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American Arcadia

As Netflix’s spectacularly point-missing Squid Game: The Challenge crassly indulges in that which its source condemned, conversations about the ethics of reality TV have been reignited. Which gives the second release from Madrid’s Out Of The Blue Games a timely feel – despite it taking place in a 1970sstyled false utopia, and borrowing liberally from a film now 25 years old. The idea of a protagonist who realises there’s a different world beyond the walls of the ones he’s always known, and is forced to choose between blissful ignorance or the brutal truth, is hardly new.

Still, it’s refreshing that The Truman Show, rather than the Matrix, should be the pop-culture touchstone here.

American Arcadia’s script certainly isn’t shy about acknowledging its debt to Peter Weir’s 1998 satirical dramedy, from references to a decree named the ‘Burbank Act’ (Truman’s surname) to a pseudonym named after the character played by Natascha McElhone’s Sylvia. Though it diverges from the film’s premise in key ways: all inhabitants of this hermetically sealed metropolis are unwitting stars from birth, not just protagonist Trevor. And his escape from this gilded cage is prompted from the outside courtesy of a surrogate Sylvia. Angela has no romantic connection to this bemused everyman, but, as a disgruntled employee of the corporation making the show, she has the means and opportunity to attempt a jailbreak. There’s additional jeopardy, too: after Trevor’s work colleague Gus is whisked away to Fiji (Truman’s preferred holiday destination, of course), Angela hacks an electronic billboard to reveal that Gus’s is a vacation of the more permanent kind. He wasn’t popular enough with the viewers, and for corporations demanding constant growth, that won’t do. Affable but boring, Trevor is another turn-off – and next for the chop.

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Edge
February 2024
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