Images

IMAGES                     B+         
USA   Great Britain  Ireland  (101 mi)  1972  ‘Scope  d:  Robert Altman

I’m not really making love with him.  That will make anything all right. 

—Cathryn (Susannah York)

Made at the peak of his creative powers between McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and The Long Goodbye (1973), two of the director’s most memorable works, Altman made this strange little film about schizophrenia, the second of his “Female Subjectivity” Trilogy, coming between That Cold Day In the Park (1969) and 3 Women (1977).  While it’s not hard to imagine a little girl living in a fantasy world of fairy tales and dreams, viewed as the picture of innocence, yet here’s it’s a beautiful grown woman who appears equally stuck in an imaginary world, a strange and haunting place where the world is not as it seems, where reality comes and goes with the whims of the imagination, all running together creating a peculiar netherworld, much like the macabre and sinister universe of Carl Dreyer’s VAMPYR (1932), but this is the world as she sees it, where she seemingly floats in and out of both worlds, as the film takes place almost entirely inside a woman’s subconscious.  It’s interestingly one of the least Altmanesque films the director has ever made, where it doesn’t feature overlapping dialogue, a multitude of characters, multiple themes, several events happening simultaneously within the same frame, or an improvisational feel, instead it has a narrow focus, perhaps his most complete foray into the horror genre with its array of creepy effects, venturing into the Dario Argento art house horror genre to reveal one woman’s descent into madness.  Susannah York won the Best Actress Award at the premiere in Cannes, where Sandra Dennis in That Cold Day In the Park is a direct link to Susannah York here, offering a striking performance as the central character Cathryn, where the camera never leaves her, as Altman uses a more experimental style to capture a woman caught between two worlds, both merging into one another, with a brilliant sound design by musical composer John Williams and Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamash’ta, mixing wind chimes fluttering in the breeze with special sound effects to reflect her altered state of consciousness, where the audience is continually questioning what is real and what isn’t.  Cathryn has a complacently bourgeois husband Hugh, René Auberjonois, who sees the world as it is, representing one reality, combined with the world as it appears to her, where the majority of the film is reflective of her continuously fluctuating interior moods.  When viewed as a cultural oppression of women, there seems to be little fallback position, as Cathryn both rebels against and then withdraws from her real husband, inventing alternative options only through an abnormal psychology, perhaps viewed as unfathomable by men, where throughout the trilogy Altman deals with the crises of women through various internalized neuroses.  On the other hand, it’s not too far fetched to see the film as a portrait of an artist, seeing the world much as Cathryn does, where the jagged edges of creative artistry continually fluctuate and evolve over time.      

Originating from an Altman idea, the film is brilliantly shot in Ireland around a lakeland location of Lough Bray, County Wicklow by cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, with breathtaking panoramic vistas capturing a wintry desolation, where much of this film has a painterly appearance, beautifully mixing the natural pastoral beauty outside, occasionally delving into fantasy, with exquisitely designed interior sets by Leon Ericksen that reflect a super modern look, where each door or room leads to another world, all feeding into Cathryn’s psychosis.  Opening with a story that she’s writing that at the same time is taking her into a world that is frightening, the entire film is layered in a children’s book called In Search of Unicorns, a children’s fantasy novel actually written by Susannah York that she narrates throughout, where the story is her escapism from her twisted sense of reality, finding comfort in the safety of children’s images, where things the audience sees appear to be other things to her.  Throughout the film, the presence of the camera gives the viewer the intimate effect of being outside looking in, where there are strange incongruities throughout, becoming a fascinating portrait of mental instability, much of it captured with dreamlike imagery.  The audience is immediately struck by her distorted sense of reality, where she suspects her husband of sexual indiscretions that exist only in her own mind, which is probably her way of avoiding her own indiscretions.  Perhaps the biggest jolt is when her husband Hugh turns into someone who isn’t there, René (Marcel Bozzuffi), a ghost from the past who has come to pay a visit, where the “visitor” remains to her just as real as anything else.  While she tries to ignore the reappearance of these haunting apparitions, knowing in some instances (a dead lover) they’re not really there, but they inevitably lure her into their sexual fantasies where she relives past experiences in her life that are most likely based on real occurrences, where for her, the present and the past exist simultaneously, like a kind of involuntary time traveling, which is especially evident in a scene when she stands atop a hill overlooking a view of herself pulling into a driveway below.  It’s not a stretch to think this influenced Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980), with Jack Nicholson similarly gazing down into the maze at the Overlook Hotel, tracking his wife and son as they navigate its corridors. 

