William Peter Blatty, autor do livro O Exorcista, que inspirou o clássico filme de terror, disse em entrevista para a revista Cementary Dance que escreveu uma nova versão da história e que ela vai virar um minisséríe para a televisão.

Segundo Blatty a minissérie terá quatro horas de duração e  a direção ficará nas mãos do mestre William Friedkin, diretor do filme original. A ideia inicialmente estaria no primeiro e seria uma sub trama sobre Karl, (protetor da casa de Chris e Regan) e sua filha Elvira, mas acabou ficando de fora do original, porque o roteiro do filme já estava grande demais.

“Eu poderia usar em um futuro próximo, escrevi uma minissérie de O Exorcista, que incluiu todos os principais elementos do romance e acrescentei um material inédito e assustador, além de um novo e mais satisfatório final”, acrescentou Blatty.

Considero O Exorcista o melhor filme de terror de todos os tempos, a trama é brilhante, porque mostra perfeitamente os dois lados da história. O da menina Regan (Linda Blair) sendo possuída e do padre, interpretado perfeitamente pelo ator Max Von Sydow.

Impossível não ficar empolgado com um projeto como esse, que envolve o escritor e o diretor do magnífico filme original. Vale também acrescentar que as minisséries americanas geralmente são bem produzidas e com atores conhecidos no elenco.

O blog vai acompanhar com atenção e torce para que o projeto realmente aconteça!

Tenho sempre algumas dúvidas quando o enredo de um filme é passado para um conceito de série em televisão, dúvidas essas que se acentuaram nos últimos tempos com algumas desilusões como a série baseada em “Crash”. Existe sempre uma tendência para banalizar grandes ideias e grandes argumentos.
Talvez neste caso do “Exorcista”, que é um dos meus filmes preferidos (assim como o livro), esse risco possa não ser tão acentuado, uma vez que o projecto assenta quer no autor do livro, quer no realizador do filme. Contudo, talvez a tentativa de levar algumas partes do filme mais longe possa entrar em choque com uma certa simplicidade crua que o filme possui, mantendo quer o argumento quer a realização focados no essencial, e que a meu ver é um dos seus grandes trunfos.
Um projecto a seguir com atenção.

Editor’s Note: This is part II in a series  of posts on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby.  For part I of the series, scroll down or click here.  As mentioned before the first post: I reveal many plot points from these films, so please watch them before reading.

Regan MacNeil’s bodyin The Exorcist and Rosemary Woodhouse’s body in Rosemary’s Baby are commandeered by male entities who exploit these female bodies for their own self-benefit. (If nothing else, these films prove that the devil is indeed a Republican. As if this were in question.) Regan and her mother find themselves abandoned by the male-dominated team of doctors who further abuse Regan’s body through a serious of invasive testing. Chris MacNeil must then turn to the Catholic Church, which although having a history and a present of oppressing women, sends priests to their home: men who are removed from the traditional male-as-sexual-predator-toward-women role. These men are supposed to exist asexually, and therefore are perhaps the only ones who can save Regan from her plight. Yes, I understand that Catholic priests have a habit of sexually preying upon young non-women, but we’ll leave that aside for now.

In Rosemary’s Baby, young, early-20s Rosemary Woodhouse realizes that her husband and the neighbors around her are conspiring to exploit her fertile body and maternal drives for their own ends. When she begins to piece together the puzzle, she runs to her original obstetrician, Dr. Hill, for safety. She does this at the behest of her girlfriends, who console her in the kitchen during a party. Rosemary’s doctor, Dr. Sapirstein, who comes recommended by her nosy and invasive elderly neighbors, has advised Rosemary to ignore the intense abdominal pain that she has been experiencing for weeks. When one of her girlfriends pleads with Rosemary to see a new doctor, another friend chimes in: “Yeah, some doctor besides that… that… nut!”

This kitchen scene comes as a welcome reprieve to the creepiness that completely saturates most of the film. Rosemary’s girlfriends are concerned for their friend’s well-being, are not dismissive of Rosemary’s complaints and ultimately are among the few benevolent figures in Rosemary’s life. But alas, the kitchen scene is a set-up. After this scene, Rosemary begins to exert some agency within her situation, and runs away from her husband, the neighbors and Dr. Sapirstein. She makes it to Dr. Hill, and in maybe the most harrowing scene in the film, Dr. Hill reveals himself to be more aligned with the male-dominated power structure than with the needs and concerns of his female patient. Once again, the creepiness of this film comes from the focus upon already existent aspects of our day-to-day lives.

Rosemary’s husband’s name is Guy, a name which points to the fact that this man is not an anomalous and horrible person. He is just your average “guy”, an unthinking man who, if given the chance, would sign away his wife’s body for his own selfish gains. At the end of the film, Guy offers these words in the form of an apology after it has been revealed that Guy allowed his Satan-worshipping neighbors access to Rosemary’s body so that Satan could impregnate Rosemary with the anti-Christ fetus (you know, your average marriage snafus): “They promised me you wouldn’t be hurt and you haven’t been…really. I mean, supposing you had the baby and you lost it? Wouldn’t that be the same? And we’re getting so much in return, Ro.” Guy’s flippancy toward his wife is truly terrifying and the viewer, at this point, has seen many signs of it. Even before we begin to piece-together the scenario along with Rosemary, we see Guy give his wife dismissive pats on the ass, pooh-pooh her suspicions as resulting from the “pre-partum crazies”, and most scarily, admit to fornicating with Rosemary’s unconscious body — an admission that we discover is a cover-up for what really happened.  After the otherwise lovely night when Rosemary is raped by the devil (something Rosemary doesn’t realize until much later in the film), Rosemary wakes up and this back-and-forth with her husband ensues:

Rosemary: I dreamed someone was raping me, I think it was someone inhuman.
Guy: Thanks a lot. Whatsa matter?
Rosemary: Nothing.
Guy: I didn’t want to miss the night.
Rosemary: We could have done it this morning or tonight. Last night wasn’t the only split-second.
Guy: I was a little bit loaded myself, you know.
Rosemary: You… you had me while I was out?
Guy: It was kinda fun in a necrophile sort of way.

Rosemary shrugs off Guy’s excuse for allegedly having sex with her lifeless body, which is a very scary thought in itself — even without the devil business.  This is to me is the scariest aspect of Rosemary’s Baby — the utter helplessness that Rosemary experiences in relation to the whims of men.

When Dr. Hill opens the door and lets in Guy and Dr. Sapirstein, Dr. Sapirstein has this to say, with Guy standing sheepishly at his side: “Come with us quietly, Rosemary. Don’t argue or make a scene. Because if you say anything more about witches or witchcraft, we’re gonna be forced to take you to a mental hospital. You don’t want that, do you?”  In many modern works of fiction, the mental hospital becomes the last viable option for men in dealing with women who are for whatever reason not fitting into their system.  In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood is given shock treatment and forced to spend much of her time in mental facilities because of her inability to behave “appropriately” for a young woman in her time and place.  Lisbeth Salander in the Steig Larsson’s Millenium series is institutionalized because of the threat she poses to the patriarchal powers that be (indeed, the Swedish title of Larsson’s first book translates as Men Who Hate Women).

In The Exorcist as well, the team of doctors strongly encourage Chris MacNeil to have their daughter institulationalized because of her strange disorder and their inability to properly label and deal with her problem.  While The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby utilize demonic possession in their films as a means of eliciting terror, it is through showcasing the status of women in society outside of the movie theatre that really makes these chills hit home.

Stay tuned for more on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby! In the meantime, don’t forget to say your prayers.

Editor’s Note: this blog post assumes that you have seen the films The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby and therefore we reveal central elements of their plots. If you haven’t seen them, please:  1) Netflix them, 2) watch them, 3) make me a pulled-pork sandwich and then, 4) return to this post.

A woman becomes pregnant.  A human stranger grows inside of her.  This creature exists in darkness, feeding off of its host, affecting her diet, her mood and many of her bodily functions.

A young woman goes through puberty: an unfamiliar body develops, a strange voice emerges and a new personality is born.  Her desires, thoughts and behavior become very different than those of her prepubescent self.

When viewed from such vantage points, natural human events and processes can appear very odd.  Uncanny, as Freud would have it.  For Freud, the uncanny feeling results when concepts or things feel familiar yet strange; what was once comforting and affirming is now hostile and threatening.  Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is perhaps the quintessential piece of uncanny fiction.  In the beginning of Usher, the unnamed narrator confronts the house of his former friend Roderick Usher.  Poe’s narrator compares the feeling of looking upon this house as the same feeling he gets when coming down from opium – “the hideous dropping off of the veil” as he describes it.

It is by utilizing the uncanny and a “hideous dropping of the veil” that two of the 20^th century’s greatest American horror films gain their respective effects of terror.  Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) deftly craft feelings of the uncanny by using young women as their respective focal points.

Both of these films involve demonic invasions as experienced by two young women during points of biological unrest: puberty and pregnancy, respectively.   Both of these women experience bodily invasion by male demonic entities who take control of their bodies as a means of furthering their own, literally devilish, schemes.  Both of these films utilize bodily orifices and bodily fluid in order to play upon our fears regarding our own bodies.  They also play upon the natural helplessness of women in a patriarchal society in order to cultivate terror, but more on this later.  The point is that although both films involve major aspects of the supernatural, the real terror is cultivated through enhancing and riffing upon elements of terror already found in our lives.

