Sean is trying to build a kingdom on battery chemicals and Dorito dust. Or so it seems in Joel Potrykus’ newest paranoia thriller, The Alchemist Cookbook. His newest schizoid of a protagonist is tucked away deep in the Michigan woodlands in what, at the film’s beginning, seems to be an off-the-grid getaway. There’s freedom in the smells of the freshly fallen leaves. Serenity threads the sky with the branches of the tall trees. The air is crisp and rejuvenating. Yet Sean isn’t interested in a vacation; he’s running away – into the arms of the devil.
Potrykus’ last feature, Buzzard, let the audience in on its protagonist’s ways early on. Marty was a grifter extraordinaire. He went for the conglomerates one frozen pizza coupon scam at a time. He wore his eff’-it-all attitude on his sleeve. That sort of character work allowed the audience to understand Marty’s worldview externally; there was no mistaking his motivations. And so when the paranoia set in, it came from within him. The Alchemist Cookbook is in a way the anti-Buzzard. Sean is black, and instead of caw-cawing his way through Detroit’s dank city streets, he is framed and pressed by a remote location, unfamiliar to both us and him. When the breakdown comes, it’s from pressures and forces manifested externally.
The film adopts an observatory aesthetic early on. The majority of the film is shot in fixed, flat compositions as Sean moves within each frame. It’s a bit like a human safari by way of tableau vivant. As he attempts to bring order to his world, we just watch, waiting for something to happen. What we are waiting on, we are never really sure. At first glance, Sean is an amateur, pseudo-chemist, mixing God-knows-what in his small shack in the woods. His boombox blares overhead as he cuts batteries, spins beakers, and creates near mini-environmental disasters. In those moments, Potrykus and cinematographer Adam Minnick press the camera in over Sean’s shoulder. It flows and moves with Sean’s rhythms. As he concocts, we get mixed up with his movements.
It’s soon revealed through a small, tome-like book he constantly refers to that this is some sort of alchemy-witchcraft. And when his relative Cortez shows up with groceries and a bit of needed levity, Sean’s intentions become clearer. He’s running from something and he thinks involving the devil will rid him of that threat. Yet the only threat we ever see lurks in the shadows of the woods, off-screen in noises and low rumbles which constantly startle Sean, and the audience. A clue to his crazed, off-kilter hermit life is when we see him taking pills, freaking out when Cortez doesn’t bring him a refill.
The Alchemist Cookbook captures the fear of a slow mental breakdown in its negative space. Paranoia is peppered throughout, pressing down upon Sean from every which way. The horror of the unknown and a lurking evil (which here is very real) soaks the brown-leaved frames with dread. Potrykus knows the modern world, and creates horror films around it. In Buzzard it was low-wage malaise and a junk food slackerdom that set-off Marty’s break with reality. These two characters come from very distinct yet similar socioeconomic groups. Their fears are of not making it, of being swallowed whole by their desire for some marginal success. Ambition is the true possession Sean faces. Later in the film, as it devolves into a frank portrait of possessed body horror, Sean recounts his once lofty dreams to his cat Kasper. He wanted a mansion of gold in the woods, with unlimited Doritos and junk food, soda and sweets for days. He longed for a simple kingdom, something out of the mind of a 12-year-old.
Alchemy is proto-scientific, medieval chemistry that sought to transform matter into gold. All Sean can conjure is a palette of dank browns. A half-gilded woods and an unrelenting demon terrorize him instead of manifesting his humble kingdom. His golden life haunts him; his ambition eats him alive. Low-wage dreams and otherworldly escapes don’t have the power to combat the external juggernaut of capitalism, American society’s ever-turning, stifling wheel in the sky.
Potrykus has a keen eye for the underseen. Hailing from Michigan, the center of national tragedies like Detroit and Flint, you’d assume he’s seen some small-town existential grief. These are sites where life doesn’t relent, where fate crushes people into metaphysical dust. How can our dreams and goals of the American ideal be realized when our water is poisoned and our infrastructure pulverized? The fears of the 21st century permeate his films, and caught in the middle are these disaffected, arrested-adults. These men (Buzzard’s Marty and Cookbook’s Sean) filter self-help, successful living mantras through the most bizarre of pragmatics. Petty, forceful scams and alchemy-as-witchcraft are maniacal, deranged engines of ambition for the modern man. Potrykus has deconstructed the self-made man and revealed the paranoiac behind the ambition.
In each of his features, he takes time at certain key intervals to watch his protagonists eating. In Buzzard, Marty shovels an entire plate of spaghetti and meatballs, each massive bite like an entire meal. Here, long takes show Sean guzzling Gatorade bottles or crunching through an entire bag of Doritos. It’s a strange authorial trademark, but it cuts to the quick of these films. When all viable options of a promised American hope and assent have been hidden away from the poor in spirit and wealth, gorging oneself is a spiritual respite. They scarf junk food like it’s the end of the world. Their green and gold fortunes have been poisoned, possessed, and pilfered all along. Maybe they can eat away at the impending doom.