All posts by Michael Diamades

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: OM DAR-B-DAR (1988)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Kamal Swaroop

FEATURING: Anita Kanwar, Gopi Desai, Lalit Tiwari

PLOT: A young boy named Om comes of age amidst diamond breeding frogs, melodramatic love affairs, and other absurdities.

Still from Om Dar-B-Dar (1988)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Almost completely incomprehensible at first, like a Hindi “Finnegan’s Wake,” Om Dar-B-Dar requires at least a second viewing to fully appreciate its eccentricities and chaotic nature.

COMMENTS:  At first, the narrative seems straightforward, but don’t be fooled, this is as surreal as a movie can get. We follow a family, father Babuji and his two children, a thirty-year-old woman named Gayatri and a young boy with the unique name Om. After a short voiceover introduction giving us a bit of a socio-political background, Om seems to emerge as the tale’s main character. However, something is off.

Dialogues between Om and his family start casually but stray immediately into the absurd. A love affair begins between his sister and a young man, full of extravagant musical numbers in the familiar Bollywood style, albeit with nonsensical lyrics. Early on, the movie shows a willingness to break with stylistic conventions and to parody and deconstruct long-established genres through absurdism. Gayatri’s love affair subverts the language of erotic melodramas, for instance, while the main narrative of Om’s life plays like an epic saga on steroids.

And then it really gets weird! Characters rant about space travels or express a longing for female emancipation, while embarking on a variety of bizarre schemes involving diamond breeding frogs, or imitating God for profit. Humorous sketches pseudo-poetic and pseudo-philosophical ramblings abound, all while delivering caustic commentaries on the commercialization of spirituality.

Om’s life flash-forwards before our eyes through rapid editing full of jump cuts. Occasional gaps in time or space create a sense of disorientation and the fragmented narrative contributes a dreamy quality. Hypnotic sound effects like voice echoes, or psychedelic futuristic tunes, are applied. There’s even a complete, albeit momentary, disruption of the audio at one point.

Om Dar- B -Dar is an enigmatic puzzle thanks to the unconventional way it combines the everyday with surrealism. It will appeal mostly to those that have some familiarity with Hindu tradition and history, though, as many mythological and cultural references can be found among the absurdity. The rest of us will scratch our heads and open an online encyclopedia.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a hodge-podge of non-sequitur dialog and scenes, trippy montages, political symbolism, genre-splicing, nonlinear storytelling, magical realism, social satire, society seen through pop-commercialism, art-house mysticism, and general confusion.”–Zev Toledano, Worlwide Celluloid Massacre

(This movie was nominated for review by debasish dey, who suggested it with the following background: “…a 1988 Indian Postmodernist film directed by Kamal Swaroop. The film, about the adventures of a school boy named Om along with his family, employs nonlinear narrative and an absurdist storyline to satir[ize] mythology, arts, politics and even philosophy. The movie was described by its director as a story of Lord Brahma, and it sprouted from the idea that in Hinduism, although Lord Brahma was considered the father of the entire universe, strangely no one ever worshiped him. The director also said that the film’s script was written based solely on dreams and images that he had and claimed he ‘cannot think in words.’ ” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: VASE DE NOCES (1974)

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AKA Wedding Trough; The Pig F*cking Movie

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Beware

DIRECTED BY:Thierry Zéno

FEATURING: Dominique Garny

PLOT: A young farmer embraces his animalistic side as he romances a sow.

Still from Vase de Noces (1974)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Vase de Noces is an under-appreciated classic of surrealist cinema. Not only it is full of extremities but it remains enigmatic, inviting us to ponder on  possible interpretations.

COMMENTS: The opening shot, somewhere in between the lyrical and the grotesque, the poetic and the nonsensical, sets the tone accordingly. Our protagonist attempts to dress two pigeons with doll heads, in the first of a series of segments where animals fall prey to his whims. The monstrosity he strives to create recalls a pair of malformed angels, and his perverted, personal view of the angelic. And this layered and disturbing—if purely symbolic—act is just the beginning of our tale.

The film is simple from a narrative standpoint. We follow our protagonist, a young peasant, in a series of extreme and illogical acts. He seems at times a pure, innocent, childlike soul, flying his kite without a care in the world and praying before lunch like a proper Christian. He is also capable of the grossest barbarities, like the infamous act of bestiality mentioned whenever this movie is discussed.

What exactly his nature? Is he a real yet disturbed person, a simpleton, and  the film a realistic character study? Or is he purely symbolic, an allegorical personification of the wildest impulses of the human psyche: the id, the beast lurking inside each and every one of us? Probably the latter. Our protagonist is a being of pure emotion, full of contradicting desires, yet always eager to embrace his bestial side.