In the first third of Rosemary’s Baby, the viewer witnesses the intimate moments of a young couple checking out and then moving into a NYC apartment.  The actors, Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, deftly portray young lovers who, although clearly not in the most loving and supportive relationship, are in a relationship that one can relate to.  It’s a relationship that rings true: we can imagine being friends with the Woodhouses.  This verisimilitude is very important, for the feelings conjured by this seemingly real and run-of-the-mill relationship will compose the veil which the remainder of the film works to drop – inch by painstaking inch.

In the first third of The Exorcist, the viewer witnesses the intimate moments of a mother and a daughter as they settle into their new Georgetown home.  Once again, the actors portraying this duo, Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair, bring a certain aura of realness to their roles that will come in handy later in the film when we are meant to empathize with them completely as their lives fall apart via demonic invasion.  Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil is a woman who is flawed and vulnerable, just like us.  Her life is messy, but the viewer gets the sense that, even when we can judge her for how she treats her servants, this woman works hard for herself and her family and fights for what she believes is hers.  Just like us.  Except for the servants part.

In both films, and this is the crucial element that many horror and thriller filmmakers don’t seem to understand, the veil is gradually and surreptitiously placed before our eyes.  Lesser modern horror films will dance bloody corpses and fantastical monsters before our eyes as if that were all it took.  Such films amount to B-grade horror porn (horrporn?).  The better modern horror films will put as much craft into the non-scary aspects of their film as the payoff fright scenes.  You have to work just as hard weaving the rug as you do pulling it out from underneath our feet.

What the Exorcist team of director William Friedkin and writer William Peter Blatty and the writer/director of Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski, understand is that very basic aspects of life are frightening, fundamentally, to the human consciousness.  What they realize is that in order to scare the shit out of people, one only needs to zero in on aspects of life that are already scary and then embellish.  Puberty and pregnancy are scary.  Puberty, with its unseen chemical surges and transactions and its utterly transformative effects on the human personality and body, is at the very least creepy for the child as well as his or her parents and siblings.  Pregnancy, with its parasitic invasion of the female body featuring an unseen life form growing and feeding within another human, along with its bloody and screeching arrival, is enough to put anybody on edge – including the baby.

Stay tuned for part II of this post, where I will further explore the sources of terror in these two films, including men in power, the soul/body binary and antagonistic furniture.

The Birthday Party (William Friedkin, 1968)

From the Losey trilogy onwards Harold Pinter’s custom-made screenplays are, of course, cornerstones of cinema. But there are also the film adaptations of his theatrical works, which are by necessity geared more towards the specialist. Losey’s biographer suggested that JL never took on a Pinter play because it would have been an “away fixture”, and certainly the plays, magnificent though they are, are also hampered by what they are.

They’re written for the stage, action almost entirely constrained to one room, with opportunities to “open out” the play severely limited; unless you want to rewrite the play, which would rather defeat the original point. There’s this one, the second feature from the man who shortly afterwards directed The Exorcist and The French Connection; there’s the equally low-budget versions of The Caretaker and The Homecoming by Clive Donner and Peter Hall; there’s a rarer-still film of Betrayal with Jeremy Irons (I think).

The Birthday Party is very early Pinter. These days his mid-to-late period, from Old Times onwards, strikes me as more sophisticated but the early “comedies of menace” were the ones that blasted a hole in the ceiling of theatre. This play is rich, mysterious, affecting and infused with a language that dazzles.

If you can get past the idea that it’s Filmed Theatre rather than full cinema, this version is actually rather stylised and quite cinematic. The opening titles are shown to the driver’s view of a Rolls Royce gliding silently through the ghost town that is Worthing on a 60s Sunday morning, scenes are broken up with panoramic views of the pier and pathos-addled shots of Petey tending to his deckchairs. Once the action’s taking place in Pinter’s Room, composition, lighting and camera angles are set out in a fairly interesting way too.

Our set up is that the stoic Petey and the warm-hearted but simple Meg are ostensibly running a shabby boarding house. Stanley (Robert Shaw) appears to have been hiding out with them for some months and a girl called Lulu (rent-a-dollybird Helen Fraser from Billy Liar and Repulsion) sometimes pops round, though most of her scenes have been cut. A suave London Jew and an Irishman, Goldberg and McCann, come to the house. They interrogate Stanley, provoking a nervous breakdown, then take him away.

After the titles, we find ourselves in Meg’s filthy kitchen. As she hums to herself, the cornflake box is aimed at the bowl and most of them go over the table; an early indicator that she’s not all there. Petey comes home and for the first few lines of trite dialogue the faces are off camera, emphasising that their conversation is not a form of communication but a barrier to it. When we first see Meg’s face, the camera is in the living room and peering through the serving hatch. People are boxed in, confined.

Petey reads his paper, they chit-chat, the camera steers around the fried bread as if it’s likely to bite. When Meg ventures upstairs to see Stanley, the camera zooms out from a detail of the wallpaper. We rejoin Petey as clatter and laughters drifts down from upstairs. Robert Shaw gives Stanley his trademark rasp and air of dormant aggression. His clothes are filthy and he looks a little like Céline.

As Stanley eats his breakfast, he teases Meg and there seems to be a sexual undertone to all their interactions- she tickles him whilst trying to get a cigarette. He steps outside to smoke, but a plane overheard drives him back inside. It’s clear that the boarding house is a hideout for him when news of two newcomers makes him so agitated (“They won’t come, it’s a false alarm”). The big monologue about his past as a concert pianist is played without tricks; just a slow, gradual zoom into Shaw’s face as it leans on his hand.

The worldly Lulu and her Sandie Shaw bob make a brief appearance from the outside world, opening the window and curtains before declaring Stanley a “washout”. He flees through the back door at the arrival of Goldberg (Sydney Tafler) and McCann (Pinter/Losey favourite Patrick Magee).

McCann is sombre and pessimistic, always peering fearfully at the backyard and disgusting kitchen, whilst Goldberg has an air of relaxed authority in his grey tailored suit. He’s got the gift of the gab and his voice has a musical, yiddish twang (“Whadda lahvly flighta stairs”). Meg is enchanted. When the pair have popped out she gives Stanley his toy drum, and as his tension boils over the first act ends with his primal-scream banging.

Cut to McCann in the front room, tearing his newspaper into strips. It’s done with enervating slowness and the noise is heavily amplified. Stanley comes downstairs and tries to impose himself. McCann does not react until he declares his intention to leave, which causes a bit of brinkmaship. Why don’t you stay in? We’re having a party in your honour. Stanley now tries to establish his credentials as a harmless, obedient recluse, before pleading and making desperate attempts to ingratiate himself (“I know Ireland. The people have a wonderful sense of humour”). McCann’s poker face doesn’t flinch. Petey tells them he’ll miss the party as he has a chess match- more of a life of the mind than his wife.

Enter Goldberg. As he sits and delivers a monologue, the camera slowly circles him to reinforce that air of authority. He speaks with eloquence but there’s something not quite right about it; as he tells us about a bygone romance with a Sunday school teacher, we hear that “walking home, I’d tip my hat to the toddlers, give a hand to a couple of stray dogs”. Stanley tries the aggression with Goldberg too, refusing to shake his hand and posing as defender of Petey and Meg (“They’ve lost their sense of smell. I haven’t”).

Goldberg and McCann spring into action, coercing Stanley to sit down. The interrogation is shot with quirky angles, the two men standing either side of Stanley. From a top corner of the room, the camera will swoop down and around the armchair before zooming back out. There are rapid cuts between the three men. Once Goldberg and McCann manage to build up a rhythm, their speech flows like music. When they take Stanley’s glasses we see his POV, fumbling through a blurred field of vision until he falls. The interrogation seems largely concerned with sex, religion and guilt, culminating in a refrain of “Why did the chicken cross the road?” (sounds daft, but as a whole the piece is very poetic with plenty of word association and its own internal logic).

Stanley reaches his breaking point just about now. He screams and we see the interrogators’ faces before the camera, looking like the reflection in a spoon. There are jump cuts and weird angles aplenty as the three fight, brandishing chairs. It’s interrupted by Meg arriving in a red party frock, which has Goldberg gurgling with laughter. Meg is asked to deliver a toast, and McCann to shine a torch on birthday boy Stanley. Photography turns an oddly psychedelic sepia as the lights go out. Told to “say what you feel”, Meg ends up crying and not noticing that Stanley is still reeling.

Lulu arrives at the party. Goldberg does some more oratory and she clearly fancies him (“You’re empty, let me fill you up”). We zoom back from those two to see McCann vigilantly topping up Stanley’s whisky. Everyone focuses on getting drunk, there are lots of intrusive close-ups on perspiring faces, snatches of multiple conversations and it’s all mildly hallucinogenic. Lulu and Goldberg start snogging on an armchair whilst Meg and McCann talk at cross purposes.

“Have you ever been to Carrickmacross?”

“I’ve been to King’s Cross.”

Now in high spirits, the ladies decide that they would like to play a parlour game and someone suggests Blind Man’s Buff- perfect for the purposes of Goldberg and McCann. Meg is first to wear the blind- a soundtrack of heavy breathing and she caresses McCann before the blind is lifted “Oh, it’s you”. McCann’s POV next as he takes the blind and trashes the room. His hands grope, his arms flail, the camera jerks all over the place. The breathing is quite canine until he finally catches Stanley.

