Double Feature: Bigas Luna's Anguish and Caniche

Spanish filmmaker Bigas Luna, who passed away last year, is a relatively unknown exploration in cinema for me. His films are not talked about much. Add to the fact his work is largely ignored here in America and mostly unavailable on home video, and it becomes clear he's not regarded as an essential figure. Well, after seeing two of his films from different periods in his career, I can attest his influence should be seen by many. Making films from 1978 until 2010, Luna's biggest side note seems to be his penchant for telling stories with a decidedly twisted, perverse sense of morality... and the fact that he basically discovered young Penelope Cruz and cast her in his 1992 film "Jamon, Jamon". Pitched somewhere between the classical style of Carlos Saura and the more wildy ambitious, sexually frenzied new wave of Julio Medem and Pedro Almodovar, Luna is a case study I hope to further develop.

The more accessible of the two films discussed here is "Anguish". Released in 1987, it could best be described as an art-house slasher film. Even though that sounds boring, please give it a try. It starts out uneveningly… a cross between a psych-out grind house film and “Psycho” re-invented with Zelda Rubenstein as the domineering mother and centrifugal force behind her son’s desire to kill people and cut out their eyeballs. As the son/killer, Michael Lerner plays his role to weird perfection, full of smarmy glances, nervous ticks and an equally unhealthy fascination with caged birds. But after the son commits his first murder (full of blood pools and cheesy horror film chases), Luna turns the tables on the genre and “Anguish” becomes super-meta. We soon realize that the mother/son gore fest is a film-within-the-film and we’re introduced to a host of people sitting in a darkened theater watching a film (humorously called “The Mother”). The on-screen unpleasantness seems to be bothering some movie-going patrons, especially young and impressionable Pattie (Talia Paul), whose squeamish reactions to every eye-slicing scene becomes more and more troubling. Added to the discomfort of the movie watchers is the incessant hypnosis that mother Rubenstein inflicts upon her son on-screen, complete with spiraling records, slow moving snails and her repetitive chants. Pattie has to get away from it all and exits the theater where she soon becomes witness to a variety of murders perpetrated by someone supremely affected by the slasher film. “Anguish” becomes a Chinese box of murders with the fictional film (art) imitating real life. Murders on-screen by the fictional son become intertwined with real life and Luna does a terrific job of mixing both time lines together so we (the real viewer in all this) become disoriented as to what’s real and what’s fictional.



“Anguish” is a bracing deconstruction of the slasher genre with something more important on its mind. And all of this is executed without a hint of sarcasm, irony or wink-wink fetishism. This is no 1980’s version of “Scream”. In fact, it plays the violence for dirty realism. Not only does he film bodies being dragged out of sight in the restroom with a perverse point of view, but the many images of people scurrying around already lifeless bodies attempting to take cover from incoming gunfire, become genuinely unnerving examples of random terror. In this day and age of repeated public shootings, YouTube suicide rants and screwed up manifestos, “Anguish” looks and feels like a prescient affair. Like the warning the film-within-the-film gives at the beginning (and a gimmick taken by provocateur Gaspar Noe years later for “I Stand Alone”), “Anguish” wants to disturb… and it achieves that brilliantly.

“Caniche” (“Poodle”), released in 1979, is Luna’s second film. Starring Angel Gove (who would act in many of his pictures) and Consol Tura as brother and sister in a completely unhealthy relationship, the film feels like an assault on a lot of things- including the domesticality of the upper class and our ever prevalent reliance of affection on animals over human beings. “Caniche” is also a film of its time. Spain, late 70’s… when a number of filmmakers were forced to convey a message against their political situation in nuanced and allegorical ways. The innocent victim in the middle of “Caniche” is Danny, a whimpering poodle forced to bear witness (and sometimes partake) of the various sexual perversions and psychological battle between brother and sister. Eloisa is constantly pulling the dog to her, settling him in comfortable positions and feeding him. Bernardo- the more silent of the couple- holds hidden feelings about his sister, becoming jealous when she begins seeing an older friend/doctor of the family. In addition, Bernardo fills his days hunting stray dogs to lock up in his basement, not only for nutrition for Danny, but to hold them for more nefarious reasons. “Caniche” is not for the faint of heart. Luna builds the story into a festering, perverse explosion that sees Bernardo literally morph into a hungry, horny, rabid dog. Its only fitting that the finale should be Danny high tailing it out of the house after the dust has settled. For an angry, veiled political shout, “Caniche” ends on an unexpectedly happy note for its conscientious observer.
Visually, “Caniche” is a fragmented effort. Full of low-level point of view shots (perhaps to indicate the perspective of a dog) and images of hands, legs, eyes and grassy exteriors, I can only recall a few times in which a character was shown in full body. It’s a decidedly intense way to build the story, leaving out more narrative than it includes. Then again, there are certain actions performed by brother and sister in “Caniche” that are better left unviewed in all their disturbing glory.

