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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE INVISIBLE FIGHT (2023)

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AKA Nähtamatu võitlus

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DIRECTED BY: Rainer Sarnet

FEATURING: Ursel Tilk, Kaarel Pogga, Ester Kuntu, Indrek Sammul

PLOT: A conscript is inspired to join a local monastery where he hopes to pursue his new dream of mastering holy martial arts after surviving a massacre at the hands of three kung fu masters who descend from the heavens.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Deeply informed by both Eastern Orthodox Christian theology and kung fu film lore, Rainer Sarnet’s fish-out-of-water comedy bubbles over with goofy slapstick, heavy metal, and ancient wisdom.

COMMENTS: The path toward enlightenment is traveled with humility—and preferably while listening to Black Sabbath. The Invisible Fight dives deeply into the past, with anachronistic layers coexisting as joyfully as its insouciance interweaves with asceticism. What could easily have come across as the height of judgmental arrogance—fun poked at holy traditions (brick pillow, anyone?), martial artistry (pierogi fight and sausage stand-off), and flippant dismissal of a sinister Soviet past—sublimates into a vapor of merry rumination as it zips from set piece to set piece, leavening its silliness with wisdom, and vice versa, as its main character grows from a blithe, metal-head mechanic into a blithe, metal-head Starets monk.

It is 1973, and our hero, a border guard named Rafael, witnesses the unlikely arrival of three kung fu fighters. Though his peers are murdered mercilessly—if quite stylishly—by this gang of heavenly warriors, Rafael is spared, with his commander’s dying words (“I guess God has other plans for you”) seared into his young mind as deeply as the transcendent run-in with the boombox-bearing bad-asses. Fast forward to life at home, where he rocks, and while rocking rocks long, rebellious hair, a shiny cross (in defiance of the Soviet authorities), and a dumb little red car that’s always breaking down.

Stylistically, The Invisible Fight owes its verve to silent comedy, classic wuxia, and the ubiquitous Black Sabbath classic, “The Wizard.” (This track is, appropriately, from the album “We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘N’ Roll.”) Cartoony blast-titles mark the chapters, with designations like “A Lesson in Humility”, “A Lesson in Humility Number 2”, “Shadow Fight”, “The Demon”, and so on. Sarnet plinks in Looney Tunes sound cues for winks, wobbles, whacks, and whiplash. Practical martial arts duels are liberally sprinkled throughout, whether they be between Rafael and a rival monk, or during a bout with a State Security agent on a holy road trip.

This film is, as you have sussed by now, silly to the core, and borders on giddy. But this renders the deep philosophy all the more remarkable and memorable. Christ’s many icon-ic gestures are correlated to martial moves; Rafael’s challenges, though often solved with kung fu, echo the trials and tribulations of holy men of yore; and the overarching—might I even say, fundamental—lessons of Christ’s philosophical teachings are constantly reinforced while never feeling preachy. Humility, forgiveness, and self-awareness elude Rafael. But by the end, under the benevolent tutelage of the elderly brother Nafanail, Rafael cruises his blindly-cheerful self to a form of Zen—introducing the monastics to the joys of Black Sabbath along the way.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Writer-director Rainer Sarnet’s deliriously weird The Invisible Fight would be irksome if it weren’t crafted so lovingly and with a charming earnestness.” — Charles Lyons-Burt, Slant (contemporaneous)

Invisible Fight [Blu-ray]

Invisible Fight [Blu-ray]
  • Kung fu meets heavy metal meets Orthodox monks in this Estonian action comedy
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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST (1967)

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DIRECTED BY: Theodore J. Flicker

FEATURING: James Coburn, Joan Delaney, Godfrey Cambridge, Severn Darden

PLOT: Dr. Sidney Shaefer is chosen to provide his psychoanalytical services to the president of the United States, making him target number one for sinister agents both foreign and domestic.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: The President’s Analyst begins as a cute exploration of the 60s craze for psychotherapy; but at an accelerating speed, cute spirals into silly, then into zany, then to madcap, before climaxing in a jaw-dropping finale plucked straight from a giggling paranoiac’s subconscious.

