Tag Archives: Period piece

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FANTASIA 2023: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: , , 

FEATURING: Toby Poser, John Adams, Zelda Adams

PLOT: A scrappy family trio travel Depression-era Catskills pursue an ascension into big time carnival show-biz, all while executing harsh justice.

Still from Where the Devil Roams (2023)

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: It probably shouldn’t—if not for that final shot. My goodness.

COMMENTS: Dark times bring forth dark magic in this meditative and macabre motion picture from the renowned indie horror team the Adams Family. They entered our collective awareness with The Deeper You Dig, knocked off socks (and knocked out ear-balls) with the metal-infused follow-up Hellbender, and gloriously return once more with Where the Devil Roams. Tobey, John, Zelda, and Lulu continue to hone their craft as a family-filmmaking team (and unlike the Ormonds, these are fun-time, fun-filming folk). Their “tiny” movie explores big ideas, delivers big gore, and proves to have a big heart beating at its tattered core.

The slow death of the carnival business grinds down the poor carnies of upstate New York, perhaps none more so than Maggie, Seven, and their daughter Eve. This trio aspire to earn a place at the “Buffalo Horror Show,” the last remaining big to-do in the circuit. While traveling along with their bare-bones circus group, they drop in on various ill-doers—a cruel landlord, a crooked financier—smiting the enemies of the little man with a smiling viciousness. Maggie wields the weapon, Seven speaks the scripture, and Eve, born mute, captures their handiwork on camera with a quiet relish.

Taking a moment to consider the inputs for this film—third- and fourth-hand props and costumes, self made sets, musical chairs camerawork (who ever was not in a frame at the time was typically behind the lens), and the mystical fusion of American myth with homemade magick—the film is impressive. But then, it feels impressive even without that qualifier. I mention those elements to share how much heart and soul went into this little wonder; and that’s not mentioning the blood. Papa Seven cannot abide further carnage after his time as a medic in WWI, so Mama Maggie applies his blindfold before the blood and fury. These grisly doings are a grisly delight: either through the sheer bluntness of a chiming skillet, or a deadly harpooning with a fire poker, it’s always fun to watch these righteous murderers. And with the black magic tied in (heh), there is an unreal aura whose moral ambiguity becomes darker and darker.

The image gets a bit dark, too, and strange: beginning in a full-palette, it flickers and devolves into grainy, black-and-white harshness. By the end, as the family’s already meager fortunes collapse (along with a couple of their bodies), we enter a saturated, white-light nightmare.

Which brings me to the punchline. In the penultimate shot, our heroine Eve has transformed from an angel of light to one of darkness, who escorts an unknown entity down one of those looong corridors typically reserved for nightmares. With a reassuring bend of her finger, she beckons to her follower, along with us, to go through the final door to end stage. A song emerges from her lacquered lips, a spotlight jolts into life, and BAM!

Listen to Giles Edwards’ interview with the Adams family about Where the Devil Roams.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a conscious homage to early cinema traditions… Formally, the film is audacious, again pulling off stylistic flourishes that in the hands of less confident, skilled filmmakers could feel hokey or cliched.”–Alexandra Heller-Nicolas, AWFG.org (festival screening)

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CAPSULE: BROOKLYN 45 (2023)

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Brooklyn 45 releases on Friday, June 9, exclusively on Shudder and AMC+.

DIRECTED BY: Ted Geoghegan

FEATURING: Anne Ramsay, Ezra Buzzington, Archibald Stanton, Kristina Klebe, , Ron E. Rains, Jeremy Holm

PLOT: Following the close of the Second World War, Colonel Hockstatter invites his friends over for a séance in the hopes of contacting his dead wife; the evening turns out to be far more illuminating than any of the attendants would have hoped for.

Still from Brooklyn 45 (2023)

COMMENTS: One could, theoretically, craft a languid melodrama in which old friends with unspeakable pasts gather one evening at Yuletide, weighed down by the tension of physical proximity and psychological burdens, until revelations crash through the civil veneer. But, thank goodness, Ted Geoghegan said, “Nuts to that.” Brooklyn 45 is a ghost story, thriller, chamber drama—and I emphasize the singularity of “chamber” here—and contemplation on the horrors of war. Brooklyn 45 makes its zippy pacing believable by taking full advantage of its catalyst: a séance.  A communication with the dead. The past. And there are few groups of five characters with as messy a shared history as Marla, a former interrogator; Bob, a Pentagon desk-jockey; Archie, a real Yankee doodle dandy; Paul, an all-brass veteran; and Clive, a broken widower.

