The Poppies of Terra #73 - A Journal of the Plague Summer

Summer 2003. Ben (Everett Blunck), who’s new to town, attends a summer water polo camp where he has to navigate tough athletic training but even choppier social waters. Jake (Kayo Martin), Ben soon discovers, is at the top of the group hierarchy, and he has a sixth scent for weakness. Just minutes after meeting Ben, Jake teases out Ben’s extremely slight speech impediment related to the letter “t” while pronouncing the word “stop,” which earns him the moniker Soppy. “Stop” contains heavy ironic foreshadowing.

Ben, gangly and somewhat ungainly but a quick sport and astute observer of power dynamics, doesn’t take long to figure out how to fit in with the group. He syncs up to their rhythms of small talk and raunchy banter. More importantly, he learns to avoid direct contact with the weird kid, Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), who he is told carries the plague. Ben doesn’t literally believe that Eli is the bearer of a deadly contagion, though Eli is clearly struggling with some kind of physical ailment, which he tries to cover up by wearing long-sleeved shirts. Nevertheless, Ben understands that his own star can rise by joining in the ostracizing of this easy target. And yet, this opportunism doesn’t sit easy with him.

You see, Ben believes, with almost theological certainty, in the decency of people. At one point he says with conviction that he could turn a Sith good. This is a noble, idealistic, well-meaning position–which leads to terrible events. Part of the ingenuity of the film’s screenplay, written by its director, first time helmer Charlie Polinger, is its complex dramatization of the consequences of dogma, whether negative or positive. Ben’s curiosity about Eli, combined with his own dangerously misguided surety in being able to help Eli achieve at least a measure of social acceptance, proves damaging to all players.

Ben, perhaps naively, assumes that Eli’s outsider status is the result of his physical affliction, rather than existing independently of it. Are the quirks of Eli’s personality due to his creativity, or maybe spending a lot of time alone and learning to unapologetically embrace his own idiosyncrasies? It would be nice to think so. Critically, Ben misses things that we in the audience might pick up on, because Ben’s worldview colors his world, and because he doesn’t have years of experience to provide perspective. 

While Jake is an expertly knowing manipulator of others, Ben is at the unwitting mercy of himself. The road to hell is paved with Ben’s intentions.

The film reveals two worlds: the world of water, and the world outside it. In the water, sound is suspended, movements are lighter, and competition is formally acknowledged and rewarded. In the world outside of it, loudness prevails, physicality requires effort, and alliances and betrayals are undertaken surreptitiously for fear of reprisal in a system of unstated rules.

Another two worlds: the world of daytime, and the world of night. In the light, the kids jostle and jockey and jeer and strut, mocking an accidental erection. In the dark, they fantasize, masturbate, and give in to cruel impulses.

And yet two more worlds: inside the clique, and outside of it. Protected by the warmth of Jake’s herd, most of the boys feel impervious to authority, along with the suffering of others. A dressing down by the coach, “Daddy Wags” (Joel Edgerton), leads not to reflection but laughter. Outside the flock, the cold stings, and even small slights cut deep. 

These bisections all serve the greater dissection of group behavior, bullying and the desperate desire to fit in when one is uncomfortable in one’s own skin. I imagine that this film will be a gut-punch for those who have experienced bullying. It will likely also prove cathartic. 

All three leads give top-notch performances, and Edgerton is in usual fine form. Polinger orchestrates the group scenes of the kids, who range from twelve to thirteen, with an Altmanesque sense of controlled chaos: dialogue overlaps, is mumbled, and at times is heard only elliptically. What is said is captured with Linklateresque naturalism. It’s a double trick: capturing the gawky, awkward, self-aggrandizing patois of pubescent teens, while also taking us back to the fashion and types of exchanges common in the early 2000s. Johan Lenox’s score, mostly driven by heightened human voices, and Steven Breckon’s bold, stark cinematography make for a confronting audiovisual assault. From the opening shot to the closing sequence, the aesthetic is bracing. 

While The Plague is thematically in dialogue with works such as Lord of the Flies and The Wave, it also serves to modernize the anxieties of Carrie, intersects with We Need To Talk About Kevin, and overlaps with Piggy. I recently watched The Good Son, a 90s spiritual sequel to the then-uber-schoking 50s The Bad Seed. In The Good Son, the young protagonist, who has witnessed psychopathic behavior, asks a therapist, “What makes people evil?”, to which she replies, “Evil’s a word people use when they’ve given up trying to understand someone. There's a reason for everything if we could just find it.” The kid is skeptical: “What if there isn’t a reason? What if something just is?” The Plague reframes these questions in terms of empathy and self-knowledge. Wisely, it doesn’t come down on the side of Jake either being evil or simply misunderstood. Instead, it limits our point of view to Ben’s experiences, filtered by his own subjective, highly emotional states. At times Jake is an annoying, self-serving ringleader with whom to curry favor so as to avoid the stick; at times he is charismatic, even witty, potentially a sharp ally with whom to enjoy the carrot; often, he’s callous, monstrous, inflicting pain on others with zero regard for morality or consequences. He’s narcissistic, but also nimble; insecure about his position at the top, but projecting a suave belief in the infallibility of his own reign. In short, he’s complex. As is this strikingly realized movie.

Though Ben intellectually knows there’s no such thing as the plague, the shifting reality around him makes him doubt himself. When gaslighting works in our favor, we become its collaborators and actively author our escapism: when it opposes us, we painfully resist it, and victimization ensues. Outside influence and self-deception meet in an undefinable midway twilight. Even memory becomes fluid under their influence, which is part of the reason The Plague seems to simultaneously recapture an intense world of adolescence we may have forgotten and to create a wholly new experience. If our very natures are the real plague, art like The Plague might just be the cure.