When her husband Hugh takes her out to their country estate, a dream cottage beautifully located on a lake and within walking distance of a majestic waterfall in what appears to be a magical forest with a herd of sheep running free, Cathryn continues to see visions, having violent episodes often when she’s left alone, where the world closes in on her much like Catherine Deneuve’s hallucinations in Roman Polanski’s REPULSION (1965).  Haunted by unwelcome memories that she tries to suppress, and the thought of a lonely childhood where she was often forced to “invent” friends, we’re never told specifically what is ailing Cathryn, or if the frequency and intensity of her schizophrenic episodes have grown more acute.  Instead, alone with the subjective point of view of the central figure, the audience is reeled into the same claustrophobic existence where these episodes are conspiring against her.  Hugh also brings home a creepy old friend, Marcel (Hugh Millais), who has recently obtained custody of his 12-year old daughter Susannah (Cathryn Harrison), who bears a striking resemblance to a young Cathryn.  The lecherous Marcel instantly hits on Cathryn, much like René, with both characters (along with her husband) feeling almost interchangeable, where they obviously have some history, though it’s Susannah that attracts the attention of Cathryn, where they’re both seen attempting to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of what turns out to be the country house where they live, where it’s clear in Susannah she sees a younger version of herself, fused together in a mirror image out of Bergman’s PERSONA (1966), where the lines of reality are blurred, mixed with the fantasy elements of the story and the nearby magical forest.  Marcel’s perceived sexual aggressiveness is fended off while at the same time succumbed to, where he tells her, “You know what you are?  You’re a schizo one minute fighting like a tiger and the next all love and kisses.”  Because she imagines characters that don’t exist, she can’t distinguish whether his sexual advances are real, though she eventually confronts her “visitors,” awakening something deeply unsettling inside that resembles a madness within, where eventually the dead mix with what’s real, and she’s left questioning what she’s done.  Cathryn is always quick to invent fictitious scenarios to explain what otherwise resembles a catastrophe, as schizophrenics that live with this condition are used to covering up their hallucinations, where they routinely invent excuses or lies to convince others that everything’s all right, even as they are slipping further into the void. 

By the end, Altman’s film resembles the surreal landscape of David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY (1997) with its infamous identity schism.  Cathryn drives along the road at night returning back to the city for what she believes is her waiting husband, where she encounters along the way, among other things, haunting images of ghosts, including one of herself beckoning for help, “Let me in Cathryn.  What’s the matter with you?” where she is literally fighting for control of her own soul, which appears fragile and easily lost in the mist.  She thinks she has a handle on her visions, growing elated at the thought all the ghosts are gone, leaving her feeling somewhat euphoric, driving ecstatically through a phantasmagorical world of brightly saturated colors, illusion and hallucination, where Altman loves to use shots through glass, odd camera angles, zoom in and out of focus, or use mirrored images that serve as reflections of the past, providing an altered expression of reality, where the camera sees what Cathryn sees throughout, a window into schizophrenia.  The entire film plays out like a nightmarish fever dream that literally breathes psychological intensity, using eerie and atmospheric sounds of percussion along with weird images that seem to offer a view of the occult.  The film is an impressionistic drama that takes us on a mysterious journey into the maze of a mental labyrinth, where each twist and turn leaves us even further removed from where we started.  By the end, Cathryn remains an Alice down the rabbit hole enigma and has only retreated further into her stories, where her grip on reality is even less tenuous, relying upon the kindness of others, “Hugh will be here in a moment and we’ll see who’s here and who isn’t.”  The complex and smartly thought-out film is well acted, beautifully constructed, and not like anything else Altman has ever done, where he presents the fear and isolation associated with a personality disorder, showing how little support and actual communication is offered, reflecting the depths of alienation and trauma.  One of the clever touches is Altman creating characters using the real names of the actors, where Cathryn is played by Susannah York, Susannah is played by Cathryn Harrison, René is played by Marcel Bozzuffi, Marcel is played by Hugh Millais, and Hugh is played by René Auberjonois.  The film was originally released in Chicago at the Biograph Theater on a double bill with Nicolas Roeg’s Don't Look Now (1973), both emotionally cold films, but dreamy, psychologically obtuse thrillers having much in common, particularly in the extraordinary visual compositions and artful expression of a fractured reality, but this is one of the few Altman films that actually excels in weaving a tightly constructed narrative.     

