Mute (2018)
The Netflix film Mute is a passion project directed and co-written by Duncan Jones, who made a splash with Moon, then solidified his fans with Source Code, which is the primary interest for most people who seek this one out deliberately on the streaming service. Jones’ last effort, Warcraft, had been much wider in scope and budget, but studio demands and fan expectations had him handcuffed, and the result had been a box office failure that never gelled in the U.S. (though it did very well in China), but fans have mostly not been dissuaded, knowing that it was a film that had likely gotten away from the still relatively new filmmaker.
Despite having conceived of this project as his debut film, sixteen years prior, that never could quite get off the ground, Mute is likely going to the one that has the largest impact on Jones’ fans being skeptical about his prowess on projects yet to come. It returns Jones to Berlin, a place where he has spent a good chunk of his life, while his father, David Bowie, would be working on music, resulting in his acclaimed, “Berlin Trilogy” of albums. One can see within the storyline of Mute some similarities to Jones’ life, as there’s an eight-year-old character, an only child, who is shuttled around by her father while he’s always away on business in Berlin, and her mother is nowhere to be found, leading her to be left to be raised by others, including prostitutes. In connection, Duncan, whose own father had been busy with music and a mother, Angie Bowie, who had become absent as a mother and then completely estranged to him, had been mostly raised by others, especially his Scottish nanny, Marion Skene, who died in early 2017, and one of the two people that the film is dedicated to, the other being his father, David Jones, aka David Bowie, who had divorced and left Duncan with Angie, and who also died in 2016.
Jones sets Mute, not in the past of his youth, but in the future, in the year 2052, in a cityscape that seems directly inspired by Blade Runner. Alexander Skarsgard (The Legend of Tarzan, War on Everyone) stars as Leo, a mute Amish bartender, speechless since a childhood accident severed his vocal cords, forcing his to express himself through facial gestures, body language, note writing, and the occasional art piece. Protective Leo ends up having to traverse the seamy underbelly of criminals within the city in search for his lost girlfriend, Naadirah (Saleh, Dogs of Berlin), whose shady past has come back to haunt her. Meanwhile, we also follow a couple of American lowlifes in town working as surgeons for the criminal underworld, Cactus (Rudd, Captain America: Civil War) and Duck (Theroux, Star Wars: The Last Jedi). Anxious Cactus is doing whatever he can to secure the doctored documents necessary to get himself and his young daughter out of the country, while the more laid-back Duck feels free and liberated in the bustling city.
Though the storytelling within his last two films leaves something to be desires, Jones continues to make visually appealing movies, as Mute does offer a very robust and eye-popping imagining of a Berlin set decades from today, though it is obviously influenced by Blade Runner in its design. The same goes somewhat for the structure of his story, which also dabbles into a mystery that needs resolving, churning up future-noir plotting, albeit with quirky and eccentric characters lifted from a Coen Brothers modern noir. Unfortunately, it is also someone else’s vision, which makes Mute feel more derivative than it should for a vehicle that feels as if it were written by someone who thinks he has something more profound to say.
Jones also works well in allowing his actors some room to explore, as Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux offer charismatic performances with some interesting interplay that does offer up the notion that these are two partners who’ve known each other for some time. Skarsgard does what he can to emote effectively in a mostly non-speaking role. Where Jones sometimes has trouble is in trying to make his child actors seem like more than just props in service of the plot rather than flesh-and-blood characters with whom we should readily feel are in great peril. And then, we get answers to the mystery, and we realize that, when revealed, it has very little impact. Jones sets things up as if we’re supposed to feel impacted by the plights of so many, and yet it all feels so manufactured, so concocted, each point in the plot gets checked off and we grow even more distant to these characters at moments in which we’re supposed to be on the edge of our seats.
The film is also quite graphic in its levels of violence, including some rather unsavory sequences that take place in the make-shift operating room in which Cactus and Duck use to slice open their patients, all the while chatting it up and wisecracking as if they were on the set of Robert Altman’s version of “M*A*S*H”, reportedly Duncan Jones’ favorite comedy. M*A*S*H is essentially the homage that Jones is striving to emulate by making them ex-combat medics, like Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntire. However, as gruesome as the film can sometimes be in its violence, the level of taste may push toward unpalatable when a pedophilia subplot is developed, which is addressed in a way either for jokes or to continue to push for more stakes at the climax that some viewers are likely to find offensive. The nastiness of the film takes some of the wind out of the comedy and thrills, especially as the story gradually becomes less enjoyable as it progresses into its second half of an already overly lengthy film.
Mute has some interesting ideas, enough to suggest that Jones hasn’t shot his entire wad as a storyteller with his first two films. It also has very nice technical aspects, as well as terrific cinematography from Jones regular Gary Shaw (Ill Manors) and another brilliant score from Clint Mansell (Ghost in the Shell). And yet, it’s a great deal of admirable qualities in search of a story worth contemplating beyond just the whodunit at its heart. Perhaps the limited budgets and scope of Moon and Source Code were a benefit to thinking creatively, as his last two efforts saw a great widening in that scope and budget, only to find Jones more enamored with his technical tools at the expense of his story and characters. It’s a film both odd and uneven at the same time.
— Fans of Moon will be amused with a courtroom scene played on television that connects Mute as being in the same universe.
Qwipster’s rating: C-
MPAA Rated: Not rated, but would definitely be R for strong grisly violence, sexuality, and language
Running Time: 126 min.
Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Paul Rudd, Justin Theroux, Seyneb Saleh
Cameo: Sam Rockwell, Dominic Monaghan
Director: Duncan Jones
Screenplay: Michael Robert Johnson, Duncan Jones