Coup!

What if the class structures of the early 1900s, which aren't really that much different than they are today, were isolated and broken down bit by bit? The movie Coup! Attempts to do just that, taking its eccentric cast of characters on an adventure through anarchy, madness, and self-discovery. Can it successfully blend this heavy message with its wit and charm?

Whether you enjoy the humor in this film or not, Coup! Is certainly an interesting look at class structure and how that structure can break down, given the right circumstances. It is a film with a lot to say and is able to say it rather well, mostly due to the talent of the cast. Clocking in at a crisp 90 minutes, and assuming you beheaded my warning about the humor and tone, you will not regret spending an hour and a half with these colorful characters.

It is 1918 and the world is at war. Floyd Monk (Peter Sarsgaard) is a wannabe revolutionary who complains that the Spanish Flu is killing more people than the war. He argues for a full shutdown which can be seen as treasonous. He becomes a chef in a large estate on an island. The owner Jay Horton (Billy Magnussen) and his wife Julie (Sarah Gadon) have two young children. Jay insists on not killing anything and being vegetarian. Floyd keeps stirring up conflicts as he hides from the authorities.

Sarsgaard is great and playful. This story has a new resonance after COVID. The black humor doesn't always work. The story is a little rambling and a bit disconnected. I would like the servants to be more specific. The wife needs an extra scene or two. This is interesting although it does need something more.

Jaunty class-war drama "Coup" has a decent premise & good performances, but its main characters are all so dislikable that it fails to hold attention. As the 1918 Spanish Flu bites, well-to-do journo Billy Magnussen secretly flees with wife Sarah Gadon & kids to his island country estate, pretending to still be in NY as he lambasts the govt to fuel his own political ambitions... til mysterious new chef Peter Sarsgaard stokes ill-feeling among his staff & family, as the 'plague' starts to grip the island, and the poop hits Magnussen's fan. Co-writers / co-directors Austin Stark & debutant Joseph Schuman offer an interesting analogy... but it just isn't interesting nor engaging enough.

Weird, dark, and fun is how I'd describe this one. It shows a microcosm of society using a family and their servants holed up during the Spanish Flu. It's satirization of performative activists and limousine liberals feels on point. Peter Sarsgaard makes interesting choices in all of his films, and he does it again playing a charming scumbag of a cook. Billy Magnussen, while not given the same juicy role, does a great job as well playing a writer / aspiring politician, who feels very familiar in the Covid-era where we all had to suffer through the "Imagine" celebs. Overall, it's a fun watch, not a broad comedy, but I did find myself laughing a number of times.

A sort of new "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". The eternal theme of the confrontation between the Dionysian and Apollonian principles, in which there is no clear good and evil, sides of light and darkness. Here, however, in the Dionysian principle there is less truth than in "The Cuckoo's Nest", and here it is more like a devil who can get to his victims only through their weaknesses and vices. This amazing ambivalence in every moment of the film, like in Merezhkovsky's novels, where good and evil are so mixed up with each other that you begin to understand they are just sides of the same coin. And this depth is right up to the very last frame, literally.