Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Reading Log for 2011
1. After Dark, My Sweet by Jim Thompson (1955) 5/5
Having read The Killer Inside Me some years ago and having done more researching into the life of Thompson than reading any more of his actual material I decided to finally dig back in and now the man is 2 for 2. I've got a sneaking suspicion that nobody in his novels is even remotely close to a decent human being; sociopaths, psychopaths, alcoholics, drug addicts, opportunistic scum, a few of those are found in this taut and phenomenal work involving a mentally unbalanced ex-fighter, an alcoholic widow with a mean streak that would make a badger wince in fear and a crooked (ex?) cop out for one big score. Nobody trusts anyone, everyone is trying to fuck someone else over. What marks this as something more than just another pulp novel is the ending; poetry has never been so prominent in pulp.
Sincerity (1939, Mikio Naruse)
Rating: 5/5
Let me just start by saying that though I absolutely love the films of Ozu and Mizoguchi, and of course Kurosawa, it continually pains me to a certain degree that Mikio Naruse is not nearly as well know as the 3 big hitters of classic Japanese cinema. His technical capabilities are just as well honed as theirs; perhaps its his regularly surfacing sense of extreme pessimism and sometimes nihilism that keeps the Japanese from exporting more of his films (after all, about 50 have survived.)
He's just as interested in the then modern Japanese family as Ozu, just as willing to explore societal concerns as Mizoguchi (and might be considered even more of a feminist if it weren't for his perpetual sense of futility in resistance, most notably in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs.) His ability to tell a story is just as marvelous as Kurosawa's. So the question remains, why don't more Americans know Naruse? I really don't know, but with Criterion's recent Eclipse set of silent Naruse films perhaps there's a glimmer of hope for this master to gain more notoriety among American cinephiles.
1939's Sincerity clocks in at only 67 minutes yet it displays all the hallmarks of great Naruse; namely the everlasting conflict between the hypocrisy of adults and the easily corrupted innocence of youth & class status and its effect on the relationships choked by its confines. Two young girls, one from a rich family & the other from a poorer family where there is only a mother and a grandmother, go to school together where one is at the top of her class (the poor one) and the other, the rich girl, is in the 10th spot in class.
As the story unfolds its revealed that Tomiko's father at one time was quite fond of Nobuko's mother who was at the time married to a man who Nobuko's grandmother informs the young girl was a no good drunkard; we're left to make up our minds as to the integrity of this missing man as Nobuko's swears he was a wonderful man and, as previously stated, her mother holds the opposing viewpoint. An event occurs that brings the two would-be lovers together, glances are exchanged and thanks are given in the form of a French doll (an item which causes a briefly lived stir in Tomiko's house.) But in the end all go back to their lives, except for the father who has been shipped off to fight in the war. There is no real point in struggling against an existence that has so firmly planted itself into the daily lives of all those involved.
Let me just start by saying that though I absolutely love the films of Ozu and Mizoguchi, and of course Kurosawa, it continually pains me to a certain degree that Mikio Naruse is not nearly as well know as the 3 big hitters of classic Japanese cinema. His technical capabilities are just as well honed as theirs; perhaps its his regularly surfacing sense of extreme pessimism and sometimes nihilism that keeps the Japanese from exporting more of his films (after all, about 50 have survived.)
He's just as interested in the then modern Japanese family as Ozu, just as willing to explore societal concerns as Mizoguchi (and might be considered even more of a feminist if it weren't for his perpetual sense of futility in resistance, most notably in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs.) His ability to tell a story is just as marvelous as Kurosawa's. So the question remains, why don't more Americans know Naruse? I really don't know, but with Criterion's recent Eclipse set of silent Naruse films perhaps there's a glimmer of hope for this master to gain more notoriety among American cinephiles.
1939's Sincerity clocks in at only 67 minutes yet it displays all the hallmarks of great Naruse; namely the everlasting conflict between the hypocrisy of adults and the easily corrupted innocence of youth & class status and its effect on the relationships choked by its confines. Two young girls, one from a rich family & the other from a poorer family where there is only a mother and a grandmother, go to school together where one is at the top of her class (the poor one) and the other, the rich girl, is in the 10th spot in class.
