Recently we've seen a handful of films that have proven exceptionally effective by having their main characters communicate (mostly) through means other than the spoken word – chiefly The Shape of Water, A Quiet Place and War for the Planet of the Apes. All of these films forced the characters to be more expressive, and thus the story works that much harder in service of the characters, to the greater benefit of the viewer. Mute attempts a similar approach but fails drastically at it. Lead character Leo (Alexander Skarsgård) is the titular mute, searching for his missing lover in a world primed for verbal communication and commands. All well and good in theory but the way Leo is portrayed, with a completely unexpressive oak-like façade, the mute equivalent of the archetypal monosyllabic male, makes him a frustrating character to centre a film around. Skarsgård is usually a solid actor but it's as if we're watching a robotic version of him here. He quietly exists in this colourful new world until his life is disrupted, but there's actually very little to the character apart from the curious decision to foist upon him a religion with a fear and rejection of technology, which feels awkward and unnecessary.
Almost as if to overcompensate for Leo, we have Paul Rudd's overtly animated, characatureish Cactus Bill, and his friend Duck (Justin Theroux). The pair are clearly having a lot of fun here and in many ways are a more intriguing part of the film. There's something curious about their zany darkness even if it's hardly explored and so never really fits into the world the film is working in. Mute desperately wants to be a futuristic, neon-lit neo-noir in the vein of Blade Runner, but it forever feels derivative. Curiously the film massively underplays the future-Berlin setting – there's little to no explanation about how or why the city/world is as it is, as it's solely concerned with it's own little microcosm. Too many films with settings like this try and grab the viewer by the hand to go "look at what we've created!", which can feel overly gratuitous. But in Mute's case the setting feels utterly incidental. Why bother going to the effort of creating a world like this without showing off a little of it? There are lots of miniscule moments hinted at without any elucidation (that TV news story shown in the café!?). There's just no context to the world we're in and it doesn't connect to the story in any way – transplant the story to a different setting (WWII Berlin for example) and it would only require the most minimal of tweaks.
The only explanation for this setting is director Duncan Jones, whom having made one extremely good sci-fi film – his debut Moon – is now effectively pigeonholed into the genre. Sure Warcraft may be a little deviation but it plays in the same sandbox, whilst Source Code is sci-fi through and through, even though it's better in idea than execution. The frustration with Mute is that along with it's flaws in execution and a lead character who doesn't work, the idea just isn't very good – there are hints of some mysterious plot reveal, something to tie it into this world, but instead it goes for the blandest most unoriginal answer possible, whilst the most appealing aspect (its setting) is left unexplored. This is a ridiculous analogy to make in 2018, but scouring a phone book with a magnifying glass in search of a specific number would surely have been a more satisfying experience.
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