"Anguish" is available on Region 1 DVD. "Caniche" is unavailable on DVD.

Halloween Kick Off Double Feature: The Addiction and Ganja and Hess

Bill Gunn's "Ganja and Hess" (1973) and Abel Ferrera's "The Addiction" (1995) are unique "vampire" films, if one's even inclined to label both efforts. I don't know if I'd even lump these films into the horror genre as both works are defiantly independent takes on the idea of the mythological blood-addicted creatures, whether through budgetary constraints or, most likely, their individual director's extreme avant garde prerogative. Both films explore the psychological consequences when an intelligent person (African-American doctor Hess, played by Duane Jones and white undergrad student Lili Taylor) become infected and crave human blood. While Ferrera's vision of this horrific perma-life is carried out in the comfortable, seedy confines of his New York City (and in saturated black and white to dilute the bloodletting), "Ganja and Hess" resides in a more dreamy, classical large manor. Both films are mood films in the purest sense, at times explaining nothing and allowing the angry socio-political views of their authors to overtake the narrative force. "Ganja and Hess" itself is a call to arms for radical independent African American filmmakers of the 70's. Not many people besides Marvin Van Peebles and other blacksploitation artists where seeing their visions on large American screens. Ferrera's "The Addiction" (still not available on home video or DVD) spends more time questioning mass genocide and the Vietnam war than actual 'vampirific' acts. Needless to say, both films had much more on their mind than vampires, and it shows.

Released in 1995, "The Addiction" came at the crest of a wave for Ferrera. Coming off critical acclaim for a string of films including "The King of New York"and "Bad Lieutenant", "The Addiction" is a terrific example of the burgeoning mid 90's indie scene..... a scene that spawned a couple of introspective, well crafted but marginalized vampire films like Michael Almeryda's trancing "Nadja" and Larry Fessenden's "Habit". Starring Lili Taylor, the film opens as she's in the middle of a stressful student year at NYU. Confronted with images of slaughters in Vietnamese villages and constantly thinking about war atrocities as she studies to be a psychiatrist, it's not 5 minutes into the film when she's whisked away down a dark alley and promptly bitten by Annabella Sciorria in a scene that, in my opinion, rightly justifies Ferrera's splendid use of black and white. It's a quick and violent infection, just as if the war atrocities were being inflicted upon her body as well. From there, "The Addiction" is a relatively straight-forward tale of blood lust as Kathleen (Taylor) stalks her campus, eventually infecting her best friend (a young Edie Falco) and teacher (Ferrera regular Paul Calderon). Her bloodlust begins to spiral out of control though, which is one of the many modern inflections Ferrera and screenwriter Nicholas St. John add to the vampire myth. Her psychology background, the writer and director's ever present Catholic guilt, and modern cinema's own need to rationalize and re invent genre in self reflexive ways, drive Kathleen to exorcise the habit overtaking her. In what's probably the best scene in the movie for its quiet acceptance of death, Kathleen lies on a hospital bed and asks for the blinds to be open. Ferrera anchors his camera at the foot of her bed as the sunlight slowly creeps down the wall towards her. Not only is it one of the film's most operatic moments, but it fits so nicely into the Ferrera mold of self immolation and mythic redemption.