COMMENTS: Psychological analysis is a slow process: trust is built, feelings are explored, and emotions’ roots are teased out over time. The President’s Analyst, on the other hand, is a speedy journey through a pinball plotline, a zany zipping from point A, to B, to C—through the entire alphabet, perhaps, as director Theodore J. Flicker maneuvers an unflappable James Coburn from humble sitcom beginnings all the way through an explosive climax and a joyfully jaded denouement.

To speed along the plot necessities, Flicker amply uses cinema’s age-old time quickener: the montage. He establishes Dr. Sidney Shaefer’s profession before the opening credits wrap up, then intercuts that montage with another laying out the “thriller” angle: shady guy passes off envelope, envelope receiver winds through city streets, then is murdered by Don Masters, sneakily in broad daylight. Don is a CEA agent (not at all to be confused with a CIA agent) in a rush: “I gotta hurry, or I’ll be late for my analyst.” Scenes move along with purpose, often with a 1960s “ahhh-AHHHH-ahhh” woman’s chanting musical cue in moments of peril (and there are many moments of peril), with plenty of smoooooth lounge-style synth work.

Events escalate badly for Dr. Shaefer. Against the wishes of the FBR chief (not at all to be confused with the FBI chief, particularly as this man’s organization is staffed entirely by somber men who stand below five-foot-tall), Shaefer has been groomed and selected to serve the president. This leads our hero to acquire too much knowledge, and hostile forces stack up quickly to either kill or kidnap him: the Russians (through the machinations of friendly super-spy Kropotkin, friend of Don Masters), the Chinese, the Libyans, the Cubans, the British—and even, we find, the Canadian Secret Service. The FBR (who, along with the CEA, were not consulted for this film) are after Shaefer as well, sending two of their top short men.

The second half of The President’s Analyst is “Spy v. Spy” writ large, but with character-building moments breaking into the many montages. The two FBR agents are distinct, established in a delightful little scene in a New Jersey suburb, one admonishing the boy of the house about racist language. Don’s and Kropotkin’s friendship is touching, as two long-career spies working from opposite sides of the Cold War divide. And James Coburn is a combination of James Bond and Dr. Hartley from the “Bob Newhart Show,” thinking on his feet (at one point he stumbles onto a tour bus and ends up dressed as a hippie-band gong maestro), both for survival and analysis.

Looming in the background is a most unlikely nemesis: bigger than any petty foreign agency, bigger than the KGB, bigger, even, it seems, than the US government. This reveal, with its concurrent implications of technological grandeur and the power to enslave humanity, forced my long dropped jaw to remain open until the finish.  Casino Royale, eat your heart out; “The Prisoner,” eat your heart out—The President’s Analyst is a prescient, madcap, disturbing, hilarious, thrilling adventure which fuses Cold War paranoia with ’60s-silly cinematic sensibilities.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a psychedelic mega-satire with sado-burlesque overtones… a full-scale, mind-bending comic nightmare.”–Giles M. Fowler, Kansas City Star (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Mel Arkey, who called it “an all time fave of mine and most definitively weird.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

The President's Analyst (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

The President's Analyst (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]
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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: WILD TIGERS I HAVE KNOWN (2006)

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DIRECTED BY: Cam Archer

FEATURING: Malcolm Stumpf, Patrick White, Max Paradise,

PLOT: Logan, a junior high school student, explores his own identity and sexuality, developing a crush on a slightly older “bad boy”.

