You Destroyed Your Spirit In A Waste Of Shame: Red State (2011)

Kevin Smith has always brought a certain level of serious societal criticism to his films, whether it be a his hilarious romp through the fallacies of organized religion in Dogma or his clearly autobiographical look at lost love in Chasing Amy.  Smith, however, always manages to keep his films staunchly comedic endeavors, rarely going wholly dramatic in his approach.  This fact is what helped to make his newest film Red State something completely out of the ordinary.  Instead of being a comedic film with dashes of drama, Smith's 2011 film is the complete opposite and its very much an action/drama film that is light on its comedic hits.  One could quickly assume that a director completely stepping out of his comfort zone would produce dire results, yet to my surprise Red State is a very watchable film.  It will never make the short list for the best Kevin Smith films by any means, but it is an excellent change of pace for the director, particularly given his apparent decreasing relevance to contemporary indie discourse.  Regardless, the film is fully realized and a fresh take for Kevin Smith, not to mention given its clearly liberal leanings it was not entirely difficult for me to enjoy its scathing attack on the illogical horrors exacted by religious fundamentalist extremism.

Red State is rather bizarre in its plot, but one that seems entirely possible in American society.  The initial portion of the film focuses on three boys Travis (Michael Angarano), Randy (Ronnie Connell) and Billy-Ray (Nicholas Braun) who are unpopular in their high school, making their quest to get laid seemingly impossible.  This quest is overshadowed by their community dealing with the absurd protest of the Five Points Trinity Church at a recently murdered gay student's funeral.  Despite this, the boys are able to chase down a possible sexual encounter via a craigslist style website for sex.  Planning ahead, the group is able to get one of their parents car and travel to the location in the country outside of their small suburban town.  On the way to the encounter, they accidentally sideswipe a car which is occupied by the town sheriff and a gay prostitute.  In a panic, the group flees the scene and continues on their quest.  They quickly reach their point and find their meet-up point, which happens to be a trailer occupied by a woman named Sara (Melissa Leo).  The nervous boys adhere to Sara's demands without question, which includes downing multiple beers before stripping.  It is at this point that Sara chastises the group for attempting to engage in sodomy.  Befuddled the boys begin to lose consciousness and pass out, only to wake up to haunting spirituals and a realization that they are victims to the previously mentioned Five Points Trinity Church.  Witnessing the murder of a gay man at the hands of the church led by the maniacal, yet eerily friendly Abin Cooper (Michael Parks) the boys try to escape.  Their efforts seem futile, but luckily, the upset sheriff has sent a deputy to search for the car, which leads him to the Five Points compound.  The deputy after realizing that the situation is quite suspicious attempts to call in reinforcements, only to be shot by a member of the church.  This shooting leads to the sheriff, despite threats of blackmail by Abin, to call in the help of the ATF.  The film then enters into its second act, which focuses on Agent Keenan (John Goodman) who is a specialist in the plots and going-ons of Five Points, particularly their accrual of weapons and explosives.  Attempting to make the confiscation and removal of members from the location amiable, Keenan sets a stakeout point, only to have the sheriff ruin the plan by shooting one of the fleeing boys leading to a full-on shoot out, which leaves many killed in the process.  After much fighting and a constant changing of plans by the government the member of Five Points evacuate their facility after hearing what sound to be trumpets.  Thinking these sounds to be the act of God, Abin walks up to Keenan defiantly only to be subdued with a headbutt.  The film then cuts to Keenan at a federal hearing to justify his actions, in which he is scolded on camera, only to be told off camera that his actions were perfectly reasonable, if not hilarious, and would result in his promotion.  The film closes with Abin jailed for engaging in intended terrorist activities, with an ironic assumption that the gay acts he loathed so much would be enacted upon him frequently in jail.  It is in this closing shot that we get the most Keven Smithesque jab of the entire film.

