Tag Archives: Cult Film

Saturday Matinee: Mother Night

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Helps us see that there is no escaping the burdens of living in a political world.

Film Review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Source: Spirituality and Practice

There is no escaping the burdens of living in a political world nor is it possible to duck our obligation to take responsibility for what we do. These two moral points are at the hub of Keith Gordon’s riveting screen adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 novel Mother Night.

In 1961, Howard Campbell (Nick Nolte), an American, finds himself in an Israeli prison where he is ordered to write his memoirs before standing trial as a war criminal.

He recalls his life in Germany and his success as a playwright. During the rise of Hitler, Campbell and his wife try to ignore what is happening and live in their own “nation of two.”

Then Col. Frank Wirtanen (John Goodman) plays upon Campbell’s ego and convinces him to become a secret agent while posing as a Nazi sympathizer. Campbell’s virulent radio broadcasts against the Jews and the Allies win him fame in Germany and hatred abroad.

After the war is over, he moves to Greenwich Village alone; his wife has died during the war. Campbell doesn’t know whether to view himself as a hero or a villain. Meanwhile, he is pursued by two Russian spies (Alan Arkin and Sheryl Lee) and some neo-Nazis.

The screenplay by Robert B. Weide draws out the moral conundrums in Vonnegut’s thought-provoking novel about good and evil, role-playing, and conscience.

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Watch Mother Night on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11749338

Saturday Matinee: Valley of the Gods

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By Peter Sobczynski

Source: RogerEbert.com

Of all the films this year that have been forced by circumstances to make their debuts via home video and streaming services, I can’t think of one that I would’ve rather seen in a theater than “Valley of the Gods.” This is partly because it is indeed a large-scale drama with a grand visual sweep that presumably needs a big screen to be properly appreciated. However, the real reason I wish that I could have seen it in a theater is to be able to see the faces of the other audience members once the end credits started rolling. My guess is that their facial expressions would greatly resemble those of the first night crowd for “Springtime for Hitler” at the end of the opening number. This is a movie so strange, bizarre and so unclassifiable that as soon as I was done watching it, I contacted my editor to see if deploying the phrase “batshit crazy” would be acceptable. It was approved but I have decided not to employ it on the basis that even that description undersells the experience.

As the film opens, a man (Josh Hartnett) arrives at the Valley of the Gods, an area of southeastern Utah near Monument Valley where the spirits of Navajo Indian deities are said to reside within the enormous stones on display. The man pulls a desk out of the back of his car and begins writing, in longhand, of course. In due time, we learn that he is John Ecas, an advertising copywriter whose life has collapsed since his wife (Jaime Ray Newman) left him, evidently for her hang gliding instructor. His therapist (John Rhys-Davies) suggests that the best way for John to cut through all the absurdity that he sees in the world is to beat it at its own game by doing things that are even crazier—climbing up a mountain face while dragging all of his pots and pans with him or walking the streets both backwards and blindfolded. Having accomplished those feats, John has now decided to write the novel that he has always dreamed of penning and while I cannot be 100% sure, it is implied that most of the rest of the film is a visualization of what he is creating.

This eventually introduces us to Wes Tauros, the richest man in the world, and rumored to have gone mute following a personal tragedy. He is played by John Malkovich, who is not exactly the first person one might think of to play a mute. Anyway, he’s in the midst of closing a deal to acquire the mineral rights to the Valley of the Gods in order to mine for uranium, a move that divides the Navajos still living there between those who want the money that they will receive as part of the deal and those upset that the development of the land will desecrate what they consider to be holy ground. Eventually, John turns up at Tauros’ super-lavish estate in order to write the man’s biography but discovers things that are peculiar, even by the standards of a character played by John Malkovich.

By most critical standards, “Valley of the Gods” is a film that starts off as being fairly berserk and quickly becomes frothing mad. It feels as though writer/director Lech Majewski had a marathon of the films of Terrence Malick and the recent works of Wim Wenders and decided to try to make something that would combine the two, minus the lucid plotting. The narrative, which unfolds via a prologue and ten separate chapter headings, is, to put it charitably, a mess. The various plot threads involving the rich man, the tormented writer, and the Navajos are largely inscrutable and they do not so much weave together towards the end as much as they clumsily crash into each other. Too often, Majewski abandons them entirely to go off onto strange tangents that range from Tauros catapulting a luxury car over a cliff vis some dubious effects work, to the scenes in which Keir Dullea turns up as the rich man’s spectral butler. (This may indeed be the most bewildering film that Dullea has ever appeared in and you know what his most famous credit is.) Then there is Bérénice Marlohe, who turns up in the world’s stretchiest limousine but otherwise does nothing but get a makeover and appear in what is only the film’s third most ridiculous sex scene. (The winner, FYI, is the bewildering sequence where one of the Navajos climbs up a giant rock formation and, uh, has sex with it.)

