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DIRECTED BY: Steve Oram
FEATURING: Steve Oram, Tom Meeten, Julian Rhind-Tutt
PLOT: In an alternative society where people behave like primates, an exiled alpha male, along with his beta companion, attempts to return home and reestablish his dominance.
COMMENTS: Is the entirety of human civilization nothing but a facade, camouflage for our authentically animalistic behavior? That’s what Steve Oram’s low-budget DIY feature debut seems to suggest. Aaaaaaah strips humans of their cultural wrappings.
Our story starts in an archaic and archetypal manner, recalling Odysseus ‘s return to Ithaca. An alpha male, exiled in a forest along with his companion/follower, attempts to find his way back home and regain his former position as the dominant male of the pack. This is a narrative of power plays in their most basic and primal form. Dialogue is absent and behavior is totally unfiltered. Wild instincts govern everyone’s actions. You can expect crude violence, with B-movie special effects, and a few disgusting segments immersed in bodily fluids and secretions. It stays focused on the main plot, for the most part, though introducing some twists later on and employing a few flashbacks in the process. Once it strays from our protagonists, following the younger of the pack’s females in a short escapade to showcase similarly barbaric social dynamics in other aspects of this society.
Oram gives special emphasis to the types of media these monkey-people consume. The media landscape portrayed in Idiocracy is sophisticated in comparison. The film mirrors our own world in a distorted way, revealing how entertainment services our lizard brains: in other words, the animals within us.
The soundtrack is comprised of accordingly simple melodic tunes, and a few more nostalgic, sensual or playful ones, creating a dissonance with the depraved segments usually accompanying them.
All in all, despite its extravagance and over-the-top moments, this movie doesn’t revel in shock value, but honestly strives to underline the way archaic instincts hide behind even the most civilized social dynamics.
PLOT: A reflection on the destructive nature of time, centered around a ruthless sexual abuse and a vicious revenge.
COMMENTS: First things first: I balk at calling Gaspar Noé’s classic Irreversible a “weird” movie. Experimental, brutal, shocking, or thought-provoking are all more suitable adjectives. Its “weirdest” element, apart from its anxiety-inducing quasi-infrasound and some improvised dialogue, is perhaps that the movie exists in two versions: a disorienting one where the story is told in reverse and a clearer one, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, that retains the chronological order of the events.
Another aspect worth bearing in mind is Noé’s intention to blur the boundaries between the real and the fictional. At the time of filming, leads Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, both of whom offer superb performances as young couple Alex and Marcus, were actually married As a result, their scenes together feel tender and sweet, and they are imbued with genuine love—a stark contrast to the gruesome violence pervading most of the film.
Because, despite all the stylistic experimentation, Irreversible remains grounded in disturbingly realistic ideas. In an interview, Noé bleakly revealed that the film was meant to represent the fact “that people are animals who control themselves to survive in a civilized environment, and not the other way around.” In effect, while the movie is far from being a gorefest, the atavistic behavior that characters display in some of the sequences is chilling. When the outbursts of violence take place, the viewer can’t help but stare in astonishment at the dark underbelly of human nature presented on screen. The horror of the film lies in these very actions and in the realization that they can be triggered any time under the right circumstances.
The central conflict of the movie (spoilers ahead) exemplifies such unhinged violence. It is also literally the central scene, the one that doesn’t change its location irrespective of which version of the film one watches, and the one that is hotly debated among commentators who are undecided whether it’s one of the most powerful scenes in cinema history or simply gratuitous onscreen shock value. It is a crude, ten-minute static shot depicting Belluci’s rape and beating in an underground tunnel, whose red walls become a symbol of hell. This scene constitutes the trigger for Cassel’s revenge on the perpetrator, but it also works on a level beyond the screen, the long static shot directly making us viewers witness to a cruel reality, rendering us impotent before it, just as the victim is.
The other gruesome scene of the film takes place at the beginning or end, depending on the version, at a gay bar called The Rectum (fans of psychoanalysis may find links to the above-mentioned tunnel), where the rapist, referred to as Le Tenia, is blithely clubbing and having fun with other men. Cassel and his friend burst into the bar and, Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER SUGGESTED QUEUE: IRREVERSIBLE (2002)→
PLOT: In an alternate Japan, kids take control, forming their own utopia—or dystopia.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: This is taboo-breaking cinema at its wildest, full of sexually depraved content that could easily pass as pedophilic. At the same time, it is a radical yet nuanced political allegory with a dreamlike, fragmentary narrative.
COMMENTS: Terayama is one of the most audacious representatives of the Japanese New Wave, a filmic movement associated with political critique and experimental formats. His cinema is highly transgressive, combining the absurd with an anti-authoritarian attitude foreshadowing punk. Emperor Tomato Ketchup is an exemplary example of and perhaps the most subversive moment in his filmography.
The plot revolves around a Japanese colony where children have taken control. Adults have been ostracized or enslaved. Kids, “freed from fixed views on childhood,” as they say, attempt, through orgies, to explore their sexuality.
Equating radical politics (kids taking control of the state) with sexual revolution, Ketchup is clearly a product of the sexually liberated late 1960s and early 1970s . However, goes a step further, deconstructing this seemingly noble revolution and underlining its grotesqueries to reveal it for what it really is: a new authoritarianism, and a re-appropriation of old patterns of thought and symbols. The mustache remains a symbol of power, however absurd that may seem when prepubescent kids rule.
The narrative unfolds through vignettes. Subplots emerge, but not a coherent story in the conventional sense. There is no dialogue, just a complex voiceover reciting excerpts from the revised constitution, poetic yet absurd terminology, and letters from a state official to its mother, a fugitive hiding for her life.
A holistic portrait of this violent state gradually forms, showcasing its inherent depravity. Through figures like the child-official, we see the archetype of the compromised opportunist, and understand the banality of evil. At the same time, violent or mildly sexually explicit scenes take place in the luxurious bedrooms of the new king—a boy around eight or ten years old—and in vacant industrial spaces that recall Nazi gas chambers. The parallels are as loud and clear as they can be.
As for the graphic scenes, let’s just say that even though they are mild, they still make for a difficult watch since they often suggest sexual behavior between minors. Two extended scenes—depicting homosexual foreplay between male teens and a small boy playing with nude adult women—could even pass as softcore erotica. If you could stomach the final segment in Dusan Makavejev‘s Sweet Movie, there is a high probability you can tolerate this. (Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Sweet Movie share a lot of common DNA, both ideologically—as revisionist takes on the sexual liberation of the 1970s—and aesthetically, as taboo-breaking spectacles.)
The soundtrack revels in ominous industrial ambience, but at the same time, ironically, occasionally incorporates sensual melodies and uplifting music. Heavy theatrical makeup and extravagant accessories complete the carnivalesque aesthetic.
Note that there are two versions of this film. The first was released immediately, in 1971, as a heavily cut 27-minute short film. The second is an extended reconstruction released in 1996, running around 70 minutes. The extended reconstruction was the subject of this review.
PLOT: An unnamed worker rebels against social norms.
COMMENTS: The anarchic, sexually liberated atmosphere of the late 1960s and 1970s left a rich cinematic legacy. Many auteurs inspired by the era’s revolutionary ideologies produced subversive masterpieces, bold in every sense of the word, both formally and thematically. Themroc is a product of this environment, even if it is a bit dated and tame in comparison with wilder contemporaries like Sweet Movie (1974) or 120 Days in Sodom (1975). But it is a decent attempt at 1970s-style taboo-breaking.
The story follows a lonely, horny worker living with his sister and mother. He is alienated and repressed, a dormant beast. The film avoids actual dialogue: the few words spoken are unintelligible gibberish. The characters communicate non-linguistically or just physically, highlighting their animalistic nature.
Our hero constantly coughs, with his coughing sometimes transforming into a roar. He is truly a lion in a cage. His mother shows similar bodily responses, hiccuping when stressed. A female neighbor obsessively sucks her thumb. Later on, touching and moaning will take the lead as the ultimate forms of non-verbal communication.
As the plot develops, a trivial incident at work becomes the catalyst for the protagonist to decide to break free from social and moral conventions. Breaking his room’s outside walls, he transforms it into an alternative public-private space of free love, incest, cannibalism, and so on. It sounds extreme, but it develops like a schematic anti-capitalistic and anti-authoritarian parable, and the most shocking imagery is only implied. Any pretense of realism and in-depth political discourse gives way to naïve escapist fantasy, especially when our hero overcomes problems with law enforcement by employing an orangutan-like power and attitude.
