Review: Monkey Warfare, or Guerrilla My Dreams

One of the arguments people make against Canadian films is the lack of a sizeable budget to entice potential moviegoers. There are those who feel low-budget films look cheap and amateurish, but they obviously haven't been watching Canadian films lately, because I can't recall another point in time when Canadian filmmakers have compensated for string-shoe budgets with innovation and imagination. Reg Harkema's Monkey Warfare is the latest budget-challenged Canadian film that gives viewers more than enough visual stimuli for an engaging viewing experience.

Harkema takes a $30,000 budget and creates a thoughtful and very funny account of a radical couple who are keeping a very low profile in the Toronto suburb of Parkdale. Political activists Dan and Linda (played superbly low key by real-life couple Don McKellar and Tracy Wright) spend their days going to garage sales and looking through people's garbage, seeking out abandoned knick-knacks that they can sell online to keep themselves in pot. When their pot dealer is arrested, Dan encounters Susan, a young woman from Calgary, who happens to be a dealer of primo B.C. bud. Susan is quickly integrated in both Dan and Susan's lives and begins to plan her own revolutionary tactics, Molotov cocktails included.

To say anything more about the plot would be giving too much away, but at a brisk 75 minutes, Monkey Warfare is a cynical and exciting film that is unapologetic with its reverence for all things Jean-Luc Godard, starting with the opening credits: "A Masculin Féminin production", to the on-screen text that accompanies a hilarious and sexy women-on-bicycles montage. When Dan discusses revolutionaries like the Black Panthers with Susan, Harkema jumps to a flurry of still images complete with raucous and brilliant song choices. Songs from bands like the Refused, Fugs, Comets on Fire and Sun Ra help fuel the revolutionary cause. I love the grainy low-grade film stock because it compliments the static, weary life Dan and Linda have grown accustomed to in the past fifteen years.

What's equally exciting about Monkey Warfare is that Harkema, though cynical, doesn't give the audience a clear statement about radical politics. While in many ways the film mocks Dan and Linda for their passive existence after living life as revolutionaries, it also gives credence to the futility revolutionary tactics can be in the contemporary world. When Dan and Linda lecture Susan about what it means to be radical, there's a certain logic that even revolutionaries need to grow up. Of course I also believe Harkema uses Dan and Linda as a metaphor for what all the hippies did with their really big ideas and became stock brokers and TV network executives. If flower power is dead, as the film's poster suggests, wouldn't that mean revolutionary power is just as corruptible?

I can't see Monkey Warfare as an American feature. Could you imagine any studios bidding for a self-financed film about a revolutionary couple? A little too edgy for the Fox Searchlight "indie" boutique, methinks. Thankfully it took the genius and ingenuity of Reg Harkema to assemble a stellar cast and play with several sides of guerrilla politicking to create a truly memorable and subversive comedy. Now about those Molotov cocktails....