Drowning In Paper
By Stuart Phillips
Watch The Flood here.
“Big Government.” The pejorative is used as a political javelin to pierce the stultifying effects of bureaucracy, the way that reams of regulations and stacks of forms sap the humanity from society and renders both sides of the equation into ciphers. True, there is a dehumanizing aspect to the rote nature of the bureaucrat work necessary to sustain the modern state. The careful shuffling of papers, the application of inflexible standards, the almost willful ignoring of humanity has become accepted, if not acceptable. Anthony Woodley’s The Flood burns itself slowly through this premise.
The movie centers around the intake and interview of an immigrant seeking asylum. The Immigration Officer, played by Lena Headey, is hailed by her boss as the prototypical drone: he assigns her this case because of her rigid adherence to the rules and relentless respect for the quota. Her time with a refugee, played by Ivanno Jeremiah, reveals that everything you think about the deprivations suffered on the quest to reach sanctuary is wrong. They’re worse.
It is hard for the vibrancy and immediacy of the flashbacks that show this journey to gain traction when they’re related in the bureaucratic sterility of a softly out-of-focus government office in Brexit Britain. Jeremiah’s calm insistence manages to force Headey to acknowledge him as a person, not a case.
With this, Headey truly conveys not only the humanity of Jeremiah, but herself. By movie’s end, she shows the gentility of bureaucracy, the ability to use the intimate knowledge of forms and subparagraphs to do something truly worthwhile. In a way, she has shown that there is some measure of hope not only herself, but the increasingly complex state that we live in.
Watch The Flood here.