Tag Archives: 2022

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE DIABETIC (2022)

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DIRECTED BY: Mitchell Stafiej

FEATURING: James Watts, Travis Cannon

PLOT: A filmmaker visits his hometown and is annoyed to find that Matt is the only friend from his glory days who can spend time with him.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: The interspersal of fuzzy-collage subconscious interludes, culminating in a long-form hazy nightmare kicking off the third act, makes this fast-talking mumblecore a very strange character study of a breaking man attempting to become wholly broken.

COMMENTS: “Disorientingly intimate” is the best way to describe the viewing experience for this bleakly hilarious buddy comedy. From the moment we meet our protagonist, Alek, his environment’s dimensions are obscured, with only occasional glimpses of his milieu to anchor our perception. The camera is in his face—or his associates’ faces—for most of the film, and the disassociative effect of all these floating heads, often partially out of frame, reflects Alek’s disorganized approach to his friends and himself. We ride along with Alek as he travels through drink, drugs, and dialogue, following the mad whims of the swarm of bees that seem to make up his consciousness.

The story is straightforward enough, and the characters do a fine job filling their archetypal slots. Alek (James Watts, channeling by way of Jack Black) is arrogant, charismatic, fast-talking, despairing, and terrified. His buddy Matt (Travis Cannon, a reassuringly grounded presence) is affable, and never got the memo that Alek never really considered him a friend back in high school. There is an ex-lover, some incidental parents, and a much put-upon liquor store salesman (who at one point declares, “This is getting too weird; I’m calling the cops”).

There were moments when The Diabetic reminded me of ‘ Je T’aime, Je T’aime: the recurring water themes, and most obviously the opening line about the impossibility of time travel, attempted anyway. And there were moments that reminded me of Begotten—at least visually. I don’t know another film to compare to to describe the blurry-blottedness of our visits to (or intrusions from?) Alek’s mind. It (his mind, that is) rears its head every once in a while over the course of the evening, taking center stage for long minutes when Alek, in his quest for annihilation, just about succeeds in his ambitions.

Director Mitchell Stafiej would have done just fine merely whipping out a better-than-average talk-comedy in the vein of Clerks and other ’90s indie features. But he doesn’t. The hyper-documentary style, augmented by Super-8-into-16mm cinematography, lends the film an unnerving urgency, rendered claustrophobic throughout by the throwback 4:3 aspect ratio. The diegetic sound is slopping, sloshy, growing more and more so as Alek stumbles further into his debauched abyss of hating the world and hating himself. Stafiej pulls off the impressive stunt of fusing hyper-reality and nightmare in a comi-tragedy, making The Diabetic one type of film you definitely want to give a shot.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a cry out into the urban abyss. A feverish ambling through past lives best left past… you are more likely to be hooked on the disorienting aesthetic than compelled by the story being unraveled.”–Alex Brannan, CineFiles Movie Reviews (festival screening)

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CAPSULE: HATCHING (2022)

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DIRECTED BY: Hanna Bergholm

FEATURING: Siiri Solalinna, Sophia Heikkilä

PLOT: Tinja’s focus on her upcoming gymnastic competition is compromised after a giant egg she has been hiding from her family cracks open to reveal a monstrous bird.

COMMENTS: Tinja is on the cusp of a nervous breakdown, her brother is an under-diagnosed brat of a boy, the father is the embodiment of self-destructive acquiescence, and mother has a blog about their “lovely everyday life.” Forget the giant egg for a moment and contemplate that the real horror going on in Hatching is the diminution of mental stability behind the scenes of a stereotypically “happy” Finnish family. Gauzy cinematography draws the viewer into a a fragile picture of perfection that, within the opening minutes, is shattered by the visit of an errant crow—literally, as it crashes into the precarious Living Room objets, and metaphorically, when the matriarch, determined to let nothing compromise her vision of domestic perfection, coldly snaps its neck.