As the story unfolds its revealed that Tomiko's father at one time was quite fond of Nobuko's mother who was at the time married to a man who Nobuko's grandmother informs the young girl was a no good drunkard; we're left to make up our minds as to the integrity of this missing man as Nobuko's swears he was a wonderful man and, as previously stated, her mother holds the opposing viewpoint. An event occurs that brings the two would-be lovers together, glances are exchanged and thanks are given in the form of a French doll (an item which causes a briefly lived stir in Tomiko's house.) But in the end all go back to their lives, except for the father who has been shipped off to fight in the war. There is no real point in struggling against an existence that has so firmly planted itself into the daily lives of all those involved.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
2011's music; Ranked & Rated
1. Moonsorrow - Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa 5/5
As epic in scope as any past album; Moonsorrow, to me, are like Robert Bresson; anything they touch will be at least a 4/5, so that the new album is beyond phenomenal is no surprise. Fanboy? Nah, just an admirer of brilliantly crafted anthems.
2. Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will 4.5/5
Not as simultaneously blissful & devastating as Happy Songs for Happy People its still a top notch album; beautiful sweeping guitars, haunting piano & some highly memorable bass lines make for yet another absolutely magnificent album from Scottish boys.
3. Rotten Sound - Cursed 4.25/5
Nasum is gone and they're never coming back, so with Cursed Rotten Sound seem like they're the forerunners for their replacement (Granted RS came to be only one year after Nasum's inception.) Ferocious, fierce and relentless grindcore of the angriest order.
4. Crowbar - Sever the Wicked Hand 4.25/5
More of a devoted EYEHATEGOD fan in the past few years I've clung more to Crowbar on account of EHG's indefinite absence from the scene. The best description of the band came form Beavis & Butt-Head where one of them said "This music is slow and fat." If by fat they mean heavy then certainly the band hasn't let up in the 10 + years they've been together. Some thrashier moments find their way in a few of the songs, but they're still churning out sincere songs of isolation and heartbreak.
5. Defiled - In Crisis 4.25/5
We're only in the middle of March but I can guarantee that in terms of sheer brutality no album will come close let alone match the newest effort by these Japanese death metal masters. My mouth fell open and my eyes bugged out on numerous occasions in reaction to just how brilliantly brutal this album is.
6. Amon Amarth - Surtur Rising 4.25/5
Initially this was more of a 3.5 album, but it gets an extra .75 after a few more listens. It starts off with enough ferocity to get one excited for the proceeding tracks, but by the time the last 2 tracks come along, not to neglect the System of a Down cover, its sort of petered out. Where as "...And Soon the World Will Cease to Be" was a phenomenal closer to what I consider to be their best album "Doom Over Dead Man" just doesn't have the same epic impact.
7. Screeching Weasel - First World Manifesto 4/5
I'm completely unfamiliar with Ben Weasel's output between Anthem for a New Tomorrow and his latest release I'm willing to bet that this is probably one of his best most fresh sounding outputs in those 18 years. The speed found on My Brain Hurts hasn't really held its place, but the sense of melody and a knack for hilariously bitter and biting lyrics is still in full force.
8. Burzum - Fallen 3.5/5
Eh, it's Varg, big deal. Not as entrancing as 2010's Belus it isn't a bad album but there really isn't anything remarkable here, folks.
9. Deicide - To Hell With God 2.75/5
Deicide. One of the most inconsistent bands in the history of American death metal hasn't released a genuinely phenomenal or important album in almost 2 decades. With To Hell With God, yet again, there's no new ground and at this point Benton is such a joke that its almost embarrassing to know that he A.) exists and B.) takes himself with complete and unflinching seriousness. There are some decent moments, and some good songs, but nothing great or above good can be found on this album.
10. Weedeater - Jason...the Dragon 2.5/5
When did Bongzilla start writing shorter songs? Waaaiiit a minute, this isn't Bongzilla, its their little brother Weedeater. Their 2002 album Sixteen Tons was pretty much completely forgettable but 2011's Jason... the Dragon is a slight improvement. Its heavy, there's no doubting that, but there isn't really anything memorable going on here. In a world full of bands like this what makes them different or special? Nothing, really.
11. Decoder - Decoder 2/5
Is this supposed to be a concept album or something? Either way, I don't really care. It starts off promisingly enough but then sinks into total mediocrity. I keep debating whether or not they'd be decent as an instrumental band as both vocalists are subpar and unoriginal but even without vocals this would still be bottom rung stuff. I'm sure chicks dig this shit, though.
2. Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will 4.5/5
3. Rotten Sound - Cursed 4.25/5
4. Crowbar - Sever the Wicked Hand 4.25/5
5. Defiled - In Crisis 4.25/5
6. Amon Amarth - Surtur Rising 4.25/5
7. Screeching Weasel - First World Manifesto 4/5
I'm completely unfamiliar with Ben Weasel's output between Anthem for a New Tomorrow and his latest release I'm willing to bet that this is probably one of his best most fresh sounding outputs in those 18 years. The speed found on My Brain Hurts hasn't really held its place, but the sense of melody and a knack for hilariously bitter and biting lyrics is still in full force.