So this film is not initially what one would expect form Kevin Smith, with that being said it is still easy to pick up his little offerings throughout the film.  The first and foremost is the raunchy characters, while they are not on the level of Jason Mewes, the young boys foul mouth and sex-crazed minds immediately place the film in the world of Kevin Smith.  Second, the film is incredibly detailed both in its narrative and in its physical world.  The characters statements, including the seemingly insane ramblings of Abin are realized and quite reflective on what an individual in such a role would say.  Furthermore, Smith's attention to details with his set is one of his best creations to date, from the civics classroom covered with quotes, pictures of presidents and reminders to the church complete with a large metal cross, children's drawings and food for a post-rapture world, this is a world that exists as a plausible reality.  It has always been a concern of Smith since his filming of life in a convenience store to promote believability and Red State certainly adheres to this notion.  Finally, and perhaps the hardest to connect between the collective works of Smith are his moments of prophetic clarity in his works.  Perhaps the most prolific of these occurs in the diner conversation between Ben Affleck's character and Jay and Silent Bob, in which Bob breaks out of his muteness to explain the woes of love and how every individual has to "chase" their own inaccessible love.  This moment of clarity occurs in the closing of Red State during the interview between Keenan and the government agents, in which Keenan realizes that the blaring horns, which actually from a practical joke played by neighboring college students, were so unexpected and illogical that such a thing as divine intervention occurs in the world, even if the source is not literally divine.  It posits the possibility of karmatic punishment and reward, without directly tying it to a deity.  It is a profound moment in a film about hateful and ignorant blindness, and one that could only come from the mind of Kevin Smith.

Just like my previous review of Restless, Red State is another great film for the year of 2011.  It is certainly not Kevin Smith's best, but one well worth owning nonetheless, particularly given the gritty beauty of the bluray release.

You Must Get Beyond Passion, Like A Great Work Of Art: La Dolce Vita (1960)

The auteur Frederico Fellini always manages to touch upon something inherent to human nature in his epic films whether it is the delusions of a man sinking slowly into insanity 8 1/2 or the tragic nostalgia of existing as portrayed in Amarcord.  The Italian director's 1960 masterpiece La Dolce Vita, or The Sweet Life, is certainly not an exception.  Using famed Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, Fellini creates a visually stirring study of an aging man as he realizes that his desires both physically and spiritually are unattainable and that his life is slowly flickering into nothingness, despite his best efforts to find meaning.  As, I noted in an earlier review of Michelangelo Antonionni's Zabriskie Point, this concern with the existential self is a key element of Italian filmmaking.  However, nobody seems capable of capturing the true despair of this philosophical rut, quite like Fellini, and La Dolce Vita is certainly his best existentialist work.  From the sparsely constructed mise-en-scene's to the large cast of characters, La Dolce Vita is concerned only with the quest of one man as he realizes that his life is far more bitter than it will ever be sweet.  La Dolce Vita is often described as a comedy, and while it certainly has hilarious moments, the laughs gained from this movie are only a result of peoples own realizations that their lives are tragically linked to Marcello's desperation.  This link results in laughter, because to acknowledge it would be far too depressing.

The main character mentioned above is Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) an aging journalist who has come to loathe his job and the identity that is attached with such work.  Despite his disdain for his own work, Marcello has little luck shaking off the paparazzi and journalists who constantly follow him.  As a result, Marcello attempts to detach himself from his lackluster employment, by finding a romantic connection.  His first encounter is with a Maddalena (Anouk Aimee) a woman he meets at a nightclub only to sleep with hours later.  However, his rendezvous leads his current lover Emma (Yvonne Furneauz) to attempt suicide.  After this encounter, Marcello meets the famous American actress Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) who is the object of seemingly every males affections.  Marcello at first appears immune to Sylvia, until he is witness to her climbing up stairs at a local cathedral, it is during this time that he compares her to the Madonna and falls madly in love with her, claiming that she is equitable to the first woman ever created.  However, his advances are quickly thwarted when after spending and evening playing in a local fountain he is beaten up by Sylvia's American lover Robert (Lex Barker).  This failure to achieve love with his idea woman leads Marcello to find his answers through religion, which prove illogical first by his meeting with an old friend name Steiner (Alain Cuny) who sees church as nothing more than a place to play organ.  Marcello's second encounter with the false support of religion arises when he helps cover a story of a purported sighting of a Madonna by children at a tree in the outskirts of Rome.  This coverage quickly goes awry when rain begins to pour and the film technology begins to break.  This confusion paired with impatient attendees attempting to gain their own "healing" from the tree leads Marcello to leave the scene in with a greater amount of disillusionment.  These attempts at finding answers to his life's meaning continue as Marcello seeks solace in intellect, family, money and his past only to discover that each quest is as useless as the first at which point we are shown Marcello at what appears to be a party a few years following the previous events, given his now graying hair.  At this party, Marcello attempts to instigate an unwanted orgy amongst the attendees only to be stopped by the owner of the house, at which point Marcello rips open a down pillow and showers the party guests in feathers as he introduces them as performers in a play.  The film then shows the partygoers on the beach as they admire a large stingray with awe.  Marcello then notices the call of a girl from across the beach and quickly recognizes her as a young waitress from a restaurant he had attended years earlier.  She attempts to yell out words to him, but neither he, or the viewer, can comprehend her words.  Instead, he simply smiles and walks back to his party, leaving the young girl to be excited about life, while he wallows in his continued existentialism.  This closing, while uncertain, might imply that the only way to assure a life with meaning, is to remain ignorant to the fact that their is no meaning, however, Fellini offers such an ending in irony, for to do so would be to state definitively that there is no meaning.

So all this talk of existentialism, can cause the film to seem irrelevant, or as an existentialist would put it...inherently meaningless.  While some existentialist would say that this is the case, most would argue that even though the ultimate end is nothing, one should not stop from being amazed by single moments as they occur, whether it be something like falling in lover, or witnessing the natural awe of the world.  It is quite apparent that a film like La Dolce Vita, while bittersweet, certainly adheres to the latter.  Fellini's film is a celebration of moments that are beautiful, whether it be Marcello's infatuation with Sylvia, which leads to a poetic dance in water, or, a group of aging intellectuals admiring the ambient sounds of the natural world.  Fellini is not suggesting that a person should find despair in the fleeting world around them, instead he suggest that we should take solace in the moments while they last, because they will provide a person with some semblance of happiness.  Fellini certainly drives this point home with his comparison of Steiner and Marcello as characters.  Steiner states during a party that he is not as tall and powerful as people believe him to be and is actually quite self-loathing.  His own despair is never dealt with which leads him to commit suicide and kill his children in the process.  This, at first, comes as a surprise to viewers given his claims to find beauty in his children.  However, it is quite apparent that his beauty is rooted in jealousy for Steiner and his violent act serves as revenge.  Similarly, Marcello has his own run in with the beauty of youth through the young waitress, with whom he openly discusses the beauty of ignorance.  However, instead of exacting revenge on the young woman for her sweet innocence, Marcello decides to step away and ignore his jealousy.  The films closing scene of him turning his back on youth may seem dark, but what it really implies is Marcello's own transcendence of his existential longing for something different.  Ultimately, Marcello realizes his meaningless life is still his own and while it ends in nothingness, at least it is his own nothingness to possess.

This is a giant of an Italian film both literally and figuratively, and is one of the few Italian films I can fully support as being a masterpiece.  I cannot recommend viewing it enough and would suggest getting a copy for your collection.  However, it has yet to be released on Bluray so waiting awhile might not be a terrible idea.

The Television Screen Is The Retina To The Mind's Eye: Videodrome (1983)

Videodrome is a psychological thriller of its own world.  Special effects whiz and gore enthusiast David Cronenberg creates a film that is both absurdly distancing and bizarrely familiar, using the problems of television and the decay of his society as a medium for a much more profound study of human existence and meaning.  At no point in Videodrome does the viewer feel certain of the filmic reality, often assuming dreams for reality and vice versa.  What makes Cronenberg different from his horror contemporaries is his unrestrained focus on narrative structure and the believability of his images.  Sure, the film is inherently fantastic in its existence, but somehow the director manages to make the act of a man's chest opening and receive a video tape like a VCR oddly believable.  Cronenberg's intent is to create a film that is as much a documentation of his society, as it is a manifesto to a world void of mind-numbing television, which can literally kill those addicted to its dangerous aura.

Videodrome's dystopic narrative begins with television executive Max Renn (James Woods) awaking to his own personal television station, the psuedopirated station Civic TV.  Viewers quickly discover that Renn's station is far from politically correct and often shows violent images and profane sexual acts.  Surprisingly, Max is fed up with his material and openly demands a new show that is both raw and realistic depicting the degradation of humanity at its lowest level.  After a series of flops, Max's co-worker and television pirate Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) introduces Max to a feed he has received which depicts a woman being viciously tortured.  Max becomes obsessed with the show fantasizing about discovering its source and obtaining it for his own use on his television station.  However, as Max finds out the show titled Videodrome is far more complex than a series of images.  According to the shows creator, Videodrome represents something far greater than television in that it represents the next evolution him humankind, a form that is inextricably attached from the television and becomes a pawn to its every demand.  Without divulging the entirety of the plot, it is safe to say that this attachment to Videodrome leads Max into a surreal world of repetition, madness and simulation that ends in a poetically tragic point that is as uncertain to the viewer as the film has been up to this point.  It posits the possibility that the viewer has now become the next extension of Videodrome, whether they care to accept it or not.

