Kicking off the year with a surprise Sundance win, Hailey Gates’ debut feature Atropia is now lined up in competition at Tokyo International Film Festival. Satirizing the military, the media and the movie business, the film veers from the surreal to moments of slapstick as it portrays the world of a training facility to prepare troops for deployment to unfamiliar countries and cultures.
“The initial idea came when I was trying to make a documentary,” Gates explains to The Hollywood Reporter in an interview during the festival. “I was spending time ingratiating myself with the Department of Defense — now the Department of War — but the way I wanted to film wasn’t going to be possible. So, I thought I’d make a MAS*H-style film instead.”
Gates, whose resume includes acting, modelling and journalism, feels the “9/11 generation” has been underserved in onscreen examination of its wars. “When you look at Vietnam, all the great directors made anti-war films. But when you look at the Iraq War, there’s a real dearth. You know, it’s sort of Bigelow, Eastwood, Bigelow,” she says. “And so many things made at that time were in cahoots with the government. I just felt like I wanted to fill a very strange hole there.”
Gates’ film, which stars Alia Shawkat and Callum Turner, takes its title from the fictional country “Atropia,” a name the filmmaker unearthed during her research into U.S. military training sites.
“They’re all called things like Fort Irwin, and they give them different town names,” she says. “The idea, I’ve heard, is from the Greek word atrophia, meaning to atrophy, so they’re always fighting atrophy to keep the military muscle strong. A little military poetry for you.”
Shot in just 19 days on a California movie ranch, but Gates found the production less hectic and haphazard than making documentaries.
“Everybody thought 19 days was crazy, but I thought it was thrilling to have a schedule with time. On the first morning, driving in and seeing 40 cars, I actually wept a little. I couldn’t believe all these people were here to make this stupid idea come to life,” she recounts.
However, her acting background helped ready her for feature making, and shaped how she directs.
“I like doing little parts in movies because it’s the best way to watch a director work. I worked with David Lynch on a few episodes of the Twin Peaks reboot, and he’s famous for using a megaphone, even if there are only three people in the room. I realized it’s not just about projection; it’s about getting the whole crew on the same emotional page. That really stayed with me,” she explains.
The flashes of irreverent, even puerile, humor in Atropia can feel jarring in a piece that also points the finger at U.S. imperialism. But the effect is deliberate, according to Gates: “I studied experimental theater before I became a filmmaker. I studied a type of French clowning called bouffon, where you perform for the king and make him laugh at his atrocities. I really like the idea of Trojan-horse storytelling: reeling people in through comedy and then having that comedy curdle a bit, so when you’re walking home, you start rethinking what you were laughing at.”
Gates avoids easy caricature and polemics, casting her critically humorous eye across the board.
“I don’t like being taught a lesson when I watch films. I like being presented with moral quandaries and coming to conclusions on my own,” she says.
Nevertheless, a satirical film about the U.S. military in a climate where dissent is being quashed isn’t without risks.
“It’s definitely a film about the American empire and its follies. I just wanted to show that it was built with flimsy plywood,” says Gates. “I had a foreign festival invite the movie and then write back and say, ‘Actually, we think this might upset people.’ It hasn’t opened widely in America yet.”
Despite the Sundance victory, Atropia’s reviews have been mixed. But Gates says she’s unfazed.
“It might be that it isn’t a typical Sundance film: it’s not a mood piece, it’s not very sentimental,” she says. “But I’d rather make something polarizing than something everybody loves. If everyone liked the movie, we would’ve made the wrong movie.”