Brooklyn 45 is a period piece that plays out like a period production. It would be at home as a TV special from the 1970s, with its faded-candy-colored sets, props, and costumes. The dialogue isn’t stilted, but echoes vintage radio. The action (so to speak) rests at the intersection of Clue! and Twelve Angry Men. It even features a delightfully subtle opening of a curtain, as we see three people arrive at their place of judgement, and then later closing on three of the players exiting the bloody drama. We are watching performances; we are listening to reminiscences; we are being told a story.

This story is, at least, five stories. And while a keen attention to period detail anchors the viewer (I particularly enjoyed the empty packet of “Westerfields”), that doesn’t mean we’ve been abandoned in a do-nothing room. Various punctuations act as triggers: a door is sealed; a light switch turned off; the radio is silenced; and, before expected, a gun is fired. Geoghegan’s self-assurance is apparent here, as he does not shy away from the tools a contemporary teller of tales has on-hand. Time is of the essence, and there is much to learn as we are locked in a room with war criminals, spies, torturers, and ghosts.

We’re also in this room with Bob, the milquetoast bureaucrat. His wife, Marla, moving so assuredly with cane in hand and firm tone on her lips, intrigues from the start. Archie alternately charms and disappoints (morally speaking) as a semi-closeted homosexual awaiting a war crimes trial. Major DiFranco hits all the right notes;  a highly moral military man with some serious regrets. And Colonel Hockstetter evinces confusion and pity. But Bob, whose mild-manner immediately telegraphs he is doomed to a radical shift, is introduced as, and remains, a cipher. Brooklyn 45 is about the past, and the weight it bears down on the present. With this cryptic character, Geoghegan demonstrates that, even though he plays many cards in this film, he’s still keeping a few close to his chest. I’m looking forward to seeing more of them.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

” I was very pleasantly surprised to find a film so very oddly tender and tragic at the heart of a story that also features ectoplasmic seances and Geoghegan’s trademark pension for schlocky gore…”—Hunter Heilman, Elements of Madness (contemporaneous)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: INU-OH (2021)

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DIRECTED BY: Masaaki Yuasa

FEATURING: Voices of Avu-chan,

PLOT: A blind itinerant priest crosses paths with “the King of Dogs”, a vivacious and deformed creature with a talent for dancing; through the priest’s music and the dancer’s storytelling, they attempt to lay the lost souls of the Heike clan to rest.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: I have come to the conclusion that perhaps everything in Masaaki Yuasa’s œuvre should get canonized, particularly as we now have the elbow room to do so. (Night is Short, Walk on Girl was shortchanged due to numeric constraints.) Inu-oh brings an unlikely legend to bombastic life, fusing rock opera, ballet, pyrotechnics, spirits, curses, gender self-discovery, physical transformation; it’s a 21st-century story about a 14th-century performance troupe unearthing the secrets of an 12th-century war.

COMMENTS: It tickles me that Inu-Oh is Masaaki going “commercial.” This stems to a great extent, of course, from the fact that here in the United States, film norms are sickeningly normal: we are reigning kings of the lowest white bread denominator (so much so that it was controversial when Disney took a belated and modest stand against overtly bigoted legislation in its home state). Among the many themes explored in Inu-Oh, gender identity is near the fore, along with the nuances of parental acceptance of someone’s true self.

But let me stop that vein of thought for the moment. This is film for, and about, entertainment. It’s about musical revolution, and the delineation of the esteemed Noh tradition, which harkens back to the middle of last millennium. Inu-Oh follows Noh’s traditional story arc, lacing it with modern rock sensibilities. (Well, maybe not “modern” rock, but certainly strains of Buddy Holly through Jimmie Hendrix and Freddie Mercury.) The titular character is a born performer, despite—or because of—the fact he is a born monstrosity: an unnamed son of a proto-Noh performer, a boy of ambiguous shape, deformed face, and a long, strong arm. He embraces his outcast status, at one point referring to himself as “the Horrible Gourd” in honor of his misshapen mask. But as the son of a dance troupe leader, it comes as no surprise that Inu-Oh was born to jump and jive.

