This is going to be a weird review, but I can't really express it any other way. Please bear with me while I try to work out some rather charged emotions.
WEEK THREE - SHOCK & AWE
October 14
Nearly half a day has past since I've seen the film for the very first time, and even now, I'm still struggling to find the correct sequence of thoughts that help put everything together nicely, neatly, and it's for a film that has neither nice nor neat in any of its near-100 minute duration. It's a film that pushes every moral boundary of what a filmmaker's responsibility is in delivering artistic expression, pushing well beyond the breaking point, spilling out much like the viscera on display. It's the kind of film that despite typing everything out for you in terms of its thematic aspirations, it still confuses you, partially because you can't resolve why it had to take things so far to get there, and that lingering thought that they perhaps should not have even bothered if this was going to be the ultimate result. Anger is almost assuredly the overriding emotion that anyone that gets through watching this for the first time feels, and even after the initial shock of what you just saw wears off, you can't let go of that feeling, that sense to say something about it, ranting, raving, or otherwise.
Not for one second does the film's reputation ever precede itself. The Most Controversial Film Ever Made. The One That Goes All The Way. The Most Savage and Brutal Film in All of History. Advertising slogans designed to titillate, to oversell, and yet there's nothing to oversell. This is the first film I've seen with this kind of reputation, this kind of gruesome mystique, this kind of appalling endorsement, and it is the truth. It's true. It's All Goddamn True. Yes, it all happens like they said it would, and it's even grislier than you could have imagined.
It pisses me off because it works. Why does this fucking thing work? Why would I ever think this is a good thing that it shatters every kind of on-screen taboo imaginable, and figuring that justifies almost all of it? What the fuck is wrong with this movie? What the fuck is wrong with me? The whole situation makes no sense. Why do I keep trying to make sense of it? What do I gain out of it making sense?
It shouldn't work at all, really. The first half of the film is too long, the dubbing of the actors is generally quite poor and the guys that worked on it should be thankful that the film's tone is so unrelentingly grim that it can't spoil it, it practically screams its message from the top of a building and makes no effort to be subtle about it, it has no one to root for, and goes where no film should ever go with its extraordinarily graphic depiction of real animal deaths. Not violence. Deaths. Messy ones. Not a single one of them should have ever happened.
But it works. Its format was groundbreaking, and continues to be groundbreaking. It's remarkably well-made in spite of its worst narrative tendencies, with so much ingenious staging that it really does feel real. It has to do with the way a lot of its violence is measured: you tell yourself that the violence isn't real, but then you see how its being depicted, the way the camera is directed at it and not pointed at it, and you start to doubt yourself. The animal violence is unforgivable, but with the exception of the first truly pointless and cruel murder, they are set up in such a way that further accentuates that second-guessing: what you're looking can't be real, but it has to be. It's unflinching in every sense of the term: you can close your eyes, and you can look away, but the film is still there. It's a horror film, but not the kind that you can emulate or reproduce. There is no Cannibal Holocaust with a hockey mask. There is no Cannibal Holocaust reboot on the way. There is just Cannibal Holocaust.
This isn't a film I can see myself giving a rating on any kind of scale. I find it to be truly pointless, because this isn't a film where you go ahead and say "I give this a _________ out of _________" and expect that to be the end of it. It can't be, because even after you turn off your DVD player, eject your VCR and rewind the tape, leave the theater, whatever format that you saw the film on, the film lingers. It stays with you whether you like it or not. And every time you remember anything about this film, no matter how small and insignificant that detail might be, it's all going to come back to you. Hum a few bars of its deceptively gorgeous theme, and you will see a scene pop into your mind once more. It's staying in that head of yours, and you can't do anything about it.
October 15 preview: While I try to shake lose my brain from the bombardment it has received in the past couple of days, the next challenge is a double feature of recent cult favorites. Dutch director Tom Six has unleashed upon the cinema world quite possibly its most bizarre creation in his film series of
The Human Centipede. I've got both films currently released on the docket, and we shall see just where his twisted imagination will take me.