He seems to find some sort of happiness through bestiality—at first. The female pig gets pregnant and gives birth to three beautiful piglets. It’s almost wholesome. Yet the young man is still unable to find comfort. Unable to help himself, he wreaks havoc through a series of repugnant acts, culminating in a tragic finale. Fully embracing your wild impulses can only bring destruction and self-annihilation, our tale seems to say.

Vase De Noces was Zéno’s feature debut, his second movie after a short documentary portraying schizophrenic artist Georges Moinet. His main interests here are not dissimilar. Zéno once again studies humanity apart from its logical “civilized” aspects, depicting people as amalgamations of impulses, emotions, depravity, and nothing more.

That’s why words—a product of reason—are completely absent from our tale. Instead, we have a rich soundscape full of playful tunes imitating animals’ voices or natural sounds, with classical melodies adding a hint of lyricism. There are also piercing and alarming noises at the most intense moments. The soundscape perfectly aligns with the film’s hypnotic black and white photography.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…this Belgian-lensed art-dirge is one of the most foul and pretentious pics ever made. It’s so damned bizarre that simply detailing the plot can’t even come close to conveying the unique combination of utter disgust and absolute boredom you register while viewing it.” – Steven Puchalski, Shock Cinema

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: CAN DIALECTICS BREAK BRICKS? (1973)

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La dialectique peut-elle casser des briques?

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: René Viénet

FEATURING: Hung- Liu Chan, Ingrid Yin-Yin Hu, Jason Piao Pai

PLOT: Alienated proletarians, trained in kung fu, fight against their bureaucratic oppressors.

Poster for "Can Dialectics Break Bricks?" (1973)

COMMENTS: What if a typical kung fu flick was transformed through voiceover into a subversive and radical wanna-be manifesto? Such an anarchic romp could only come from France. But let’s take things from the beginning.

Some definitions should be clarified. Dialectics is a product of the Situationist movement, a group of anti-capitalist artists and thinkers, known cinematically mostly through Guy Debord’s documentaries. Like a lot of spoofs—What’s Up Tiger Lily? (1966) and In Search of the Ultra-Sex (2016) come to mind—this movie takes preexisting material and subverts its meaning through clever use of voiceovers.  The Situationists call the exact technique used here “détournement”, and it could be better defined as a reappropriation in a new and ideologically subversive setting. It is a recontextualization of images so that new meanings, radically different than previous, are produced: a practice commonly used in  postmodernist art of the later half of the twentieth century until our own time.

With the theoretical background of this movie specified, what is it really about? The plot revolves around a commune of proletarian martial artists defending themselves against alienation and their evil overlords. These overlords are not simply your typical evil Western capitalists, but we can trace references to the Soviet Union’s nomenklatura as well. They in fact represent of every possible state, even of those that hypocritically claim to defend the rights of the proletariat.

A main character emerges from the crowd, a typical hero who becomes the focus of the narrative, a man who sets his noble ideals against the bad guys. What is atypical of the genre , though, is that while the choreography of fighting plays out, our characters indulge in deep conversations about class struggle, the abolition of masters, and Wilhem Reich‘s writing, among other subjects. Through voice-over an “essential”  bibliography is mentioned, too, which one of the most unexpected and weirdest elements of the movie.

Don’t worry, though. This is not a heavy movie. Sexual jokes and self-aware irony prove its unwillingness to take itself too seriously. In fact, Dialectics isn’t much more than a funny gimmick. It surely has an appeal for fans of cult cinema, but it is not essential viewing for anyone interested in the Situationist movement. On the other hand, if you enjoy this kind of absurd humor—and the eccentric idea of a martial arts show about the class struggle—and would like to view something similar, albeit in a contemporary setting, try to find the French TV show “Machine” (2024) created by Thomas Bidegain and Fred Grivois.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“An obnoxious and hilarious stunt from 1973…”–Eve Tushnet, Patheos (streaming)

(This movie was suggested for review by Comrade Faustroll, who said “The filmmakers strike the right balance of meaning what they’re saying enough to be really weird, but joking enough to keep it interesting.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: PARVULOS (2024)

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Párvulos: Hijos del Apocalipsis; AKA Párvulos: Children of the Apocalypse

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Parvulos is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Isaac Ezban

FEATURING: Carla Adell, Mateo Ortega Carsillas, Leonardo Cervantes

PLOT: Three brothers struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world while caring for two zombies caged in their basement.

Still from Parvulos (2024)

COMMENTS: A tale about family in times of extreme change. Isaac Izban, the Mexican auteur of films like the mind-bending and space-bending Incident (2014) or the deeply-layered Similars (2015), known for its political undertones, returns with a slightly more conventional, yet still eccentric combination of family drama and zombie apocalypse. But let’s take things from the start.