So yeah, the movie doesn’t “work,” as they say. And yet, even though it pretty much goes off the rails right from the start, never to return, I never quite minded. The film may be nuts but it certainly isn’t boring and there is never a moment where you feel the plot gears grinding away—this is definitely a movie that moves to the beat of a different drummer, even when it seems as if the drummer in question is Keith Moon. Additionally, it has a formal beauty to it that can’t be denied and which is frequently ravishing to behold—there are times when you just want to sit back and let the whole thing just wash one you. I also admired the willingness of actors like Hartnett and Malkovich to go way out on an artistic limb by taking part in it.

“Valley of the Gods” is a film that most people may find to be, at best, wildly uneven and frequently ridiculous and I cannot disagree with those assertions. However, I am still kind of happy that I saw it and I know that there are things in it that I will remember long after most of the more conventional movies of late have faded away. If you are someone who has in the past embraced such wonderfully unrestrained and seemingly foolhardy cinematic visions as Emir Kusturica’s “Arizona Dream” (1994), Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales” (2006) or the Werner Herzog title of your choice, you might want to check this one out for yourself. If you do, be sure to stick it out for the jaw-dropping finale in which … well, you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you. 

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Watch Valley of the Gods on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/13724818

Saturday Matinee: The Warriors

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By Dante James

Source: Film Threat

Warriors… come out to play! Warriors… come out to play!

One of the most well-known movie chants in cinematic history has passed the 30-year mark.

When The Warriors, starring a bunch unknown actors at the time, made its debut in ‘79, No one could have predicted it would be considered one of the greatest “cult classics” in film history… but here we are.

And if you were to ask any fan of The Warriors why this film has stood the test of time in cult fandom, most will never be able to give you a solid reason other than: “It’s just f*****g cool, man!” But that’s the magic of this movie!

The concept was simple enough. Street gangs from all over New York would come to a truce and unite under the highly respected urban messiah, Cyrus (Roger Hill), Leader of the Grammercy Riffs. A meeting was called in Central Park where they would all hear his message of strength in numbers against the cops. Except, everything goes wrong when Luthor (David Patrick Kelly), leader of Rogues, for no apparent reason other than he was bored, pulls his gun and kills Cyrus from the crowd.

But instead of getting caught, he immediately blamed one of The Warriors, the gang from Coney Island, for the assassination. After violently beating their leader, Cleon (Dorsey Wright), the gangs turned their attention to rest of The Warriors: Swan (Michael Beck), Ajax (James Remar), Rembrandt (Marcelino Sanchez), Vermin (Terry Michos), Cochise (David Harris), Snow (Bryan Tyler), and Cowboy (Tom McKitterick). And from here on out, they have every gang in New York after their a*s as they try to make it back home to Coney.

During this time in cinema (the mid to late 70s), there was an influx of genre movies that were becoming more and more popular. Blaxploitation, gritty cop dramas, and of course, kung fu.

What set The Warriors apart from most films (at the time) was how stylized it was. Starting with how very eccentric and themed all the different gangs were:

The Grammercy Riffs: The biggest and most feared gang made up of Black Kung Fu artist.

The Lizzies: The punk, all-girl gang.

The Boppers: The Harlem crew who looked like 1920s gangsters.

The Turnball AC’s: The skinhead, rabid, “Mad-Max” psychopaths.

The Baseball Furies: The gang dressed like the New York Yankees with facepaint and big bats!

This is just a few of the 20 or more gangs featured in this film. But it was enough to have every 10-year-old boy’s imagination working overtime!

Though there wasn’t a ton of dialogue in the film, the performances were strong all the way through. Especially that of Lynne Thigpen, who plays “The Voice,” a radio DJ who gave the other gangs sightings of The Warriors so they could continue their hunt. And though you never see her entire face in the whole film except for her lips, she brings the much-needed weight that makes the film feel legit.

Deborah Van Valkenburgh, who played the mouthy, tough-girl Mercy who helps The Warriors navigate through the dangerous city, was a stand-out! You go from wanting her to get pushed into ongoing traffic, to loving her by the end. Valkenburgh, though not a household name, has been consistently working in Hollywood even to this day. But her role as Mercy is still the one she gets the most recognition for!

James Remar, who is noted bad-a*s in every movie he’s in, makes Ajax the one Warrior that we all gravitate towards. Even to the point of stealing scenes away from Michael Beck who at this point in the movie, is the actual lead. Ajax’s rumble with The Baseball Furies is still the most memorable fight in the movie!

Another performance that should not go unnoticed is that of Hollywood’s favorite bad guy, David Patrick Kelly who plays Luthor, Leader of The Rogues. From the moment he kills Cyrus, until the end of the film, he delivers on being the scumbag we love to hate. And of course, he’ll always be remembered for his legendary scene in the car as The Rogues have The Warriors cornered at the beach and taunts them by clinking three bottles together on his fingers over and over chanting: “Warriors… Come out to play!” And rumor has it, this scene was completely improvised by Kelly, which makes it even more classic.

The Warriors saw a resurgence in the early 2000s. With not only a video game from developer Rockstar Studios but also with an updated re-release of the film with added footage. People at comic conventions were now cosplaying as The Warriors and all of the different gangs from the film. There have been several reunions with the cast (that are still living), and talks of a reboot.

For many guys in my generation (Gen X), The Warriors has been a constant on most “Best of” list. And for me personally, It’s one film that can’t be redone for the simple fact, there isn’t a living director that can capture what made this movie work!