8. Burzum - Fallen 3.5/5
9. Deicide - To Hell With God 2.75/5
10. Weedeater - Jason...the Dragon 2.5/5
11. Decoder - Decoder 2/5
Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton)
Rating: 5/5
Remember the first time you tried to walk on your own? No? Yeah, nobody really does, but there were a slew of things that were a first that came after those pivotal steps that were most likely draining in varying respect and trying of every aspect of your persona; take most of these experiences and measure them up to having to make your major studio feature length directorial debut. Very few directors really genuinely get it right the first time; Lynch did with Eraserhead, Huston hit the nail on the head with his adaptation of Hammett's Maltese Falcon, and most notably Orson Welles did relatively well with what's now his best known, if, unfairly, his only really well known effort as director: Citizen Kane.
Then there's this Laughton guy. An actor who decides to give directing an adaptation of a book by the same name a shot. In the studio system of 1955 Hollywood you had to have quite a pair of balls to willfully make a film about a psychopath who dresses as a preacher with no reservations about hunting down two children with the intention of murdering them to get to the decent chunk of change their recently deceased father left them as a safety net.
Then there's the tattoos; HATE on the knuckles of one hand and LOVE on the other, he has no hesitation to divulge listeners to the epic struggle between the two base human emotions; but this is a man wholly without one and an ample amount of the other, how many other blatantly sociopath characters, dressed as preachers, can you name from an American film from the same time?
What?
None?
Yeah, I didn't think so. Mitchum's portrayal of Harry Powell, one of the most despicable human beings in the history of cinema, is so pitch perfect that if you were to have seen him walking towards you on the street chances are you'dve run for your life or just jumped in front of a speeding car.
The film, more or less, tanked on initial release; leading Laughton to proclaim his lifelong resignation from the director's chair: thanks general film going public and useless critics of 1955. Not only does the film contain one of the best performances of the 1950's, not that everyone else is lackluster it's just that this is Mitchum's film; everyone else is background music, it's also home to some of the most stunningly gorgeous black and white cinematography since somebody decided to film a garden scene in 1888. Dually influenced by Film Noir and the German Expressionist, which gives the film its feeling of a Grimm fairy tale, films there are more memorable scenes in this one film than in the vast majority of a lot of other directors entire filmographies.
Of all films to compare this now established American classic (ain't that the way it always goes; film gets released, no one cares, 20-40 years later it's hailed as a work of art.) it, in a sense, resembles Tobe Hooper's Texas Chain Saw Massacre because, without really spoiling Hunter there is a happy ending but the two children have gone through so much hell that it was most likely a concrete impossibility for them to grow up into mentally stable adults, sort of like Harry.
Avalance (1937, Mikio Naruse)
Rating: 5/5
(originally written December 15, 2009)
This is the 2nd Naruse film I've seen and I'm slowly and steadily falling in love with the man; he's got a way of observing people, woman in particular (which only two films into his filmography I feel he does better than Mizoguchi), that is so simple and fluid. There's a subtle underlying idea of futility to the actions of all his main characters; they can choose to do something, but chances are it won't work out and they'll either die or end up continuing on with their old ways. This film strengthens this theory; a spoiled rich boy, I'll call him a boy because that's what he acts like, who is completely oblivious to the feelings of all those around him marries a woman that he doesn't care about at all and then coldly turns around and demands from his father that he be allowed to get a divorce; when the younging is talking to his dad he almost sounds like something Oshima would say to an older Japanese male at the time; questioning societal norms, ethics and morals.
(originally written December 15, 2009)
This is the 2nd Naruse film I've seen and I'm slowly and steadily falling in love with the man; he's got a way of observing people, woman in particular (which only two films into his filmography I feel he does better than Mizoguchi), that is so simple and fluid. There's a subtle underlying idea of futility to the actions of all his main characters; they can choose to do something, but chances are it won't work out and they'll either die or end up continuing on with their old ways. This film strengthens this theory; a spoiled rich boy, I'll call him a boy because that's what he acts like, who is completely oblivious to the feelings of all those around him marries a woman that he doesn't care about at all and then coldly turns around and demands from his father that he be allowed to get a divorce; when the younging is talking to his dad he almost sounds like something Oshima would say to an older Japanese male at the time; questioning societal norms, ethics and morals.
Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968, Nagisa Ōshima)
Rating: 5/5
I know Oshima is well known, to those who know more about him than just that he's the dude who made that movie with Japanese penis and mutilations, etc, as someone who seems to hate every filmmaker other than himself but his 1968 film seems almost like an ode to Godard, Buñuel and to a lesser extent Resnais; 3 students are on the beach and decide to go for a swim, they strip themselves to their undies and head for the water, leaving their threads behind, when a hand reaches up from underneath the sand to steal their, I'm presuming, Japanese military outfits, leaving two of the three of them with a few yen and the clothes of *GASP* Koreans. Like with Death by Hanging, I don't know which came first as they were both released in '68, Oshima takes a look at the Japanese prejudice against Koreans and the impact this has on Koreans living in Japan; this leads the three main characters on one fantastically witty journey, only to kill them off at the 40 minute mark (in an 80 minute film); they're, you guessed, resurrected & they go through, basically, the same routine as in the first 40 minutes of the film, with some changes to the story on account of this time they know what's going to happen to them which only adds to the comedy revolving around the reactions to those who are not in the know.
There's also a moment in the film where the three main characters, played by some sort of Japanese pop band from the time, are walking the streets of, I'm assuming, Tokyo asking random people if they're Japanese, and they come to find that everyone they ask is Korean, when asked why they're Korean they simply reply, all of them, "because I am".
And guess who shows up to declare his Korean......ness? The man himself:
I know Oshima is well known, to those who know more about him than just that he's the dude who made that movie with Japanese penis and mutilations, etc, as someone who seems to hate every filmmaker other than himself but his 1968 film seems almost like an ode to Godard, Buñuel and to a lesser extent Resnais; 3 students are on the beach and decide to go for a swim, they strip themselves to their undies and head for the water, leaving their threads behind, when a hand reaches up from underneath the sand to steal their, I'm presuming, Japanese military outfits, leaving two of the three of them with a few yen and the clothes of *GASP* Koreans. Like with Death by Hanging, I don't know which came first as they were both released in '68, Oshima takes a look at the Japanese prejudice against Koreans and the impact this has on Koreans living in Japan; this leads the three main characters on one fantastically witty journey, only to kill them off at the 40 minute mark (in an 80 minute film); they're, you guessed, resurrected & they go through, basically, the same routine as in the first 40 minutes of the film, with some changes to the story on account of this time they know what's going to happen to them which only adds to the comedy revolving around the reactions to those who are not in the know.
There's also a moment in the film where the three main characters, played by some sort of Japanese pop band from the time, are walking the streets of, I'm assuming, Tokyo asking random people if they're Japanese, and they come to find that everyone they ask is Korean, when asked why they're Korean they simply reply, all of them, "because I am".
And guess who shows up to declare his Korean......ness? The man himself:
Ann Inn in Tokyo (1935, Yasujirō Ozu)
Rating: 5/5
This is, without a doubt, one of Ozu's unsung masterpieces & a film that requires immediate viewing from all cinephiles who enjoy his other, more well known, works; not only that, but it is simply one of the best silent films I've ever seen, with performances that are beyond phenomenal (the children are just as above par as the adults), and it's also just one of the best films I've ever seen period. A man struggles for about 1/2 the film to find any kind of resources to feed his two boys, and it is this masterful depiction of poverty and its effects on the psyche that lead me to believe that this is one of the finest silent films, and film in general, that I've ever seen or am likely to see.
Fighting Friends (1929, Yasujirō Ozu)
Rating: 3/5
One of Ozu’s earliest films that luckily has not been given up for lost is his 1929 short comedy Fighting Friends Japanese Style. 14 minutes in length and there are already some implications that he had found, more or less, some aspects of the style that he would come to be know for: the use of trains, the existence of Japanese traditions in a changing society (when the two friends go at it at work the boss declares that they shouldn’t be broken up because fighting is a privilege. ) Two friends almost run over a woman one day during work and finding that she has no family to go to they offer her a place to stay where they live. The two men are attracted to this woman and this causes their stable friendship to suffer from a few hiccups. One of the men buys her a secondhand kimono to show her his admiration; basically, they revert from two grown men to two little boys, evident in one scene where the two are trying to outdo each other by trying to find things, mainly money, in their pockets to give to her. But, as the story goes, she falls in love with an entirely different man and leaves, on a train (of course, what is an Ozu film without a train?) , the two friends having reconciled their bump in the road over a humorous event involving what I’m guessing was some sort of wasabi snack. The humorous moments remind one of something from a Chaplin film, informing us of Ozu’s awareness and intense admiration for the American cinema of the time. Not necessarily essential, but an enjoyable viewing for the casual and dedicated Ozu fan.