"Ganja and Hess" also features a self imposed act of exorcism. Starring Duane Jones as Dr. Hess, the film explains through opening title cards that doctor Hess was studying ancient tribal mysteries when he comes into the possession of a dagger that is "diseased". Hess takes in assistant George (played by director Bill Gunn himself), a mentally unstable man who eventually stabs Hess with the dagger, "wherein he becomes addicted and could not be killed or could not die". It's in these careful framing words that director Gunn sets up the implications for something larger than blood lust. After killing George and stuffing his body in a basement freezer, Ganja, George's wife, returns to the States and takes up residence with Doctor Hess, awaiting the outcome of her husband's "disappearance". She and Hess fall in love, although it's quiet the sadistic relationship. Ganja, played by Marlene Clark, takes pleasure in insulting Hess's butler and promptly throws her weight around the house. Even after finding her late husband's body in the cellar, she marries Hess and establishes quiet a unique marriage.

Like "The Addiction", "Ganja and Hess" is an art film first. A victim of its time (early 70's funk cinema and Times Square exploitation), "Ganja and Hess" feels, looks and sounds cheap.... all things that filmmaker Gunn makes up for in dreamy narrative. Images of the tribe bleed into real life with droning chant-like sounds.... jump cuts establish no rhythm and force us to recognize the interaction between people quickly, and the blood that Hess so craves is often orangish tomato juice. But its the ideas that give "Ganja and Hess" its creative power. Like "The Addiction", this is one way to substitute the universal struggle of addiction into an easily identifiable means of expression. Whether that addiction is substance based or the paralyzing fear of mass destruction and the apocalypse, both Kathleen and Dr. Hess are just inquisitive, educated people inoculated by the dangers of our time. Separated by 22 years, both films create a dazzling double feature that feels almost interchangeable. In "Ganja and Hess", one scene has them lying in bed together when Dr. Hess asks "do you think I'm still psychotic?" Her reply of "everyone has their freaky side, baby...." would fit right at home in the punk rock nihilism milieu of Abel Ferrera's cinema.

Unintentional Double Feature: Exodus and The Gatekeepers

Two films that examine the Israeli State, Otto Preminger’s “Exodus” and Dror Moreh’s “The Gatekeepers”, may not be the most unbiased or educational efforts on the tenuous subject, but they do serve as bracing examples of how Hollywood and the Jewish community themselves may view their long, arduous struggle for a homeland. Seeing them together, in quick succession, doesn’t make me a Jewish state expert, but both films give me a circumference of knowledge I didn’t have before.

Released in 1960 and starring Paul Newman, “Exodus” is a bit long in the tooth, but completely justified of its almost four hour running time due to the swiftness it gives its subject… that being Leon Uris’s praised novel. Beginning immediately after World War 2 when Jewish refugees were being sorted around the globe, “Exodus” intensifies its scope on the island of Cyprus where a Haganah officer named Ben Canaan (Paul Newman) successfully maneuvers a large group of refugees out of Cyprus and into Jerusalem. From there, the film focuses on the uneasy relationship between the new Jewish settlers and the large Arab contingency after 1950. Also part of the story are Dov Landeau (Sal Mineo) as an impressionable and violent young man who joins the Irgun (a violent offshoot of the Haganah) and carries out attacks towards Arabs. This being Hollywood, there’s also the development of a love story between Newman and visiting American widow Eva Marie Saint who not only finds herself falling in love with Palestine, but also the customs and ways of life there. Strikingly, the most moving relationship in the film doesn’t belong to Newman and Saint, but the younger, tragic romance between Mineo and Jill Haworth as Karen, a fellow refugee.

Comments on Jewish diplomacy aside- and the film and book have often been praised as very pro-Zionist for good reasons- “Exodus” is just good old fashioned filmmaking. I haven’t delved very deeply into Preminger’s full oeuvre, but “Exodus” is a very patient, subtle work. Filmed in 70MM (and boy would I love to see it in the ration on the big screen today), the images are given room to breathe. Long dialogue scenes are often relegated to a single take and characters are placed at the left or right edges of the frame with plenty of space out to the side where the eye can roam on the atmosphere of the room. One scene in particular, as Sal Mineo’s character is interrogated by a group of men and probably sealed his awards run that given year, is directed with grace and precision, bringing in elements of film noir and silent cinema. Visually, “Exodus” is a treat and one of those rare instances where bloated Hollywood got it right.