When Stanley becomes “it” we see a bird’s eye view of the room, Goldberg orchestrating the others’ movements, then the camera is level with the floor as Stanley is tripped up by the drum. McCann breaks his glasses. There’s a sudden blackout, gasps and a scream in the dark. More groovy sepia negatives when McCann finds the torch. It turns on Stanley, his hands around Meg’s throat. He whimpers and moans.

Cut to golden lamps on the pier and that almost still-life shot of deckchairs. Petey has finished his early morning shift and is heading home. The third act is very morning-after, giving the film a symmetrical feel (before/during/after). Meg has a headache and frets over the broken drum. Goldberg gives Petey a diagnosis of Stanley’s breakdown and dissuades him from calling a doctor. McCann comes down from the patient’s room, his sleeves rolled up, muttering that “I’m not going up there again”. He sits to polish his shoes as Goldberg ushers Petey back out to work.

For once it’s Goldberg who is tensed up. When McCann speaks out of turn he lunges at his friend with venom and throttles him. He tries to cheer himself up with more speeches and rhetoric, but it’s as if he’s realising their hollowness for the first time. Try as he might he cannot complete his sentence, “Because I believe that the world…”. It’s Pinter giving the boot, however unsubtly, to any ideologues in this world, anyone pretending that they know the solutions (an attitude we need to hold onto now the PM-in-waiting is telling us that removal of ‘big government’ will make everything perfect).

Goldberg falls back on tradition (“Who came before your father? His father!”) before going weird again and asking McCann to blow into his mouth. When Stanley reappears he is a zombie in a smart suit. This time the pair give him a “nice”, motivational version of the interrogation which appears to be all about religion. This time Stanley is dumb, obedient, and Petey’s climactic call of “Don’t let them tell you what to do!” falls on deaf ears as he is led into the car. The car speeds off into town and the camera swings back to Petey twitching his net curtain; a nice note of ambivalence from the director.

I first read The Birthday Party at the age of 16, loved it and went on to devour all Pinter’s plays- they had a profound influence on me. When I watched this film, I was no longer so sure about his stance. Is living in a starving artist’s shabby pit really so superior to wearing a suit and conforming to tradition? I suppose that the young wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t scrutinise and challenge everything that was handed down to them.

Anyway this version of The Birthday Party has the limitations of being designed for another medium, but it’s been assembled by Friedkin with not a little skill and in a way that only augments the sense of dread. There are some genial performances (particularly those of Goldberg and McCann) and it’s still far more of a film than something like In the Loop. It deserves to be better known.

The Exorcist (1973)

"This sow is mine!"

In 1973 William Friedkin created a screen adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist. It is a character driven drama that deals with the demonic possession of a young girl named Reagan MacNeil (Linda Blair) and her faith-finding mother’s (Ellen Burnstyn) desperation as she sees her daughter consumed by this evil supernatural force. The film earned ten Oscar nominations.

The demon Pazuzu

The way in which The Exorcist presents its characters and allows each of them to develop in this horrifying predicament is what sets the stage for the horror to seem so genuine. Especially considering that in this setting, regardless of your faith as an audience member, everything that happens and everything priests Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) and Father Lankester Merrin (Max Von Sydow) believe in is absolutely real. It is their piety and endurance in the face of such evil that are precisely the tools needed for Reagan to be saved. It is their duty and they are the film’s heroes.

"Do you know what she did?!"

Vomiting toward The Exorcist

On the flip side, the demon, Pazzuzu, who has consumed Reagan, is just as devote to evil. Merrin makes it clear to Karras that the demon is a masterful liar and that they must not listen to him no matter what. Later on we see first hand the psychological onslaught of lies that they must endure. It is almost as powerful and horrifying as the earlier stages of the film where we see the gradual manifestation of evil in young Reagan.

A deeply possessed Reagan MacNeil

Father Merrin, The Exorcist and the film's great hero, arrives.

The shift from normal little girl to full blown demon in the Exorcist contains, at least within the context of this compelling drama, the scariest images ever portrayed on film. I saw the Exorcist for the first time when I was pretty young (in fact, too young). I didn’t even get to see the truly scary parts until years later, but even the early stages gave me nightmares. The scene where we hear little Reagan screaming from the other room and the doctors rush in with her mother and they see her flopping uncontrollably from the waste up. Then she suddenly leaps up and begins to talk as the demon for the first time. “This sow is mine!” she shouts. I was told that the film would only get worse from there, but I didn’t watch much beyond that until a few years later. So it stewed in my mind and I imagined horrible things and suffered quite a bit of nightmares. When I was 13 or so I saw it again, little did I know that even those years of imagining what could be worse then that “this sow in mine!” sequence did not prepare me for the crucifix scene.

"The power of Christ compels you!"

Reagan next to an image of Pazuzu's statue.

I watch the Exorcist every Halloween as it is the only classic that continues to scare me to this day. Part of that is nostalgia but it is an incredibly compelling movie as well. I just don’t understand when I hear people who say it is funny, and that they laugh when they watch it. It isn’t that I couldn’t find humor in they way they watch it; it is just that they’ve missed the point. Watching a horror movie should be like riding a roller-coaster. You should enjoy the excitement and hold your arms up in a roller-coaster to maximize the experience. The mind-set to enjoy a film like the Exorcist should be similar. You shouldn’t see it as a test of what you can and cannot look at. If you approached a roller-coaster that way you might get a stiff neck. With a horror film you are supposed to be afraid and furthermore, with any film you should ideally always be compelled into it’s fictional world. That is what makes the experience an unforgettable one. There are so few horror films that can do that, but the Exorcist delivers every single time. That is what makes it so exceptional.

My rating is 5 out of 5 stars.

In 1973, a little film directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection) was released that caused mass hysteria, fainting and undying controversy. The film launched new comer Linda Blair into the spotlight and set a benchmark for psychological horror films to come. The film was “The Exorcist”.

In the new Exorcist film, we are introduced to a younger Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard, Max Von Sydow in the original 1973 film). This film is almost an origin story if you will.

Following the devastation and gritty aftermath of World War II, Merrin has become disillusioned with his faith and turned his back on the church. He now makes his life as an archeologist.

His passion for uncovering the past brings him to a desolate village on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya where a church has been uncovered. The church was built in 500 AD and seems to hold a rather disturbing secret. Upon Merrin’s arrival, he is greeted by Sarah (Izabella Scorupco), a doctor who has been with the dig since the beginning.

As Merrin begins to investigate the mysterious church he learns that the site was constructed over a pagan temple and that the archeologist who uncovered the site has gone completely insane. As the mystery deepens, Merrin will face his tortured past, seek redemption and face the greatest evil man has ever known.

Stellan Skarsgard is quite impressive as the struggling Merrin and it his performance that accents a lot of the credibility housed in this film. You can see this man’s pain and how he conflicts with everything he witnesses. Even in the attraction scenes with the younger Scorupco, Skarsgard doesn’t allow his character to find any raw emotion.

Director Renny Harlin’s tone and gritty nature does emulate a lot of what is happening within Merrin. But his overly gory and bloody sequences make the film quite hard to stomach in places. I have also never witnessed so many blatant attempts to lay on the gore so heavy.

Gore is fine but here it seems layered on as a sort of horror icing. Does gore equal horror?

What was so fun about the original was that it was highly psychological even though we did have that infamous “pea soup” scene. It dove into the mind of not only Linda Blair’s 12-year old girl but the struggling of Father Merrin. In the new film we seem to lose the psychological element as the true evil is finally revealed.

The film feels like it goes over three hours but it is only about 100 minutes. The reason for this is probably because there is just so much heaviness and dark gritty scenes that your mind plays tricks on you.

In a lot of the scenes which used overly horrific elements, I found that is was just too much. Also the film throws out the whole idea that Hollywood doesn’t harm children on camera. There are just so many unsettling and disturbing scenes housed in this film.

I really enjoyed Skarsgard and Renny Harlin’s gritty direction. I also was captivated by a lot of the film’s mysterious elements and story. I just got frustrated with the gratuitous gore and disturbing violence.

3 out of 5

So Says the Soothsayer.

(The Exorcist)

Videoteca do Beto #14

Dirigido por William Friedkin.

Elenco: Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Miller, Max Von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, William O’Malley, Barton Heyman, Peter Masterson, Gina Petrushka, Robert Symonds, Thomas Birmingham e Mercedes McCambridge (voz).

Roteiro: William Peter Blatty, baseado em livro de William Peter Blatty.

Produção: William Peter Blatty.

[Antes de qualquer coisa, gostaria de pedir que só leia esta crítica se já tiver assistido o filme. Para fazer uma análise mais detalhada é necessário citar cenas importantes da trama].

Para algumas pessoas – como eu – poucos temas são capazes de provocar medo como os relacionados aos espíritos. Por isso mesmo, confesso que dos filmes recentes de suspense que eu assisti, os que mais me agradaram tinham este tema em comum (“O Chamado” e “Os Outros”). Em “O Exorcista”, clássico dirigido por William Friedkin, este tema foi explorado com absoluta competência, provocando um frio na espinha da maioria dos espectadores e criando um festival de imagens que são capazes de atormentar a mais incrédula das pessoas.

A atriz Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) começa a perceber gradativamente que sua pequena filha Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) está tendo um comportamento bastante estranho. Após frustradas tentativas de curar a garota procurando a ajuda de médicos, psiquiatras e até mesmo através da hipnose, ela se rende à ajuda do padre Karras (Jason Miller), que chega à conclusão de que a menina está possuída pelo demônio e precisa de um ritual que já não é mais utilizado nos dias de hoje, chamado exorcismo.