Irreversible (Irréversible)

IRREVERSIBLE (Irréversible)    A                             

France  (97 mi)  2002  ‘Scope  d:  Gaspar Noé 

A film whose reputation precedes the first viewing, knowing in advance that something terribly ugly was going to happen right away, one can’t help but be dumfounded at the superb use of sound in the opening sequence.  Mind you, from all the advance hype one is already in a state of heightened alert from the beginning, but far and away, this exceeded any expectations.  Speaking as one who is easily squeamish, who could not watch the delight of the woman in AUDITION (1999), the fucked up, hateful beatings and the profanity-laced misogyny in DOG DAYS (2001), hell, even the last fifteen minutes of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000), all nightmares, nightmares...

 ...but I was transfixed here, as that truly ominous use of sound, those oscillating waves of mental mayhem which “preceded” the entry into the Hell of an underground male leather club called Rectum, adding those dizzying camera movements and a continuous stream of profanity, shouting, and terror as they move through one blurring act of perversity to the next, those waves of sound never stopped until a man was actually beaten to death.  Can't speak for anyone else, but that's as gripping a scene as anything in cinema.  It is that SOUND that sticks in your head, and the unbelievable energy associated with it, where the intensity level created by this scene is simply indescribable.  There’s nothing else out there like it.  It is intoxicating, almost like a film within a film, a scene that could easily stand alone as a work of an avant-garde or experimental film artist.  The unique “thrill” from that opening never goes away, as those sound waves keep pounding in your head and keep driving the energy underneath every subsequent sequence.  That opening sequence is simply unforgettable, where one never forgets that dramatically awesome power, that synergy of visuals and sound.  As writer Jason Shawhan states in The Film Journal The Sense-Deranging Sound + Vision of Gaspar Noe's Irreversible “You find, in the sequence at the Rectum, a soundscape that meshes with the nervous system in a way that hasn't been done since Argento's work with the Goblins in SUSPIRIA.  Sound and vision are so perfectly fused that it becomes impossible to separate them...here is a case of extreme sonic frequencies and visual disorientation as a necessary means to experiencing the film...the kind of experience that changes a viewer forever.”

Mark Harris:

Even a movie's being homophobic need not disqualify it from serious consideration, in my view. Gaspar Noe's Irreversible strikes me as most certainly homophobic, in the exact sense of "phobic" -- afraid of, even horrified of, homosexuality, and also of anality as a distinct phenomenon. (Consider the name of the leather club, The Rectum, and the repeated cry "Where is The Rectum?"; the name of the rapist, The Tapeworm; and that long symbolic tunnel where the rape occurs.) But Irreversible also strikes me as one of the most powerful movies of recent years. I was shaken by the film, but I did not find it hateful.