One of Ozu’s earliest films that luckily has not been given up for lost is his 1929 short comedy Fighting Friends Japanese Style. 14 minutes in length and there are already some implications that he had found, more or less, some aspects of the style that he would come to be know for: the use of trains, the existence of Japanese traditions in a changing society (when the two friends go at it at work the boss declares that they shouldn’t be broken up because fighting is a privilege. ) Two friends almost run over a woman one day during work and finding that she has no family to go to they offer her a place to stay where they live. The two men are attracted to this woman and this causes their stable friendship to suffer from a few hiccups. One of the men buys her a secondhand kimono to show her his admiration; basically, they revert from two grown men to two little boys, evident in one scene where the two are trying to outdo each other by trying to find things, mainly money, in their pockets to give to her. But, as the story goes, she falls in love with an entirely different man and leaves, on a train (of course, what is an Ozu film without a train?) , the two friends having reconciled their bump in the road over a humorous event involving what I’m guessing was some sort of wasabi snack. The humorous moments remind one of something from a Chaplin film, informing us of Ozu’s awareness and intense admiration for the American cinema of the time. Not necessarily essential, but an enjoyable viewing for the casual and dedicated Ozu fan.
A Serbian Film (2010, Srdjan Spasojevic)
Rating: 5/5
Over the course of the last 5 years or so the world of cinema has seen a handful of films whose main attraction, for most, is the hype around the brutality: Pascal Laugier’s 2008 film ‘Martyrs’, Tom Six’s 2009 film ‘The Human Centipede’ & Srdjan Spasojevic’s 2010 film ‘A Serbian Film’. The thing that differentiates those three particular films from the run of the mill cash grab trash films like the Saw series is their capacity for resonating with the viewer long after initial viewing; there are moments in each three of the listed films that 99% of viewers will never forget for the rest of their lives. Where as a Saw film will shock you for a few seconds, making you turn to your friends in awe asking “Did you see that?!”, ‘A Serbian Film’ will grasp your mind, imprint its images upon your psyche, and make you ever so slightly more curious about just exactly what the people you know do when they’re alone. I’d had the film recommended to me in a sort of roundabout way, “you haven’t seen A Siberian Film yet?” I was asked.
I searched for a synopsis that only sort of sparked my interest: retired porn star needs money to help his family, get suckered into making snuff films, alright, whatever. About a month later I randomly remembered the film and searched yet again and after reading that the film contained, without censorship, “infant rape, child rape, necrophilia & decapitation during sex: among other things” I thought to myself “I have to see this.” Not so much because I’m a gore junky, this is hardly the case, but every once in a while I get a little scratch in my mind that won’t go away until I see what the fuss about a particularly so called “brutal”, “extreme” or “relentless” film is all about. A lot, around 98%, of the films turn out to be absolute trash, but every once in a great while one of these ruthlessly brutal films contains more than just what is bleeding on the screen; there’s something more, something intellectually stimulating. So, I took the whole 2 or 3 minutes it took to find a torrent of the film, because lets face it it might be a while before this reaches DVD in the US. The copy that I ended up with was the “Screener Version” or something like that; it says that its the unedited version and if there is a more complete version than this then I think that maybe Satan is real and he exists as that longer version because all that was found in the version that I saw was more than enough to permanently scar most people.
Spasojevic has said in reaction to the controversy surrounding his debut film that its meant to be taken as a symbolic tale, an allegory of how the Siberian government treats its people. Now, when a director has a bad film on his hands and they know its terrible, or eventually realizes how horrible it is, they will try to play the whole “Yeah, this is how I meant it to be seen.” (Tommy Wiseau, I’m lookin’ at you, no ones buying it.) card, but after seeing ‘A Siberian Film’ I can understand Spasojevic’s statement. Now, I know next to nothing about the circumstances in current Siberia so I won’t go around saying that this is symbolic of this or that, but what I will say that in a general sense one can view the film as a symbol for the general willingness of humanity to exploit others without sympathy. The powers that be will more than willingly drug those below them, not literally of course, into a state of confusion so that they eventually become nothing more than puppets capable of the most heinous and disgusting acts imaginable, but only after lying to them about how they’re simply looking out for their best interests, that whatever is to come will be okay because they have it under control. Now drink this and do what I say. The fact that the film is titled ‘A Serbian Film’ begs the question “Why this title?” It could have been given a multitude of other names, but Spasojevic intended for people to see this film and understand that this is his venomously hateful view of his country & government, full of immoral opportunistic scum.