If you’ve never seen this film, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s definitely in my TOP 5 of “All time greatest movies.”  

*Pro-Tip: It’s best watched late at night, completely in the dark, with some beer and popcorn*

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Watch The Warriors on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/15742134

Saturday Matinee: In the Mouth of Madness

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That Time John Carpenter Went Meta With ‘In the Mouth of Madness’

As always, Carpenter was light years ahead of his time.

By Nick L.

Source: Collider

One of John Carpenter’s more endearing traits is his aversion to self-effacing clowning. This is not at all to suggest that Carpenter’s films aren’t funny — rather, it’s that the living genre legend often opts to play familiar B-movie scenarios completely straight, whether it be a terse gangland standoff rendered as a modern-day Western showdown (Assault On Precinct 13, one of the most influential films of the 20th century) or a masked killer, bereft of any overwrought psychological motive, terrorizing the inhabitants of a sleepy all-American suburb (Halloween, of course). While Carpenter has dabbled in satire (They Live) and high-concept fantasy (Big Trouble In Little China) over the course of his now decades-spanning career, the grounded nature of his approach is often its own reward. The Escape From New York director has all but perfected an economical, tough-minded creative ethos that has gone on to influence an entire generation of filmmakers dabbling in sci-fi, horror, and beyond.

Going Meta Before It Was Cool

In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter’s glorious 1994 cult masterpiece, might be the most conspicuous exception to this rule. The story of an insurance investigator who begins losing his grip on reality while probing the mysterious disappearance of a lucratively popular horror author named Sutter Cane, In the Mouth of Madness is an unabashedly meta exploration of the creative act as a form of hypnosis. It is not only a film whose central plot conceit is unique to the moral panic that defined so much of the decade in which it was released (the idea that exposure to certain “corrupt” media could warp one’s brain and possibly even compel one to commit violent acts, etc.), it’s also a cutting cautionary tale about surrendering to artifice and fantasy, and a clever-but-never-obnoxious social lampoon about what it means to be considered the master of a low trade.

Of course, John Carpenter knows a thing or two about being unfairly labeled as the master of a low trade. Carpenter, who is known for his tell-it-like-it-is demeanor, once quipped: “In England, I’m a horror director. In Germany, I’m a filmmaker. In the U.S., I’m a bum.” Films like the Jeff Bridges-starring Starman and the memorably nasty high school bloodbath Christine might be considered totemic cult items today, but many of Carpenter’s more beloved works were initially decried as trash in their time. As such, Carpenter and screenwriter Michael De Luca (yes, that Michael De Luca) turn In the Mouth of Madness’ most important character, Sutter Cane, into the Ernest Hemingway of airport novels. Clearly, the obvious allusion with Cane is Stephen King (or perhaps, to a lesser extent, Clive Barker), right down to the fact that Mouth of Madness eventually makes a narrative detour to Hobb’s End: a kind of bastardized stand-in for King’s own sleepy, creepy fictional borough, Castle Rock.

Third Film of the Apocalypse Trilogy

In The Mouth Of Madness opens with Sam Neil’s John Trent being admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He appears to have gone stark-raving mad, as evidenced by the demented look in his eyes, and the vaguely occult-looking marks he’s scrawled onto his face. In a gesture that feels borrowed from a tale by H.P. Lovecraft (Carpenter’s reverence for Lovecraft is well-documented at this point), Trent begins to recall the tale of how exactly he went mad. We learn that when Trent worked in insurance, his employer (Charlton Heston) tasked him with looking into the matter of Sutter Cane. For all intents and purposes, Cane appears to have vanished off the face of the earth. After its ghoulish prologue, Mouth of Madness settles into a more deliberately routine rhythm, only to disappear further and further down the proverbial rabbit hole as Trent and a colleague, Cane’s editor (memorably played by Julie Carmen), find themselves lost among the otherworldly horrors of Hobb’s End.

In The Mouth Of Madness is the third and final film in John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy,” which also includes The Thing and the criminally underappreciated Prince of Darkness. In all three films, evil manifests as a primarily unseen, invisible force, often contorting familiar things like dogs, books, and human bodies into horrifying and hitherto-unseen new shapes. In The Thing, Kurt Russell and his motley crew of researchers hole up in icy Arctic seclusion, fending off the malevolent energy of a shapeshifting, violently hostile alien parasite. In Prince Of Darkness, a group of college students occupy an incredibly menacing old church, where they proceed to unearth a tube of neon-green liquid that, if mishandled, could unleash the very literal fury of the devil. Both movies are steeped in Lovecraftian imagery and primordial terror, and both amplify the built-in claustrophobia of their settings to phantasmagoric degrees.

In The Mouth Of Madness is a funnier, sillier, more stylistically gonzo effort than its two predecessors in the trilogy, mostly because it purports to stand outside the nuts and bolts of its superficial narrative, to some degree, and actually comment on the art of what it means to scare people for a living. There is something wickedly ingenious about the idea of a popular novel whose contents are so unholy that reading it would cause one to spiral into a kind of monstrous abyss. If that idea alone were all the movie were interested in, In the Mouth of Madness would still rank as one of Carpenter’s more enjoyable late-career works. And yet, as always, the director is keen to dig deeper into the subtextual resonance of his story, turning what might otherwise be a spooky ’90s chiller — the type of thing you might have caught a rerun of on TBS sometime back in the 2000s — into a cheeky, compelling commentary on the horror pantheon itself, and Carpenter’s place in it.