With a metaphor this obvious, it’s a good thing that Hatching delivers on all the peripherals. Siiri Solalinna’s performance is right on the mark as twelve-year-old Tinja, a girl reckoning with burgeoning womanhood, a domineering mother, a speedily growing egg, and then a strange and horrific creature she adopts as her own child. This massive and grossly misproportioned bird beast has an appearance, as they say, that only a mother could love. Tinja looks past its skeletal form, its unsavory goo, irregularly-sized arms, and giant-eyed, scraggle-toothed face and sees something to love, providing it with an affection that her own mother is all too sparing with.

As with any horror film, things go from bad to worse, with Tinja powering through her trials at school, her suffocation at home, and the discovery of her mother’s infidelity with Tero, a classically handsome, manly counterpoint to her own “soft” father. In this oppressive world, it is these two father figures (Tero and actual father) who provide the only scintillas of genuine support and approval that Tinja seeks. Her mother’s burning impulse for control and projected flawlessness dominates. By the film’s third act, when Tinja is clearly on the brink of mental collapse, the most comfort her mother can muster is the reassurance, “You know the best way to get rid of stress? Winning the competition.” Tinja’s internalization of her own growing diffidence, distress, and depression manifests itself in her own “daughter,” the creature she hatched, which, despite its appearance and behavior, is the only other character who elicits sympathy. It is a primal, reactive beast: when a neighbor’s dog keeps Tinja up at night? It has a solution, proffering the headless canine to Tinja the next morning as a gift.

As her mother’s life collapses, the pressure on Tinja ratchets up further, and Tinja’s own “daughter” grows more and more into the girl’s image. The blood and goo are front and center, with these instances adroitly acting only as occasional punctuation to the mundane, spirit-crushing happenings of daily life. The film feels like an ancient dark fairy tale upon which director Hanna Bergholm shines a glaring modern spotlight, rendering it all the more unnerving.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…think of it as the weird lovechild of ‘American Beauty’ and a grotesque version of ‘E.T.,’ with the uncanny touch of Yorgos Lanthimos.”–Tomris Laffly, Variety (contemporaneous)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022)

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Crimes of the Future is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.

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DIRECTED BY: David Cronenberg

FEATURING: , , , , Don McKellar, Welket Bungué

PLOT: Sometime in the future, for unknown reasons, human evolution has accelerated; one man makes performance art out of growing new organs and surgically removing them before a live audience, while other groups attempt to put their own stamp on humanity’s future.

Still from Crimes of the Future (2022)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Recycling a title from the very beginning of his career, this grisly summation of Cronenberg’s unique brand of carnal depravity feels like it’s closing a circle.

COMMENTS: The crime that opens David Cronenberg’s latest feature is a rough and bizarre reverse-Oedipal affair. It seems that the crimes of the future will have to be extreme, considering what passes for entertainment: the arts are dominated by grotesque displays of self-surgery. For unknown reasons, evolution has gone askew. The ability to feel pain has diminished in the general populace, while certain people—among them our performance artist protagonist, Saul Tesher—spontaneously grow new organs, of uncertain function. A pair of government functionaries run a novel “organ registry” out of a dusty office, but act more like obsessed fans than bureaucrats. A special police “vice” unit defends the integrity of the human body, but when “surgery is the new sex,” what rises to the level of crime?

Sickly Saul Tenser (Mortensen) wanders eerily deserted streets, wrapped from head to toe like a Bedouin prowling the Interzone. The world is almost depopulated; the only crowds are found at surgical theaters. One lonely conversation plays out in front of a beached yacht, a symbol of a world wrenched from its purposes. A surprisingly high number of expository scenes drag the pace down, but they are punctuated by moments of squirmy perfection: a man festooned with growths who sews up his eyes and mouth before performing a dance, Saul and his assistant Caprice (Seydoux) embracing in the nude while being punctured by remote-control scalpels.

