Cast: John Abbey, Delphine Seyrig, Donald Pleasence
Director: William Klein
Country: France
Genre: Comedy
The following review is a continuation of Matthew Blevins’ Subversive Saturdays series.
William Klein lived through the oppressive tumult of the 1960s and though the world seemed to be crumbling around him into a final war between squares and the fatally groovy he was able to find the sublime humor of the situation and create social satire that is absurd but frighteningly close to reality. Mr. Freedom follows the misguided jingoistic exploits of a dual pistol wielding maniac; an insane superhero who murders black families and beats up hippies in the name of decent white America! A mild mannered square by day and uniformed mascot of American jingoism by night, he fights for the interests of big corporations and Uncle Sam with brainless audacity. He wears a uniform of red white and blue complete with football pads and a helmet, an avatar for plain American decency in a time when those with contrarian ideas or odd skin colors would dare to speak their minds. What he lacks in intelligence he makes up for with swagger and blind optimism in the righteousness of the ideals he fights to defend. The social consciousness of the American people is urgent danger as it is silently protected by those with the foresight to fear the blight of “anti-freedomism” which apparently is at an all time high despite the best efforts of Dr. Freedom and his minions of freedom fighters. There are groups that would usurp freedom by having ideas that vary from the established social norms, so Mr. Freedom must go into the heart of the the counterinsurgency and take his haunted past and simpleton cowboy smile to France. France may be mired in the dangerous thoughts of young idealists, but it has a chance for salvation because of its largely white population.
He wears a uniform of red white and blue complete with football pads and a helmet, an avatar for plain American decency in a time when those with contrarian ideas or odd skin colors would dare to speak their minds.
He’s a man with a strict set of rules, living by a misogynistic code of blind patriotism and arrogant objective idealism, but what he lacks in intelligence he makes up for in self-assuredness. He’s a champion of middle-American idealism that distrusts his fellow man but intrinsically trusts corporations and politicians that have somehow duped the majority into self-inflicted blindness toward their own self interests. We must fear communists, derelicts, and free thinkers who would warp us into odd ways of thought and would dare to usurp our freedom with their different ways of thinking and skin colors. In order to defeat those with their own ideas of freedom, Mr. Freedom leads pro-freedom rallies for uniformed circus performers that chant right-wing slogans and captivates them with mindless diatribes that use dizzying circular logic to dupe the young into believing in the absolute goodness of a Rockwellian America filled with white folks on parade. He chuckles at the plight of minorities and holds the same loves as every “normal” white god-fearing man. He fears the forced homogenization of communism but harbors a deep hatred for anything that dares to look or think differently than himself. Mr. Freedom must face the avatars of Soviet and Chinese communism in subway tunnels until Jesus Christ himself interjects with his unfortunate idealism that is inconveniently at odds with the plain decency of White Christian Democracy.
Klein flips through channels, billboards, parades, and acts of social defiance to paint a satirical portrait of a free white America, unburdened from the thoughts of the young and tragically non-white. Television screens litter the landscape of crumbling ideologies as the purveyor of the thoughts of those with enough money to control its content. The film is absurd and satirical but frighteningly close to the mainstream sensibilities of a population duped into believing that consumerism holds the only path to true salvation as the stars and stripes with a little help from the dollar act as our new deity and we must learn to follow a dogma of commercial interests and oppression of minorities if we are to save the decades old post-nationalism version of America. Free elections create problems for the defenders of freedom as sometimes groups of derelicts and outcasts at odds with the divinity of the nuclear family try to bring their bastardized ideologies to the public debate.
Mr. Freedom acts as an avatar for the lost soul of America, confused by the changing priorities of post-industrialism and increasingly uncertain of its own objective righteousness as it seemed as though the “other side” was gaining a foothold in shaping the popular consciousness.
Though the social satire is absurd, the central ideas behind the satire are dangerously close to reality. Klein exposes the odd hypocrisies of the popular ideas that still reverberate through generations as we live in a landscape shaped by the twisted priorities of the rich and powerful. Klein creates an amplification of the odd realities that illogically passed for freedom in America during the 1960s to sublimely absurd and terrifying heights as the vacuous preposterousness of Cold War mentality is exposed for all its hypocritical folly. Mr. Freedom is a hilarious and whimsically revolutionary film that condenses the preposterousness of world events into a series of conflicts between madmen in ridiculous costumes representative of their respective ideals as a deliberate exaggeration in the differences between groups of people would give everyone a side in the battle for popular consciousness. Mr. Freedom acts as an avatar for the lost soul of America, confused by the changing priorities of post-industrialism and increasingly uncertain of its own objective righteousness as it seemed as though the “other side” was gaining a foothold in shaping the popular consciousness. He begins to lose faith in everything he represents as the diametrically opposed ideas that constitute his demented persona begin to self-destruct. The reactionaries would lose traction in their battle for public consciousness, but it would never lose the arrogance that still drives its core with brazenly sanctimonious assuredness in its own righteousness as it still dares to define the parameters of freedom within the confines of its myopic world-view.
[notification type=”star”]80/100 ~ GREAT. Klein exposes the odd hypocrisies of the popular ideas that still reverberate through generations as we live in a landscape shaped by the twisted priorities of the rich and powerful. Klein creates an amplification of the odd realities that illogically passed for freedom in America during the 1960s to sublimely absurd and terrifying heights as the vacuous preposterousness of Cold War mentality is exposed for all its hypocritical folly. Mr. Freedom is a hilarious and whimsically revolutionary film that condenses the preposterousness of world events into a series of conflicts between madmen in ridiculous costumes representative of their respective ideals as a deliberate exaggeration in the differences between groups of people would give everyone a side in the battle for popular consciousness.[/notification]
