Lars Von Trier, Denmark, 2009, 104 min.

This film really highlighted how important trust is in a filmmaker. Von Trier’s latest tells the story of a married couple who struggle to deal with the loss of their child. The intro that shows how this happened is filmed in balletic black and white slow-mo that harkens back to The Fall. It’s a striking opening that sets the tone for the rest. Four chapters detailing a psychological drama that slowly turns into supernatural horror.

She, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, is overcome by grief and turns to medication to get through the pain. He, played by Willem Dafoe, immerses himself in trying to help his wife in his own misguided way.

Much has been made of how graphic and intense this film is. There is penetration,  masturbation, and mutilation. Between the explicit scenes we are treated to ethereal dream/reality sequences that are filmed in super slow-motion, and wonderfully lit to create a very unearthly feel.

There are plots points that appear as the film goes on. Some involving the cabin, some involving the mother’s thesis on witchcraft, and some involving philosophical ideas about the inherent evil of humanity. Everything tantizingly points to backstory and motivations and mythology that may explain what is going on. But it all becomes moot when Von Trier cranks up the horror. Or does it become moot?

That is the main question I have with this film, and that is the main reason that trust is so important in a film-maker. If this was Haneke, Lynch or Jodoroskwi I would feel that there is meaning in there  somewhere. That what is happening in the film, although it may not be clear, is clear to the film-maker. That there is a method to the madness that will reveal itself, even if it is only in that twilight state between dream and waking.

I don’t have that trust with Von Trier. He is pretentious and evasive in his interviews. Although he has made some great films, he has also made some that I utterly dispise and I find them all to be very gimmicky. So when I watch Antichrist, and struggle to find meaning in the film, I start to think that maybe there isn’t any. Maybe it was meant to shock and to awe and to make people believe he has something worthwhile to say.

But I’m not entirely convinced that there isn’t any meaning in this film. You will have to watch it and see for yourself. If you do, you will be in for at least one treat. The performances of Defoe and Gainsborough are incredible.

They imbue these characters with an undercurrent of real dread and intensity. They throw themselves fully into the roles and, putting their trust in the director, they fearlessly do whatever the script throws back at them. Let’s just hope that it wasn’t all in vain.

Michael Haneke, France, 2001, 131 min.

After watching this film I think I found out what has drawn me to Haneke as a writer and as a director. He’s restrained in his style and evasive in his content. He doesn’t give you all the answers. The motivations you have to figure out for yourself, and if you need closure you have to earn it as a viewer.

This is not a cop-out, though. His films raise questions, and the fact that these questions are thought of and that the viewer has a need to get them answered show that Haneke strikes a chord. And he does it both with his form and his substance, which is rare in a director.

The Piano Teacher is the story of Erika (Isabelle Hupperte), a repressed professor who lives with her overbearing mother. She spends her days teaching and acting out in her own little ways in an effort to feel something. To get something out of life. Porn, voyeurism, genital mutilation. In the hands of a lesser director it would be sensationalism, but Haneke treads the line perfectly.

Erika doesn’t have what she wants but then she meets Walter (Benoît Magimel), a handsome young piano prodigy who seemingly has everything in life but still falls in love with her. She tells him what she wants, what she desires. This leads to actions and circumstances that neither of them were ready for.

Haneke, although at the top of his game, is far from the only big player in this film. Huppert and Magimel give two of the best performances I have ever seen. It’s remarkable how deep they make these characters. They lose themselves in the roles and the results strengthen an already strong film.

The ending of the film plays on Haneke’s strengths that I outlined above, and thus may be a disappointment to some.  There is closure, but its not a traditional ending. When the credits appear, you are left wondering, and if my reaction was any indication, you will be thinking about the film days later. What Haneke does not reveal resonates much more than anything he could have shown.

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mexico, 1970, 125 min.

