( Ruggero Deodato / 1980 )
Deodato's mondo horror wants to be both celebrated and reviled but is too bound up in horror convention and general incompetence to truly be either. Harold Monroe, anthropologist, travels into the Amazonian jungle to recover the filmed footage from an earlier documentary crew for a TV company who want to use the footage in a sensationalist feature. Upon discovering that the reason the earlier expedition never made it back was because they were killed in retaliation for a series of atrocities committed against the tribespeople Monroe begins to question who the real savages were.
Clerici's story could be the basis for a great film: 'found footage' sequences - when done right - lend an unbeatable immediacy to the proceedings, and the framing device offers plenty of opportunity to analyse the symbiotic relationship between horror and its audience. Unfortunately, the intelligent and promising undercurrent is made redundant through the overwhelming desire of HOLOCAUST to be as gruesome as possible at the expense of anything else. The film's apparent central question of 'who are the real savages?' is turned into a mockery of through gleeful scenes - every ten minutes or so, whether it makes narrative sense or not - of tribal brutality as part of their inherent culture. As an attack on imperialistic attitudes, although the Westerners are portrayed as brutes and get their comeuppance, Deodato and Clerici only allow you a name or a character if you are white. HOLOCAUST also pretends to be a film which attacks the staged documentaries of MONDO CANE and its ilk (or even of more mainstream fare) as barbaric and exploitative, presumably hoping the audience will forget about the scenes of animal death or how, rather than making up names, Clerici adopts the names of actual South American tribes for his fiction. Even ignoring any supposed allegory and just taking the film as unadorned horror the 'found footage' lacks any proper sense of development, it's just a simple, highly elliptical selection of scenes, first showing the expedition torment the tribespeople, then the tribespeople torment the expedition.
Regardless of all of this HOLOCAUST is occasionally an arresting film. Helped by Sergio D'Offizi's loose but stylised camerawork, there are moments where HOLOCAUST reveals what it could have been if not for its rampant hypocrisy and single-minded intentions. Strangely, it's in one of the films most infamous sequences that the film appears to achieve its promise of being both intelligent and revolting. In a 'found footage' segment the expedition need food so they behead and gut a turtle for food and the girl, Faye, runs off and vomits before coming back to have her share. It's a scene that has been cut for reasons of animal cruelty in many countries, yet in real life the turtle was given to the natives for dinner and so if this turtle was not killed then another animal would have been killed in its place. In Faye's hypocritical reaction you can find commentary on our own hypocritical reaction: how many people would be disgusted by an abbatoir but eat meat every day? It suggests that what we think of as 'savage' is in actuality just honesty: to eat we need to butcher animals, and this is actually closer to what it is to be human than the 'civilised' method of denying our butchery by hiding it in specialised buildings.
Having said all of this, considering the lack of thought in just about every single other area of the film this kind of analysis is sadly open to charges to 'emperor's new clothes' and it could be hard to defend against this accusation. The only consistant aspect of HOLOCAUST is the excellence of Riz Ortolani's score. Made up of two distinct approaches, one - tribal drums and ominous synth - is exactly what you would expect to find in an 80s cannibal movie, but the other - lilting orchestration - is what you would expect to find in a twee documentary and its ironic intrusion at the most inappropriate and violent moments is probably the most pleasing and intelligent thing about HOLOCAUST as a finished product.
Saturday 31 December 2011
GODZILLA (I Honda)
( Gojira / Ishiro Honda / 1954 )
Where most disaster/monster movies - even those with a supposed message like THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW - gleefully enjoy all the mayhem and tension, GODZILLA is near unique for its pervasive sense of melancholy. Explicitly themed around the terror of nuclear devastation, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were far too recent events for GODZILLA to be anything but a tragedy with special effects. When Godzilla rampages around a city instead of simply providing amoral, fetishised destruction like Hollywood would inevitably do, keeping the victims either faceless or irrelevant, GODZILLA produces a cowering family whose mother announces to her children "You can see your father soon, we'll join him in heaven". The scientist who invents the weapon to destroy Godzilla agonises over whether to reveal it at all, fearing it could later be used against mankind. His solution, revolving around Japanese ideas of honor and sacrifice, feels like a direct attack against the scientists who helped with the technology leading to the A bomb. Even if they did not order the attacks themselves, GODZILLA implies, they are still guilty of a crime against humanity.
