Review: Landscape with Invisible Hand (2023)

Landscape with Invisible Hand (2023)
Written and directed by Corey Finley
Based on the novel by M.T. Anderson

Note: Throughout this review I wrote the name of the alien species as “VuuV,” which is what I understood from the film. After I finished, I read a few other reviews and they all use the spelling Vuvv. So probably they’re right; but I don’t think it makes much difference, and I like the visual of “VuuV” so I’m keeping it. PS The film was in limited release in late summer 2023 and can now be seen on Amazon Prime and other streaming services.

“Landscape with Invisible Hand” is, on its surface, a teen comedy with a science fiction setting. It’s also a satire of unfettered capitalism, as the title suggests: the “invisible hand of the market” was Adam Smith’s metaphor for the unseen forces that ostensibly control markets in a capitalist system.

We’re in a small town, maybe in the upper Midwest. The earth has been invaded and taken over by an alien race called the VuuV. Written thusly, their name is descriptive: they are pink dog-sized creatures with four limbs that end in flippers, which they use both in communication by rubbing the flippers together, and to locomote. They are ridiculous looking, but powerful: with their relatively unlimited resources and superior technology, they have ended all work (except that which requires opposable thumbs) and bestowed the populace with as much 3D-printed, nutritious, bland foodstuffs as it wants, for free. (A school lunch menu is posted featuring “SMEAT CUBES AND RICE” and “SHAM AND BEANS”.)

The film begins on the day all the teachers are fired; the VuuV have given everyone a wearable “node” to slap on their foreheads, and this beams a new curriculum – of VuuV propaganda – that replaces subjects like English and Chemistry. The middle-aged English teacher, clearly a burned out case even before the invasion, dismisses the students bitterly, then shoots himself.

Adam, a young black student artist, introduces himself to the girl that’s just moved to town. Since the Vuuv took her family’s house under Eminent Domain (the aliens seem to like bureaucracy a lot, since they can use it to bend the society to its will), her family is homeless, so he invites her and her family to come to live in their basement. (We then see one of Adam’s paintings, with its title The Lodgers, and the year, 2036. Each scene is introduced, or commented on, with one of these paintings.)

The two teens are attracted to one another, and Chloe (Kylie Rogers) asks Adam to participate with her in livecasting their teen romance. It seems that the one thing the VuuV don’t understand about the earth is human love, and this is one way they intend to study it in action. At first this works great — all they have to do is wear the “nodes” during their hand-holding and first-kiss stages.

But (as every real-life livestreamer can testify) once they learn what subjects and actions earn more views, it changes the way they interact. Here they are at the dinner table:

CHLOE: Family dinner is one of our most cherished human rituals. It's an important time to strengthen the bonds between parents and their young.

ADAM (to his mom, sotto voce): Sorry, it helps the numbers when she explains things for them.

CHLOE: A good meal like this isn't just about sustenance. This ritual also expresses our camaraderie.

CHLOE'S DAD: To our two little entrepreneurs and another very profitable week!

CHLOE (sotto voce): Dad, you're not supposed to talk about the broadcast ON the broadcast. It ruins the suspension of disbelief. (Changes to full voice) It's so nice to sit down for a family dinner. Isn't it, Adam?

ADAM: Sure is.

Adam, the pure-hearted artist, has no interest in putting on a show, and both the livecast and their romance soon end. But they’ve already earned hundreds of dollars for their first week, and the Vuuv sue them to get it back, though they’ve spent it on food. This need to repay the money leads the two families into ever more humiliating acts, including a sham marriage between Adam’s mom (Tiffany Haddish) and one of the VuuV. Since the creatures learned about earth from studying its television broadcasts (or “historical documents,” as a different alien race put it in “Galaxy Quest”), her new mate consequently treats her like crap. It even orders a blonde wig and 50s-style apron for her to wear.

The movie handles these satirical situations gracefully and with fairly gentle humor. Another director might have made a much broader farce, at the expense of satire; as it is, the pokes at capitalism and the way we adjust to its demands are quite clear. We change our behavior for clicks; we stifle our feelings to keep from antagonizing others; we are made to feel grateful for being employed at the bare minimum. Even the teacher’s suicide, at the beginning of the film, is pointed. He’s not the first laid off worker to dramatize it by killing himself — though this too, of course, fits in quite well with the plans of both economic as well as planetary overlords.

Adam commemorates the events by including them in a mural on the side of the abandoned school (“Life Under Occupation, acryilic on brick and plywood, 2037”). The VuuV declare it a major work and offer Adam a huge one-year contract as “artist in residence.” He accepts, and along with him, we think that maybe this offers a chance for some real inter-species communication. The VuuV have lifted the mural — the whole wall of the school on which it was painted — into their mothership, and they want it and Adam to tour the galaxy. But they’ve made “minor edits” to the work to their benefit, perverting its meaning by making themselves cuter and benevolent, with humans smiling and grateful to receive the aliens’ gifts.

Adam’s expression of disbelief and horror as he gazes upon his defaced work is that of every musician whose producer changes the whole feel and meaning of a song in the recording studio, and every novelist whose book is made dumber for the movies. His speechlessness echoes that of every woman whose ideas and work are stolen by a supervisor and presented as his own. He has to make the same choice he’s made throughout the film, the choice faced by everyone in a capitalist society: to swallow his dignity and accept the humiliation for the money, or to reject the deal and risk going hungry. Films have presented this choice before, but the sci-fi alien frame may make it easier and more relatable to young viewers. Up to now I’ve posited an adult, college-educated viewer; but I have the feeling that a 10th grader, who probably has not heard of the “invisible hand,” understands plenty about livestreaming and doing things for views and tips and whatever else is exchanged these days. They know all about it.