At the opposite end of the cinematic spectrum is Dror Moreh’s “The Gatekeepers”, an austere and clinical documentary that interviews six different men who at one time or another were heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s version of the CIA or NSA. Through straight-forward talking head interviews and stock footage, “The Gatekeepers” buries itself headlong into the messy, complicated and bureaucratic manners of not only protecting Israel’s individualism but the sacrifice of human collateral.

The six men speak on a variety of topics like true politicians, rarely blinking, and refusing to admit mistakes. Moreh’s documentary is fascinating for not only the way in which the military heads justify their actions, but their subjective and inside view of a nation’s political swamps. Like “Exodus”, “The Gatekeepers” may not be the most historically correct aspect of the Jewish chapter in history, but it’s one that deserves its own slot. If Uris and Preminger’s vision of Israel ended on the precarious image of a line of military trucks heading into an unknown battle, Moreh’s “The Gatekeepers” is the logical extension of that image where violence and counter action are the norms of everyday life… and one that’s still being fought today.

Unintentional Double Feature: Rolling Stones Documentaries

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Unintentional Double Bill: Silence of the Sea and The Night of the Generals

Anatole Litvak’s “The Night of the Generals” and Jean Pierre Melville’s “The Silence of the Sea” express their Occupation-timed themes with wildly varying degrees of sensitivity. While both could be subtitled “The Inner Monologue of an SS High Commander”, how they get to the root of madness via their self absorbed, larger-than-life Nazi commanders are distinctly different events. Litvak’s film, released in the late 60’s, is a much more lurid treatment of the Nazi atrocity, headlined by an all star international cast and an overwrought, queasy performance by Peter O Toole. Melville’s film is a chamber piece, rarely leaving its single main setting and drowning the viewer in subtle voice over that plays out like a stream of conscience diary just 5 years after the war had ended.

At 2 and a half hours, Litvak’s “The Night of the Generals” (1967) doesn’t seem to have a very hearty appreciation, yet it’s an ambitious, terrifically entertaining film that dared to frame a fictional murder mystery around very real events of the Third Reich. Omar Sharif is Colonel Grau, an intelligence officer following up on an eyewitness account of a murdered prostitute in 1942 Warsaw. Seen leaving the building immediately after the murder was a German soldier identified by the red stripe in his trousers, a clear indication of a general’s uniform. By process of elimination, Grau discovers that only three generals had unknown whereabouts the night of the murder: General Kahlenberg (Donald Pleasance), General Gabler (Charles Grey) and General Tanz (Peter O Toole). Grau’s investigation spans over twenty years and is consistently interrupted by history- first by the sacking of the Polish ghettos by General Tanz, followed by his own promotion to Paris and the Occupation there, and then later interrupted by the plot to kill Hitler. Yes, there is justice served and a perpetrator is eventually brought to justice but its not by the good guy of our story, but by a peer instead and only after two decades of the war ending. “The Night of the Generals” is good for a history lesson, but immediately startling for its no-nonsense treatment of these hallmark Nazi moments. Just when Litvak establishes the three possible murderers and Grau is closing in on the most likely candidate of Tanz (O Toole), his division is in the throws of executing Hitler’s Final Solution in the Warsaw ghettos. These atrocious actions, memorialized for the entire running time of other films, is given only a few minutes of screen time here, considered as buffer for the lethal mental state of General Tanz and an excuse for Grau (Sharif) to temporarily postpone his investigation. It’s only a day later when Grau receives a promotion to Paris by two of the three men he’s investigating and his case is permanently sidelined.

Flash forward two years and another girl turns up murdered in Paris, this time with all three Generals stationed there as the Allies push toward the German positions. Grau re-opens his investigation, only for the film to be sidetracked and deepened by the plots of a coup to assassinate Hitler. Again, the murder mystery takes a curious backseat as the film explores the various backdoor dealings of several Generals, but it’s also in this hefty middle section where the film explores the mental breakdown of General Tanz. O’Toole really gets to go off the deep end here. Through his fractured state of mind, obsessed with cleanliness and timeliness, “The Night of the Generals” becomes a Jack the Ripper tale that, for my money, best appropriates the nature of unchecked Nazi aggression on both the global and personal scale. We’ve already seen O’Toole wipe out a whole section of Poland, so what’s going to stop him from murdering a girl of the night? While the real life events of “The Night of the Generals” are firmly recorded, it’s the fictional aspects that seem to dictate the driving madness behind the whole Nazi agenda.