Well for what it's worth, despite the provocative controversy, this is one of the best films of the year as it combines such a powerful, boldly impactive film style with subject matter.  While bowled over by that unforgettable oscillating sound loop in the opening sequence that just screams out waves of anticipated danger, a device that certainly remains under your skin throughout the film, a non visual device that is infinitely more powerful than witnessing the ensuing brutality, which happens so quickly, engulfed in a murky, barely lit, nightmarish dream world, where the gruesome reality of it, witnessing a man being beaten to death, can barely match the power of the menacing atmosphere that is simply overwhelming.  In this case, the audacity of the artistic creation is indescribably brilliant, while the actions of men are equally gruesome and brutal, so the depiction of otherworldly eeriness is strangely in balance, artistically speaking.  That opening sequence is one of the most powerful and intensely exhilarating sequences ever experienced. 

That said, this sequence is strangely not the controversial, or so-called hateful or misogynistic scene, which comes shortly afterwards, where the lingering aftereffects of its power in some ways overshadows the subsequent shot-in-real-time rape scene, which instead of being engulfed in an extraordinary art design, is shown straight, exactly as is, where the nonchalance of the rapist is contrasted against the horribly agonizing sounds of the female victim, where again, it is the sound that provides the overriding sense of horror and brutality.  The uncomfortable length of this sequence is stunning, as we keep waiting for it to be over, to cut to another scene, but the director stays with it for an interminable length, thoroughly reminding the viewers what an invasive, emotionally draining and physically exhaustive experience this is, as rape is overwhelmingly brutal, a parallel to the devastating opening sequence.  Stylistically, the length of the scene recalls Terence Malick's THE THIN RED LINE (1998), where the audience is subjected to wave after wave of relentless military assaults, where the physically exhaustive accumulation of death and carnage takes its toll over time, as it was intended to do.  

The first sequence is filled with the thrill of anticipation, what are they looking for, what kind of world is this, where the raw physical presence of a strange fascinating underworld guides our interest, culminating in a chilling act of violence which ends in a stunning silence.  The second sequence is surprising by the complete lack of artifice, as all possible outside distraction is stripped away, leaving us helpless, forcing the audience to endure the bestial attacks that women around the world suffer daily, yet male-dominated societies barely lift a finger of outrage or protest.  And if it happens to men in prison, or if they get HIV infected, well who cares?  They shouldn't have allowed themselves to get locked up in the first place, ignoring the societal inequities that place 25% of young black males under 30 in prison.  No, it would be hard to call the *film* hateful, not as hateful as reality is, war, torture, rape, the death penalty, but it's certainly provocative, as it stirs up the feelings of resentment and outrage. 

As for Ebert's take (Irreversible Movie Review & Film Summary (2003) | Roger Ebert):

The fact is, the reverse chronology makes "Irreversible" a film that structurally argues against rape and violence, while ordinary chronology would lead us down a seductive narrative path toward a shocking, exploitative payoff. By placing the ugliness at the beginning, Gaspar Noe forces us to think seriously about the sexual violence involved. The movie does not end with rape as its climax and send us out of the theater as if something had been communicated. It starts with it, and asks us to sit there for another hour and process our thoughts. It is therefore moral - at a structural level.

In total agreement here on the backwards chronology, as it does change what would otherwise be a nihilistic, exploitive, and highly pessimistic film into one that at least allows for a differing outcome.  It opens up the world of possibilities for people to eradicate so much of the needless and unnecessary pain that is inflicted upon others and gives us a chance to reevaluate ourselves in this light.  The near Eden ending is really just the beginning, as each new life offers a new beginning, and in that there is an indescribable hope.

