East is East

There's a scene early in The East (2013, directed by Zal Batmanglij) in which our heroine, Jane, puts a gold cross around her neck. She later says a prayer that she might be strong in the face of the task in front of her. Her job is corporate security and she's going undercover to infiltrate an ecological/anarchist collective. The thing that jumps out at me about this scene is that the film is indulging in dogwhistles. This is a signifier that has no purpose in the film but to subtly demonize the "side" Jane is on: corporate, conservative, Christian. The film's sympathies are with resistance to all three of these ideologies, though the film makes no further use of Jane's Christianity, even as moral dilemma. This is a missed opportunity. The movie as a whole is like that.

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