Friedkin inicia o filme mostrando o cotidiano do experiente Padre Merrin (Max Von Sydow), que está fazendo escavações no Iraque. Durante estas escavações, Merrin acaba se encontrando com uma estátua macabra no alto de um monte. O plano final desta seqüência no Iraque, com o pôr-do-sol avermelhado, remete ao inferno. Em seguida, o diretor nos ambienta profundamente no relacionamento entre Chris e Regan, mostrando imagens das duas brincando e conversando na cama (neste plano vemos o rosto de Regan em close, o que dá a exata noção do contraste quando ela está possuída). Desta forma, ele cria empatia entre o espectador e aquela família, o que aumenta ainda mais o drama quando Regan começa a dar sinais de mudança em seu comportamento. O diretor também é inteligente ao nos situar nos problemas da família, como no plano em que Chris tenta falar com o pai de Regan e discute com a operadora de telefone. A câmera lentamente se afasta até mostrar Regan ouvindo a conversa escondida. A falta do pai seria utilizada como justificativa posteriormente para a mudança de comportamento da garota. Além disso, lentamente Friedkin vai introduzindo elementos que nos mostram sinais do que aconteceria depois, como a cama balançando freneticamente, a reação de Regan nos exames e os palavrões que a garota começa a falar. Finalmente, somos apresentados ao sofrimento do Padre Karras ao ver sua mãe doente, que também terá reflexo no restante da narrativa.

Vale dizer que todo este cuidadoso primeiro ato é mérito também do excelente roteiro de William Peter Blatty (baseado em livro do próprio Blatty). O roteiro desenvolve muito bem os personagens e seus dramas familiares, o que colabora com o nosso envolvimento no filme. É também corajoso ao trabalhar muito bem questões delicadas como a vida pessoal dos padres, normalmente vistos como pessoas acima do bem e do mal, mas que são seres humanos normais, que têm defeitos, medos e enfrentam problemas pessoais como qualquer um. Observe, por exemplo, este trecho de uma das conversas entre Chris e Karras: (Chris: “Padres sabem guardar segredo?” / Karras: “Depende.” / Chris: “Do que?” / Karras: “Do Padre.”). Não é por ser padre que uma pessoa é ou não é confiável, isto depende exclusivamente da pessoa. Blatty conseguiu ainda ilustrar de forma correta o conflito comum entre a medicina e a religião, através do ceticismo dos médicos no início do tratamento da garota. Finalmente, o filme jamais abre espaço para o humor, o que soaria falso e deslocado, a não ser pela repetição da piada sobre o filme que está passando no cinema no final do filme, já quando o espectador está mais relaxado.

Também colabora sensivelmente para o sucesso do longa o talentoso elenco dirigido por Friedkin. Ellen Burstyn e Linda Blair mostram uma boa química no início, o que serve até como comparação para a incrível transformação que ambas sofrerão durante o restante do filme. Regan, sempre sorridente, e Chris, sempre carinhosa, vão lentamente se transformando em pessoas completamente diferentes por razões distintas. Burstyn é extremamente competente, por exemplo, ao demonstrar sua comoção com a notícia da morte de Burke, chorando escandalosamente e com as mãos trêmulas. Seu desespero para tentar curar a filha é tocante, apelando para toda e qualquer ajuda vinda dos médicos, psiquiatras ou até mesmo de um especialista em hipnose. Observe sua reação ao ouvir a sugestão de um médico para procurar o exorcismo (e aqui ele dá uma explicação técnica para o sucesso do ritual, mostrando novamente que a medicina não tolera a explicação religiosa). Ela olha assustada para todos na mesa, mudando o foco do olhar da direita para a esquerda e vice-versa, tentando entender o que era aquilo. Finalmente, Burstyn completa sua transformação na cena em que expõe todo seu sofrimento ao gritar para o padre Karras que ela reconheceria sua filha de qualquer jeito (“Aquela coisa lá em cima não é minha filha!”). A atriz é muito competente na transmissão da dor e do desespero de Chris. Da mesma forma, Linda Blair também merece destaque pela excelente performance como Regan MacNeil. Inicialmente meiga e apegada à mãe, a garota lentamente se transforma num verdadeiro monstro, e o desempenho de Blair cresce consideravelmente quando está possuída. Aterrorizante, o resultado final de sua transformação é mérito também da excelente maquiagem e dos sensacionais efeitos sonoros, como podemos observar na primeira vez que a garota fala com a voz alterada. Jason Miller consegue transmitir muito bem o drama vivido pelo Padre Karras, que tem uma vida extremamente complicada. Localizada em um bairro pobre (as ruas pichadas e cheias de lixo mostram o bom trabalho de Direção de Arte), a velha e desorganizada casa reflete seu estado psicológico, seriamente afetado pela doença de sua mãe. A relação com a mãe, aliás, é algo muito importante para Karras. Talvez pelo fato de não ser casado, ela se tornou sua única companheira. Um dos seus bons momentos acontece quando Chris fala sobre exorcismo e ele pergunta espantado: “Como é?”. Completando o elenco principal, Max Von Sydow oferece uma ótima atuação como o experiente Padre Merrin, que encontra o seu destino no quarto de Regan e reforça o primeiro ato do filme, dando um peso maior à forte cena do exorcismo. Sydow é extremamente competente na criação do clima perfeito para o ritual, transmitindo ao espectador o perigo que aquilo representa, por exemplo, quando está rezando no banheiro.

Além do talentoso elenco, “O Exorcista” conta ainda com um apurado trabalho técnico que aumenta ainda mais o clima de suspense. Observe como a fotografia (Direção de Owen Roizman e Billy Williams) começa a escurecer na medida em que Regan começa a dar sinais de estar possuída. Com o passar do tempo, a fotografia se torna ainda mais sombria, ajudada também pela paleta granulada que torna a imagem menos nítida. Friedkin aumenta a sensação de horror ao jogar imagens demoníacas que piscam rapidamente na tela. O ótimo trabalho de som também colabora para criar o clima perfeito, como na cena em que podemos ouvir os barulhos no sótão da casa de Regan. O som ajuda também nos sustos causados na platéia, como na cena em que Chris investiga a origem dos barulhos na casa, além de funcionar perfeitamente nas cenas em que Regan está possuída.

Ao contrário de filmes como “Tubarão”, onde o suspense é muito mais psicológico, “O Exorcista” aposta no visual para causar medo no espectador. De maneiras diferentes, os dois filmes conseguem sucesso. Quando Regan desce as escadas no meio de uma festa, diz uma frase macabra e faz xixi no chão, o espectador percebe o nível das assustadoras cenas que vai presenciar. E a coleção de cenas aterrorizantes é enorme. Regan vira a cabeça completamente para trás, desce a escada de costas com as mãos e os pés apoiados nos degraus (na famosa cena conhecida como a “menina-aranha”), agride sua própria genital com um crucifixo dizendo palavras obscenas, levita sobre a cama e move objetos para tentar agredir quem entra em seu quarto, entre outras cenas impressionantes.

Assustador e repleto de imagens chocantes, “O Exorcista” faz ainda um excelente estudo sobre a perda da fé. Observamos pessoas completamente diferentes e que enxergam a fé de formas ainda mais distantes, alterarem suas vidas após serem atingidos por tragédias particulares. O Padre Karras, completamente modificado após a perda da mãe, enxerga no drama de Chris a possibilidade de se reencontrar com sua fé. Chris, que segundo ela mesma não tem religião, se entrega à fé para tentar salvar sua pequena filha. E o Padre Merrin, mesmo com toda sua experiência na vida religiosa, tem sua fé realmente testada dentro do quarto de Regan.

Extremamente visual sem se descuidar de seu conteúdo, “O Exorcista” é um filme aterrorizante, com imagens fortes e boas atuações. Seu roteiro coeso aborda a complicada possessão da garota de forma lenta, elevando a tensão a níveis extremos de maneira inteligente. Acredite ou não em espíritos ou demônios e, independente de qual seja a sua fé, o espectador jamais sai indiferente ao filme. Goste ou não, é impossível não respeitar a qualidade do trabalho realizado e o resultado alcançado.

Texto publicado em 15 de Outubro de 2009 por Roberto Siqueira

The following post is by a special guest contributor who finally decided to grace us with her presence after many weeks that I spent harassing her, prodding her to write a review for this blog. Hopefully she becomes a regular, but until then, enjoy the following entry as I take the week off!

Having recently gotten Netflix, I am now prepared to indulge myself in all the movies I never had the time to watch and regale you with my deep, intellectual musings on them – beginning with The Exorcist. Classy, I know. As most everyone knows, the plot follows the bizarre events that keep occurring to 13 year-old Regan MacNeil. Beginning with a Ouiji board and a ghostly teacher, the events escalate from a shaking bed to convulsions to vomit and self mutilation. Finally, having exhausted all medical avenues, her mother turns to a struggling Catholic priest for an exorcism.