American Mary

AMERICAN MARY               D+   

Canada  (100 mi)  2012  d:  Jen and Sylvia Soska         Official site

Doesn’t everybody just love a good horror movie?  Well, that’s not exactly what this is, as instead it’s kind of a tongue-in-cheek stab at torture porn, a subgenre of one of the most hideously gruesome forms of sadistic horror, and one that seems to have little if any redeeming value.  Apparently some find this sort of thing entertaining, however, as evidenced by Eli Roth’s two HOSTEL (2005, 2007) movies, the first grossing ten times the initial budget, and the highly profitable SAW (2004) franchise, where the original was made for $1.2 million but grossed over $100 million dollars worldwide, churning out nearly one movie a year ever since, where the latest, SAW VII (2010), is a 3D effort.  While torture porn appeals to the basest form of crude and grotesque behavior, featuring explicit scenes of sadistic torture, dismemberment, and mutilation, where the gory action sequences are presented as freak-show sensationalism, the effects of watching this stuff is largely unknown, though one would think the mentally unstable should stay away.  Some films, like Rob Zombie’s THE DEVIL’S REJECTS (2005), initially thrown into the mix, probably don’t belong, as they pay homage to earlier 70’s era drive-in, grindhouse B-movies, representative of the golden age of exploitation, schlock films filled with buckets of blood and gore, where the melodramatic hysteria is met with equally over-the-top visualizations, all made for next to nothing, usually for satiric effect.  The Kuchar Brothers, for instance, were masters of the low budget aesthetic, working alongside 60’s underground legends Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger, which eventually spawned John Waters and his outsiderist cult films of the 70’s, a director who expressed an equal amount of joy and influence from highbrow “art” films and sleazy exploitation films.  But the father of modern horror pictures is Dario Argento, who interestingly began his career as a screenwriter teamed up with Bernardo Bertolucci and Sergio Leone for the spaghetti western ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968) before venturing out on his own, where his claim to fame is giallo films combining high quality, art film production values with nudity, gore, and shocking horror, not the least of which might feature throat slashings or decapitations along with unusually stylish camerawork.  It’s the unflinching content of high production slasher or splatter films that establishes a connection to torture porn, where only snuff films remain an untapped exploitive resource. 

Unbelievably, even a snuff film was presented for the first time at the Cannes Film festival this year, according to Scott Roxborough and Patrick Brzeski from The Hollywood Reporter (Cannes: Ultra-Violence Peppers Competition Selection - The ...). 

Pushing the envelope furthest is Atrocity Exhibition, showing in the Short Film corner, which its director Ebadur Rahman has described as “Cannes’ first snuff film.” Says Rahman: “Cannes has been showing fake ‘extreme content’ for ages: Any film by Tarantino, Takeshi Miike, or Kim Ki Duk is at least as violent as mine. What’s different about Atrocity Exhibition is, I didn’t fake it.” Asked whether viewers might have to look away during screenings, Rahman says: “I would hope so.”

Not only has the SAW franchise legitimized torture porn, providing a large audience and a new avenue into horror films, always a lucrative movie business,  but South Korean filmmakers Park Chan-wook’s OLD BOY (2003) winning the Jury Prize at Cannes (a Tarantino favorite) and Kim Ki-duk’s Pieta (2012) winning the Best Film at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, all but give the genre the artistic seal of approval.  Not so fast, some may scream, as some parted company with Park Chan-wook’s next offering, SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE (2005), where Cinema Scope and freelance writer Michael Sicinski writes an open letter of protest to New York Times critic Manohla Dargis in condemnation of the film (see reviews dated 9/15, 2005 Toronto International Film Festival), calling it “a repugnant piece of shit.”  This kind of outrage is a natural extension of the product, as it’s meant to be revolting, just as Mary Harron’s over-the-top use of surreal horror in American Psycho (2000), something this slightly resembles, is meant to be outrageous, which brings us to Canada’s the Soska sisters, Sylvia and Jen, interviewed here by The Guardian’s Steve Rose (Guardian: Soska Sisters):    

Horror was a natural direction for the Soskas. As kids, they'd lurk in the horror section of the video store looking at the backs of the boxes, they say. "Mom eventually caved in and let us watch Poltergeist when we were 10," says Sylvia. "We were like, 'We can handle it mom.' Then bedtime came and we were scared… fucking… shitless. And my mother did something that would forever change the way we look at horror movies. She sat Jen and me down and explained what we had actually seen. She explained the director, the actors, the prosthetics, the sets, everything. And she told us how these were very talented artists who collaborated with the intention of scaring the audience. We were like, 'Wait a minute. It can be your job to scare people for a living?'"

