb into Lord Rothermere’s building by scaling the wall and throughout other sketches, Brand shows us why he’s such a successful comedian, with his improv ability and wit shining through occasionally.

The parts which start to feel a bit insulting is where Brand uses children to illustrate a point, using them to highlight the unfairness of wage inequality by having the children wear necklaces with the average wage on them, with one student having a huge amount and if asked if this is fair, the children scream NO in unison. Having children scream a very basic point at you feels like a very cheap tactic to relate the point to us, but it comes off as quite lame and obviously exploits the innocence of the children.

Right Thoughts, Wrong Methods

Quite a few scenes feature Brand attempting to get into buildings of different banks and confronting CEOs (another element seen many times before in other documentaries) but always ends up apprehended by the security guards, where he ends up rambling different facts and chasting the poor security guards/receptions who are just trying to do their jobs and would fall into the same wage level/economic class that Brand is trying to defend. Having Brand repeatedly demean them in front of the camera and the growing crowd around these confrontations comes off as slightly insulting and slightly confusing in the intentions behind these scenes.

Conclusion

An interesting note to add to this film is that when it was released in the UK several months ago, Brand himself uploaded a torrent link to the documentary, allowing any online pirates to see the film. It’s a tactic that I understand the motive behind (as Brand has purely made the film to get an important message out there and his desired audience are the ones that would torrent the film, teenagers) but this is a tactic that doesn’t do anyone good. There are more people than just Brand who worked on the film and this is something that takes money away from not just the bigwigs, but the smaller people as well, who are just trying to get by. This is a microcosm of the film itself – we understand the intentions and Brand is obviously passionate about the subject of the economic gap, but he may need to rethink how he goes about it. This documentary is kinda watchable, but with its long running time and slightly derivative/repetitive nature it can be a bit warring for those who understand the financial situation and who get what’s going on.

Do you agree with Brand’s approach? Or do you think there’s a different way he could be tackling these issues?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4Geq8dM13k

(top image source: Studio Canal UK)