Jean Pierre Melville’s “The Silence of the Sea” trades in terror as well, but it’s psychological terror. His debut film released in 1947, “The Silence of the Sea” is based on a short story secretly released during the Occupation by a French writer named Vercors. It’s depiction of a Nazi Lieutenant slowly turning his back on the Nazi movement while embracing the quiet beauty of France certainly establishes the novella’s Resistance tinted ideas. In cinematic terms, Melville’s film is simple and economic. As the Nazi lieutenant, actor Howard Vernon is steely and opaque. In the film’s opening moments, he arrives in a small provincial Paris suburb and requisitions the upstairs room of an old man (Jean Marie Robain) and his niece (Nicole Stephane). As an act of resistance, the uncle and niece resolutely deny speaking to him. This doesn’t seem to bother the Lieutenant very much as he swaggers downstairs every night and delivers a soliloquy of thoughts and statements about his past love affairs and his love of French culture. Through simple point of view shots, Melville also weaves a delicate relationship between the three, continually framing the nape of the niece’s neck under the Lieutenant’s loving gaze and the uncle’s stone stare. Initially designed as a monster due to his uniform and career choice, Vernon and director Melville slowly peel away the veneer and create a conflicted narrative where its difficult to assign blame to anyone. It’s only late in the film when the Lieutenant, confronted with his army’s ultimate goal of wiping out France, that his inner pacifism is released and the monster is given a human form.


As with “Army of Shadows” years later, Melville would complete what was ultimately hailed as the best Resistance film. With “The Silence of the Sea”, the basics are there…. And remember this was only a few years after the war itself had ended. Placing “The Silence of the Sea” in retrospect, its examination of a high commander coming to terms with his nation’s atrocities is downright frightening. There are vague mentions of gas chambers and a massacre in Treblinka that ultimately shake the Lieutenant to his core, but its also Melville’s inference that this man’s sexuality is questionable. After a conversation in which an old roommate decries France and calls it a “beast”, the Lieutenant returns to his country boarding room with self destruction in his head. That conversation is the real dagger to his heart. And like the best of Melville’s films, where quick editing and fluttering glances provide the big thrills, it’s the hushed murmur of the niece that deals the biggest explosion.

With so many portraits of psychopathic Nazi commanders littering the cinema landscape, “The Night of the Generals” and “The Silence of the Sea” give us alternative glimpses into this cinematic paradigm. Both films are readily available on DVD, with “The Silence of the Sea” available on a Korean DVD label as well as a region 2 Blu-Ray edition.

Unintentional Double Feature: 2 From Kinji Fukasaku

When there’s a prolific filmmaker in the likes of Kinji Fukasaku- 66 titles listed on imdb- one can always expect a few oddities in the mix. While a good majority of his films, produced in the 60’s and 70’s, set the template for ‘yakuza’ films that deal with the complex, multi-layered hierarchy of inherent violence and betrayal, some of his best work resides in the always chic disaster Sci-Fi genre. Three different efforts in three different decades- “The Green Slime” in 1968, “Message From Space” in 1978 and “Virus” in 1980- reveal a creative artist willing to dabble in foreign territory with surprisingly good results. Through each film, which become progressively better with “Virus” being a near masterpiece, Fukasaku tackles the well worn genre with gusto and imagination.

“The Green Slime” is probably best viewed where I first saw it recently- late at night on TCM after a few adult beverages. A relic of the 60’s, definitely, the film follows a group of astronauts as they attempt to land on a meteorite that’s slowly plummeting towards Earth, effectively blowing it up and altering its course. Michael Bay, anyone? What the astronauts find on the meteorite and subsequently bring back to the space station with them is a decidedly nasty alien life force that wrecks havoc. Living first as the eponymous green slime, the life force soon morphs into a monster that drains the ship of its energy and electrocutes anyone in sight. “The Green Slime” is not an especially good film, but it is harmless fun. Beginning as ‘kiddie’ Saturday afternoon serial with models and costumes that seem left over from an Ed Wood production, it soon turns into a latex-suited monster film that seems to exist as Fukasaku’s excuse to blend Godzilla and Hollywood science fiction. Even the theme song- part 60’s acid rock that lingers in one’s head long after the film itself is over- screams of the time period. I don’t regret seeing “The Green Slime”, but there were finer moments for Fukasaku.