The eventual film-making course didn't go well, though. They became so disillusioned that their graduation project was a fake trailer, partly inspired by Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse and partly by the film school's list of things not to put in a graduation movie. "Necrophilia, bestiality, vomiting… we put in everything we could," says Jen. "Half the audience walked out, and the other half was laughing so hard you couldn't hear the intentionally disgusting language."

Horror tends to be an exclusively all-male domain, where women are used as fetishistic objects to scare out of their wits, from Fay Wray in KING KONG (1933) to Jamie Lee Curtis in HALLOWEEN (1978), where scantily clad girls are seen staying in a secluded cabin in the woods from I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) to THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (2011), but there are notable exceptions, such as Takashi Miike’s AUDITION (1999) where the roles are reversed.  AMERICAN MARY will not be for everyone, as it’s graphically disturbing throughout, but it is a horror film with a uniquely female perspective.  Much like Tarantino, the Soska sisters not only have an admiration for the horror genre, but a certain reverence for its form, where the film is basically a series of horror set pieces filled with twisted and strangely unlikable characters.  Seen almost entirely through the impressionable eyes of Katharine Isabelle as Mary (talk about a working actress, IMDb lists 10 movies made after this one with another four either filming or in post production), an attractive young medical student who is having trouble making ends meet, painting a much rosier picture to her Hungarian grandmother on the phone, but despite getting harassed by an over-controlling professor, even though she’s the best and most promising student in class, she needs to make money fast.  So she answers an ad for what she thinks is a dancer at a strip club, but due to her meticulously detailed resumé that indicates she’s in medical school, the sleazy owner Billy (Antonio Cupo) pays $5000 cash up front and sucks her into an under-the-table, highly specialized offer of stitching up mutilated bodies that have been pulverized and left for dead from vicious beatings.  Afterwards, she immediately starts receiving calls from the Diane Arbus world of the bizarre requesting “extreme body modification.” While Mary is a professed innocent to this looming underworld of desired body disfigurement and mutilation, where despite the unpleasantness associated with the often gruesome task, the lucrative offers are extremely generous, making it difficult to turn down. 

The film’s saving grace is the exaggerated tone throughout, something of a satirical spoof, where Mary has an absurdly comic dialogue with many of her patients, some of whom feel more like a childlike collection of dolls or specimens than human beings, where it’s as if her subconscious has a voice through her exotic bodywork, giving her a titillating sense of empowerment.  Dressed in skimpy outfits, stalkings and stilleto’s, she’s always dressed for the male idealization, as if Xena the Warrior Princess has suddenly been transformed into someone’s idea of a male sexual fantasy, where working out of her own apartment, she becomes an underground cult sensation, dropping out of medical school and maintaining a thriving practice, where she quickly picks up the affectionate online nickname “Bloody Mary.”  The Soska sisters themselves appear onscreen as a pair of batshit crazy sisters that surgically wish to exchange arms with one another, so there are obviously other issues at play here, all of them disturbing, including an underlying thread throughout of nonchalant sadism, becoming an anatomically precise horror show of disfigurement.  Delving into SAW territory, Mary even holds her professor captive (as it was after all he who crossed the line), as she experiments with particularly difficult procedures on him just for practice, leaving him something of a whimpering human stump.  Where the film does tread new ground, expressed with demented relish, is portraying a highly distinctive, feminist sense of controlling one’s own body image while also adding, just for good measure, a righteous sense of feminist anger and revenge, going where no one has gone before, so to speak, as it has the desired effect the sisters are looking for, where much of what we see is pretty disgusting.  The heavily artistic production design might actually be called outlaw biker fantasy porn, as biker guys get off on drinking heavily, naked girls, and beating the crap out of people, and here they get to watch their fantasy sweetheart stitch their mangled victims back together again, where every last detail is explicitly prohibited outlaw behavior.  While the underlying comic element may be subversive, there were no laughs heard in the theater, as the experience is meant to be nauseating and revolting.  This may be highly appealing for deviants of all kinds, or people who enjoy watching sadistic behavior for their theatrical entertainment, but there remains an open question whether this graphically grotesque material adds anything significant to the world of cinema.