This isn’t an idolization of brute force, nor a revolution of the individual. The whole neighborhood is inspired by this man’s acts, and they establish a collective effort. The tale becomes a touching call for revolution and an ode to the communal spirit, even if it remains simplistic and without clear propositions.
Themroc may be meaningful as an elliptical parable, but it isn’t always the transgressive radical statement it claims to be. A few edgy fun moments prove themselves pretty unmemorable in the long term.
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DIRECTED BY: James Florian Quinn
FEATURING: Man Without a Face, Kmsura, Dead Flesh, Elektriking
PLOT: The last words of a man on his deathbed are followed by a nihilistic nightmare seemingly representing humanity’s greatest fears.
COMMENTS: Flesh of the Void is a low-budget, experimental horror film that bagged an award for Best Overall Feature and a few nominations—including Best Cinematography and Best Director—at the Nightmares Film Festival in 2017. The fact that its cast is mostly anonymous should raise no eyebrows, considering that the movie includes sexually explicit material and extremely violent scenes.
Shot on both Super 8 and 16mm film, James Florian Quinn employs different techniques that give his work a timeless feel, such as black-and-white photography, film grain effects, intertitles, and a creep– and sleep—inducing soundtrack. In that sense, and in its frequent religious imagery, Quinn’s creation inevitably reminds one of E. Elias Merhige’s (in)famous experimental horror film Begotten(1991), which gives viewers a similar impression of being witness to an old, taboo recording.
Flesh of the Void has no linear plot or conventional narrative, but it does have a sort of theatrical structure, since it is divided into three acts alongside a prologue, an interlude, and an epilogue. It all begins with a surprisingly lyrical and unsettling monologue whispered by a dying man offscreen (“And it all started, to my dismay, soon to set in the state of decay. What just still was will never be again, as I’m still lying in my bed, breathing my last breath”). Then, chaotic images with occasional voiceover ensue, and the viewer is presented with a parade of grainy images depicting increasingly grotesque scenes.
At first, there seems to be a preoccupation with industrial, urban landscapes and the sinister occurrences taking place therein. Afterward, however, violent situations and religious imagery feature more prominently, without any clear links between them and the aforementioned urban landscapes—this overall meaninglessness perhaps being part of the movie’s presumably nihilistic message.
Such haphazard sequences often involve explicit sexual action, and because of these the viewer may get easily sidetracked. At the risk of waxing intellectual, one may regard the combination of sexuality and suffering that the movie presents as the tension between Eros and Thanatos, that is, the two opposing forces that make up human life, with Eros standing for (pro)creation and Thanatos standing for destruction and death. Indeed, whoever decides to watch Flesh of the Void will be assailed by disturbingly brutal situations—including cannibalism and rape—interspersed with numerous masturbatory scenes, often involving the clergy. The latter scenes—which look good on paper as representations of Eros—drag on unnecessarily. They would have greatly benefited from condensing, for their meaning—or lack thereof—is equally impactful after just a glimpse. Such lengthy scenes detract from the overall disquieting atmosphere of the movie and border on the gratuitous.
Nevertheless, occasional shots are genuinely enjoyable despite the budget limitations, especially at the beginning and the end of the film. There is also some respite from cruelty, sex, and interminable onanism in the interlude (titled “Agony”), which is the most theatrical part of Flesh of the Void, with actors moving in ways reminiscent of Greek tragedy at times. This is the most eeriely intriguing and even—dare I say it—tranquil part of the movie, taking place between two acts that feature a great deal of the above-mentioned perversities.
Those who relish experimental movies that feel like inexplicable waking nightmares, no matter how low their budget, may be inclined to give Flesh of the Void a shot. Yet, I must give them a heads-up that their patience is going to be tested, and possibly not rewarded, for the movie as a whole frequently meanders. While opinions will surely differ, for me the nihilistic takeaway from Flesh of the Void seems to be that religious systems and promises of an afterlife are hollow, and we should only believe in the reality of human suffering and the void of death. Suitably for this interpretation, the black-and-white cinematography of the movie is maintained until the very end, when blood suddenly gushes in a vivid red. Cheerful stuff!