We live in an era where people willingly and enthusiastically sign themselves over to fictional “universes.” Whether it’s Marvel, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, or perhaps something more obscure, we now inhabit an epoch in which individuals willingly give themselves up to elaborate forms of corporate mythology. In some cases, this sort of fanboy devotion can swallow you whole. In the Mouth of Madness is concerned with this very subject. It is no wonder the film was greeted with such indifferent critical notices upon its release: as always, Carpenter was light years ahead of his time. The scariest thing about In the Mouth of Madness is that, in the world Carpenter hath created, Sutter Cane himself isn’t even seen as a mere writer of trash books — when he’s finally revealed, he is tellingly and literally depicted as a prophet.

Saturday Matinee: The Girl With All the Gifts

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By Brian Tallerico

Source: RogerEbert.com

In many ways, Melanie (Sennia Nanua) is just another ordinary girl. She goes to school every day, where she’s grown affection for her teacher Ms. Justineau (Gemma Arterton). And she’s at that age where she’s figuring out what’s important to her, and how to navigate through the world of adults around her. But Melanie is not an ordinary girl. She will soon be a mindless, soulless zombie, a braindead creature who responds only to a desire to kill and eat people around her. In fact, with the right triggers—like if the adults around her forget to wear their scent-disguising lotion—she could become that right now. Just when you thought the zombie genre was out of ideas, along comes Colm McCarthy’s smart and engaging “The Girl with All the Gifts,” a film with echoes of George A. Romero, Danny Boyle, and Robert Kirkman but one that also feels confidently its own creation, a unique take on responsibility, adulthood, and a new chapter in evolution.

Melanie isn’t alone. She lives with a number of other zombie-children like her in a bunker beneath a military facility, where she’s being studied and experimented on by Dr. Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close), in the hope that they could provide the antidote for what has essentially ended normal human existence. Melanie is one of several second-generation flesh-eaters called “hungries,” babies who literally ate their way out of their parents but are not behaving in precisely the same way as the brain-dead speedsters that have destroyed humanity. Whenever a child is found in the wild, they’re taken to this facility, where Dr. Caldwell can experiment on them and Sgt. Eddie Parks (Paddy Considine) can work to control them. Said control involves leg, arm and head restraints whenever the children are anywhere near that oh-so-enticing human flesh.

But Melanie seems so normal and is clearly learning empathy. The good doctor sees that as well, and even starts to loosen some of the restraints keeping Melanie more of an object than a person. Then one day Dr. Caldwell comes for Melanie, ready to dissect her and see exactly what she can learn from this unique child the hard way. Before Dr. Justineau can save her, all hell breaks loose and the facility is overrun. A small group of survivors is forced to travel to another sanctuary city in the hope that it’s still being run by people who don’t eat flesh. Melanie goes with them, and proves to be pretty useful.

One of the major strengths of “The Girl with All the Gifts” is evident early in McCarthy’s tactile, believable world-building. Much as Romero paid close attention to such details, the set design, costumes, and the world of “Gifts” feels lived-in and genuine. And it’s a nature-based aesthetic (dirt on walls, costumes that look worn, etc.) that continues and even strengthens once this ragtag crew is forced from safety and into the dangerous world. There’s a visceral, emotional impact to the horror and action of “The Girl with All the Gifts” that resonates because the characters and the world they live in feels real to us. It’s hard to overstate how important this to a horror movie, especially one set in a post-apocalyptic world. If we don’t believe the world is genuine, we won’t care what happens in it.

Of course, performance goes a long way to amplify this believability as well, and it’s not often you see a horror film with a cast this strong. Close could have gone showy with her doctor with a heart of ice but she plays it straight, again conveying the believability of the moment more than the B-movie archetype this character could have become. Considine and Arterton perfectly convey authority and warmth, respectively, although they’re good enough to make these people into more than mere plot devices. And Nanua is a find, again never giving her performance with a knowing wink. So she’s a zombie child who could be the evolutionary key to the future—this just happens to be her reality.

The traveling band aspect of “The Walking Dead,” the cities and landscapes empty of human existence of “28 Days Later,” the military aspect of “Day of the Dead”—it’s easy to pick apart the influences of “The Girl with All the Gifts.” But just as Melanie marks something altogether new in this world—a zombie with a conscience—the film about her feels inspired by what came before but also good enough to inspire those that come after.

Saturday Matinee: Alphaville

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GODARD’S SCI-FI/NOIR ALPHAVILLE’ IS WITTY AND SUBVERSIVE

Alphaville‘s pulpy sci-fi plot acts as a warm coat of familiarity as Godard slyly subverts one genre trope after another.