Tomona, the biwa priest, has a comparatively subtler trajectory. The son of a salvage diver, he is blinded at a young age when he and his father retrieved cursed regalia. Masaaki’s visual treatment of this unseeing musician is a treat, as total darkness gains rough outline of form with each sound Tomona hears. Being unable to see, the priest-musician (a biwa is never without his four-string shamisen and bachi) does not fear Inu-Oh, and is so able to help the mutant through his journey. Tomona’s personal journey is also about transformation as he evolves into an increasingly feminine entity, adopting the name Tomaori by the film’s end. The morphing of their name allows them to grow into their true form, but plays havoc with the spirit world, and with their ancestors—as one’s given, or accepted, name is what allows Tomona/Tomaori’s father to maintain contact from the afterlife.

While the first half of Inu-Oh is “merely” steeped in music, song, and dance, the second half is one long string of hand-clapping, foot-stomping musical numbers showcasing the monumental talents Tomona and Inu-Oh share as natural performers. They give the forgotten fate of the Heike spirits full-throated treatment, with Inu-Oh performing transgressively non-traditional storytelling through song and dance, while Tomona positively shreds it on their shamisen. Contemporary shogunate politics play a role in the story as well, as does the concurrent, tragic tale of Inu-Oh’s fame-obsessed father. Masaaki Yuasa never settles for half measures, and every theme—friendship, salvation, transformation, politics, and music—ties together in an animated vortex of vivacity and sonic rollercoaster of rocking melody.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This anachronistic rock musical promises a return to the playful, literary surrealism of ‘The Tatami Galaxy’ (2010) and its 2017 spin-off, ‘Night Is Short, Walk On Girl,’ but comes up short… There are individual sequences that reach the psychedelic heights of Yuasa’s best work. But too often, this tale of the liberating power of art is about as mind-expanding as an early-afternoon set at Fuji Rock Festival.”–James Hadfield, Japan Times (contemporaneous)

Inu-Oh [Blu-ray + DVD]

Inu-Oh [Blu-ray + DVD]
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Apocryphally Weird

14*. THE BABY OF MÂCON (1993)

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DIRECTED BY: Peter Greenaway

FEATURING: Julia Ormond, Ralph Fiennes, Philip Stone, Jonathan Lacey, Frank Egerton

PLOT: A passion-play performed in 17th-century Florence tells the story of a child born to a geriatric woman. The old woman’s daughter claims to be the child’s virgin mother and makes brisk business selling the “miraculous” infant’s blessings, while the local bishop’s son suspiciously observes her. Meanwhile, the local nobles in the audience interact with the onstage proceedings.

BACKGROUND:

  • The film was partially inspired by an uproar surrounding an advertising campaign that featured a newborn baby still attached to its umbilical cord. Greenaway was perplexed by the public’s reaction, and set out to create an unflinching depiction of the actual evils of murder and rape.
  • The Catholic Church revoked permission for the film crew to shoot in the Cologne Cathedral after Greenaway’s previous film, The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, & her Lover, aired on German television two days before shooting was to begin.
  • The Baby of Mâcon premiered at Cannes, but was seldom seen after that. Although it booked some dates in Europe, no North American distributor would agree to take on the film due to its subject matter. To this day it has still not been released on physical media in Region 1/A, although it finally became available for streaming in the 2020s.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: It is a perennial challenge to choose one image from a Greenaway picture; he regards film as a visual medium, not a tool to adapt literature. The shot of the bored young aristocrat, Cosimo de Medici, knocking over the two-hundred-and-eighth pin, signifying the end to the erstwhile virgin’s gang-rape, best merges Greenaway’s sense of mise-en-scène, his disgust for authority, and his undercurrent of odd humor.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Body secretion auction; death by gang-rape

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Fusing the most ornate costumes this side of the Baroque era with organized religion at its worst, The Baby of Mâcon is a lushly beautiful, sickening indictment of a fistful of humanity’s evils. Stylized stage performances integrate increasingly seamlessly with the side-chatter of (comparatively) modern viewers’ commentary who concurrently desire to take part in the make-believe. Greenaway moves his actors and their audience around each other with an expertise matched only by the growing moral horror developing onscreen.


