Tag Archives: 2012

Canonically Weird (The List)

144. HOLY MOTORS (2012)

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“Weird… weird.. weird! He’s so weird!”–delighted fashion photographer at his first glimpse of Merde

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , , Kylie Minogue, ,

PLOT: A man wakes up and walks through a secret panel in his bedroom wall that leads him into a cinema. Next we meet “Mr. Oscar,”who drives around Paris in a limousine taking on nine “assignments” which require him to become an accordion player, a hitman, and fashion model-abducting leprechaun, among other personae. After Mr. Oscar’s night is over, his chauffeur drives the limo back to a huge car lot labeled “Holy Motors,” where hundreds of similar vehicles are stored.

Still from Holy Motors (2012)

BACKGROUND:

  • Holy Motors was Leos Carax’ first feature film since 1999’s Pola X.
  • Leos Carax is a pseudonym for Alexandre Oscar Dupont. In most of Carax’ other movies, Denis Lavant plays a lead character named “Alex.” Here he plays a character named “Mr. Oscar” (a name which is itself hidden inside the pseudonym leOS CARax).
  • The flower-eating leprechaun character, “Merde,” first appeared in Carax’ segment in the omnibus movie Tokyo! (2008).
  • The role of Mr. Oscar was specifically written for Lavant.
  • Carax originally wanted to credit Michel Piccoli (who is difficult to recognize under his makeup) under a pseudonym, but word of the actor’s involvement in the project was leaked.
  • Carax says he does not like to shoot on digital film, but did so because he found it made fundraising easier.
  • Holy Motors swept the Weirdest Actor (Denis Lavant), Weirdest Scene (the accordion intermission), and Weirdest Movie categories in our 2012 Weirdcademy Awards contest.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: The character of Merde, the gimpy, gibbering, flower-eating subterranean leprechaun-creature, who was so unforgettable Carax recycled him from his segment in the triptych Tokyo!. For a single snapshot that captures Merde’s hard-to-define charm, we select the moment when he bites off a woman’s finger, then licks supermodel Eva Mendes, leaving a trail of blood on her armpit. Ever the professional, she never breaks her expression of sultry indifference.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Holy Motors is overwrought, pretentious, obscure, scatterbrained, confusing, and self-indulgent—all qualities that, when matched with talent, typically make for a great work of weird art. Prepare to be perplexed. You won’t, however, be bored.


Original trailer for Holy Motors

COMMENTS: Seen as a showcase for the chameleonic talents of Denis Lavant, Holy Motors is an unqualified masterpiece. Lavant officially plays Continue reading 144. HOLY MOTORS (2012) →

366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: SAVAGE WITCHES (2012)

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DIRECTED BY: Daniel Fawcett, Clara Pais

FEATURING: Christina Wood, Victoria Smith

Still from Savage Witches (2012)

PLOT: Two teenage girls, Gretchen and Margarita (Wood & Smith), want nothing more than to play games, dress themselves up and have all kinds of adventures, but they constantly find themselves in conflict with the world around them. So they set out to transform it and break free…

COMMENTS:  With a title like that and two teenage girls in the main roles, you might be expecting another grindhouse gem to assert itself onto the film scene. Not in this universe, however—in fact, Savage Witches is best served by throwing out all expectations and just going with the flow of images and sounds in this “motion picture exploration,” as it bills itself.  Savage Witches hearkens back to earlier days of experimental film—the makers cite the works of the Kuchar brothers and  as influences, and the film itself is a direct homage to the Czech film classic Daisies by , which also is about the adventures of two young women who decide to break out of their roles and have adventures by ‘being bad.’

Where Daisies was seen as an overt attack on society by the ‘bad’ behavior of its lead characters, Savage Witches is far less political, but it is still an aesthetic attack on the audience’s expectations of film as entertainment. There are no character arcs and not much in terms of action driving the plot forward. In fact, there’s only the barest hint of any sort of plot… instead, the action is mainly abstract, with the film changing from live action, to photo collage, to storyboards, to Super-8 as Gretchen & Margarita explore their freedom; although the real liberty is the freedom of cinema from the strictures that we commonly bring to it.

04_burning_0791_smallThe film begins with a myriad of colors across the screen, and a voice inviting the audience to join in on an exploration—a dream—through which the voice informs the audience, “we can go anywhere, see anything”. The colors coalesce into two faces, Gretchen and Margarita, and from here on they function as guides/proxies for the audience, as they move forward into adventure: an adventure of form and format, rather than any sort of plot or story that has to be followed in the service of ‘business’ or whatever. That is the only ‘savagery’ exhibited by these pair of “savage witches”: the refusal to conform to the typical structure of what we expect when we sit down to watch a film. It is perhaps for this reason that the “savage witches” are burned at the end (besides the fact it provides an exciting ending), and our last glimpse of them is of them resting in state, but even then, they continue to flout our expectations… in contrast to the heroines of Daisies, who are definitely punished at the end for their bad behavior. Of course the attack that the protagonists of the Czech film lead against their society is far more pointed and nastier than Savage Witches. Also, the girls of Witches are not as sexualized as the women in Daisies, who use their erotic appeal as a battle tactic.

For a 70 minute experimental feature film, Savage Witches is highly entertaining, which may come as a surprise to audiences in the U.S., whose exposure to experimental film is usually in short form and viewed as something to be endured, like a visit to the dentist. It doesn’t really qualify as weird, except perhaps to someone who has never viewed any sort of film that didn’t have a linear narrative, but that probably qualifies it as a good gateway for people to get into experimental films – its ‘weird’ factor isn’t quite high enough to alienate the General Viewer, but it’s just strange enough to be engaging to fans of weird film.  It’s also helped by the music of Fiona Bevan and sound design of Simon Keep, and the engaging performances of Christina Wood and Victoria Smith as the lead characters.

Savage Witches should continue to screen in film festivals in 2013, and DVDs should be available directly from the filmmakers from their website within a month or so. UPDATE 7/5/2013: Limited edition DVD’s now available through this link.

Savage Witches Facebook

DISCLAIMER: A copy of this film was provided by the production company for review.

Capsules

CAPSULE: FREE RADICALS: A HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM (2012)

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DIRECTED BY: Pip Chodorov

FEATURING: Stan Brakhage, Hans Richter, Ken Jacobs, Jonas Mekas, Peter Kubelka, Robert Breer, Stan Vanderbeek

PLOT: A survey of 90 years of abstract experimental film, from its Dadaist origins to its NYC heyday, with rare interviews and plentiful examples, including a few full-length shorts.

Still from Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film (2012)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Some of the filmmakers profiled here might have a shot at getting a flick or two onto the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies; this relatively un-weird overview of their lives and works, however, has no chance.

COMMENTS: Covering eighty years of film experiments in eighty minutes of film is a daunting task. Free Radicals can’t provide more than a sample platter of this enormous and ill-defined field, but the spread brings us some exotic flavors and tasty bits worth chewing on. The historical appetizer is Hans Richter’s 1921 “Rhythmus” series, movies which are nothing more than drawings of white rectangles on a black field that advance and recede; they aren’t startling in themselves, but they draw attention to the nature of film as rhythm, the articulation of time through manipulation of light. Later courses include the entire 4-minute hand-scratched Len Lye film that gives the doc its name, “Recreation,” Robert Breer’s “completely nonsensical” experiment in projecting 24-objects-per-second, and Stan Vanderbeek’s comic animated collages (a big influence on ). Lye’s 1936 color film “Rainbow Dance” is like visual candy; nutrition comes from the interviewees, who muse about art, art history, and the roles of World War I and Fascism in shaping the avant-garde. The final interviews of Richter and Stan Brakhage (who describes his life’s work as trying to reproduce the images that flash through his hypnagogic vision as he falls asleep) are rare treats for refined palettes. Although it seems like a low blow to criticize a heartfelt documentary praising artists who sweat blood to create works that almost no one ever sees, Free Radicals does have its issues. It’s a personal view of the subject rather than an objective overview. The doc begins with footage of the Chodorovs’ home movies: Super 8 footage of a normal looking kid climbing a tree and hugging his mom, except that the celluloid is folded and discolored in random patterns (a result, we are told, of a happy accident—the dog peed on the film). That personal history informs the rest of Free Radicals, and Chodorov’s preferences prevail: at times, he seems to be mainly interviewing his buddies (or his dad’s buddies), sometimes literally over a beer. This subjective approach is honest and helps convey the director’s passion for experimental films, but it also inevitably distorts the field. Chodorov favors the abstract, visual arts, scratch-on-the-film school of experimental filmmaking, and glosses over narrative or conceptual experiments.   is glimpsed floating through Meshes of the Afternoon for about a minute, but there’s no real discussion of her importance; the uninitiated might leave Free Radicals thinking a relative unknown like Peter Kubelka was just as influential. Major figures like Jack Smith and  are merely name checked, while other icons are snubbed entirely (did sleep with Pip’s girlfriend or something?) To get the most out of it, go into Free Radicals as if you were watching Pip Chodorov screen some of his favorite films from his personal collection, not as a lecture designed to give you a working knowledge of the history of experimental film. If you have the slightest hunger for new sights, you should find something satisfying in this potluck picnic of images.

Pip Chodorov has been making films since he was a child, encouraged by his father, frequent Free Radicals interviewee Stephan Chodorov. Besides making films himself, Stephan worked extensively in television and hosted a series on experimental film. Pip founded a video label to showcase experimental films and has organized film festivals at art galleries, including at the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“You may wonder, as I did, why there are no subtitles for French filmmaker Maurice Lemaître, but it’s interesting just letting the French wash over you, wondering what it means — an experience not unlike that of watching an experimental film.”–Moira Macdonald, The Seattle Times (contemporaneous)

 

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE LORDS OF SALEM (2012)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Bruce Davison, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Dee Wallace, ,

PLOT: An overnight DJ is drawn into a web of witchcraft when she plays a mysterious record.

Still from The Lords of Salem (2012)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s weird, to be sure, but it’s not weird enough to make us forgive all of the script’s missteps. I saw Salem in a theater with a quartet of teenagers as the only other patrons in the audience. They were far more thrilled by the Iron Man 3 trailer, which made the girls and boys alike squeal with delight. They were less impressed by this movie: one of them complained afterwards that it wasn’t even a “horror movie” (what kind of movie she thought it was, if not horror, I didn’t overhear). Yet, they stayed through the entire thing. If you can’t get teenagers who think Iron Man 3 looks awesome to walk out on your movie, then I’m afraid you haven’t made it weird enough to make the List.

COMMENTS: The Lords of Salem wants to be a rock and roll Rosemary’s Baby, but most of the time it’s just a bunch of dream sequences floating around in space, looking for a movie to latch on to. Of course, 366 Weird Movies doesn’t object to the use of dream sequences—hell, make your entire movie one long dream sequence and we’ll eat it up—but we do object to the clumsy, clichéd fashion in which they are handled here. If you’ve seen a horror movie before, you know the kind we’re talking about: everything seems normal and then suddenly the protagonist sees some dreadful apparition, bony fingers reach towards her neck, and then—poof!—she wakes up, it was all a dream. Do it once, and you’re just relying on a genre convention. Do it twice, and the audience may start to get annoyed. But play this trick three times or more, as Salem does, and you’ve broken a bond of trust between viewer and director. But let’s back up for a moment. These recurring hallucinations take up most of the pictures second act. The first act sets up the essential story: DJ Heidi lives alone with a dog in a Salem, Massachusetts apartment. Played by Sheri Moon Zombie, Heidi is unglamorous: skinny like a junkie, with bad tattoos, blond dreadlocks and hipster glasses. (Despite what you may have heard, her acting is not bad; the character is just underdeveloped. It was created in makeup and wardrobe, not in the script). Heidi interviews an expert on the Salem witch trials (for some reason, the late night classic rock show she co-hosts invites only Satanism-related guests) who provides historical background on local witchcraft cults. Then she receives a mysterious LP record, plays it on the air, and we drift into that seemingly never-ending series of dreams inside dreams which serve no plot purpose, but only showcase the director’s ability to construct a fake scare scene. Although it turns out all those second-act hallucinations (including a nasty bit involving a priest) were just padding, the story starts to improve in the third act, when three villainous witches start actively corrupting events. As the end draws near, the hallucination sequences become both more intense and more meaningful. Directed by the delightfully nasty and foul-mouthed hag trio, they take on a purposeful ritualistic character that makes it clear (well, somewhat clear) what’s going on with Heidi. The scenes turn operatic as Heidi’s efficiency apartment transforms into a grand ballroom. We meet a wonderfully creepy fetus-looking demon with a bifurcated umbilical cord who’s up to no good. And Rob Zombie goes all-out crazy in the final moments, creating a grand surrealistic horror montage that’s reminiscent of the kind of psychedelic apocalypses was putting up on big screens in the 1980s. The bottom line is I can’t recommend, or recommend avoiding, watching Lords of Salem. If you go you’ll see a fairly standard horror movie setup, a muddled middle, and an ambitious ending; you’ll see demons of every shape and size (including one looks like Chewbacca), corpses and rats and goats, psychedelic effects, blasphemous Satanic sex rituals, nude hags, cameos by minor genre icons like Dee Wallace and Patricia Quinn (the credits say  and  are in there somewhere too, though I didn’t spot them), and Sheri Moon’s skinny butt. If that kind of hodgepodge sounds it worth it to you, and you don’t need a coherent story or artistic vision to tie it all together, than by all means have at it.

Rob Zombie is a difficult director to get a handle on. On the one hand, he is almost certainly the most talented director to ever bear the name “Zombie.” On the other hand, each of his movies contain moments of visionary inspiration marred by deep flaws and missteps. He displays the aesthetic sensibilities of an Iron Maiden album cover combined with an overweening sense of self-importance (his rambling, half-mad director’s statement claims that “only the goat knows free will” and warns against some “dangerous old conceptual fiction so near to the silver screen”). He’s a true American weirdo for our sick times.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…the film eventually abandons psychological subtlety for hallucinatory garishness, which is too bad.”–Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times (contemporaneous)