Crimes calmly and coldly considers the aging Cronenberg’s obsession with carnality. Shadowy cabals, which hint at the promise of some rational purpose behind the apparent randomness of bodily decay, yield only more mysteries upon investigation. He adds a new measure self-reflexivity—how can showing people being sliced up be considered art?—along with a satire of our contemporary passion for body modification, a sad attempt to assert symbolic control over the vessels that will eventually rebel against us. But his main theme remains the fragility of the human body, its arbitrariness and lack of integrity, its susceptibility to maiming and tumors. It’s a graphic and honest vision of mortality; the strangeness of the presentation masks the inevitability of the decrepitude he prophesies. Although the story lacks the narrative drive of Cronenberg’s earlier features—rather than climaxing in the uncovering of a grand conspiracy, the ending here fades out—the atmosphere of evil, corruption, mutation and decay is as strong as ever.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…the story is difficult to digest. It is more an amalgamation of all things David Cronenberg than something genuinely compelling with something new to say… Even if it doesn’t amount to much, it’s still weird and worthwhile and unmistakably David Cronenberg.”–Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth (contemporaneous)

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CAPSULE: THE HOUSE (2022)

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DIRECTED BY: Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels (Part One), Niki Lindroth von Bahr (Part Two), Paloma Baeza (Part Three)

FEATURING: Voices of , , Jarvis Cocker, Susan Wakoma, Helena Bonham Carter

PLOT: Designed by an eccentric 19th-century architect, a magnificent house traps and torments a series of owners over the centuries.

COMMENTS: This unusual house has three stories. The first is classically unsettling, the second is downright creepy, and the third is charmingly hokey. Each story’s physical structure is ever-changing, as the house is built, re-built, and re-built, then is infested and decays, finally embracing its ephemeral nature. From its loftily sinister beginnings as a macro-doll’s house up through its final untethering from its foundations, the titular mansion houses three separate visions: one man’s cruel infliction of nightmarish doom; one man’s mental disintegration as he attempts to tame the decaying edifice; and one woman’s spiritual liberation. Each director provides a unique touch, but each tale fits together, creating a narrative arc that morphs into an arc of redemption.

The chronicle begins with a house within a home. A doll’s house, that is. Mabel’s immediate family has fallen from grace, and a troupe of off-putting relatives chastise them. That night, her father gets drunk and wanders angrily through the woods, only to stumble across an illuminated sedan chair, the luxurious transport housing the altogether-too-creepy architect, Van Schoonbeek (“clean stream”, one of the most subtle bits of foreshadowing I’ve seen), who promises Mabel’s family a beautiful new place to live. But as is so often the case, midnight rendezvous with giggling fatcats lead to terror and lamentation.

The House dodges the bullet typical of anthology films in that, unlike the physical structure, none of the sections are weak. Their tenor differs, as well as their style. The first features unnerving felt-made people, the latter two anthropomorphic animals. The dark shadows of Mabel’s section become marvelously lit, and tackily modern, in the second segment. An unnamed “Developer” (perfectly voiced by Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker as an at-his-wits’-end handy-rat; he also provides the closing credit’s song) begins falling part as he repairs the now-dilapidated house in the hopes of selling it off. Fate is as unkind to him as it was to the first owners—albeit with a modern twist. Part two climaxes with an intricately choreographed club-jazz dance of fabric beetles and a run-in with the law after the Developer’s dentist, sick of being telephoned at all hours and called “sweet-heart” and “dear,” sends the police around to the hapless rat realtor.

The House breaks no new ground, and much of the spook-or-creep factor relies on old fashioned methods: light-play, musical cues, background laughter, scuttles, wriggles, and poofs of poison. But it all works more than well enough. I was not unpleasantly transported in mind to that special place I can end up when emerging from a well-crafted film experience. It is worth noting the third segment, which differs sharply from the first two. It’s the story of the final owner, and of her desire for her home clashing with a subconscious itch for freedom. Helena Bonham Carter’s hippy cat performance is relief-through-whimsy (she pays rent with potent crystals), and she is the perfect guide for the frazzled young owner. The House‘s first two acts scrabble in the darker corners of the mind, but when the sun breaks through the finale’s mists, I could feel the haunting memories begin to recede.

The House is exclusive to Netflix.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a consistent anthology, in that it’s always just about the same level of surreal, playful, sadistic, and entertaining. Across its different styles and species, The House never holds the audience’s hand when it comes to the poetic flourishes from its mighty gradual pacing; it prefers to be odd…” -Nick Allen, RogerEbert.com (contemporaneous)