Short clip from The Baby of Mâcon

COMMENTS: As the audience for The Baby of Mâcon, we bear witness to its iniquities. As witnesses, we bear responsibility: responsibility for the fraudulence of the baby’s aunt when she alleges she’s Continue reading 14*. THE BABY OF MÂCON (1993) →

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: YUMEJI (1991)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Tomoko Mariya, , Masumi Miyazaki, Reona Hirota

PLOT: A bohemian poet and painter travels to Kanagawa to wait for his ailing girlfriend, only to fall for an alluring widow while he’s there.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Seijun Suzuki, a defiantly unconventional filmmaker with a career’s worth of bizarre films already under his belt, threw himself into Yumeji like he was making his magnum opus of weirdness. There’s blood painted on to the screen, life coming alive as art, and opaque references to slaughterhouses and blood—the last of which would seem to have little to do with the film’s subject. For an artfully bizarre take on an era filled with strange contradictions and perversions, who better than Seijun Suzuki to take you there?

COMMENTS: Takehisa Yumeji was a real-life painter, whose individualist lifestyle and era-defining paintings made him an icon of Japan’s Taisho era (1914-26). The name Yumeji contains the Japanese word for “dream,” so it’s fitting that Yumeji begins with a dream sequence in tribute to its namesake. But if you were expecting Seijun Suzuki to make a conventional biopic, think again. Suzuki used the names of some of the real women in Yumeji’s life, including Hikono (Masumi Miyazaki) and Oyo (Reona Hirota), who seem to have been portrayed in keeping with their real-life counterparts. Apart from these details, Suzuki paid more attention to Yumeji’s artistic side, imagining his romantic escapades and artistic concepts manifested as life.

As in Kagero-za, Suzuki centers the film on an adulterous love triangle, with a mysteriously powerful husband constantly plotting the protagonist’s murder, even though he never gets around to actually carrying it out. However, not one to repeat himself, Suzuki upped the ante here by adding a second adulterous love triangle, wherein the cuckolded husband is said to have killed his rival by throwing him down the drainage pipe at the local slaughterhouse. The killer then hides out in the mountains, evading a relentless police search and creeping around with a scythe in a none too subtle evocation of the Grim Reaper. 

Always one to dabble in surrealism, Suzuki gave in to his urges completely in Yumeji, throwing in enough hallucinatory imagery to eclipse any other film in his storied career. Paintings appear on wooden posts when tapped, a woman is cooked in a huge soup kettle by a group of singing women, and a blond madman proposes a duel while standing next to a hedge made of bloody animal carcasses, later emerging from a lake covered in blood himself. Yumeji (Kenji Sawada) also suffers from a clash of personalities which eventually lead to an identity crisis reminiscent of The Blood of a Poet: he is confronted by multiple versions of himself, all of whom accuse him of being a fraud. His morbid paranoia, his womanizing lust, his poetic thought process—all come together to inform the mood of the film and create something which feels much more like a waking dream than a biographical story.

The two previous films in Suzuki’s Taisho Trilogy (Zigeunerweisen and Kagero-za) each have their fair share of beautiful imagery, but Yumeji is overflowing with countless compositions that are framed to mimic Japanese paintings of the past. At numerous points throughout, paint is even overlaid onto the frame, including a notable scene in which a bright yellow boat nearly capsizes in a torrent of cow’s blood that is dabbed in red blobs along the bottom of the frame. Yumeji is also more erotically-charged than its predecessors, with an earthy sense of sexuality and framings that look like they could have been pin-ups from1920s Tokyo, together with levels of nudity and lewd behavior that contradict the popular image of historical films as stuffy and mannered visions of the past.

It’s fitting that as Seijun Suzuki’s career progressed, his work became more artistically-focused and surreal. His early films, with their painterly attention to color and visual design, bear the marks of an unconventional artist who just happened to be tasked with making B-movies about thugs and prostitutes. In the Taisho Trilogy, Suzuki finally had free reign to make movies that eschewed storytelling and audience expectations in favor of surreal imagery, irreverent reflections on Japanese culture and history, and fractured narratives that often featured elements of the supernatural. Curiously, Yumeji is the least supernatural of the three films, yet the weirdest overall. Like the pornographic kimono that features in its nightmarish finale, it’s a period piece that represents the culture of its era while also adding surrealism, eroticism and mystery into its historical framework. Thanks to Arrow Films, these three little known films by one of the great Japanese surrealist masters are now ripe to be rediscovered in all of their bizarre, experimental glory.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“By the time the film was completed, the gonzo filmmaker had so thoroughly dispensed with narrative sanity and even basic filmic grammar that whether or not the subtitles are on becomes irrelevant.” – Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine