The G7 photo-op that unleashes the zombie apocalypse in Rumours/Bleecker Street-Elevation Pictures

By Peter Boehm

October 27, 2024

Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the G7 and Canada will hold the presidency, hosting ministerial and other meetings that will culminate in the G7 Summit at Kananaskis.

What better moment, then, to release a Canadian-German co-production/feature film about this venerable multilateral group?

Enter Rumours, an absurdist, surrealistic and often absolutely hilarious horror-comedy in the genre of Armando Iannucci’s Death of Stalin, directed by the Winnipeg-forged directing trio of Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson and depicting a G7 summit set in a remote German forest amid the plot-catalyzing discovery of preserved remains of Iron-Age bog people. Seriously.

(Full disclosure: As a former diplomat who served as Canada’s Sherpa for six G7 summits, Rumours had me guffawing throughout – like a pilot watching Airplane! or a police detective at a screening of The Naked Gun).

The hijinks begin when the traditional G7 “family photo” takes place at a fresh bog-man excavation, where, prop-shovels brandished, the leaders learn that the unearthed man was a chieftain. More pertinently, he was a chieftain who may not have been a good leader, which would explain why (head-of-government trigger warning) he was buried with his penis hanging around his neck – a zombie leitmotif that comes back to quite literally haunt the summiteers.

The leaders in Rumours are dealing with an unspecified global crisis and – over dinner in the classic G7 setting of a built-for-purpose gazebo – debate how they might take action, establish solidarity and draft their final communiqué (in itself a dramatic conceit, as the final communiqué is generally agreed-on by the time G7 leaders hit the gazebo).

As a former diplomat who served as Canada’s Sherpa for six G7 summits, Rumours had me guffawing throughout – like a pilot watching ‘Airplane!’ or a police detective at a screening of ‘The Naked Gun’

As darkness descends, they realize that they’ve been effectively abandoned, without advisers, their cellphones dead (precisely why Sherpas come in handy!). They gamely continue the discussion and their personalities begin to emerge: the smart, sensual German Chancellor Hilda Orlmann (a priceless Cate Blanchett); the sleepy, statesmanlike US President Edison Wolcott (Charles Dance, still with his English accent, presumably meant to convey fading empire); the earnest Japanese and Italian prime ministers Tatsuro Iwasaki and Antonio Lamorle (Takehiro Hira and Rolando Ravello); the plump, pseudo-intellectual French President Sylvain Broulet (Denis Ménochet); the brainy, beautiful British prime minister Cardosa Dewindt (Nikki Amuka-Bird); and the emotionally-fraught hottie Canadian PM Maxime Laplace (Roy Dupuis, complete with manbun), widely presumed to be Justin Trudeau’s comedic alter-ego, manbun and lack of emotional filter aside (“I like strong women; sometimes I like them too much!!”).

It is Laplace who emerges as the hero, despite early references to Canada being the junior partner, by leading the group (including carrying the zombie-infected French president until a wheelbarrow is secured in which to haul him) through the dark woods, debating points of policy while repulsing the undead and eventually cutting and pasting together a communiqué.

At one point in the film, a collective bout of nostalgia strikes while they’re making their way through the forest, and the leaders begin wistfully reciting, like a bittersweet nursery rhyme, the opening lines of the final communiqué from Rambouillet in 1975, the first G6 summit (Canada joined a year later). Inspired, they briefly rally, identifying procrastination as the enemy, and declaring “Regret” the farcically understated theme of their own, zombie-besieged summit.

Laplace’s entanglements with the rest of the leaders – both past and real-time – provide emotional grist for the group dynamic. While still smarting from an unrequited fling at a previous G7 with his British counterpart, he has a tryst with the German chancellor. He later discovers the president of the European Commission, also a former paramour – Alicia Vikander as Celestine Sproul – seemingly disoriented and, in classic horror-comedy exposition fashion, imparting crucial information in what seems to be Swedish as she sits beside a disembodied brain the size of a Volkswagen Beetle (per the New York Times review) in the forest.

Roy Dupuis, Alicia Vikander, and the giant brain that crashes the G7/Bleecker Street-Elevation Pictures

Meanwhile, things reach peak world-order allegory lunacy with a circular ritual that shall remain nameless in this PG publication involving zombies standing around a campfire. Hello Luis Buñuel. Further absurd plot twists ensue, with an AI chat bot meant to snare pedophiles somehow behind the fate of this summit as the zombie apocalypse looms. Laplace, the Canadian PM, emerges as the Mylar-draped saviour amid the zombie-ravaged hellscape.

What are Maddin, Johnson and Johnson trying to tell us with this intricate multilateral morality tale?

First, leaders may be very well out of their depth and ill-equipped to deal with the great challenges of today, relying on old thinking and tropes as they attempt to untangle a spaghetti junction of seemingly intractable wicked problems.

Second, world leaders are human beings with all their faults and foibles. Fatigue, political pressures, whiffs of scandal, fear, and romantic complications are all on display in Rumours, which, beneath the hilarity of its satire, actually serves to humanize political leaders.

As the final communiqué takes shape, an answer emerges from no less a Canadian source than Neil Young, via the iconic lyric from his anthemic Hey, Hey, My My (Into the Black): ‘It’s better to burn out than to fade away’

Finally: what is the point of the rules-based international order when compliance is in active decline? To quote TS Eliot, will the world end “not with a bang but a whimper”? Is our collective, multilateral work futile? As the final communiqué of the zombie-plagued summit takes shape, an answer emerges from no less a Canadian source than Neil Young, via the iconic lyric from his anthemic Hey, Hey, My My (Into the Black): “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

Overall, I’ve been involved in various capacities in some fifteen world leaders’ summits. All events had their own dynamic, each leader their individual approach and personality. Everyone wanted to change things, make an impact and not just for domestic political reasons and international standing. There is a thread of altruism that runs through all summit efforts, from the leaders on down.

During the movie, I thought of Canada’s last G-7 Summit at Charlevoix in 2018 (known for its own sort of diplomatic horror-comedy), and the side statements my team and I negotiated on a common vision for Artificial Intelligence and on a commitment to end sexual and gender-based harassment on-line. It was oddly impressive that these two themes appeared in the film. Someone had done their research.

I had the good fortune to meet both Guy Maddin and Neil Young during my ambassadorial tenure in Berlin. They are both iconic Canadian artists (with a Winnipeg connection). Time will tell whether it’s better to burn out than to fade away, but Rumours, for all its surrealism, satire, hilarity, and entertainment value, packs a meaningful punch.

Senator Peter M. Boehm, a regular contributor to Policy magazine, is a former senior diplomat and current chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He served as Canadian Sherpa for six G7 summits, all of which were successfully concluded without zombie incursions.