One of those finer moments is “Message From Space”, a low-rent “Star Wars” impersonation replete with a narrative that features a kidnapped princess and a rag-tag group of galactic beings charged with the task of saving her and her home planet. The inevitable cheekiness of the late 70's- and Fukasaku's own determination to chop socky filmmaking in general- also dates "Message From Space", but it doesn't belong in that "so bad its good" category. As midnight cult filmmaking goes, it's a serviceable sci-fo romp that goes a long way in creating terrific atmosphere from gaudy sets and some lunatic performances which include a Japanese pimp, two hot dog spaceship pilots and Vic Morrow joining the quest to save the aforementioned princess from a planet of marauding invaders. But redundant as it is, “Message From Space” is wholly entertaining, like a Shaw Brothers rendition of “The Lord of the Rings”. And although technological advances hadn’t quite grown beyond the model and latex suit phase yet, "Message From Space" overcomes its cheapness through a genuine attempt to specify a grand adventure within the confines of a newly burgeoning high concept genre. And, for the record, the above poster from Egypt has nothing to do with the film itself.... but I love its gaudiness.

Unintentional Double Bill: Army of Crime and The Way Back

Robert Guediguian’s “Army Of Crime” and Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” exemplify two of the most prolific and popular genre threads of the second World War: resistance and incarceration. In fact, it could almost be believed that the select few survivors in “Army Of Crime” morph into the headstrong and resilient escapees in Weir’s brutally harsh drama about seven people trekking 4,000 km to freedom.

Upon first glance, “Army Of Crime” seems like a reductive title and all the more derivative for its mimic on the great Resistance film by Jean Pierre Melville’s “Army of Shadows”. But as Guediguian’s film later offers, the title comes as an ironic pitch of freedom, taken directly from the propaganda quotes plastered on posters by the German Army. While the initial reading of the title seems to infer the Resistance group, led by Armenain poet Missak (Simon Abkarian), are condemned for their violent acts, the reading of this famous quote at their quasi trial and conviction evolves into a rally cry of patriotic crusading. Still, all that rhetoric aside, “Army Of Crime” is an immensely moving and lovingly crafted documentation of the very origins of the French Resistance, led by foreign immigrants and Franco-Jewish outcasts. There’s the aforementioned cell leader, Missak, trying to shelter his beautiful wife (Virginie Ledoyen in a great performance) from the possible consequences of his actions. He leads several young men into retaliation missions around Paris. There’s Marcel (Robinson Stevenin) a promising swimmer who can’t control his hatred of the German Army and carries out solo assassinations by himself. His fourteen year old brother Simon (Leopold Szabatura) is also caught up in the violence. The sensitive young Thomas Elek (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuit) discovers just how hard it is to throw a grenade into a brothel. Like “Army of Shadows”, Guediguian’s film tracks a myriad of characters where deception and snitching is only a step behind. But whereas Melville’s film was a hermetic examination of the militaristic structure of the Resistance, “Army Of Crime” backs up a few years before there was a strong structural foundation. “Army Of Crime” also does a terrific job of showing the hard consequences this rag-tag band of freedom fighters brought upon their families. The mother of Thomas Elek doesn’t partake in crimes herself, yet she loses her business when the collaborating French police ransack her restaurant. Her only comments on the situation resonate when, after seeing Thomas come home late one night, she remarks that she knows he’s safe now that he’s home and she’s glad his actions are part of a larger conscience. While “Army Of Crime” largely concerns itself with the well edited and exciting sequences of violence and subterfuge, it also carries an enormous amount of respect and emotion for the more mundane details in these people’s lives.

Fatalistic from the very opening scene, there’s little doubt for the livelihood of this small Resistance group in “Army Of Crime“. As the end credits suggest, only three of the men and women survived the war in concentration camps. “Army Of Crime” is a hugely overlooked entry in the genre of World War 2 Resistance films. Shown as part of the Rendezvous With French Cinema series in New York in March of last year, it received a marginal release in theaters but has found its way onto a sunning Blu-Ray edition.

Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” gives a select few of these imprisoned people a small slice of hope. As the film opens, young Janusz (Jim Sturgess) has been condemned as a Party conspirator by his very own wife and sentenced to the harsh confines of a work camp in Siberia. He struggles through daily life until an escape plan falls into his sights. With an aging American (Ed Harris), a violent Russian thief (Colin Farrell) and several others in tow, Weir’s film is a trip though the most uninhabitable part of the Eastern world as the men travel towards freedom in Mongolia and then eventually India. Partly financed by National Geographic, Weird does his best to frame the film in a stately manner, revealing the incarceration by nature with extreme force. His main visual trope, though, does work as he commonly pans around the edge of a mountain or sand drift to reveal the characters slogging through an endless sea of blowing snow or heated sand dunes. While the characters themselves are mostly stock, “The Way Back” is an invigorating tale of survival that never holds back easy sentiments. There are key deaths and grisly ideas hinted at (think cannibalism). The ending is a bit stretched, yet it somehow works and adds depth to the main character of Janusz and the single-minded determination of his group of escapees to die free men.


Perhaps the best link between both films here is the enduring wish to give familes a reprieve from the seemingly hopeless environment of Europe during World War 2. For Missak in “Army Of Crime“, it’s the simple wish that his wife will survive and have a child. For Janusz, his long trip is all about redemption and forgiveness. Yes, both films place themselves in the murky and amoral times of war, but as “Army Of Crime” and “The Way Back” show, the only tangible motivation is the preservation of human life for generations to come.

Unintentional Double Bill: Sword and Sandals Edition

Actors go through phases, and for Mads Mikkelson, he must be going through his Spartacus phase. With two consecutive 'sword and sandals' films under his belt, the now recognizable actor takes this genre into two vastly different worlds. With "Valhalla Rising", he plays a savage warrior in a painterly art-deco 1000 AD world seen through the visually sumptuous eye of director Nicholas Winding Refn. And in Louis Leterrier's "Clash of the Titans", he plays second fiddle (but no less efficiently ruthless) to Persius (Sam Worthington) and his band of warriors as they set out to trump the gods. In cinema (as in life), synchronicity is charming sometimes, and it happened with these two films.

Now, before I get ahead of myself, it should be noted that one of these films is far superior to the other. "Valhalla Rising" is close to something very special... Refn's blisteringly brutal editing combined with framing compositions that seem to be borne out of exactly which way the clouds looks behind the actor rather than anything else are epic in scope. And running at a relatively quick 93 minutes, "Valhalla Rising" covers alot of territory in very spare, meditative style. Either you give in and submit to the film's patient, trancey style or give up. I loved every moment of it. On the other hand, Leterrier's "Clash of the Titans" was a virtual chore to get through. I understand that any film remade from a childhood favorite (and a favorite I watched probably 30 times over the course of 2-3 years as a kid) has the deck stacked against it. In all fairness, the executives at Warner Brothers were probably only counting on fan base favoritism for 15% of the film's success. It's a summer movie, loaded with CGI and featuring an action avatar star (Worthington) fresh off two successful movies. Still, the childlike wonder inherent in the original "Clash of the Titans" has dissipated. There is something eerily beautiful about Ray Harryhausen's stop motion animation that CGI simply cannot replace. In the new version, the creatures (especially the witches and Medusa, a character that haunted my dreams for years) appear weightless and quick without any real sense of danger. And that's the problem I've had with CGI for years. No matter how flawless it appears mixed in with the action on-screen, it still feels off to me. Not to mention the real characters in Leterrier's amped up version lack a genuine connection. Scuttled is the relationship between Andromeda and Persius in the original. Why do I really care if he saves everyone in this new version? The owl-so important and inviting in the original- is treated to the usual off-the-cuff post modern joke that dots so many remakes today. And as Persius, Worthington again brings zero gravity to his leading man... there to scowl and pout and fight. If this guy never gets work again, we may all be the better off.


