Wednesday 08/11/06
Analife (Japan, 2005) 3*
This was the one film of the festival that I actually took time off work to see. Apparently the story of three people saturated by modern consumer culture I was well up for this, all very Adbusters or so I thought.
The brochure did mention that the three ultimately cross paths in the protologist’s office but I hadn’t give that much thought. Right from the off however, I realised that this wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting.
First person we meet is a guy. Woozy, ambient visuals matched well with his flat, monotonous narration. He describes how numb he feels, how removed and isolated he feels the world around him.
He tells us about a childhood song to which he can’t remember all the words. A little girl in a forest encounters a bear. She flees in fright, dropping something in her haste to escape.
The bear calls after her but she runs and runs, terrified until she is utterly lost in the forest. He can’t remember how the story ends and so instead begins to describe the one that lets him feel alive.
Rape.
He takes us on a intricately detailed journey from victim selection through to getting away with it. As he does so he somehow manages to maintain the image of a boring, ordinary guy who happens to rape, rather than stereotype demon rapist.
Finally, having thoroughly explored this extreme behaviour to which it is implied he is driven, he describes, in the same deadpan fashion, how he is gang raped by three guys.
Eventually, unable to bare the pain anymore, he is forced to seek medical help and visits the protologist’s office.
New story, new character.
This female photographer is equally detached and numb though over the course of her story we also learn that she has suffered a great emotional trauma.
As she hides behind her camera we get another excellent representation of the numb feeling of isolation within the gaudy bustling colour of consumer capitalism.
One day she comes across a murder, as you do. A local serial killer wanders about, jamming his knife in behind people’s ears before watching them bleed to death.
She watches him do his thing, then watches as he walks towards her. He has sex with her, she doesn’t really mind, it just happens.
It becomes a regular thing. He kills, they shag, she photographs the corpse. Again it’s only in the absolute extremes that she can find sense of life or reality.
Finally he decides to strangle someone instead of stabbing them. Then, in another change to the scheduled programme, he kneels behind her as they have sex.
Suddenly the ‘dead’ guy pops back up and stabs a rusty old pipe right through his would be killer and right into her unfortunately exposed arse.
Eventually, unable to bare the pain anymore, she is forced to seek medical help and visits the protologist’s office.
Last story, last character.
Another lonely guy, lost and confused. No communication, no connections, just his one, all consuming hobby.
Other people’s rubbish.
By sifting through people’s refuse, using everything, reading everything, he sees the most intimate details of their lives and this is the only intimacy he has.
By comparison with the first two this guy’s ‘thing’ seems almost normal and yet it really, really isn’t.
He finally has to face this when a home enema kit he tries out goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Eventually, unable to bare the pain anymore, he is forced to seek medical help and visits the protologist’s office.
So here’re our three, all alone, victims of the society they inhabit, drowned in information, senses deadened by relentless messages.
Finally confronted by two mysterious men, they find themselves lost in the forest for real and forced to sing the song that haunts them all but that none can fully remember.
But then, under pain of death, they do remember.
The little girl turns and faces the bear, who returns the tiny, delicate earring she dropped.
And so they are released to the world, refreshed and awake once more.
Classic Japanese mentalism, disturbing and inspiring in equal measure.
I especially liked both the portrayal of that desensitized, detached feeling and the message that even though society may be to blame, it’s up to the victim to pull themselves out of it.
Jam (UK, 2006) 5*
When the director of this film, Angelo Abela, introduced his film he described it not as a low budget film but as a no budget film.
No-one involved got paid and the filming itself was done for almost nothing. Despite, or perhaps even because of this, Jam was one of my favourite films of the festival.
Amid a horrendous traffic jam we explore the stories of the occupants of a dozen or so of the stationary vehicles including a van full of guys on a stag night, a funeral procession and a very randy couple.
With no grand special effects this whole piece relied entirely on the writing and the acting. Luckily both were excellent and the result was a mostly hilarious and occasionally moving cinema experience.
Leaving the screening it occurred to me that this was not only a great film but a perfect example of great British cinema. Very clever, very funny and sporadically filthy, I felt it summed up what we’re all about really.
The various stories overlap and echo through one another and somehow, via just snatches of conversation, we gain a genuine insight into the wider lives of all the characters we meet.
A fantastic film that, unfortunately, is unlikely to receive a very wide release. Should you get the opportunity I can’t recommend seeing this enough.
Friday 10/11/06
The Empire In Africa (USA, 2006) 5*
Holy shit.
This year’s film festival allowed me to prove beyond doubt how utterly spurious the idea of ‘desensitisation’ is.
Having watched an entire weekend of violent and disturbing horror films, (plus many years of the same,) my ability to react appropriately to real life suffering should have been well and truly eroded.
“The Empire In Africa” however, an extremely graphic documentary about Sierra Leone, was quite literally traumatic viewing.
The senseless knots of Sierra Leone’s recent political history were made accessible through a solid narrative, interviews and stock news footage. Unfortunately this newfound understanding carried with it a sense of despair.
This was all background however, to the documentary footage that shoved the grim reality of all those facts. For the few days after seeing this film I found some of these images burned into my retina.
Life is dirt cheap in this labyrinth of political conflict. Casual execution on the streets, piles of bits of bodies and common place amputations of hands and feet among young and old alike.
I have never before in my life felt the urge to actually walk out of a film mid screening but, seeing a real guy’s real head actually fall apart as he’s shot to death in the street, my body wanted to look away, wanted to walk out.
But looking away and walking out is exactly what has allowed things like these to happen in the first place.
Not for the faint hearted but a worthwhile trial, this doc brought home to me that before we can set about righting the wrongs of the world we first have to look at them and that in itself can be a huge task.