By Brian Holcomb

Source: PopMatters

In Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1992) Ray Manzarek (Kyle MacLachlan) tells Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer) a story about his experiences working in the Hollywood of the late 1960s. He says he told a studio executive that he did not need a script to make a film. “Godard doesn’t use one,” Manzarek claimed. The executive replied, “That’s great… Who’s Godard?”

By the late ’60s, Jean-Luc Godard was a legend among young cinephiles. Beginning with Breathless in 1960 and ending with Weekend just eight years later, the caustic former Cahiers Du Cinema film critic made 15 films which can only be described as revolutionary. Both in terms of cinematic form as well as political and personal content, these films broke the old rules while inventing new ones. The use of handheld cameras, jump-cuts, natural light, and improvisation were both old and new things he popularized. Many of these ideas were used during the freewheeling days of silent cinema before filmmaking was industrialized and, in the mind of Godard and his “New Wave” colleagues, fossilized.

Godard wanted to provoke. But unlike some of his more didactic later work, these initial films are playfully provocative. Most of them are defined by their adversarial relationship to popular movie genres. Breathless is Godard’s deconstructed take on the crime film. A Woman is a Woman (1961) is his musical comedy.

Alphaville (une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution) (1965) is two genres for the price of one: science fiction and noir. Maybe it’s even a third genre as well. It can be argued that the film is just another Eddie Constantine “Lemmy Caution” flick. “Lemmy Caution” flicks were big business in France since the ’50s, and Constantine played the role in over a dozen of them. Created by British pulp novelist Peter Cheyney, Caution is either an FBI agent or a private detective, depending on which novel you read, but it doesn’t really matter. He’s less a character than a genre archetype and it’s the archetype that Godard wanted. Especially one that was already lost in translation: British novels about an American detective adapted into French films starring an American actor speaking French.

Constantine was synonymous with the role, so Godard simply dropped him like a found object into his dystopian science fiction plot. The old fashioned tough guy Lemmy Caution does not belong here. His simple macho values and violent responses are hilarious when placed into this new context. In one scene, he shoots and kills a man then attempts to question him. Caution appears to have no idea what question to ask anyway, as his bizarre mission pits him against a fascist sentient computer called Alpha-60, which rules Alphaville and forbids any expression of emotion. Caution is deadpan but filled with primitive emotions both violent and romantic. It’s no surprise that Godard considered calling the film “Tarzan Versus IBM”.

By the end of the film, Caution gives up trying to understand the computer’s semantic games and resorts to his base instincts to bring Alphaville down. Along with using his fists and a .45 automatic, Caution expresses love for Natacha Von Braun (Anna Karina), the daughter of Professor Von Braun aka Leonard Nosferatu (Howard Vernon) — the man who built Alpha-60. Natacha grew up in Alphaville and does not know the meaning of words like “Love”. Caution challenges her to understand the meaning and challenges Alpha-60 by telling it a riddle that it cannot possibly comprehend.

From this description, the film may seem like a cold intellectual exercise. A film made by Alpha-60 itself. But this isn’t the case. I find Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), which is obviously inspired by this movie, to be a much colder experience. Alphaville is one of Godard’s wittiest and most emotionally moving. The pulpy sci-fi plot acts as a warm coat of familiarity as Godard slyly subverts one genre trope after another. Godard never really stopped being a film critic. His films were as much essays on how films worked as they were films themselves.

So Godard reveals the artificiality of B-movie fight scenes by presenting them as a series of posed comic book stills and gives Caution melodramatic theme music, which turns abruptly on and off at the most dramatically incorrect and hilarious moments. The excellent score by Paul Misraki shifts from this intentionally clichéd thriller music to beautiful and haunting pieces full of romantic longing.

This romantic theme is used most effectively at the end of the film, a scene which is a perfect example of what fellow French New Wave director Francois Truffaut called a “privileged moment”; brief moments in cinema when the film captures something intangible in a way no other art form could. As Misraki’s score builds, Godard holds on a lengthy closeup of Anna Karina, whose eyes are as hypnotic as any performer in film history. Karina’s expression slowly and subtly shifts from cold to warm and she ends the film by speaking the words she could not comprehend earlier: “Je vous aime…”

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Watch Alphaville on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/15675583

Saturday Matinee: Belladonna of Sadness

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Reconsidering Belladonna of Sadness: Still powerful after almost 50 years

By Carmen Antreasian

Source: Anime Feminist

A cult film originally released in 1973, Belladonna of Sadness can be read as a second-wave feminist work. However, in order to understand the film as feminist, it is important to emphasize that the film’s plot is based on Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière (translated as Satanism and Witchcraft or The Witch of the Middle Ages in English), originally published in 1862. In his book Michelet discusses his conception of the Witch’s way of life and the persecution the Witch faced by feudal Christian societies in the Middle Ages. Michelet defends the Witch in his book as a champion of love and healing and defends witchcraft as a prelude to science: “…we shall mark the beginning of the professional man as juggler, astrologer, or prophet, necromancer, priest, physician. But at first the woman is everything”. Belladonna of Sadness follows Michelet’s same view, combining this 19th century vision of the liberated witch with second-wave feminist ideology to create a flawed but fascinating work that invites revisiting even all these years later. 