We follow three brothers—two kids and their older teen brother—struggling to survive in a world where the rules have changed dramatically. Everything seems typical to post-apocalypse fans, at first. A pandemic has decimated the population, while a not-fully-tested vaccine had serious side effects, creating hordes of zombies. Parallels with the recent Covid pandemic haunt the story, but there is no explicit analogy, just a new take on common tropes of the genre.

The twist brings something new to the table. In their basement the boys are hiding two zombies, scavenging and collecting food for them. Who could they be? When the youngest brother Benjamin discovers they are his parents, the boys begin an effort to tame the dead and remind them who they are.

The film could develop as a parable on toxic family dynamics, with the parents being wild zombies, but it doesn’t want to go there. It remains, even at its grossest moments, a wholesome combination of family drama and post-apocalyptic themes, targeted at a teen audience of the main protagonist’s age. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but it’s not as deeply layered or rich in allegory as Ezban’s earlier works.

Parvulos is formally inventive. The faded color palette, resembling black-and-white photography, gives an eerie and melancholic tone. Wide shots along with distorted audio underline some of the tensest moments. There soundtrack is rich: composers Edy Lan and Camilla Uboldi, close collaborators of director, creates a wide range of tones, from ominous orchestral music to uplifting beats with lyrics in English.

The story continues through a series of encounters of the boys with other survivors. A picture of the new state of the world gradually emerges, with deadly cults roaming around (another common trope of apocalyptic fiction). But the tale remains fresh by keeping the family dynamic between the kids and their zombie parents at its heart. It is an intriguing premise, and there are even some WTF moments here, as when the zombies have sex or, chained to their seats, attend a festive Christmas dinner.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an ambitious, eccentric, ultimately memorable tale of juvenile brothers’ survival after civilization’s death by plague.”–Dennis Harvey, Variety (festival screening) 

Essays

GREEK WEIRD CINEMA BEFORE THE “WEIRD WAVE”

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Greek directors were weird long before made his feature debut with Kinetta (2006) and soon after found great success with Dogtooth (2009). From the late ’60s and 70s, while Greek commercial cinema was in decline, new directors emerged with singular voices and a modernist approach, many of them inspired by the teachings and international appeal of the Nouvelle Vague. Among these unique visions, there were many controversial ones, and even some really weird ones. This article is a short introduction to the weirdest aspects of Greek cinema of the 20th century, through five notable examples that traverse a wide range of styles and genres, each weird in its own unique way.

Let’s leave films that are just subversive and creative aside, and focus on movies with a WTF-level of weirdness. Subversiveness in Greek cinema starts about 1967 with works like Nikos Papatakis’ The Shepherds of Calamity, a drama famous for its social critique through the controversial portrayal of a slightly kinky love affair between a poor peasant and a girl from a wealthy family. It was a favorite of Lanthimos. In the following decade, many movies used an eccentric style to portray the rock and roll spirit, or to tackle subjects regarding Greek counterculture, like ‘ The Wretches Are Still Singing (1979), or ‘ entire filmography. As both these directors have been mentioned previously on this site, I won’t expand on them. There are many more and bizarre hidden gems out there, waiting to be discovered!

Still from Idlers of the Fertile Land (1978)

Let’s start with Idlers of the Fertile Land (1978) by Nikos Panayotopoulos, a director clearly inspired by the style of . This film more closely resembles the contemporary Greek Weird Wave in the way it builds an elliptical allegory of the absurd. We follow a wealthy family, a father and his three sons, as they isolate themselves in a mansion along with a maid played by sensual Olga Karlatos. They decide to pass the rest of their lives by sleeping and by doing literally nothing else, becoming increasingly idle. The central concept of rich guys isolating and destroying themselves by indulging in their vices is of course similar to ‘s La Grande Bouffe (1973); it’s a caustic morality tale parodying laziness in exactly in the same way Bouffe parodies gluttony.

Still from Mania (1985)

Our next selection is Mania (1985), an anarchic and oneiric parable commenting on our need to escape from “civilized” society, even if just for a bit. Haunting shots follow a young woman named Zoe, a program analyst for a big company, who finds herself in a series of escapades and dreamy encounters while strolling at a park. Her Bacchanalian odyssey and transformation have been compared with “Alice in Wonderland.” Suntan director Argyris Papadimitropoulos claims this movie as a favorite. As Zoe navigates through her surreal experiences, she grapples with the constraints of her daily life, leading to moments of profound introspection and liberation. This film’s rich visual style and evocative storytelling invite viewers to question the boundaries between reality and fantasy, making it a memorable exploration of the human psyche.

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