Some have declared that the director is criticizing his country for willing to become more like the West, that the film is nothing more than some sort of fascist fear mongering propaganda film portraying the influence of the west as one of hedonistic and full of decadence and debauchery. This feels like reaching for a grain of sand in a dark room the size of the Atlantic ocean. This simply reads as Serbians, or people of Serbian descent, reacting the way the director wanted them to; shame. Now, perhaps its shame that the director, in their views, is depicting their homeland as a place of nothing but pimps, prostitutes, pornographers and other societal goodies, but again, this just seems like spitting in the wind.
The premise of the film is as simple as they come: A man needs money to help his wife & son. How he gets it is something not so commonly found. A retired porn star he receives a tip from an ex-“coworker” that there is a new breed of porn emerging from their country to be released to the whole world: Art Porn. Milos, the main character, meets with the man in charge, a man by the name of Vukmir Vukmir (chillingly odd coincidence that a psychotic woman with the same last name has been recently elected to the Wisconsin State Senate.) Milos asks his brother, a man jealous of Milos’ family life (obviously indicated by the fact that he got fellatio while watching a home movie he shot of his sister in-law), a cop to check up on his employer and nothing incriminating is found. Things begin to turn dark and darker amd eventually there is no possibility of turning back from the bottomless abyss into which Milos has been flung.
The effects in the film do more than their job in convincing the viewer of their dedication to a realistic depiction of decapitation, forced anal sex and a few other things that I’ll leave as a surprise to whomsoever is brave enough to seek this out, or to watch it with me. There isn’t really much to say about the cinematography of the film as with a film like this cinematography is of little to no importance; its the impact of the experience that matters the most. There is no real bad acting to be found in the film, from the lead characters to the tiniest role everyone does a compelling and convincing job with their characters. The soundtrack works to create a mood of impending doom and chaos.
‘The Human Centipede’ is disturbing in a “what if” sense; "What if some guy, or gal, was psychotic enough to do something like this for no real particular reason other than their own gratitude. ‘A Serbian Film’ is disturbing in a realistic, 100% visceral sense, because you know in the back of your mind after watching this that the movies you saw being filmed are sitting somewhere on a shelf in someone’s house.
Over the course of the last 5 years or so the world of cinema has seen a handful of films whose main attraction, for most, is the hype around the brutality: Pascal Laugier’s 2008 film ‘Martyrs’, Tom Six’s 2009 film ‘The Human Centipede’ & Srdjan Spasojevic’s 2010 film ‘A Serbian Film’. The thing that differentiates those three particular films from the run of the mill cash grab trash films like the Saw series is their capacity for resonating with the viewer long after initial viewing; there are moments in each three of the listed films that 99% of viewers will never forget for the rest of their lives. Where as a Saw film will shock you for a few seconds, making you turn to your friends in awe asking “Did you see that?!”, ‘A Serbian Film’ will grasp your mind, imprint its images upon your psyche, and make you ever so slightly more curious about just exactly what the people you know do when they’re alone. I’d had the film recommended to me in a sort of roundabout way, “you haven’t seen A Siberian Film yet?” I was asked.
I searched for a synopsis that only sort of sparked my interest: retired porn star needs money to help his family, get suckered into making snuff films, alright, whatever. About a month later I randomly remembered the film and searched yet again and after reading that the film contained, without censorship, “infant rape, child rape, necrophilia & decapitation during sex: among other things” I thought to myself “I have to see this.” Not so much because I’m a gore junky, this is hardly the case, but every once in a while I get a little scratch in my mind that won’t go away until I see what the fuss about a particularly so called “brutal”, “extreme” or “relentless” film is all about. A lot, around 98%, of the films turn out to be absolute trash, but every once in a great while one of these ruthlessly brutal films contains more than just what is bleeding on the screen; there’s something more, something intellectually stimulating. So, I took the whole 2 or 3 minutes it took to find a torrent of the film, because lets face it it might be a while before this reaches DVD in the US. The copy that I ended up with was the “Screener Version” or something like that; it says that its the unedited version and if there is a more complete version than this then I think that maybe Satan is real and he exists as that longer version because all that was found in the version that I saw was more than enough to permanently scar most people.