Still from "Wild Tigers I Have Known" (2006)

COMMENTS: The administrators are good at irrelevancy; the mother is good at volatility; the classmates are good at bigotry; and Logan is good at maintaining his solitude. He watches old movies, listens to late-night radio, and thinks. He thinks about death, he thinks about his peers, and lately he’s been thinking a good deal about Rodeo, a cynically charismatic, older schoolmate. Cam Archer’s feature debut, Wild Tigers I Have Known, is above all thoughtful. As it meditates on its protagonist, the narrative flow is meandering, with Logan approaching daily challenges and joys and starting to form an underlying identity.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this movie should have hovered closer to “barely endurable” for me. However, it did not. (Had this been from a French filmmaker, I blanch at the prospect of my tirades about entrenched boredom and hack-handed pretension.) The variation in its filming style helps. Shots of Logan’s quotidian activities—unpleasant locker-room encounters, sudden outbursts from his mother, the respite he finds in old media—are intercut with more abstract cinematic representations: of memories, sexual fantasies, and day-dreams. The gauzier surrealism of these interludes occasionally bleeds into the realism of this boy’s life, but never smothers it.

Mostly, though, Wild Tigers I Have Known succeeded in maintaining my active interest because of its charming leads, genuine tenderness, and fitting ambiguity. It is unclear just what path Logan embarks upon, appropriate for someone of his age. Is he gay? He claims otherwise. Is he something different? Maybe. His relationship with an older boy hovers somewhere between friend and lover (never made quite clear), and Logan’s self-awareness evolves as the background metaphor (beware the mountain lions) plays out like an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Perhaps more than anything else, the closing shot won me over. This genre is (understandingly) populated by movies with depressing overtones and even more depressing endings. Wild Tigers I Have Known has a good share of setbacks for Logan, and ambient cruelty. But there are lights in his life, and though he may not quite know who he is or what he’s after, his dreams and memories begin to merge, if only a little, by the end. Cam Archer explores a slice of life before leaving his character to develop away from our prying eyes. Logan bids us a fond farewell, waving gaily at the camera before traipsing over the crest of a hill.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A surreal, fragmented masturbatory fantasy whose vision of adolescence borrows elements from Elephant, Tarnation, Mysterious Skin and Donnie Darko…”—Stephen Holden, The New York Times (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by “Henner,” who called it a “Strangely told coming-of-age story” with “Strong imagery and lots of dreamy stream-of-consciousness scenes.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Wild Tigers I Have Known [Blu-ray]

Wild Tigers I Have Known [Blu-ray]
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

CAPSULE: TRAINSPOTTING (1996)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , , Jonny Lee Miller, , Kelly Macdonald

PLOT: Renton, a heroin addict struggling to get his life under control, is just one of a collection of misfit 20-somethings puttering around Edinburgh, Scotland, in this stark and blackly-comedic examination of the underworld.

Still from Trainspotting (1996)

COMMENTS: A commonly requested movie in our reader request queue, Trainspotting holds the ranks of cult classic, box office smash (relative to its budget), and critical hit. Not only is the movie itself enshrined by fans, but the soundtrack—one of the biggest reasons why this is a cult film to begin with—was a worldwide multi-platinum seller. To make sure that I don’t go off on anymore tangents about the soundtrack (because I adore it, natch), here’s my coverage over at my music blog gig so I can focus here on the movie; later, I’ll climb on my soapbox about drug legalization/awareness/safety. When it comes to this movie’s themes, I find myself almost distressingly overqualified to discuss it.

I trust that after almost three decades almost everybody interested has seen (or at least heard about) the film, so I’ll just fill in some light non-spoily details. Trainspotting has a Pulp-Fiction-like structure, with several intersecting lives on various trajectories, some headed up and some headed down, verily, to the gutter or the grave. At the center of this busy rat’s nest of urban squalor is antihero Renton (McGregor), heroin addict trying to get his life on track. His mates are Sick Boy (Miller), a blond pimp, co-junkie, and charming sociopath; Spud (Bremner), a luckless underdog with the personality (and IQ) of a Labrador puppy; Begbie (Carlyle), a brawling psychopath with a hair-trigger temper that even scares his closest friends; and Tommy (McKidd), a squeaky-clean and very self-righteous jock. Renton is trying his best to straighten out and fly right. But first he has to overcome his addiction, and then the gravitational pull of urban poverty. Renton stands at the threshold of a bleak and joyless existence, wondering if his own future is worth salvaging.

