Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

Among the most promising titles to debut at this year’s TIFF was Brian DePalma’s best (and only) film in years, the four hour epic The Scotsman. A painstakingly de-aged, Glaswegian accented Al Pacino stars as a grizzled 24 year old indie pop fan whose long relationship with CHVRCHES is at a standstill after the controversial Love Is Dead album. After browsing reddit, Pacino’s enlightened, poptimist music fan (named, with a possibly unearned sense of portent, William “Billie” Lossless, a reminder that Paul Schrader is one of the cowriters here) develops a newfound passion for the Screen Violence album, which leads into an orgy of actual violence as Billie Lossless is sucked into a cult of violently reactionary incel vinyl collectors. From the innocent love of CHVRCHES, Lossless is indoctrinated by an indie subreddit in the ways of hating Missy Elliott and obsessing over the “real music” of the Killers, and his music fandom is turned to evil ends as he becomes involved with a cell of “Dance Yrslf Clean”-loving terrorist rockists. The second part of the film is a sort of Breaking Baddish remake of Scarface (here, Lossless rises into a lord of a cell of meth dealing incels). The film ends, appropriately for Hitchcock fetishist De Palma, with echoes of North by Northwest, as Billie Lossless has a showdown atop a gigantic, practical-effects-rendered Nessie (substituting for Mount Rushmore in the original film). The Scotsman is reportedly the most expensive film ever made in Scotland, but what really stands out are the performances. Morrissey does magnificent voice work as Nessie (one of the film’s more interesting conceits is that Lossless is impelled to violence by hearing the voice of a suspiciously redpilled Loch Ness monster), and David Duchovny’s show stopping appearance as former prime minister Gordon Brown is sure to be remembered at awards season—it’s also a reminder of Duchovny’s little known British roots. The question of how Scotland fits (or doesn’t) into Britain is also central here, as the film envisions its incel indie gang as a paramilitary adjunct to the Conservative Party. James Corden appears as PM Boris Johnson, paying off Pacino’s character late in the film to torture a group of popheads. Meanwhile, at the start of the film, before his rise and fall in the crime world, Pacino is shown as a socialist and a supporter of the Scottish National Party. While simplistic, our music correspondent assures us there are elements of truth in this portrayal, as the indieheads subreddit has been linked with inculcating reactionary tendencies, through the conservative dream pop to John Maus pipeline. The Scotsman is not only a masterly exploration of the dark side of the indie scene, it will literally knock your socks off. Best of all, CHVRCHES have provided a stunning original score. The only real question hovering over the enterprise is why an elderly American actor was cast as a youthful Scottish character. De Palma has simply said, “Because I could.” Indeed.