Spasojevic has said in reaction to the controversy surrounding his debut film that its meant to be taken as a symbolic tale, an allegory of how the Siberian government treats its people. Now, when a director has a bad film on his hands and they know its terrible, or eventually realizes how horrible it is, they will try to play the whole “Yeah, this is how I meant it to be seen.” (Tommy Wiseau, I’m lookin’ at you, no ones buying it.) card, but after seeing ‘A Siberian Film’ I can understand Spasojevic’s statement. Now, I know next to nothing about the circumstances in current Siberia so I won’t go around saying that this is symbolic of this or that, but what I will say that in a general sense one can view the film as a symbol for the general willingness of humanity to exploit others without sympathy. The powers that be will more than willingly drug those below them, not literally of course, into a state of confusion so that they eventually become nothing more than puppets capable of the most heinous and disgusting acts imaginable, but only after lying to them about how they’re simply looking out for their best interests, that whatever is to come will be okay because they have it under control. Now drink this and do what I say. The fact that the film is titled ‘A Serbian Film’ begs the question “Why this title?” It could have been given a multitude of other names, but Spasojevic intended for people to see this film and understand that this is his venomously hateful view of his country & government, full of immoral opportunistic scum.
Some have declared that the director is criticizing his country for willing to become more like the West, that the film is nothing more than some sort of fascist fear mongering propaganda film portraying the influence of the west as one of hedonistic and full of decadence and debauchery. This feels like reaching for a grain of sand in a dark room the size of the Atlantic ocean. This simply reads as Serbians, or people of Serbian descent, reacting the way the director wanted them to; shame. Now, perhaps its shame that the director, in their views, is depicting their homeland as a place of nothing but pimps, prostitutes, pornographers and other societal goodies, but again, this just seems like spitting in the wind.
The premise of the film is as simple as they come: A man needs money to help his wife & son. How he gets it is something not so commonly found. A retired porn star he receives a tip from an ex-“coworker” that there is a new breed of porn emerging from their country to be released to the whole world: Art Porn. Milos, the main character, meets with the man in charge, a man by the name of Vukmir Vukmir (chillingly odd coincidence that a psychotic woman with the same last name has been recently elected to the Wisconsin State Senate.) Milos asks his brother, a man jealous of Milos’ family life (obviously indicated by the fact that he got fellatio while watching a home movie he shot of his sister in-law), a cop to check up on his employer and nothing incriminating is found. Things begin to turn dark and darker amd eventually there is no possibility of turning back from the bottomless abyss into which Milos has been flung.
The effects in the film do more than their job in convincing the viewer of their dedication to a realistic depiction of decapitation, forced anal sex and a few other things that I’ll leave as a surprise to whomsoever is brave enough to seek this out, or to watch it with me. There isn’t really much to say about the cinematography of the film as with a film like this cinematography is of little to no importance; its the impact of the experience that matters the most. There is no real bad acting to be found in the film, from the lead characters to the tiniest role everyone does a compelling and convincing job with their characters. The soundtrack works to create a mood of impending doom and chaos.
‘The Human Centipede’ is disturbing in a “what if” sense; "What if some guy, or gal, was psychotic enough to do something like this for no real particular reason other than their own gratitude. ‘A Serbian Film’ is disturbing in a realistic, 100% visceral sense, because you know in the back of your mind after watching this that the movies you saw being filmed are sitting somewhere on a shelf in someone’s house.
Inception (2010, Christopher Nolan)
Rating: 3/5
“A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again.”
- Jean Renoir
There’s a great deal of applicability of this quote when it comes to Christopher Nolan. In Memento a man accidentally kills his wife and can’t deal with the guilt so he creates a world of his own to live in in order to come to terms with what happened; in Inception basically the same thing happens but instead of telling the story backwards & from the perspective of someone who no longer has any short term memory this time the gimmick is dreams. Being the spontaneous internet forum wanderer that I am I’d heard here & there comparisons to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of just how intensely visceral of an impact the film has on one’s psyche. Now, I didn’t go into my viewing with this in mind, but it lingered there back in my subconscious where the guy from Third Rock from the Sun & Bronson were trying to steal whatever secrets I have.
The difference between a film like Kubrick’s awe inspiring masterpiece and Nolan’s film which only makes it to the level of ‘just good’ is that there’s this sense in Nolan’s film of being scared of alienating too many people from enjoying his film. “Well, I’ll make it sort of complex, but only include the most base ideas and the most placid dreams imaginable. Oh, and the end will be kind of ambiguous but not too much, don’t want to make anyone angry or instigate any kind of lengthy discussions.”