In "Valhalla Rising", nothing is treated as a joke and the locales- fog covered Scottish mountains and grimy, black mud- authenticate a real story. I understand this comes off as yet another lobby for low-budget artistic style over big budget commercialism, but in this case, watch both films and tell me one doesn't agree. As One Eye, Mads Mikkelson is a caged slave warrior who escapes his captors, reluctantly joins up with a band of marauding Christian Vikings and ends up stranded in the New World as religion and faith falls apart around him. Spare imagery, clashing electric guitar drones and violent cuts between quiet and action create a tension within "Valhalla Rising" that's impenetrable to escape. Like his previous film "Bronson", "Valhalla Rising" is a character study of a violent male that tells you very little about the man outside his own self aggrandizing. One Eye is a mute, prone to precognitive visions about his own fate and "Valhalla Rising" keeps this hermetic sense of time and self intact. Bouncing from violent adventure to the next, "Valhalla Rising" has been described by Refn himself as a science fiction film without the science, and its numerous static shots of men talking off-screen in stream-of-conscious thought or One Eye's blood red visions of the future certainly place the film in a very netherworld atmosphere. All in all, this film's rugged savagery and auteur-like imagery put the mascara-clad acting and unimaginative CGI of "Clash of the Titans" to shame.

Unintentional Double Bill: Homicide and Kapo

David Mamet's 1991 film "Homicide" and Gillo Pontecorvo's "Kapo" are separated by nearly 30 years, yet both films represent Jewish faith and guilt in startling ways. Though I'm not Jewish myself, I can appreciate the religion's inherent foundation in symbolism and history, and both films tackle not only the question of one's place in that sprawling system of belief but one's identity when moral conviction is put under tremendous (and violent) stress.

In "Homicide", Joe Mantegna plays a Jewish cop who stumbles across the murder of an elderly Jewish shop keeper in a dilapidated part of New York. Her family, embedded with a very rich and suspicious Jewish organization fighting... something, believes it was more than a murder of opportunity. As Mategna digs into her past, he discovers ties to post war gun running and backroom Neo Nazi propagandists. Yet the real crux of Mamet's film- and it is a Mamet film, full of his razor sharp dialogue and crassly poetic exploration of the curse word- is the dissolving identity of lead cop Mantegna. Years of cop rhetoric and snide racial swipes at every possible race, including his own, have rendered him a mute practitioner of the Jewish religion. In one wince inducing scene, he talks on the phone to his partner (William H. Macy) in an office he thinks is vacant, tossing out every possible Jewish slur because feels the current assignment of investigating the Jewish woman's death is holding him back from stardom in catching a cop killer on the loose. Mamet's camera slowly pulls back to reveal the granddaughter (Mamet regular Rebecca Pidgeon) sitting on a couch in the corner, over hearing every remark. It's not only a pivotal scene in revealing the depths of Mantegna's self-imposed distance from his religion, but the caustic root of the entire film with a red herring title such as "Homicide". Through his investigation and conversations with more of the family, Mamet draws the cop as a prodigal son slowly and violently returned to the fold. Though Mantegna's steep escalation from hardcore cop to religious militant is less than believable at times, "Homicide" is one of his more potent works, largely due to its moral gravity and stunning finale.

If "Homicide" is a modern day attempt to exemplify the guilt experienced within a besieged religious group, Gillo Pontecorvo's 1959 Holocaust drama "Kapo" is a time capsule document of where it came from. Starring Susan Starsburg as Edith, a young Jewish girl led to a concentration camp, she is given solace and a new identity by a generous doctor. She manipulates the ravages of the camp initially by her beauty, becoming the lover of a German officer. She then graduates to a position of "kapo", given charge to keep order over the rest of the camp prisoners. It's only when a group of military POWs enter the camp and initiate the idea of escape that Edith falls in love and dares to reveal her true Jewish identity. "Kapo" isn't near the masterpiece that Pontecorvo would go onto helm several years later with "The Battle of Algiers", but it's a very good film that's been strangely absent on video until now. Watching it immediatedly after "Homicide" gives a three dimensional perspective on both films. In an alternate universe, Edith could easily be the old Jewish shop keeper in "Homicide", staunchly proud and driven to outlaw gun running via immense guilt for ignoring her faith during those young years of her life. We've seen numerous Holocaust tales of survival, and it would be a great disservice to condemn a film (or character) for their lack of aggressiveness. For every Resitance fighter, there were 3 or 4 people who were forced to turn their back on their families and moral values to survive. How would anyone of us react today? In watching "Homicide" and "Kapo", this question is raised to even deeper proportions, both in artistic and stylistic different ways, but powerful nonetheless.