Writer-director Christopher Munch notes that it’s difficult to have a serious discussion of extra-terrestrial visitors to Earth; he notes that talk of UFOs brings giggles and that “gatekeepers in the media” avoid the subject, fearing that they won’t seem smart anymore. That’s the territory he plumbs in The 11th Green. There are no lovable ETs or terrifying space monsters or flying saucers in The 11th Green, just a life-and-death conspiracy of secrets.
Suppose there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Now it’s not much of a leap that such intelligent life would have visited Earth. If THAT has happened, then maybe humans have noticed the visitors – or maybe even humans have been contacted by the visitors.
The 11th Green starts with the premise that extraterrestrials visited and made contact in the 1950s, but the leadership of that American generation, having experienced Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds, has suppressed the news until the public can be prepared not to panic. The conspiracy of secrecy has survived to this day.
Our protagonist, Jeremy Rudd (Campbell Scott), is a DC-based science journalist. He has been estranged from his father, an Air Force General retired from the national security elite. When his father dies, Jeremy travels to his father’s home in Palm Desert, California, to handle the estate. There, he goes through his father’s stuff and meets his father’s peers, including a fascist general, an oleaginous spook and his dad’s nubile assistant.
As Jeremy unpeels the onion of his father’s career, he uncovers the story of the Millennium. And here’s where Munch launches his trademark Magical Realism. Weird shit starts happening – but all with its own internally consistent logic.
Ike and Mamie Eisenhower show up as characters in The 11th Green, along with a retired President Barack Obama and post-war Defense Secretary James Forrestal. (Jeremy’s father had been living in the former winter retirement home of President Eisenhower on the 11th green). You need to suspend disbelief here – do it.
I loved Christopher Munch’s previous film, Letters from the Big Man, a work of uncommon beauty. Munch’s magical realism worked there because he presented it absolutely straight, as if having a lovelorn Sasquatch in the forest setting was as normal as a squirrel. Sadly, Letters from the Big Man is currently difficult to find.
The cerebral and reserved Campbell Scott is perfectly cast as the offbeat, but always contained, brainiac Jeremy. Religiously scientific, Jeremy always follows the data, even when the data takes him to what others would find unbelievable. More than a little OCD, he makes the emergency trip from DC to Palm Desert – on a train!
I am resistant to science fiction generally, But I went with the story, and found The 11th Green to be absorbing and satisfying – and another completely original work from Christopher Munch. You can buy a virtual ticket for The 11th Green – and support the Roxie Theater – at Theatrical-At-Home.