Tag / review

by Jonathan M

Mesrine : Killer Instinct (2008) – Only I Exist… and I’m Great

To a greater or less extent, we are all solipsists.  We live our lives trapped in a prison of pure subjectivity, profoundly alienated not only from the real world but from the subjective experiences of other people.  We assume that people think like us and that the external world is out there for us to perceive and interact with but we don’t know.  Not in the same way that we know whether or not we are thinking or feeling pain.  We infer, we assume, we project, we deduce, but we do not know.  That which is out there is not as real as that which is in here.  We all possess this instinct.  An instinct that has inspired countless philosophical schools from classical scepticism through empiricism and the the socialised idealism of post-modernity.  It also explains why the dominant currency of the humanities is phenomenological; feelings, emotions, beliefs and the self.  To creative people in thrall to the solipsistic instinct, these mental constructs seem far more real and far more accessible than facts about the real world and so they are accorded more importance.  An excellent example of the privileged position of the phenomenological is the form of the autobiography.

Most autobiographies do not try to invoke impersonal forces or neurological causality in their attempts to explain the author’s decisions or apparent personality quirks.  Instead, most autobiographies are stories.  Stories in which the author is the protagonist while the real people they encountered in their life become extras, side-kicks, love-interests and villains.  These are the kinds of stories that we all tell ourselves when we think about our place in the world.

Jean-Francois Richet’s L’Instinct de Mort (2008) is perhaps the most formally honest screen adaptation of an autobiography you are ever likely to see.  The film’s representation of the life of famed French criminal Jacques Mesrine fully embraces the solipsism of both the autobiography and its psychopathic protagonist by showing us a world in which Mesrine is the hero while everyone else is just set dressing.

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by Jonathan M

REVIEW – Moon (2009)

Sometimes it isn’t easy to love the cinema.  Increasingly, the greatest popular art form of the 20th Century has become a means of oppression  :  Every year, the summer blockbuster season lasts that little bit longer.  The season of empty months.  Months during which the few decent films that do make it into cinemas are instantly forced out by over-hyped sequels and works of distorted genre.  Works so disjointed and violent in their imagery that they have come to resemble twisted parodies of the world we know.  Works that do not seek to elevate our collective humanity but to pervert it by filling our poor throbbing skulls with whole new vistas of psychosis and paranoia.  Vistas we can only escape from with the help of consumer products, the antics of boy wizards and bellicose robots.  Vistas produced by a media-industrial complex that keeps us supine and malleable lest we realise the living hell that we have made of our collective existence.  A collective existence so cruel and unhinged that were we to grasp its true nature for even a second we would all run screaming into the streets, tearing at our clothes and flesh in a hideous and brutal attempt to somehow get clean and free of a system that has crushed us beneath its heel for far too long.

But then a film comes along that seems to recognise all of this.

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by Jonathan M

REVIEW – 35 Shots of Rum (2008)

Recently, Ruthless Culture has become somewhat fixated with films that deal with alienation, death, misery, insanity and violence.  Fixated enough that I think a bit of a change might be welcome and I can think of no better a vehicle for change than Claire Denis’ 35 Rhums (2008).

35 Shots of Rum is a warm-hearted but utterly uncompromising drama revolving around a somewhat extended family grouping.  Lionel (Alex Descas) lives with his daughter Josephine (Mati Diop) in a block of flats that also serves as home to Lionel’s old partner Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue) and old friend of the family Noe (Gregoire Colin).  If I use vague terminology such as ‘partner’ and ‘friend of the family’ it is because, initially at least, many of the relationships in 35 Shots of Rum are unclear.  This lack of clarity is not only intensional, it is one that continues throughout the film as Denis tries to place us in the same position as her characters… we know how we feel but we do not know where everyone stands.

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by Jonathan M

REVIEW – 20th Century Boys (2008)

VideoVista have my review of Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s 20th Century Boys.

