#654 – Landscape with Invisible Hand (2023)

Landscape with Invisible Hand (2023)

Film review #653

Director: Corey Finley

SYNOPSIS: In the year 2036, an alien race called the Vuvv has caused mass unemployment and homelessness across the planet, as their advanced technology has rendered most human jobs obsolete. Adam meets a new girl at his school named Chloe, who has just moved there and is living out of the family’s car since they have no money. As Adam and Chloe start to get close. They decide to make money by broadcasting their relationship to the Vuvv, who have a fascination with human romance. They start to earn money to live as their broadcast becomes popular, but the strain on their relationship starts to affect their broadcast, leading to an uncomfortable confrontation with the Vuvv…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Landscape with Invisible Hand is a 2023 sci-fi film based on the novel of the same name by M.T. Anderson. Set in the year 2036, when an alien race named the Vuvv have made most human jobs obsolete with their advanced technology, leading to mass unemployment and homelessness. High school couple Adam and Chloe decide to try and make money by live broadcasting their relationship by using headsets that show their point of view, as the aliens have nothing like romance in their culture, and see it as a bit of a novelty. As time goes on however, the pressure of their personal lives being on show puts a strain on the pairs relationship. This premise of the film is a fairly solid one, is simple to grasp, and opens up its world to a satirical look at the human cost to a ‘peaceful’ alien invasion. You can easily fill a film with this plot and explore its implications, which the film does…but it doesn’t stop there sadly. This plot essentially takes up the first third of the film, but evolves into something else entirely, as the film takes a three-act structure and almost completely changes the focus of the plot: when Adam and Chloe’s relationship suffers because of having to broadcast everything, they are sued for ‘faking’ their relationship; leading to a compromise where a Vuvv moves in with them to try and experience ‘real’ family life that they have seen in Tv shows. Then after that, we get Adam’s arc as an artist come to the forefront, as the Vuvv want to exhibit and reproduce his art, again without any idea of what actually means in human culture. These ideas are good enough, but together in the same film, they form a mish-mash of ideas and themes that start and stop, without either the depth required to fully explore them, or a resolution before the film moves onto the next thing. Nothing really adds up; it’s just an exploration of the world and its themes that fails to progress towards anything. This culminates in the film just ending with nothing having been accomplished: nobody really learns anything, the world hasn’t changed for better or worse, it just…goes on, I suppose.

As mentioned, the film takes a satirical tone, poking fun at typical sci-fi concepts and how banal this alien conquest has been brought about not by conquest or military might, but by businesses and capitalism seeing an opportunity to make profit. The banality of this conquest seeps down into every facet of the film, with the characters muddling along with their daily lives, just with giant alien ships floating above them occasionally. It keeps a lighthearted and quirky tone throughout, but still has powerful moments that emphasise the situation humanity is now living under. For example, the opening scene concludes with Adam and Chloe’s teacher shooting and killing himself because his job has been taken over by Vuvv technology. Moments like this are powerful, but are quickly forgotten about as the film bounces along and whips up another mix of ideas and perspectives to try and congeal them into a structured critique.

The characters are a mixed bunch, but are mostly portrayed well. Nothing in the script really hits a strong emotional high, and as mentioned, it’s kept satirical and quirky, which hinders something a bit deeper developing without a tighter, cohesive story. Landscape with Invisible Hand has an understanding of it’s subject and what it wants to do, but that aim is often lost amidst it trying to do far too much, without brining unfinished ideas and relationships forward as the film progresses. As such, it is a jumble of ideas that occasionally hits the mark, but too often spreads itself too thin.