As a scholar of Islam (yes, pretentious) I am uncomfortable with the role of religion, especially Islam in opposition to Catholicism, in the story. The movie opens with the sound of an Islamic prayer, “Allah Hu Akbar” (meaning “God is the Greatest,” or “God is Almighty” – literally the biggest or oldest) and images of an archeological dig in Iraq. It is here that we are introduced to the demon that will later possess Regan through the discovery of several ancient artifacts, including a statuette of a face and a St. Joseph medallion. After a surprising amount of time following the mysterious, ailing archeologist, we leave him staring down the statue of a winged cat-like beast. Wikipedia tells me that this image is Pazuzu, an ancient Sumerian demigod. How is the audience supposed to know this? As far as I could tell, the strange statues found are part of the culture in which they are presented, either Islamic or Iraqi culture. Presenting these relics in opposition to Catholicism (through the pairing of the stone face with the medallion) only serves to delineate who is good and who is bad. Come on, start a movie with Allah Hu Akbar and end with the sacrificial suicide of a recently-repentant Catholic priest who died to save a virginal young white girl from an ancient Iraqi demigod?! (*sigh*)

That being said, the film scared me. In fact, I’m still jumpy – just waiting for the next stranger to rise several feet in the air, tell me that my mother is a prostitute in hell, and projectile vomit on me. (… Wait, what was that noise? ) Overall, this movie deserves its reputation. The special effects were fabulous, especially for the time period, and the mood it sets draws in the audience. While many of the characters are less than relatable, the film is saved by a very good performance from the young Linda Blair and Jason Miller. There is nothing quite like seeing a 13 year-old girl stab herself in the vagina while grunting, “Let Jesus fuck you.”

In summary… was it better than a nap? Better than one, yes. Better than the many it may rob me of with its haunting images and religious hamfisted-ness ? We will see.

Dificilmente um filme antigo chama atenção daqueles que gostam superficialmente de cinema, ainda mais se for um filme em preto e branco, como é o caso dessa jóia impactante dirigida por Sidney Lumet. Contando com um elenco composto por Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley e Jack Klugman, que são responsáveis por excelentes atuações de personagens cheios de detalhes, que transformam este filme em algo absorvente, tenso e excitante.

Primeiramente somos apresentados a um júri composto por dozes jurados, onde onze deles estão convencidos que o réu é culpado por assassinato e apenas um sustenta a hipótese de sua inocência. Em um caso em que há provas avassaladoras contra um adolescente acusado de matar o pai, este único jurado (Davis, interpretado por Henry Fonda) tenta fazer com que os outros cheguem à sua conclusão.

Todas as ações acontecem dentro de uma única sala, com exceção da primeira e da última cena, que se passam no tribunal e na saída do mesmo, respectivamente. È incrível como Lumet consegue fazer um filme de 96 minutos tão parado, sem torná-lo monótono em nenhum momento sequer. 12 Homens e Uma Sentença é um drama forte, impregnado de suspense, bem agradável de ser visto, podendo causar sensações de emoção até aos mais insensíveis.

Esta ótima produção além de um elenco de astros recebeu quatro indicações ao Oscar, incluindo Melhor Filme (1957). Conta também com um remake para TV, de 1997 dirigido por William Friedkin e com um excelente elenco. Recomendo que vejam as duas versões para que visualizem as formas diferentes de ver uma mesma coisa, e ainda fazer um comparativo da evolução técnica da sétima arte.

O filme põe em questão os determinantes sociais, trazendo à tona a discussão de temas fortes e polêmicos, que podem gerar perdas irreparáveis e erros fatais, entre esses temas facilmente se nota o preconceito e o apego indevido ao falível poder determinante do ambiente e da classe social. É absolutamente desprezível tentar inferir algo que não se analisa, simplesmente por achar coisas pessoais (e supérfluas) mais importantes que a vida de outra pessoa. O fato mais interessante é que o filme mostra que muitas vezes a dúvida pode ser mais eficaz e válida que a certeza.

Trailer:

USA, 104 min

+ The French Connection: An Interview with William Friedkin (GoogleDocs)

+ The Genre Film as Booby Trap: 1970s Genre Bending and The French Connection (GoogleDocs)

Jimmy „Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) jest nowojorskim policjantem. Daleko mu jednak do przeciętnego stróża porządku. Jest niesamowicie skuteczny, ma niezwykłą intuicję i dostatecznie dużo odwagi, by działać na granicy prawa. Pewnego dnia on i jego partner Rocco wpadają na trop gigantycznego przemytu heroiny. Szlak wiedzie z Marsylii aż do Nowego Yorku, gdzie działa tytułowy francuski łącznik. Narkotyki przerzucane są z Europy do Ameryki w nadprożach samochodów, w miejscu praktycznie niemożliwym do wykrycia. Doyle okazuje się jednak geniuszem śledztwa, rozpracowuje całą szajkę i mimo znakomitego planu przestępców udaremnia narkotykową transakcję. Porażką jest jednak to, że łącznik nie zostaje zatrzymany.

Film Williama Friedkina został oparty na autentycznych wydarzeniach, jakie miały miejsce w latach 60., a pierwowzorem detektywa Doyle’a był genialny policjant o nazwisku Egan. W 1972 roku Francuski łącznik został nominowany do Oscara i zdobył go aż w pięciu kategoriach, w tym za najlepszy film, dla najlepszego reżysera i dla najlepszego aktora. Ten spektakularny sukces sprawił, że już wkrótce John Frankheimer nakręcił sequel, w którym główną rolę ponownie zagrał Gene Hackman.

Fabuła drugiej części filmu jest podobna. Znowu chodzi o rozpracowanie systemu przemytu i zatrzymanie łącznika. Tym razem jednak Doyle, mając już dobre układy z policją francuską, prowadzi śledztwo także w Europie. Jego celem jest udaremnienie kolejnej transakcji na gigantyczną skalę.

W sumie trzypłytowe wydanie DVD Francuskiego łącznika i Francuskiego łącznika II przynosi imponującą ilość materiału. Na pierwszej płycie umieszczono film Friedkina i dodatki: zwiastun oraz komentarze reżysera, Gene’a Hackmana i Roya Schneidera. Drugi dysk zawiera już same dodatki – sceny usunięte, niezwykle interesujący dokument BBC o powstawaniu filmu (mnóstwo informacji o autentycznych wydarzeniach sprzed czterdziestu lat), galerię zdjęć, fotosów i plakat. Trzeci płyta mieści sequel Frankheimera, zwiastun w języku angielskim, hiszpańskim i portugalskim, galerię zdjęć, storyboard (atrakcja dla osób interesujących się techniczną stroną produkcji filmu), komentarz reżysera i aktorów.

Mimo że na DVD przeniesiono filmy z lat 70., ich obraz jest niemal doskonały. Charakteryzuje się bardzo dobrym kontrastem, świetnym nasyceniem barw i idealną ostrością. Nawet w bardzo dynamicznej scenie pościgu na pierwszej płycie obraz nie traci nic ze swojej jakości, wszystkie sceny w mieście przypominają komputerowo robiony komiks, tak że nawet w nocy wszystko jest doskonale widoczne. Z dźwiękiem jest trochę gorzej, nie osiągnięto tu szczytów jakości. Ale zarzut z tego faktu mogą robić jedynie ci, którzy – ślepo zapatrzeni w cyfrowe technologie – nie czują klimatu prawdziwego, soczystego kryminału z ubiegłego wieku.

(Tekst dla IDG S.A., 2004)

In 1975 the Nigerian author and critic Chinua Achebe gave a lecture that sent shock-waves through the literary community.  In this lecture, he suggested that the depiction of Africans in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) was more than sufficient to label not only the text but also its author as racist.  While Achebe would later soften his position by suggesting that his interpretation was only one of many and that his reading in no way invalidated all of the laudatory readings cooked up by admirers of the work, the damage was done.  Over thirty years later the spectre of racism still hangs over Heart of Darkness, provoking the feeling that however glorious the novella might be, it may well be a reflection of a by-gone age with values not quite the same as ours but which we are willing to put up with for the sake of what is good in the work.  In fact, introductions to contemporary editions of the work bend over backwards to stress Conrad’s anti-colonialist credentials.

However, Achebe’s “An Image of Africa : Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’” actually addresses this issue by discussing Conrad’s layered approach to narration.  Conrad gives the story not one but two narrators; Marlow who recounts his curious experiences in the Congo and a shadowy figure who is telling us about Marlow telling the story.  By insulating himself so carefully, Conrad seems to be insulating himself against the language and the opinions of the story.  It is not Conrad who speaks of ‘buck niggers’ but Marlowe and his chronicler.  However, Achebe’s critique stretches much deeper than merely cataloguing all the uses of racist language and stereotypical depictions of Black people.  In fact, his piece is at its most powerful when it is talking in the abstract about the technique that Conrad uses to project fears onto an entire population.  This is a technique that is still in use today and it is just as problematic as can be seen in films such as William Friedkin’s Cruising (1980) and Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible (2002).

Book Cover

Conrad’s crime, according to Achebe is that he panders to :

“the desire — one might indeed say the need — in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.”

Achebe continues :

“Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as “the other world,” the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilisation, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant beastiality.”

And yet, for all the Otherness of the Africans’ behaviour and the base savagery of their existence, there is something recognisable about them.  We know this because Conrad shows us partly civilised Africans and the story concludes with the image of Kurtz, that most civilised of white men, who has ‘gone native’ and seen the raw truth that lies behind all of the civilisation, morality and comfortable myth that White men claim to be spreading across the globe.

“The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there — there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly and the men were …. No they were not inhuman. Well, you know that was the worst of it — this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces, but what thrilled you, was just the thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough, but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you — you so remote from the night of first ages — could comprehend.  Herein lies the meaning of Heart of Darkness and the fascination it holds over the Western mind: “What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity — like yours …. Ugly.””