I had first seen this film years ago on an old bootleg video after seeking it out purely for its underground notoriety. My thoughts on it then (as an impressionable pre-Cinesthete) was that it was bizarre, creative, entertaining, and completely beyond my understanding.

For those of you who don’t know, El Topo (The Mole), tells the story of a man and his travels through the desert. It starts with him and his young son setting out to kill a group of bandits for slaughtering a village. What follows are several bizarre sequences where El Topo is charged with slaying the four masters of the desert in order to gain a woman’s love.

After completing this task by compromising his own values, he is betrayed and left for dead by the woman and a mysterious female gunslinger who previously joined them. As if things weren’t already strange enough, the film takes a turn when El Topo is rescued by a group of deformed cave-dwellers and brought underground. There, after sleeping for years, he awakens to find he is now considered a god by these people, and he may also be the only way for them to escape their underground prison.

To do this he sets out into the neighboring town with young dwarf woman. Their aim is to try to raise enough money to dig a tunnel through the mountain so that their people can escape. What they finds in the town is a den of sin and excess, where everyone is a member of a seemingly familiar religious cult. From here the film builds nicely to a climax that, after two hours of cinematic excess, does not disappoint.

But was all of this worthwhile, or was it just an exercise in bizarre imagery for the sake of shock value? It is shocking, no doubt, but upon closer inspection you can find layers upon layers of deeper imagery. That doesn’t mean you understand it any more. Watching it again, and doing some reading, I came to realize that Jodorowsky wasn’t in it to shock. Everything in that film has a deeper meaning to him, and it all gathers around the description he gave of this film:  “A man goes on a journey to find spiritual enlightenment.”

There are some wonderful reading materials about this film. Specifically over at Subterranean Cinema there is a great scene by scene description of the film by Jodorowsky himself.

Here are some choice bits:

She drags herself along the sand dunes. She falls facedown on the sand, digs in the sand and finds thousands and thousands of turtle eggs. In front of her is a rock shaped like a phallus. This stone is an exact replica of my own phallus: thick, not very long, but with a voluminous head. That’s how I am. That’s how the rock is. That’s El Topo’s sex. Mara taps the rock with a stone, and a stream of water spouts forth — like urine, like a stream of semen. She immerses her face in the miraculous water.

El Topo stands in a circular lagoon in the middle of the oasis. He’s playing with the stone figurine. He floats it on a splinter of wood and places a small live lizard on its back. Here I express the relationship that exists between the stone sculpture buried so many years in the depths of the desert and the small lizard living so many years on the surface of the desert. Joining the lizard with the stone sculpture symbolizes the union of depth and surface.

The possessions of the Masters have been diminishing. The First Master lived in a tall tower, the Second Master in a wagon, the Third Master in a lean-to, The Fourth Master has only a pole in the desert and a sheet covering his body. The First Master had two revolvers, the Second Master one revolver that fired several shots. The Third Master one revolver that fired a single shot. The Fourth Master has no revolver, only a butterfly net. The First Master had a large oasis, the Second Master a small stream, the Third Master an oval pool. The Fourth Master has only sand in the desert.

Insane? Genius? Exploitative? It’s hard to decide at times, but that is all part of the fun. The above website contains dozens more interesting quotes. It is hard to navigate through, but well worth the trip.

Actually, that last sentence is a very good way to describe El Topo. Shocking, yes, but Jodorowsky did not make it to shock. He had his own spiritual and personal reasons behind the film. It’s true that most people don’t connect with those reasons, but those who do will find a positively fantastic viewing experience. And for those who don’t, well, it’s still a movie unlike any other.

Ryuhei Kitamura, Japan, 2003, 128 min.

Unlike Kitamura’s previous big hit, Versus, this film holds up well after the more than one viewing. Azumi is the story of a teenaged female assassin raised in the remote Japanese mountains during feudal times. Her and others like her are kept isolated from society, and trained by their master to be ready when called into action. They will eventually have to save the land from rampaging warlords by assassinating each before he becomes too powerful.