Whilst conceptually more impressive than the sillier GODZILLA VERSUS... offerings that followed, many disaster movie fans may well enjoy the sequels more, as they avoid the uneasy tension between monster smashing fun and guilt-placing moralising.
Where most disaster/monster movies - even those with a supposed message like THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW - gleefully enjoy all the mayhem and tension, GODZILLA is near unique for its pervasive sense of melancholy. Explicitly themed around the terror of nuclear devastation, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were far too recent events for GODZILLA to be anything but a tragedy with special effects. When Godzilla rampages around a city instead of simply providing amoral, fetishised destruction like Hollywood would inevitably do, keeping the victims either faceless or irrelevant, GODZILLA produces a cowering family whose mother announces to her children "You can see your father soon, we'll join him in heaven". The scientist who invents the weapon to destroy Godzilla agonises over whether to reveal it at all, fearing it could later be used against mankind. His solution, revolving around Japanese ideas of honor and sacrifice, feels like a direct attack against the scientists who helped with the technology leading to the A bomb. Even if they did not order the attacks themselves, GODZILLA implies, they are still guilty of a crime against humanity.
Whilst conceptually more impressive than the sillier GODZILLA VERSUS... offerings that followed, many disaster movie fans may well enjoy the sequels more, as they avoid the uneasy tension between monster smashing fun and guilt-placing moralising.
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (R Wagner)
( Der fliegende Holländer / Richard Wagner / 1843 )
A cast of the undead and the threat of eternal damnation do little to hide what Wagner's early opera actually is: a romantic and surprisingly light-hearted affair. Daland, a sailor on the return journey of a sea voyage, meets a mysterious captain (the Flying Dutchman) who promises riches for anyone who can find him a wife. Daland's daughter Senta, pursued by an unpromising suitor, dreams of meeting the mysterious captain about whom she sings a ballad every night. As luck would have it the mysterious captain with Daland and the mysterious captain from Senta's ballad are one and the same, they meet, fall in love, and after some minor agonising, a sea shanty, and a bit of death, sail off together.
Wagner's poem is riddled with problems. The most cursory plot summary is all one needs to second-guess every plot turn HOLLANDER takes and Wagner's enjoyment of dramatic irony means that any narrative development is sign-posted an hour before it happens. So although the Dutchman sings about being damned for all eternity if he can not find a wife, we know he will, and HOLLANDER is not half as dramatic as it thinks it is. In addition, supernatural accoutrements aside, HOLLANDER is a typical operatic romance of fate (both Senta and the Dutchman have been waiting their whole lives for just each other) around the theme of love redeems all.
HOLLANDER's strengths obviously lie within Wagner's music. The overture is one of opera's finest, perfectly reminiscent of an impressive storm at sea. The Dutchman's leitmotif sounds like a mournful wake-up call and is instantly memorable. Senta's Ballad is another obvious highlight but the music reaches a real emotional depth when Senta and the Dutchman are finally alone together. The idea of love at first sight, complete with instant declarations of everlasting devotion, are a common operatic cliche but Wagner makes it work by not leaping straight into declarations but rather beginning with tentative disbelief before slowly making its way into the usual massive harmonies. As straight-faced as most of HOLLANDER is the Norwegian sailors' dare to the Dutchman's undead crew of "Steersman, leave your watch" is joyous, silly and a musical treat. Narrative sins aside, a fine opera.
A cast of the undead and the threat of eternal damnation do little to hide what Wagner's early opera actually is: a romantic and surprisingly light-hearted affair. Daland, a sailor on the return journey of a sea voyage, meets a mysterious captain (the Flying Dutchman) who promises riches for anyone who can find him a wife. Daland's daughter Senta, pursued by an unpromising suitor, dreams of meeting the mysterious captain about whom she sings a ballad every night. As luck would have it the mysterious captain with Daland and the mysterious captain from Senta's ballad are one and the same, they meet, fall in love, and after some minor agonising, a sea shanty, and a bit of death, sail off together.