I agree with Achebe that it is telling that Conrad decided to set the story of the spiritual defrocking of a Victoria gentleman in Africa.  Could Kurtz not have been pulled from a cotton mill whispering “the horror, the horror”?  The whole point about Victorian myths of civilisation is that they were obviously myths.  In Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy (1999), a nervous W. S. Gilbert steps out of the theatre, unable to be in the building during the premiere of the Mikado.  All he needs to do is round the corner from the Strand and suddenly he finds himself in a sinister and dangerous world very much at odds with the illusions of Victorian propriety and civilisation.  As Achebe points out, Conrad is pushing at an open door… he is drawing upon commonly held stereotypes and prejudices about Africa to fuel his depiction of a savage and lawless world.

Film Poster

However, where Achebe is wrong is in his apparent belief that Africa is somehow being singled out.  When Heart of Darkness was reinvented as Apocalypse Now (1979), Francis Ford Coppola transported the action to South-East Asia and drew upon a popular feeling that the Vietnam war had seen the unravelling of the American conscience.  That Vietnam was a place of madness and death.  John Moore’s Behind Enemy Lines (2001) used the same technique to present former Yugoslavia as a theatre of unrivalled savagery and inhumanity.  Europe’s Dark Heart.  He even plays for laughs the idea that a Yugoslavian teenager might drink Coke rather than water.  A double-edged joke that both speaks to the provincialism of Americans and the supposed surrealism of as mundane an object as a bottle of Coke cropping up in Yugoslavia.

Film Poster

Friedkin’s Cruising and Noe’s Irreversible saw these techniques applied to homosexuality and both films draw upon popular perceptions of the gay fetish underworld to fuel their depictions of the unravelling of a straight man’s mind.

Film Poster

Friedkin’s Cruising deals with a straight cop named Steve Burns (Al Pacino) being sent to work undercover as part of a hunt for a homosexual serial killer.  The cop moves out of the apartment he shares with his girlfriend and takes a flat in the meat-packing district of the West Village, a place which, prior to the AIDS epidemic and the gentrification of inner cities, was packed with gay clubs that catered to New York’s gay BDSM community.  As Friedkin follows Pacino through places with names such as “The Cock Pit” and “The Ramrod”, you can almost hear the Conradian jungle drums beating.  Friedkin shows us a world of mass group sex, bacchanalian excess, of male sexuality unfettered and unconstrained by the presence of either a woman or the authorities.

Still from Film

Still from Film

In this setting, we are shown a series of grizzly murders.  We never see the murderer’s face, we only hear his voice and the voice of the murderer at each new killing is provided by the murder victim from the previous one.  It is almost as though there is no individual killer, but rather the murderer is a manifestation of some violent and deeply buried psychosis embedded in the fabric of the culture itself.  Every leather-boy is as much a potential murderer as a potential victim.  In a scene deleted from the final cut, Friedkin showed a wall daubed with the gay rights slogan “We Are Everywhere” just before the first body part is uncovered.  As the cop spends more and more time in this environment, pushing his engagement with the scene further and further away from the sexual norms of a long-term heterosexual pairing, he starts to change.  He meets up with his girlfriend and expresses his desire to stay with her (“I don’t want to lose you”).  He then fucks her roughly, almost brutally.  When his girlfriend asks him what is going on, the cop merely replies that “What I’m doing, is affecting me”.

Still from Film

Still from Film

Film Still

What the cop means by this becomes evident in the film’s final scenes as Burns’ gay neighbour turns up dead.  The neighbour had a stormy relationship with his boyfriend and throughout the film we can see the cop getting more and more agitated by this and his apparent attraction to the neighbour.  Given that the cop had apparently tracked down the murderer, who killed the neighbour?  The suggestion is that it might well have been Burns.  The film’s final scene sees his girlfriend trying on his leather cap while he shaves.  Clearly, despite attempting to scrub himself clean of what he saw and what he experienced, the cop cannot escape what he has become.  It has followed him home.

Film Poster

The similarities between Heart of Darkness and Irreversible are even more obvious thanks to the film’s remarkable structure.  It opens with a monologue by the character of the Butcher from Noe’s previous films I Stand Alone (1998) and Carne (1991).  The scene is packed with homo-eroticism as the Butcher sits naked on a bed chatting with another man who has a coat draped over his groin.  The degree of intimacy between the two men is difficult to watch.  We feel as though we are intruding on lovers.  The film then moves to scenes of the films’ protagonists being dragged by the police out of a gay S&M night club called The Rectum.  The characters do not speak but we can hear the off-camera taunts of two local thugs who claimed to be able to track down a rapist. “His asshole must have bled a lot.  Fucker.  Fag”  and “All philosophers are fags.  I hope they get you hard.  In prison there are no condoms.  You’ll get AIDS straight away fag”.  These thuggish homophobes are almost like a classical chorus, anointing the characters with their new status as gay men.

Film Still

Film Still

Irreversible is structured back to front so that the film begins with the characters being called gay before showing us the path that lead them to that hellish moment.  A path stretching back through a gay night club (in which they were nearly raped), being called gay by a cab driver, being abused by drunks in a pub because they were looking for a gay club and searching for a transsexual prostitute.  A path stretching all the way back to the infamously brutal scene in which Monica Bellucci’s androgynously named Alex is raped by a man calling himself the Tapeworm.  A man who, whilst sodomising her, coos in her ear “You have such a tight ass.  A nice fag ass”.  The rape scene is almost like the trading post in Heart of Darkness.  It is the furthermost outpost of heteronormative civilisation.  A man raping a woman but making it clear that his frame of reference (as well as his behaviour) is that of another world.  One hidden beneath and outside the world of the characters with their flirtatious parties and their cute heterosexual intimacy.  Irreversible takes us from the gay hell of the Rectum to moments of pure beauty, couples together laughing and playing, a pregnant woman sitting in a park as children play beside her.  As in Cruising, Irreversible changes its colour schemes.  Cruising moves from cold metallic blue to warmth and sunshine.  Irreversible moves from red darkness to a similar sunny hetero- promised land of sunshine and warmth.

Film Still

Film Still

Film Still

Irreversible fits into the Conradian schema not only because of its clear ‘descent to hell’ narrative but also because Noe’s films are littered with a deeply ambiguous attitude towards all forms of sexuality.  In Carne (1991), his daughter’s first period makes the Butcher believe that she has been raped.  Confusing the natural process of becoming a woman with a more tawdry and violent loss of innocence, he sets off and exacts revenge upon an innocent Arab labourer.  In I Stand Alone, the Butcher is trapped between the S&M fantasies of his lover and his deranged incestuous yearning for his own daughter.  It is easy to see the hierarchy present in Noe’s world-view : Women first, then women who have sex, then women who have kinky sex, then transsexuals and finally gay men : Madonna, Whore, Shemale, Queer.

Madonna/Whore Complex by Hansjurgen Bauer

While I agree that there is something profoundly distasteful about this kind of personalised demonisation of entire cultures, sexualities and races, I actually think that it reflects more profoundly upon the people doing the demonising than it does the demonised.  When Conrad wrote of the savagery of Africa, he was giving a voice to his own fears and prejudices as well as those of the society that surrounded him.  Heart of Darkness speaks of the Victorian image of Africa in the same way as Apocalypse Now speaks of the American vision of Vietnam, Behind Enemy Lines speaks of American fears of ‘Old Europe’ and both Friedkin and Noe’s films speak of a deep-seated fear for their own sexuality.

As Achebe says, much of the emotional force from Heart of Darkness comes from the idea of recognition.  White Europeans are supposed to see the Africans not as inscrutable Others but rather as reflections of their own potential for savagery.  Both Friedkin and Noe’s characters begin the films as straight men before encountering the homosexual demi-monde and being sucked into it, a process that changes them forever.

The key question to ask when trying to work out how one feels about this process of Othering is what purpose is served by these kinds of depictions of Black or Gay people.  Achebe sees the European’s demonisation of the African as being motivated by self-aggrandisement.  If you write about how savage the lives of the Africans are then you are also making the civilised life of the European seem that much more attractive, noble and moral.  Think of Conrad’s depiction of the Thames as a grand old river, beautiful because it is civilised and well-travelled.  The wild has been beaten out of it.  It has been tamed.  Compared to this, the Congo seems a terrible place lined with danger and death.  Both are vast rivers, but one has been tamed and made fit for human travel.  The other needs civilising.

Conversely, we can take the demonisation not as a means of elevation but of deflation.  By showing us the savagery of African lives and making it clear to us how recognisably human they are, Conrad is reminding us that civilisation is a myth, a shell game, a vast act of voluntary self-delusion.  The capacity for savagery is within us all and it is only by ignoring the realities of life that we can convince ourselves otherwise.  Consider for example, Conrad’s depiction of the offices of the great trading company at the beginning of the novella : A dried out, fly-blown tomb where manners and fussy decoration are used not to demonstrate civilisation but as a buttress against the forces of entropy.  It is, in its own way, no less horrific than the trading posts of the Congo.

The ambivalence expressed in Heart of Darkness about civilisation is one reason why Achebe’s critique has not lead to the work being marginalised  and seen as merely a product of its time.  Its style is unfashionable.  Its imagery and language unsettling.  And yet the book remains a vital part of the Western canon.  This same ambiguity envelops the works of Friedkin and Noe : We are repulsed by their use of Gay stereotypes and their equation of homosexuality with brutality and death and yet we hesitate before calling either work bigoted.  We return to them because of their ambiguity.  Perhaps Achebe was right and our refusal to reject these works marks a deep-seated and well-hidden vein of prejudice.  A secret belief that all gay men are piss-drinking deviants or leather-clad rapists.  That Africans are brutally uncivilised and incapable of governing themselves.  Perhaps we enjoy these works for the same reason that white teenagers enjoy gangsta rap : it speaks to their prejudices.  This is possible.  It is a question that all of these works pose of us because of their similarity and because of their power.  That too is a reason for returning to them.