As seems to be the deal with Nolan his main actor is really cringe worthy or laugh inducing (“OH JESUS CHRIST!!!!”) DiCaprio doesn’t go through the film growling at people but he is still pretty bad. To be honest the only one who doesn’t seem to be phoning in a performance is Tom Hardy, and that’s only barely the case.
The folding of Paris was pretty nice, but everything else just seemed flat and Nolan never, in 150 minutes, gets the feel of a dream quite down; not when DiCaprio is Mr. Charles in the bar, not when Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Jamiroquai-ing it up with some guys in a hall or hauling a floating bundle of his buddies into an elevator.
There’s nothing in this film that you can’t learn about dreams from Richard Linklater’s phenomenal film “Waking Life”, so, Inception proves to be a fairly useless film in the end, but it is, oddly enough, worth at least one viewing.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Enter the Void (2009, Gaspar Noé)
Rating: 1.5/5
Noé is to cinema as Palahniuk is to literature. Going in you know what you're going to get, so with Enter the Void running at around 160 minutes I was hoping maybe that he'd finally stopped relying on gimmicks. Turns out he's relying on them even more so than in Irreversible (which I actually love) or I Stand Alone (which is just a good film). I don't understand the cries of this being nothing more than an excuse to shock people...because there's nothing shocking in it. What did people find shocking exactly? The "tripping" scenes that came off as nothing more than a bad screensaver? The close up of an abortion? The laughably stupid melodrama that unfolds as the film progresses? The mundanely unorthodox relationship between the brother and sister?
None of this is shocking so much as it is just plain boring. There were a few moments I felt were handled gracefully, namely the handling of the story of them as children. One big offense is the meaningless recycling of previous scenes. If you're going to do this it has to serve a purpose; Oshima's Three Resurrected Drunkards repeats the entire first 45 minutes of the film almost 100% verbatim and its a fucking masterpiece. This is just 160 minutes of close ups of fluorescent lights, street lights, neon lights and candle light. It isn't shallow, there's something here....if you think there is.
awww, he gets reincarnated, how cute!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Introduction to Modern Cinema Assignment #2: Film Noir
I’ve seen my fair share of both classic noir and neo-noir so I’d say that my understanding of the genre is fairly well rounded and decently informed. Beginning in the early 1940s with films like Stranger on the Third Floor, the Maltese Falcon and They Drive by Night noir surfaced in response to America’s increasing paranoia in regards to the threat of Communism (and foreign invasion in general) and also the underlying tensions found in most male/female relationships, with the fight for women’s rights slowly beginning to increase in strength. Fully employing all of the stylistic possibilities of black and white film noir is home to some of the most iconic images in classic Hollywood cinema (see: Carol Reed’s the Third Man). The use of light and dark, the utilizing of shadows as some sort of ever looming implication of the fatally unknown, along with the femme fatale (the regularly occurring malicious intentions of the female sex is hard proof for borderline misogyny in the genre), are all quintessential staples in film noir.
Orson Welles’ 1958 film Touch of Evil is considered by most one of the most masterfully crafted in the genre (evidenced in the opening shot; done in one 3 minute tracking shot.) That Welles would try his hand at noir is no surprise as the man’s ability to compose memorable shots through his utilization of shadows was evident in his directorial debut Citizen Kane. (He’d also helmed three noirs prior to Touch of Evil: 1946’s the Stranger, 1947’s the Lady From Shanghai, & 1955’s Mr. Arkadin.) The film is as stated previously brilliantly crafted even after having suffered various botch jobs from the studio; not to mention the fact that Charlton Heston plays a Mexican. There are few characters in the film that don’t appear to have hidden, possibly detrimental, intentions. Welles plays a crooked cop, more interested in vanity and glory than any sense of actual justice. There are some stellar uses of shadow and some marvelous moments of nerve wracking tension, but the one key element seemingly missing form Touch of Evil is the femme fatale; perhaps Marlene Dietrich’s character could be seen as one, but she seems more like the worn and jaded character found in the genre.
When science fiction meets noir Blade Runner is born. Using all the key elements of the film noir genre (relying on shadows, light and dark and rain to create an atmosphere; femme fatales; a down and out detective.) Ridley Scott created one of the most brilliant of the neo-noir films of the last 30 years. Some neo-noirs, since they’re in color, seem more like crime or gangster films and that is where I think the use of color is somewhat of a deterrent in regards to noir. It’s possible to recognize elements of noir in something like Pulp Fiction with Blade Runner you get the idea right away that this is a sci-fi film noir.
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