Wagner's poem is riddled with problems. The most cursory plot summary is all one needs to second-guess every plot turn HOLLANDER takes and Wagner's enjoyment of dramatic irony means that any narrative development is sign-posted an hour before it happens. So although the Dutchman sings about being damned for all eternity if he can not find a wife, we know he will, and HOLLANDER is not half as dramatic as it thinks it is. In addition, supernatural accoutrements aside, HOLLANDER is a typical operatic romance of fate (both Senta and the Dutchman have been waiting their whole lives for just each other) around the theme of love redeems all.
HOLLANDER's strengths obviously lie within Wagner's music. The overture is one of opera's finest, perfectly reminiscent of an impressive storm at sea. The Dutchman's leitmotif sounds like a mournful wake-up call and is instantly memorable. Senta's Ballad is another obvious highlight but the music reaches a real emotional depth when Senta and the Dutchman are finally alone together. The idea of love at first sight, complete with instant declarations of everlasting devotion, are a common operatic cliche but Wagner makes it work by not leaping straight into declarations but rather beginning with tentative disbelief before slowly making its way into the usual massive harmonies. As straight-faced as most of HOLLANDER is the Norwegian sailors' dare to the Dutchman's undead crew of "Steersman, leave your watch" is joyous, silly and a musical treat. Narrative sins aside, a fine opera.
Friday 25 November 2011
DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING (L Fulci)
( Non si sevizia un paperino / Lucio Fulci / 1972 )
As entertaining as Fulci can be when he's commanding an army of flesh eating zombies his command of the language of cinema itself is rudimentary and somewhat awkward. Thus this giallo, about a rural police force and a journalist trying to track down a child killing serial killer before superstitious villagers lynch another innocent weirdo, exposes his weaknesses in handling a film that relies on developing a narrative and creating suspense and intrigue rather than films - like his fine GATES OF HELL trilogy - which can sustain themselves by merrily chugging along from one gory splattering to the next.
As entertaining as Fulci can be when he's commanding an army of flesh eating zombies his command of the language of cinema itself is rudimentary and somewhat awkward. Thus this giallo, about a rural police force and a journalist trying to track down a child killing serial killer before superstitious villagers lynch another innocent weirdo, exposes his weaknesses in handling a film that relies on developing a narrative and creating suspense and intrigue rather than films - like his fine GATES OF HELL trilogy - which can sustain themselves by merrily chugging along from one gory splattering to the next.
ONE MISSED CALL (T Miike)
( Chakushin ari / Takashi Miike / 2003)
A group of teenage girls receive voicemail messages featuring recordings of their sudden and violent deaths in Miike's 2003 mainstream J-horror offering. Daira's script never manages to make the premise seem anything but faintly ludicrous and as the film begins to reveal the psychological underpinnings of what's going on ONE MISSED CALL comes dangerously close to just being incomprehensible. It is to Miike's credit that this is not an awful film.
Apparently used to working with whatever script comes his way (the man averages at around 4 films a year) Miike is firmly in control, creating a plethora of eerie, gorgeously shot sequences. At one point a TV crew persuade one of the intended victims to be filmed during the minutes leading up to the time of her predicted death and this finds Miike in his element: perverse and horrific but with just the right touch of black humour. So whilst the script is rife with the issues and cliches that plague J-horror, Miike's command of cinema works to make it an entertaining (if distinctly not great) flick anyway.
A group of teenage girls receive voicemail messages featuring recordings of their sudden and violent deaths in Miike's 2003 mainstream J-horror offering. Daira's script never manages to make the premise seem anything but faintly ludicrous and as the film begins to reveal the psychological underpinnings of what's going on ONE MISSED CALL comes dangerously close to just being incomprehensible. It is to Miike's credit that this is not an awful film.
Apparently used to working with whatever script comes his way (the man averages at around 4 films a year) Miike is firmly in control, creating a plethora of eerie, gorgeously shot sequences. At one point a TV crew persuade one of the intended victims to be filmed during the minutes leading up to the time of her predicted death and this finds Miike in his element: perverse and horrific but with just the right touch of black humour. So whilst the script is rife with the issues and cliches that plague J-horror, Miike's command of cinema works to make it an entertaining (if distinctly not great) flick anyway.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)