This movie seems to have a funny and interesting idea from the outlook. Yet this movies never quite takes off in the right direction or any direction. Through the first half of the movie it builds up as a comedy. In the second half it tries to alter itself into an engaging drama. Personally I had no problem with Shaq and Penny Hardaway in the movie. Nick Nolte with his character fit perfectly. Still the writing was totally unimpressive and horrible except for the one scene with Nick Nolte at the end with his press conference. Everything else in this movie seems to be cliché and would not amuse anyone except for small kids.

The supporting cast other than the three basketball players and Nolte’s ex-wife fit perfectly or should I say match the poor and cliché writing of this movie. For example J.T. Walsh was cast as Happy. Happy was in charge or at least had connections that helped Nolte get his top notch recruits with illegal strategies such as buying houses, giving money and buying other luxurious items for the recruits’ families. J.T. Walsh seemed very easy to spot as a corrupt and horrible man even though his character is supposed to have a low profile and be behind the scenes. This presents a huge problem for a key character who does seem to be quite believable. He is supposed to be the man doing things under the table instead he is totally visible to the public.

As I said before the writing in this movie does not engage the audience because it doesn’t take on its own identity. It is hard to call this a comedy with too few jokes and attempts to amuse the audience and it is hard to call this a drama with the movie trying to be portrayed as a comedy.

This movie could have been easily fixed if there was more work done on the writing and the casting. Blue Chips attempts to show the corruption in college sports but it fails to show the many aspects of it. Such as the corporate sponsors and the pressure an athletic director is under of loosing their job. It does not show the competing colleges vying for the top recruits and most of all it does not show you how such pure and genuine feeling such as playing a sport can be so easily corrupted by the pressure and the need for winning from coaches and colleges to fans and corporate sponsors. This sounds like a lot but could have been very easily included in the movie without having to overextend this into a 2 1/2 hour movie.

Depois de “O Diabo Veste Prada”, um dos filmes mais esperados pelos fashionistas é “Coco Avant Chanel”, pelo menos esse é um dos três filmes que estão sendo aguardados, e que tem como protagonista uma das maiores estilistas da alta costura francesa e mundial.

“Coco Chanel et Igor Stravinsky” é uma das outras quatro opções que virão. Essa segunda produção pretende relembrar a relação entre a grande estrela da costura e o compositor russo que encontrou refúgio na casa da estilista, na década de 20. A terceira produção também já tem nome, e se chamará “Igor&Coco”, do diretor William Friedkin, de “O Exorcista”. Como se não fosse o suficiente ainda é provável que a atriz Demi Moore esteja no papel principal de uma outra história, ou seja, até hoje nunca vi alguém ser tão reverenciada nas telonas em um curto intervalo de tempo. A previsão é de que “Coco Avant Chanel” estreie nas telas brasileiras até outubro. Assim, “Coco Avant Chanel” tem a direção de Anne Fontaine, brasileira que fez um império na França, conhecida como a rainha das camisas brancas.

Para saber mais sobre Coco Chanel:

Coco Chanel – A personalidade
Coco Chanel – O império
Coco Chanel – O Perfil e biografia

William Friedkin (born 29 August 1935 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing The Exorcist and The French Connection in the early 1970s. His recent film is Bug (2006) for which he won the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique (FIPRESCI).

After seeing the movie Citizen Kane as a boy, Friedkin became fascinated with movies and began working for WGN-TV immediately after high school. He eventually started his directorial career doing live television shows and documentaries, including The People vs. Paul Crump which won several awards and contributed to the commutation of Crump’s death sentence. In 1965 Friedkin moved to Hollywood and two years later released his first feature film, Good Times starring Sonny and Cher. Several other “art” films followed (including the gay-themed movie The Boys in the Band), although Friedkin didn’t necessarily want to be known as an art house director.

In 1971, his The French Connection was released to wide critical acclaim. Shot in a gritty style more suited for documentaries than Hollywood features, the film won five Academy Awards, including Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director.

Linda Blair and William Friedkin

Friedkin followed up with 1973’s The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty’s best-selling novel, which revolutionized the horror genre and is considered by some critics to be the greatest horror movie of all time. The Exorcist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Following these two critically acclaimed pictures, Friedkin, along with Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich, was deemed as one of the premier directors of New Hollywood. Unfortunately, Friedkin’s later movies did not achieve the same success. Sorcerer (1977), a $22 million dollar American remake of the French classic Wages of Fear, starring Roy Scheider, was overshadowed by the box-office success of Star Wars, which was released around the same time. Friedkin considers it his finest film, and was personally devastated by its financial and critical failure (as mentioned by Friedkin himself in the documentary series The Directors (1999)).

Sorcerer was shortly followed by the crime-comedy The Brink’s Job (1978), based on the real-life Great Brink’s Robbery in Boston, Massachusetts, which was also unsuccessful at the box-office. In 1980, he released the highly controversial gay-themed crime thriller Cruising, starring Al Pacino, which was protested against even during its making, and remains the subject of heated debate to this day.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Friedkin’s films received mostly lackluster reviews and moderate ticket sales. Deal of the Century (1983), starring Chevy Chase, Gregory Hines and Sigourney Weaver, was sometimes regarded as a latter-day Dr. Strangelove, though was generally savaged by critics. However, his action/crime movie To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), starring William Petersen and Willem Dafoe, was a critical favorite and drew comparisons to Friedkin’s own The French Connection (particularly for its car-chase sequence), while his courtroom-drama/thriller, Rampage (1987), received a fairly positive review from Roger Ebert despite major distribution problems. The Guardian (1990) and Jade starring Linda Fiorentino received minor success by critics and audiences.

In 2000, The Exorcist was re-released in theaters with extra footage and grossed $40 million in the U.S. alone.

Friedkin’s involvement in 2007’s Bug resulted from a positive experience watching the stage version in 2004. He was surprised to find that he was, metaphorically, on the same page as the playwright, and felt that he could relate well to the story.

Later, Friedkin directed an episode of the hit TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, entitled Cockroaches, which re-teamed him with To Live and Die In L.A. star William Petersen. He would go on to direct again for CSI’s 200th episode, Mascara.

William Friedkin and Laurence Fishburne CSI set

Trivia:

The night he won his Academy Award for directing The French Connection (1971), he was riding with his manager when their Rolls-Royce broke down several miles from the ceremony. They had to hitch a ride from a driver at a gas station in order to arrive in time.

His video for Laura Branigan’s song “self control” has never been shown in its entirety on MTV. Friedkin’s uncut version features a brief shot of a female breast.

Was going to work with Peter Gabriel on a film project, but Gabriel was caught up with work with his former band Genesis on the album “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”. The project was called off.

He was believed to be the youngest person to win the Best Director Oscar, at age 32. Later, he was discovered to have actually been born in 1935, and was 36 at the time. The record returned to Norman Taurog.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. “World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985″. Pages 372-375. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

After The Exorcist (1973), he was planning on making a film about Aliens and Atlantis. But, after Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) went into production, he abandoned the film and made Sorcerer (1977), instead.

While on his first directing assignment for “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” (1962), he was reprimanded by Alfred Hitchcock for not wearing a tie.

Friedkin and wife Sherry Lansing

Began his career in the mail-room of WGN-TV in Chicago. Within two years, he was directing live television.

In 1985, was sued for plagiarism by Michael Mann, who claimed that To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) stole the entire concept of Mann’s TV series “Miami Vice” (1984). Mann lost the lawsuit.

He directed 5 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Jason Miller, Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair. Hackman won an Oscar for The French Connection (1971).

Does not like to work with storyboards.

Was offered the chance to direct The Exorcist (1973) by producer William Peter Blatty after Blatty screened The French Connection (1971). Warner Bros. had been pressuring him to use another director but after seeing the Friedkin’s film, Blatty decided he wanted the film of his novel to be infused with as much energy as Friedkin had brought to “The French Connection”.

Eli Roth and William Friedkin

His two most famous films, The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973), both begin in a foreign country, in which something in that country is brought over to America and then dealt with by American “authorities” in that field. The French Connection (1971) has drugs coming from France and then dealt with by American narcotics officers; The Exorcist (1973) has a demonic presence (from an idol) coming from Iraq to America, and dealt with by American priests.

Has two sons: Jack with Lesley-Anne Down and Cedric with Australian dancer Jennifer Nairn-Smith.

Directed his first opera, “Salome” by Richard Strauss, at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich (2006).

Profiled in “Conversations with Directors: An Anthology of Interviews from Literature/Film Quarterly”, E.M. Walker, D.T. Johnson, eds. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008.

In a recent review of Quentin Tarantino’s different-film-from-how-it-was-marketed opus, Inglourious Basterds, film critic and friend of SCFOM Jonathan Kiefer writes, “When last we met in this space to discuss Quentin Tarantino, I claimed he was ruining American movies. Now I must acknowledge his progress. Now he’s on to European movies.”

I’ll take it a step further and suggest that he’s ruining movies. Period. His latest piece of fluff (dressed up as Important Movie), the aforementioned Inglourious Basterds, is sadly a box office champ, proving New York Times critic A.O. Scott’s theory that Americans have all the film sense of children (he also posits that we’re being treated as children, which, depending on your point of view, is accurate, cynical, or what we deserve).