To those unfamiliar with the film, Belladonna of Sadness is the story of Jeanne and the persecution she faces as a woman in a feudal society. The story begins when newlywed Jeanne is gang-raped by the local baron and his attendants under the justification of “prima nocta”. When her husband falls ill, Jeanne becomes desperate and a clitoral/phallic demon appears to her and gives Jeanne wealth and influence as the village money-lender. She holds this role and this power until she is stripped of it–literally–and chased out of town. She ultimately “sells her soul to the devil”, which is the grown version of the initial phallic creature, and becomes a witch who lives apart from the village. Plague breaks out in the feudal society, and the villagers eventually join Jeanne, who builds a society that celebrates herbal medication and sexuality. Having lost power over the villagers, the baron offers her power as a means to control her knowledge; when she refuses to tell him, she is burnt at the stake.

This is a film written and directed by men (Yamamoto Eiichi and Fukuda Yoshiyuki) and is considered a Japanese “pink film”’ as it is includes graphic depictions of sex and nudity. Belladonna of Sadness uses its “pink film” attributes in order to demonstrate the plight of the main character Jeanne as an example of Michelet’s Witch. Jeanne’s sexuality is the focal point of her journey and the catalyst for the social changes that occur throughout the story.

Created during the Japanese feminist movement of the early 1970s, Belladonna of Sadness is a second-wave feminist film, and it’s impossible to talk about Japan’s women’s liberation without discussing the ideas of Tanaka Mitsu, arguably its most prominent leader. Tanaka fought against the popular notion of the woman as either a housewife or an object for male sexual pleasure. Instead, she advocated for the woman to be seen as an individual with agency over her own sexuality and shared her own life experiences with sexual assault, including rape and harassment, to inspire other women to support women’s liberation, a.k.a. uuman libu. 

This seems to pair nicely with Jeanne: she’s initially (and presumably) destined to fulfill a wifely role in marrying her lover Jean but instead is forced into the role of sex object when brutally raped by the baron and his cronies, and gains agency as an individual through the awakening of her own sexuality. After this awakening she does not fall into the housewife/male-sex-object binary but gains power and instead assumes a leadership role in the village. However, the phallic nature of Jeanne’s sexual awakening complicates this viewpoint. To explore this, it’s crucial to look at Jeanne’s initial encounter with the little creature who awakens her sexuality before “it” becomes “him”– the devil/phallus character.

When she first meets the devil/phallus character, Jeanne is in a desperate position. Not only is she emotionally scarred from being raped, but she lives in poverty with her ill husband who, despite telling her they would move on from her assault, later attempted to strangle her. One night while her husband is asleep, a small clitoral-esque creature appears.   

The clitoral creature states that it is her. It does not deny being “the devil”, but it is born of her desire. Her sexual awakening has begun. The clitoral creature then tickles her all over her body, making her laugh, and she questions how this small thing could give her power. Then it “teaches” her how to make it grow by rubbing itself in her hand, which turns “it” into a phallic creature that gives her sexual pleasure as she lays next to her sleeping husband. This is Jeanne’s first experience with masturbation, initiated by a clitoral-to-phallic creature, a personification of her individual sexuality—“I am you”—and summoned by her “screaming soul”. The agency of the “soul” is another important aspect of 1970s Japanese feminism, as Tanaka stated, “I want to have a stronger soul with which I can burn myself out either in heartlessness or in tenderness. Yes, I want a stronger soul.” Tanaka’s soul calls out for strength as Jeanne’s does for power, both qualities that were specifically reserved for men.

Jeanne’s individual sexual agency is exactly the kind of liberation Japanese feminists of the early 1970s envisioned, and in the film, it sets in motion Jeanne’s success within  feudal society. Her sexual awakening was triggered not by the horrific rape she experienced beforehand but by her own, albeit guided, exploration of sexual pleasure without another person. However, it must be noted that this devil creature is gendered with a distinct male voice and phallic appearance.To discuss this, it’s helpful to bring in another element of the 1970s: the psychoanalytic female subject. This idea comes from Jacques Lacan’s theory of sexuation, conceived in 1972-1973. While Belladonna was in production as this theory was being published, it’s a useful way to boil down 1970s psychoanalysis to one analytical lens for the purpose of this essay.

Why use psychoanalysis and, of all psychoanalytic theorists, why Lacan, a man who once said that his brand of psychoanalysis wasn’t applicable to the Japanese? Both psychoanalysis and second-wave feminism were popular ways of thinking in the early 1970s that sometimes overlapped and often-times butted heads. Jeanne may be a feminist character, but she is also one created by men. Jeanne may be a character in a Japanese film, but she is also one based on a French man’s story of a witch in the European Middle Ages within a European social structure. And while Lacan might be thoroughly outdated in real life, his influential work still makes for a compelling tool of literary analysis. 

Sexuation, to be dangerously brief, is Lacan’s theory of how a subject becomes a desiring subject through his/her sexuality. This theory relies on a binary, and there are different roles for male and female subjects. The female subject in sexuation fits one of three roles, two of which are to cater to the male subject and one that seeks what the male subject seeks: the “phallus”, otherwise known as power. Jeanne is the latter of the three. The phallus manifests when her sexuality is awakened; the phallus gives her power; when she is destitute and chased from the village, she seeks the phallus; again, the phallus gives her power. Jeanne fits the mold almost too perfectly… but does she?