Watching this film put me in mind of archeology or anthropology.  It is based upon a series of manga which, while hugely successful in Japan, have yet to acquire much of a cult status in the West.  Because of the popularity of the source material, the film and everyone involved in t seem to be making a real effort to produce a film as close to the source material as possible.  So in effect, the film is this huge homage to this pop cultural deity that I have never heard of.  It’s like some weird and incomprehensible religion; to those within the sphere of influence of the manga, clearly the film is a big deal.  To the rest of us all of the slavish respect seems irrational and incomprehensible.  Which is probably a good state to be in when it comes to popular culture.

by Jonathan M

REVIEW – Lynch (One) (2007)

July’s VideoVista has my review of the David Lynch documentary Lynch (One).

As I mention it in the review, Here is a link to my old review of Marconi’s Lagerfeld Confidential (2007).  Both films are clearly shot around their subjects with their passive participation rather than their active participation.  What I mean by this is that both films were made with the consent of their subjects (as opposed to say Broomfield’s Kurt & Courtney (1998) – reviewed by me Here) but neither of them really press their subjects for answers or try to editorialise about their subjects.  Both have shape simply by virtue of hundreds of hours of footage being edited into a series of largely disconnected but occasionally memorable scenes.

by Jonathan M

The Virgin Spring (1960) – Trembling Before God

Horror giant Wes Craven reportedly claimed that the violence of his debut feature The Last House On The Left (1969) is a reaction by his generation to the horrors of the Vietnam war.  While this justification seems a trifle pretentious and self-serving, it does raise the issue of why it is that depictions of violence in film need to be justified at all.

Why is it that Richard Curtis never feels compelled to speak about how the goings on in Darfur dictate that he must produce sentimental comedies involving smug upper class people?  Is the production of a third Ice Age film a direct reaction to the death of Baby P?  Were it not for the death of Princess Margaret, would Woody Allen ever have made Vicky Christina Barcelona?

A lot of the time, the way in which we justify things is only as interesting as the fact that we feel obliged to justify them at all.  This is the issue that Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960) seeks to address.

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by Jonathan M

REVIEW – Anything for Her (2008)

Falsely accused of murdering her boss, Lisa (Diane Kruger) is sent off to prison.  As the appeals process dries up, Lisa drifts into a dark depression and attempts suicide.  Realising that he is losing a wife and his son a mother, Julien (Vincent Lindon) realises that his current existence is untenable and devotes everything he has to planning and executing an escape attempt that will allow the family to be re-united, albeit for a life on the lamb.  Framed initially as a family drama in which Julien has to deal with the repercussions of an imprisoned wife, Anything For Her then mutates into an introspective crime drama as a teacher decides to reinvent himself as a criminal mastermind.  The critical reaction to the film has tended to snag upon how unbelievable it is that a man in such a position would decide to break his wife out of prison, but this is to miss the point.  Anything For Her (Pour Elle) is an interstitial work that exists on the fringes of the traditional drama and the crime genre.  If it fails as a film (and I think ultimately that it does) it is not because of its crime elements or its interstitiality, it is because of the fundamental weakness of its dramatic elements.

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by Jonathan M

Town and Country (and some links)

VideoVista have my review of Daihachi Yoshida’s Funuke : Show Some Love, You Losers!.

They also have my review of Compton Bennett’s The Seventh Veil.

Funuke is by no means a perfect film but it does shed quite an interesting cultural light on one of my favourite social dichotomies.  A dichotomy I have also been discussing over at THE DRIFT.

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by Jonathan M

REVIEW – Drag Me To Hell (2009)

Drag Me To Hell marks Sam Raimi’s return to the world of Horror from the sunny shores of Summer Blockbuster island.  As with his three Evil Dead films, Drag Me To Hell straddles the gap between Horror and Comedy by combining elements of slapstick knockabout humour with the major keys, creeping camera-work and build and release mechanics of the Horror genre.  However, for a film that seeks to trade so heavily upon its big visual set-pieces, it is not only poorly written but grossly over-written too.

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