"Coup!," directed by Joseph Schuman and Austin Stark, is a 2023 film that takes place during the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. The film opens with a sepia-toned newsreel montage, setting the plot in a precise historical moment, and includes Upton Sinclair among its cast.
The film follows the enigmatic rogue, Floyd Monk, who passes himself off as a cook to gain employment at an island estate off the mid-Atlantic coast. The estate is owned by progressive muckraker Jay Horton, who isolates with his family during the epidemic. Jay rattles off articles demanding business closures or slamming the Wilson administration for censoring news about the epidemic, despite his own luxurious lifestyle.
Floyd works quickly to turn not only his fellow staff but Jay's family against him, codeswitching between the world-wise yet deferent retainer, the freewheeling bohemian, the salt-of-the-earth revolutionary, and the bandit king, depending on who he's trying to manipulate.
Schuman and Stark's film consciously plays up the parallels between 1918 and 2020, making it seem like an interwar-themed costume party. However, the film doesn't just comment on 2020; it also weighs in on the base expediency of mano-a-mano power struggle. The filmmakers have a cynical idea of class politics, which is evident in the underdeveloped supporting characters.
Floyd's "insurrection" is as much a matter of petty opportunism as Jay's progressive posturing. The film's insistence on the clash of personalities offers a typically bourgeois notion of history, framing the Russian Revolution as a product of a personal rivalry between Lenin and the Romanovs.
Rating: 7/10.