If Jeanne were to truly fit Lacan’s mold as female-subject-who-seeks-the-phallus/power, then she would not be able to dismantle the patriarchal social structure once she becomes the leader of the village. Why? Because she would then be playing into a patriarchal structure herself, adhering to an identity constructed by men for a woman in power. When she first gains power and wealth in the feudal system, she continues to lead in accordance with it. She still pays and collects taxes—in fact, her husband becomes the tax collector—and she still meets with her superiors in the feudal system. Nothing systemic really changes except that she becomes the leader of the villagers and brings them wealth. 

Jeanne is exposed to the violence and greed of those men for which the system was created once they deem her a threat to their power, and so she is eventually chased out of the village and away from the system completely. This is the moment when she “sells her soul to the devil”. It is a desperate moment, as was the very first time the clitoral-phallic creature appeared to her. This time, though, the creature is entirely phallic, monstrously large and referred to as the devil, but there is one very important detail to remember: “I am you.” 

This phallic character, once a small creature on a spool of thread, is a manifestation of her sexuality. Yes, it is exceedingly heterosexual, and a product of male writers and animators, but Joanne still has agency to engage with the manifestation of sexual desire and independence she herself has cultivated. Albeit clearly depicted as masculine, the devil phallus does not adhere to the feudal social structure but rather an invitation to the possibility of something new, born of embodiment rather than socially constructed. 

Bodily knowledge, although depicted heteronormatively, is what creates Jeanne’s new society. The beautifully animated scene of Jeanne’s sexual experience with the devil is also full of Yonic imagery. When the devil appears to her, he parts the clouds by flying down in a circular motion, revealing a clear sky without a sun. Just before the devil lands, however, he shoots out of a shape in this clear blue sky: vaginally-shaped pink, red and purple oval. This vaginal space appears to stand in for the sun and allows the devil to manifest on the earth. This phallus originates from the vaginal.

Once Jeanne and the devil’s intercourse climaxes, images of modern—okay, 1973-modern—entertainment, technology and everyday life flash before the viewer’s eyes, signifying that she made it happen. This is in accordance with Michelet’s message that it is the woman who was first to create and resonates with 1970s Japanese feminist Raicho Hiratsuka’s sentiment that “in the beginning woman was the sun”, evidence of the importance of the aforementioned Yonic imagery in the film. Jeanne’s embodied sexuality sparks the possibility for all that will be created, even that which is phallic.

Jeanne gets another chance at dismantling the feudal patriarchal social structure when the black death, better known as the Plague, destroys the village. One of the not-dead-yet villagers finds himself near her, and she cures him with what he refers to as “poison,” telling him “poison is medicine.” He goes back to tell the others, who spread rumors that she is a witch but run to join her because of her healing powers, sympathy toward others, and rejection of social hierarchies and sexual norms. On these foundations she builds her own society, one that is inclusive, even to those who have wronged her and come to her for help. She builds a society based on liberation, kindness, and open-mindedness. 

She provides antidotes specifically related to female reproduction such as labor pain medication and birth control, access to which was a large part of the Japanese women’s liberation movement in the 1970s (and remains an issue there as it does abroad). People are free to have sex as often as they wish without worrying about the potential financial burden of having children. People are free to experiment sexually, shown in the orgy scene in Jeanne’s hair. Her new society is not a patriarchal one, but she also did not have to dismantle the previous patriarchal society to create her own. The Plague provides the conditions to build her feminist society separate from the existing feudal structure. Her society is not a rebellion or antithesis of the feudal structure but a revolutionary system of its own making.

Jeanne and her sexuality—from “selling her soul” to the devil/phallus, who is also a part of herself—demonstrate that a feminist society is possible, though its conception of what that might encompass is limited due in part to the restrictions of Michelet’s source material. The sexual symbolism in the villager’s activities are heterosexually binary, and the villagers all form man/woman pairs when they first engage with Jeanne’s society. The bodies of the villagers continue to be drawn as either clearly heteronormatively male or female as well.

The major exception is the non-heteronormative sexuality depicted in Jeanne’s alternative society during the long orgy scene in Jeanne’s hair, where the villagers are all connected in sexual positions and occasionally break out to showcase various other non-hetero sexual scenarios.There are moments of bisexuality seen in the orgy and one flash of two men together, but anytime a person strays from being either cis male or female, they are merged with an animal and meant to be comical. This lack of tender, intimate queerness even under liberation becomes the biggest failing of the film’s vision.

Ultimately, however, Jeanne and the villagers are forced to go back to feudal society. Jeanne’s husband comes to her, telling her she will be forgiven by the lord if she returns. She isn’t fooled by the lord’s blatant lie, but she knows that if she doesn’t go back, the lord will send troops to capture and kill her. She is in a lose-lose situation. The patriarchal structure proves its all-powerful authority, and that her separatism is impossible without dismantling the oppressive structures she fled. When she goes back, the lord does, in fact, offer her land in exchange for her knowledge.

