Iron Sky
Dir: Timo Vuorensola
2012
*****
Timo Vuorensola's Iron Sky could not have impressed me more. First off, it's a film by the people for the people, one of the new clever things that have come from the Internet that is genuinely cool. On the face of it it seems like a cheesy and somewhat ridiculous modern B-Movie/Exploitation film, and it is but it's so much more. It's very much a satire. Some times you need to be ridiculous to point out the ridiculous. Iron Sky is one of the best satires out there, it honours Dr. Stranglove by not just adding it's tribute but for taking their concept one step further. It points out society's obvious modern flaws and ideas, 'mobile phones in space' is probably something most kids would take a while to work out wouldn't work, but then the ideas that Astronauts could be chosen on their looks and colour doesn't sound unfeasible, even though it is - but then is it? Remember W. Bush going over to Iraq to give the troops a huge Christmas turkey that turned out later to be a fake - the solders had the same lousy food they'd had the whole year but boy did it look good in the papers. This is called propaganda - something the Nazi's where pretty good at (The American media isn't too bad at it either). This is explored in the film by getting a designer in to help them with their new image, the Sarah Palin character as president isn't just a bit of fun for comic effect here. Sarah Palin vs Nazis is a ridiculous concept because their views are not that dissimilar but tell someone you're anti-Nazi and you're on to a winner. This film is so sly it's no wonder many have overlooked its undertones. It's basically saying if the Nazi's did come back they'd be very little for them to do, fascism has moved on and is wearing it's own camouflage these days. Anti-American (in this instance, it could be Capitalism, the West, right-wing etc) and anti-Nazi are two similar ways of thinking these days, it's what the rest of the world thinks anyway. Timo Vuorensola is a clever guy, if you look at his past work this is quite typical. I know loads of people who had no idea what this film is really about and I think it's quite sad that Satire seems to be a dying art, hopefully films like this will keep it alive but then many people didn't get the British comedy Four Lions either and us Brits invented satire. Getting Liabach to do the soundtrack was also an inspired decision - more reason to see that it's a political wolf in sheep's clothing. I thoroughly enjoyed it, the SFX aren't too shabby either.