I don't see how someone could interpret it as pro-radical left. Perhaps pro-left if you take that to mean people who believe in equality and inclusion as ideals. However, when it comes to the radical side, they all completely failed. The group at the beginning was chaotic and achieved nothing but putting a target on their own backs. They spoke as large as a civil war but the most they ever did was cause a blackout which was then fixed. That is not changing society. It isn't even an effective threat. They were driven into hiding when one member ratted them out, but wait, how did they get into that situation? She was wild and tripped on power, so she tripped on using her sexuality on their enemy. However, he effortlessly tracked and infiltrated their activities and came into direct contact with her without any of them noticing. That is a total failure on their part. They were never going to succeed no matter how serious they ever ended up getting.
And that is exactly what we see. She sold people out and now a small handful of them are offed. This sends the rest into hiding for about decades wherein they accomplish so much nothing that the daughter of two of the originals thinks it is all fake and her dad is delusional. At this point their "movement" seems to be nothing more than a pirate radio station, which is absolutely comical in the era of podcasts. Yet their determination to continuing to associate with a criminal strand of their own ideals continues putting the target on them and they continue to fall. Leo has been screwing around so much he doesn't even remember their protocols, yet those who do remember their protocols are worn down from constant paranoia. This is discussed by the sisters at their fortified base, that they need young blood because they are too old and worn down from "the fight" and yet they have made zero progress for their notions. One small military team captures the whole base without a single shot fired. The film is clearly not pro-radicalization.
Yet it does support their care for one another, it shows good things happen when they look out for one another, not when they try fighting the government. After it makes fun of code-talk with Leo needing to prove himself over the phone (which I think is a jab at needing to know the perfect way to phrase everything in order to be accepted in left circles), the code-talk ends up being what his own daughter who hated that stuff relies on to recognize she is safe after her life in threatened due to old battles passing down to her generation. I thought that was a wonderful validation for why social coding exists while also offering a critique that falling too deep into that paranoid fear can make you blind to those who have a heart in unison with yours (referenced by the music devices), even to the level of becoming alien to your own family. This is the film showing an understanding that it is real problems that create these things, but the radicalization is a reactionary survival response rather than the stuff that actually helps the issues that caused the problems.
In this is where I think the heart of the film really rests. As a millennial, we have all experienced the results of systemic corruption leading to unpleasant outcomes. We may have been in a protest or two or at least had friends who did. Ranging from less to more extreme and less to more active, after decades of trying to change the world for the better, it is easy to feel like not much was fixed and fighting is pointless, to put more hope in the next generation than the idea that you'll ever be able to turn society around. Yet it is in the shift of perspective taking place within that sentiment, to look after the next generation and teach them how to look after others like that, those are the things that actually do effectively transform society over time. It may not be as exciting as one battle after another but it is also not as terrorizing. There aren't targets on your back, there aren't code words, there aren't fragmented relationships, what dissonance you have with societal systems isn't amplified in your every interaction with anyone.
So yeah, this film isn't pro-radical left. It feels more like someone who tried it, experienced the weaknesses, then saw what they truly wanted out of it in something a lot more stable and connected. It even seems to insinuate that even taking up that battle is what creates the radical right that it ends up fighting and dying alongside. Perhaps it is far better not to focus on whether your power fantasy is manifesting, but to see what good you are making when you get together with a dream of a better tomorrow and cultivate that. Leo's daughter is that good personified, and I think there is purpose in making the principle personified because the good will most often be the fruit of interpersonal connection. This point reminds me of the film The New World, which is also about how encounter between those foreign to one another, through love and conflict, transforms each while also making something new that exists whether or not either one wants to acknowledge that it is neither of them.
This is a brilliant, heartful, intelligent, and funny film that cuts through the hottest contention points in our society today with an approachable relaxed look of deeply piercing insight of wisdom. Very well paced, well stated, well shot, beautiful sound. Love it, love it, love it.
Editing in further thoughts looking at Lockjaw:
He is an image of social coding reaching extremism on the right. In the military you are taught to conform to expectations. This is your strength, survival, group success, and personal honor. It is similar in the far right, you must live up to rather specific socially coded expectations in order to be considered a good whatever-you-are. He longed for this more than anything. He wanted to be recognized as the prime specimen of what he thought himself to be and for others to see and honor that. And yet, in order to meet their expectations he is denying a fact about himself: He loves black women. He may not have a good understanding of what love is or how it is done but it is clear that he really dreamed about the ability to always return to Perfidia and love her and be loved by her. This was incompatible with the expectation of how to be the "proper" version of what he was and she could not accept being forced into the expectations he had about the "right way" to be her.
All of his battles are born out of this obsession with living up to what he is expected to be. At the end with his daughter, he is lecturing her how "Maybe things could have been different" if she had "better manners"… he said as he was dragging her away to her death after kidnapping her. Nonetheless, it is an intelligent peek into his mindset. He hoped against hope that even the "unacceptable" parts of himself and his life could be accepted if they would just fit the prescribed expectation well enough, if they had good manners and knew how to present themselves. Everything in his mind was translated through a nebulous sense of propriety. As though real bigotry doesn't exist, as though enemies are only enemies because they themselves fail to meet standards somehow and that justifies ending their existence. This is indeed the particular dynamic by which the radical right sees the world and makes violence against it. It is the standard of social expectations over everything, against the noncompliant parts of oneself, against anyone who dare exist as other-than.