When that time comes, the students are pared down (in spectactular fashion) to the top five, and sent out into the world with a list of targets. The three warlords they must kill are interesting characters, and the various enemies the assassins meet along the way are fun and varied. And there are Ninjas! Azumi always manages to makes short work of them in awesome Kitamura style. Fun fun fun. The movie goes on like this for an hour and a half. And that’s a good thing.

Some sub-plots move the action in different directions, but eventually it all leads down to Azumi vs. the head war-lord. The effeminate, pristinely white, rose-carrying, master swordsman. He is so over-the-top that you can’t help but be entertained. In fact, that is a great way to describe the final battle. Azumi fights her way through hundreds of enemies to get to him, and the final confrontation takes place with some breathtaking sword and camera work.

No surprises here, but I didn’t care. Azumi is the type of film that gets you excited. That’s what Kitamura is good at and that’s why people watch his films. The type of films where people get blood splattered all over the face no matter what part of the body they are stabbed in. The type of films that are so over the top that you can’t help but laugh and smile even though you may be cringing at the dialog. The type of films that make the 15 year-old in us happy, and still let the adult appreciate giid film-making.

You can’t go wrong with Azumi, a film with a strong female character, ninjas, swords, spinning cameras, blood geysers, ninjas, Ryuhei Kitamura, swords, a feral ninja, acrobats, explosions, and of course, ninjas.

Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, France, 2007, 83 min.

Halloween has just passed, but it isn’t too late to watch a crazy horror film. And if it’s crazy and gory you are looking for, you can’ go wrong with À l’intérieur (Inside), a brutal French pregnancy horror.

A young woman, Sarah (Alysson Paradis), is left alone in her home on Christmas Eve. Her husband died in a car accident, so she is alone. She is also heavily pregnant and scheduled to give birth to her baby the next day. All she has to do is wait for her boss and friend to come pick her up in the morning. Unfortunately, during the night she has to contend with a crazed woman (Béatrice Dalle) who will stop at nothing to make the fetus her own

The film is short, and the first 20 minutes (after the bloody intro car accident) really take their time. They did build the mood, but it felt like the film was trying to stretch as much as it could to be feature length.

Fortunately, after the characters and the situation are introduced, the film picks up very quickly. Sarah is disturbed by a knock on her door. A women on the other side, claiming to need to use the telephone, knows far too much about Sarah and her past. Sarah doesn’t let her in but the women eventually finds her way into the house.

This sets up a nightmarishly cringey and gory showdown between the two (and some other unfortunate people) that lasts for the rest of the film. The first instance is when the baby-thief creeps up on the sleeping Sarah with a large pair of steel scissors. She exposes the woman’s bulging belly and slowly drags the scissors along the skin to the belly button, getting ready to cut. It’s oh-my-god-turn-your-head-away stuff.

Lucky for Sarah, the first piercing of her stomach wakes her up she manages to escape to the bathroom where she barricades herself in. The next hour is an orgy of over-the-top violence. It’s quite remarkable how much happens.

Other people come into the house (her boss, her mother, the police), but this psycho lady cannot be stopped. Those scissors stab and slice many times in many interesting ways. It just keeps getting more and more absurd, but the film never loses its mood.

The film follows the standard horror-movie/siege-movie scenario. Characters do really stupid things, everyone is one-dimensional, and the usual cliches happen. Still, the film has lots of energy and creativity behind it. The fact that Sarah is heavily pregnant, and that the baby is in constant danger just add to the tension as well.

By the end of the film, the directors had me in a mood where I could believe what happens in the climax. (Which is even more over-the-top than the rest of the film). I was laughing out loud with shock, awe, and horror at what was going on.

Overall, À l’intérieur is a great little horror film that is a must for fans of the genre. The directors  bring some fresh energy and guts (no pun intended) to the standard genre film. At the end, I didn’t know who I was rooting for, but I was happy to go along for the ride.