Ralphie’s “Blue”

Are our thoughts our own, or are we being manipulated? If we’re being manipulated…who’s doing it and how? Filmmaker Joseph F. Alexandre draws us into the dark conspiratorial world of groupthink and mob manipulation in the short film, Ralphe’s “Blue.”

Ralph Monti (Dante Salerno) is a man beaten down by life and eeks out a living as a little-league umpire. Arriving early to the stadium for peace and quiet, Ralph is approached by the mysterious “Chase” (Joseph F. Alexandre), who subtly talks about how tough it is being a white man in America. Chase then proceeds to invite him to a “retreat,” where men like him can live off the grid.

Unbeknownst to Ralph, he is being groomed as a sleeper cell known as “The Order”—a band of white supremacists. The short film exposes the elaborate series of events designed to bring Ralph to this fateful meeting with Chase.

“…subtly talks about how tough it is being a white man in America.”

If you’ve followed many of Joseph F. Alexandre’s other works (The Early Inauguration being my favorite), his fascination with current conspiracies can be frightening at times. But, if you watch the direction social and mainstream media is headed, it’s hard not to believe… Well, anyways, Alexandre is walking a very fine line with his catalog of work.

Ralphie’s “Blue” moves fast and furiously to uncover a conspiracy about how highly suggestible the world is using a combination of feelings of fear and the lucrative psych meds industry. The only issue I have is that the short film’s written logline says a lot more about the subject than the actual short film itself. Of course, the film shouldn’t need the logline to fill in the gaps of the underlying narrative. Still, like Alexandre’s other work, it effectively poses the question and forces us to consider its plausibility.