When it comes to weird-movie credentials, everyone seems to remember the toilet where Renton dives after his precious suppositories—a shot of it is in every trailer. Some recall the dead baby crawling on the ceiling, turning his head Exorcist-style before falling down on Renton, just one of many hallucinations the addict experiences during extreme withdrawal. But let’s not forget the overdose scene, where Renton nods off so hard that he physically sinks into the carpet about six feet deep… and we’re stuck in that POV all the way to the hospital, when a shot brings him bolting out of his drug coma (and return to wide-screen). His dealer, Mother Superior (“jumped the gun”), stuffs Renton’s limp body into a cab, and the cab driver in turn dumps him on the street in front of the emergency room like a Continue reading CAPSULE: TRAINSPOTTING (1996) →

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MARKETA LAZAROVÁ (1967)

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DIRECTED BY: Frantisek Vlácil

FEATURING: Frantisek Velecký, Magda Vásáryová, Ivan Palúch, Josef Kemr, Michal Kozuch, Pavla Polaskova

PLOT: In the early Middle Ages, a pair of brothers rob a caravan under protection of the King, setting off a chain of events that eventually leads to the kidnapping of Marketa, a virgin pledged to the convent.

Still from Marketa Lazarova (1967)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Dreamy pagan sequences adorn a stylized and hallucinatory landscape in Vlácil’s stark medieval epic.

COMMENTS: Although Marketa Lazarová is almost universally praised, everyone remarks on its confusing narrative. The film, which begins with a highway robbery and kidnapping, starts off with a lack of context, and the remainder of the story is fragmented, peppered with abrupt changes of scene, and with dreams, visions, and flashbacks which are sometimes impressionistic, sometimes indistinguishable from reality. The plot elements are comprehensible—a petty noble goes too far and angers the king, a virtuous maiden is snatched from her home—-but the main problem is keeping track of who is who, and where their loyalties lie. If you are prepared for confusion, you can soldier through it and the parties should sort themselves out within an hour or so. But if you would like some guidance, I’ll start this review with a short overview of the major players to get you oriented.

Despite providing the film’s title, Marketa Lazarová herself is not a prominent character until the film’s second half. The story atually centers on her eventual abductor, Mikoláš, a lanky and handsome man in a tight beard. Mikoláš’ brother and partner in banditry, Adam, is easily identified because he has only one arm (although watch out for flashbacks where he has two). Although they behave like highwaymen, Mikoláš and Adam are pseudo-nobles, the sons of Kozlík, a bald and bearded feudal yeoman who rules the walled town of Roháček. Long-haired temptress Alexandra, a brunette contrast to Marketa’s blond innocence, is their sister. In the first chapter the brothers kidnap Kristián, a German youth of noble blood, intending to ransom him. Meanwhile, Lord Lazar rules Obořiště, Roháček’s rival village; he is Marketa’s doting father. Mikoláš spares Lazar after catching him scavenging the wreckage of the caravan the Kozlík clan intends to loot, but later regrets his mercy when Lazar refuses to provide assistance against the king. In revenge, Mikoláš kidnaps the virginal Marketa, whom the (relatively) pious Lazar has pledged to the nunnery. The relentless Captain “Beer,” the king’s military representative in the region, is easily distinguished by his bushy mustache. These are the major players; many minor characters enter and leave, but if you can keep these straight, you should be able to navigate the main thrust of the tale—though details are often elusive.

The narrative confusion matters less because the film is so beautiful. The black and white vistas show off the wintry Bohemian countryside, bare interiors where scar-faced men in furs and chainmail Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MARKETA LAZAROVÁ (1967) →