Videodrome is full of points of social criticism and I have chosen to touch upon two of the rather blatant commentaries.  The first being the unprecedented influence that television based media has proven to possess over society.  David Cronenberg made this film well before the existence of Fox News, CNN or any other bias heavy news station, yet the film seems to be directly attacking these propaganda laden organizations that focus on slanderous ideology over researched fact.  This is most evident in the character of Dr. Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley) who spouts illogical prophetic statements about the place of television as a mind of the people, the sole source for their ideals, television to O'Blivion, as it is to many news media stations, is the source of infiltration to a feeble minded society that is literally attached to the television, awaiting the penetration of their next set of beliefs and actions.  Secondly, Videodrome serves as a study on what is considered obscene.  The entirety of Max's network is predicated on displaying imagery that shocks and disturbs its viewers, because as Max claims, viewers want to be desensitized whether they admit to it or not.  Like the previous commentary, Cronenberg is as prophetic as O'Blivion.  Our culture seems preoccupied with seeing degradation, whether it be through viral videos or the disturbing, yet undeniable spike in desire for abuse related media, most of which is of a sexual nature.  It is a contemporary problem that Cronenberg realized quite early, and one that the director assumes can only happen with complete annihilation of the retina that is Videodrome.

Regardless of your opinions on David Cronenberg, this movie will blow your mind and is yet another gem offered buy the crew over at Criterion.  Thank them by purchasing a copy, if only for the awesome DVD art.

Nuns, Thorns, and Desire: The School of The Holy Beast (1974)

WARNING: This review contains graphic imagery and descriptions.


I often get on a soapbox about the American influences apparent in Japanese film, particularly as it relates to action, romance and indie films.  However, I have come to a very distinct realization following my recent viewing of The School of the Holy Beast, and that is that nothing is comparable to Japanese cult films.  They exist in their own world void of influence and logical imagery.  This is one of the most bizarre Japanese works I have scene, alongside Hausu and Jigoku.  The film is saturated with repressed homosexuality, sadomasochism and nudity...it is more reminiscent of a underground pornography than artistic filmmaking.  Despite this statement, it is a sound film that manages to take itself seriously at all the right moments and lay on the cheese at others.  It is a signifier of seventies filmmaking that is as iconic as it is abrasive. A gem of gore cinema that happens to deliver a rather large-scale critique of patriarchal opression in the most unconventional terms.

The film, in a rather nonchalant manner, follows Maya (Yumi Takagawa) a rebellious young woman who has taken it upon herself to seek reform at a local abbey.  From the onset, the abbey appears to be rather blasé, adhering to the regular practices of cleaning, cooking and singing as one would expect.  However, as Maya realizes during a night of restlessness, this particular abbey is preoccupied with punishment on a personal and abbey-wide scale.  As she watches a fellow nun flagellate herself to avoid sin Maya takes it upon herself to become a spy of sorts for the head nuns catching the other nuns in acts of theft, homosexuality and lesser "vices."  The punishments for actions include violent whippings and, as Maya discovers after her own immoral act, binding with rose branches.  These acts are done in the nude while the head nuns look on longingly.  This entire cycle of punishment is arced by Maya's fascination with the appointed abbey priest who appears to have sexual interest in many of the nuns, particularly Maya.  After a plot to exploit the higher nuns' indiscretions, Maya comes to realize the local priest is actually her father resulting in issues of incest and profanity, which is exemplified by a scene of Maya succumbing to pissing on a cross.  Surprisingly this dually degrading and gorgeously stunning film simply ends with Maya away from the abbey.  It is a nunsploitation film by definition and is loyal to the genre by showing only the images associated.


The film is obsessed with clearly demarcating all problems associated with patriarchy as it relates to religion, in this particular case Catholicism.  In fact, it is this critique that helps this film avoid being overtly degrading to women.  With the Laura Mulvey put aside, it promotes a rather freeing notion of femininity.  Each act of aggression, degradation and profanity is blatantly and inextricably tied to patriarchy.  The acts of punishment are done in the name of God and Christ, both obviously associated with maleness in the film.  Many of the nuns deaths are a result of phallic objects, the most obvious being one nun's death by falling on a priests staff.  Furthermore, the jealously and subsequent vengeance that exists in the abbey is almost wholly fueled by the lecherous priest who is involved with many of the nun's including both Maya and her mother.  It is a literal depiction of patriarchy screwing generations of women, a rather brilliant moment in a graphically driven film.  The film's characters even chastise acts of homosexuality for no apparent reason, yet refrain from noting the problems of incest and force intercourse with multiple problems, all with the intent to show a connection between the churches illogical views of unquestioned male superiority as it relates to patriarchal roots.  It is a film that uses exploitation as a guise, yet incorporates feminist critique between the lines.  It is brilliant but takes a close eye to catch.

The School of the Holy Beast is a graphic film and not meant for everybody, but for those who enjoy cult cinema, particularly from Asia, I would suggest getting a hard to find copy.