He not only wants her power—the lord wants to indoctrinate her power into a patriarchal system, taking the feminine healer’s “witchcraft” and rebranding it as “science”. The lord desperately tries to get her to reveal her healing power by offering her more and more power in the feudal system, but Jeanne is not interested in being a part of his patriarchal hierarchy. She’s experienced the possibility of a feminist society and desires revolution over anything she could obtain in the existing structure.

During the film’s final moments, when Jeanne is burned at the stake, the faces of the women villagers watching her begin to change one by one to resemble her face, symbolizing the perpetuation of Jeanne’s influence. These villagers’ faces reflecting Jeanne’s face is a sign of Jeanne’s legacy. It is revolutionary in its admission that it’s possible to envision a society outside of the existing oppressive structure.

Watching the film in 2022 through an intersectional lens informed by evolving feminist and queer theories, Belladonna of Sadness may no longer seem progressive. The “girl power” message its male writers were trying to get across may be lost in its overwhelmingly graphic heterosexuality, and Michelet’s vision of The Witch may not resonate or hold the same power for contemporary viewers. 

The homogeneity of the womens’ faces at the end of the film demonstrate that the “girl power” Jeanne had put in motion is homogenous. It suggests that there is only one type of woman that can grasp and perpetuate Jeanne’s vision. Through a lens of queer and critical race theory, the womens’ faces merely play into existing power structures, as the faces are all the same and, most importantly, all white with feminine traits such as big eyes, dark eyelashes, full pink lips. A truly radical depiction of Jeanne’s society in these face changes to push against patriarchal power structures would include a wide array of faces.

Through hindsight it may not hold up today in some regards, but I firmly believe that it is still revolutionary in that it depicts the possibility of a society based in the power of sexual freedom, healing, and care, rather than one that merely reconfigures existing patriarchal structures. The society Jeanne creates outside the feudal land is radical. Her society is necessarily birthed of the female body; even the phallus cannot come into being without her sexuality. Belladonna of Sadness is a historically important film that deserves to be revisited and reconsidered. It helps us better understand current feminist thought by knowing where we’ve come from and, in analyzing its flaws as well as its more deeply embedded subversions, allows us to push current critical theory even further. 

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Watch Belladonna of Sadness on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/584431

Saturday Matinee: River’s Edge

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By Roger Ebert

Source: RogerEbert.com

I remember reading about the case at the time. A high school kid killed his girlfriend and left her body lying on the ground. Over the next few days, he brought some of his friends out to look at her body, and gradually word of the crime spread through his circle of friends. But for a long time, nobody called the cops.

A lot of op-ed articles were written to analyze this event, which was seen as symptomatic of a wider moral breakdown in our society. “River’s Edge,” which is a horrifying fiction inspired by the case, offers no explanation and no message; it regards the crime in much the same way the kid’s friends stood around looking at the body. The difference is that the film feels a horror that the teenagers apparently did not.

This is the best analytical film about a crime since “The Onion Field” and “In Cold Blood.” Like those films, it poses these questions: Why do we need to be told this story? How is it useful to see limited and brutish people doing cruel and stupid things? I suppose there are two answers. One, because such things exist in the world and some of us are curious about them as we are curious in general about human nature. Two, because an artist is never merely a reporter and by seeing the tragedy through his eyes, he helps us to see it through ours.

“River’s Edge” was directed by Tim Hunter, who made “Tex,” about ordinary teenagers who found themselves faced with the choice of dealing drugs. In “River’s Edge,” that choice has long since been made. These teenagers are alcoholics and drug abusers, including one whose mother is afraid he is stealing her marijuana and a 12-year-old who blackmails the older kids for six-packs.

The central figure in the film is not the murderer, Sampson (Daniel Roebuck), a large, stolid youth who seems perpetually puzzled about why he does anything. It is Layne (Crispin Glover), a strung-out, mercurial rebel who always seems to be on speed and who takes it upon himself to help conceal the crime. When his girlfriend asks him, like, well, gee, she was our friend and all, so shouldn’t we feel bad, or something, his answer is that the murderer “had his reasons.” What were they? The victim was talking back.

Glover’s performance is electric. He’s like a young Eric Roberts, and he carries around a constant sense of danger. Eventually, we realize the danger is born of paranoia; he is reflecting it at us with his fear.

These kids form a clique that exists outside the mainstream in their high school. They hang around outside, smoking and sneering. In town, they have a friend named Feck (Dennis Hopper), a drug dealer who lives inside a locked house and once killed a woman himself, so he has something in common with the kid, you see? It is another of Hopper’s possessed performances, done with sweat and the whites of his eyes.

“River’s Edge” is not a film I will forget very soon. Its portrait of these adolescents is an exercise in despair. Not even old enough to legally order a beer, they already are destroyed by alcohol and drugs, abandoned by parents who also have lost hope. When the story of the dead girl first appeared in the papers, it seemed like a freak show, an aberration. “River’s Edge” sets it in an ordinary town and makes it seem like just what the op-ed philosophers said: an emblem of breakdown. The girl’s body eventually was discovered and buried. If you seek her monument, look around you.

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Watch River’s Edge on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12027310