How did this hack (and by “this hack,” I mean Tarantino) get to be the original Miss Jesus of cinema? Hard to say. He made one excellent film, which combined all the great elements of a classic genre picture and threw them into a contemporary stew of pop culture references, violence and kitsch. Its non-linear structure was just enough to distract viewers (including me) from the fact that the story wasn’t all that original (a bunch of guys knock over a store, it goes bad, they turn on each other, the end — see Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing for a similar set-up), and that it doesn’t add up to much. But so what? It’s a terrific flick. Its hyperkinetic energy alone is enough to make one look past its flaws. Plus, it has revelatory performances from Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and Michael Madsen, and may be the last movie Chris Penn made before he got behemoth big.

Reservoir Dogs also introduced us to that Tarantino hallmark: his dialogue. And yes, it’s his dialogue. No character speaks in a voice that’s any different from Tarantino’s own, but no one knew that at the time. And it’s even kind of fun: ruminations on Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and whatever-the-hell-else in the opening diner scene are pithy and cute in their four-letter way. And mercifully short.

So everyone lined up to blow Quentin and he rewarded us with Pulp Fiction, a great-on-first-viewing picture. (Others rewarded us with the wretched True Romance and the so-so Natural Born Killers.) Then you watch Pulp Fiction again and you realize it’s just what it says it is: pulp. It has no value. The dialogue goes stale after a second viewing because it’s all so indistinguishable, the characters are trite and Tarantino’s biggest directorial achievement is to make John Travolta look as if he can’t dance. That, and he brought Travolta back (a dubious blessing) and gave us the ham-fisted Samuel L. Jackson that has become the standard Samuel L. Jackson. Yes: Snakes on a Plane is a direct descendant of Pulp Fiction.

Pulp Fiction’s not as bad as I make it out to be because Tarantino’s follow-up Jackie Brown is worse, unwatchable in all its talky nonsense. How can anyone make Elmore Leonard boring? Tarantino managed. Any clever ADR specialist could replace half the yapping in Jackie Brown with the words “yap yap yap” repeated over and over, and viewers would miss none of the plot. What a stupefyingly boring film, with dialogue that’s not only boring, but meaningless. And how many times do we have to watch someone open a goddamn car trunk from the inside?

Tarantino’s leap to douche-auteur got a tweak after Jackie Brown. As he says in a recent Village Voice interview:

I learned something after I did Jackie Brown—and don’t get me wrong, I love Jackie Brown. But when it was all over—even when I was making it—the fact that it was just a little bit once removed made me a little bit disconnected from it. That’s why I haven’t done another adaptation since then. I want to naturally fall into the next thing that’s going to turn me on.

You read that correctly: I love my own work too much to let another person’s decent source material cloud my vision. Ugh. That’s why we got Kill Bill, a movie so talk-heavy that it had to be split into two films. Sure, the first volume has lots of cool chop-socky violence and blah-be-de-blah snorkle bit (because that’s how much the story and talk matter), but it also has the “I’m telling you this important because if I didn’t you’d know it was horseshit” horseshit that’s become what passes for character development in a Tarantino film.

For example, The Bride (Uma Thurman) is some unknown entity to the audience, so much so that her character’s given name is bleeped out when other characters mention it in the film. That’s what the great screenwriter Tony Gilroy would call hype: calling attention to something that means nothing to throw off the audience from realizing that it means nothing. And really, who gives a shit what The Bride’s real name is? It’s not like the cops are eavesdropping and with that important piece of information they can go arrest Beatrix Kiddo (if only we knew her given name!). Christ. At least the movie has that great song by Tomoyasu Hotei.

The second Kill Bill film is even worse because it’s nothing but talk interspersed with some goofy violence that’s so absurd it doesn’t even thrill on a visceral level. (And Daryl Hannah as a bad-ass? Really?) Do we really care what these people have to say? Or care that Kiddo’s sense of honor has been violated by Bill? And who the hell thought David Carradine was worthy of all this screen time, anyway?

Oh, yes. The Tarantino dialogue. Honestly. It’s wretched. It means nothing. It’s an excuse for Tarantino to listen to his favorite subject — Tarantino — talk. Nearly endlessly. Kill Bill Vol. 2 is 136 minutes long and probably has 115 minutes of yapping, colorless, boring, self-important claptrap masquerading as Something Important. It’s not important. It’s hype. It doesn’t develop character. It doesn’t move the plot forward. It’s expository (which is doubly shitty of QT, because there’s really no story to Kill Bill other than “Woman shot and left for dead goes on a revenge-killing spree against the five people who wronged her,” which could be done in one shitty 90-minute film instead of two shitty 120-minute films). It’s dull. All the characters sound the same. Kind of like the characters in an Aaron Sorkin script sound the same. (There. I said it.) Add Diablo fucking Cody in there, too.

(I realize there are people out there who like that stuff. Stylized dialogue. Colorless characterization. Rote and one-note notions of honor. They should get out more.)

That brings us to Death Proof, the Tarantino half of Grindhouse, the we-have-some-clout-so-let’s-make-the-audience-suffer-but-it’s-all-in-good-fun crapterpiece Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino sort of made together in homage to the double features they grew up on. Guys, there’s a reason those double features don’t exist anymore: The movies sucked. For every Monte Hellman or Herschell Gordon Lewis there are 14 Sean S. Cunninghams.

Death Proof is so awful it’s hard to believe a studio would release it. (The Weinsteins released it, so maybe I shouldn’t call Grindhouse a studio picture. But hey: It’s Tarantino, right?) The movie is technically well made (and therefore subverts its own rules of being a grindhouse pic, but whatevs), but it’s a — shocker — big bore. First, we have to listen to Sydney Tamiia Poitier yap and yap and yap sanctimoniously about a bunch of nothing including Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich and oh, who gives a shit, get to the fucking story. By the way, after listening to her talk and call her friends, more or less, assholes for nearly 30 minutes, her demise isn’t nearly gory enough.

But there’s no story. And yes, that’s kind of the point of Grindhouse. Except that true grindhouse flicks had stories, as dumb as they could be, and some of them were actually fun. (The inconsistent Rodriguez’s Planet Terror is fun, mostly because he’s a hack — a talented hack — doing hack work and having fun with it. Quentin: Don’t take yourself so fucking seriously.)

There’s a second scene with a bunch of girls talking about nothing, this time in a diner, just like the guys did in Reservoir Dogs (way to reference yourself, dick). After what seems like forever, they kill Kurt Russell (the only good performance in the Tarantino half of Grindhouse). The whole film is stunningly misogynistic, but its defenders think it glorifies women. I have to ask: What pro-chick film makes so many of them such horrible people, only to dispatch them so violently? And what pro-chick film makes the good girls a bunch of vengeance seeking gorehounds? Yeah, yeah, it’s Grindhouse. I missed the point. Fuck me. Even the level-headed and respectable A.O. Scott was sucked in by Death Proof:

I’m hesitant to risk giving away too much, but I will say that Kurt Russell is awfully good, and that I could listen to Sydney Tamiia Poitier and Tracie Thoms, two of the movie’s motor-mouthed heroines, talk through the whole three hours of “Grindhouse,” read the phone book or recite “The Faerie Queene” on tape in my Volvo in the middle of a traffic jam.

I’d rather put out a lit cigarette in my ass than listen to Tracie Thoms do the tough-black-chick routine that she’s reduced to in Death Proof. Honkey, please. Even the car chase is drab. Peter Yates, William Friedkin, George Miller — they all did it better. Much better. Even shithead Michael Bay has done it the fuck better.

That brings me to Inglourious Look-I-Spelled-it-Wrong-on-Purpose!-Basterds, the film that started this whole essay/rant. Having seen it twice (and once for free, thankfully) to make sure I wasn’t crazy for disliking it as much as I did, I admit there are some good things about it. First, Christoph Waltz as the SS Colonel Hans Landa is so good that you forget you’re listening to Tarantino’s tin-ear dialogue and that the Landa character is a caricature, and you feel a little guilty for liking a Nazi so much.

Second, there is no second. Sure, there’s a perverse thrill in watching Eli Roth beat a Nazi officer to death with a baseball bat. And yes, Mélanie Laurent and Diane Kruger are mesmerizing. And much of the dialogue is in French and German, so it’s hard to be distracted by how Tarantino-esque it is (though, as a French speaker, I can tell you the idiosyncrasies of Tarantino’s gobbledegook mercifully don’t really translate). But then there’s Brad Pitt, who’s distractingly bad. Bad accent, bad mugging, and he does that stupid squint he always falls back on, and lolls his tongue about as he’s done in nearly every picture since Thelma & Louise. Is that the point, to make Pitt so terrible? Probably not, since most of the actors are quite good. There’s also his unexplained character motivation (in fairness, does one really need a reason to kill Nazis in WWII?), which Tarantino addresses in that same Village Voice interview:

[I] had a whole history with Pitt’s character, Aldo. Aldo has been fighting racism in the South; he was fighting the Klan before he ever got into World War II. And the fact that Aldo is part Indian is a very important aspect of my whole conception, even of turning the Jews into American Indians fighting the unfightable, losing cause. So that lead guy is legitimately an Indian. Also, the dichotomy of this Southern hillbilly and his verbiage bouncing off them is interesting.

Hey! That’s some great character motivation for Aldo’s actions! Too bad it’s not in the film. It’s hype. And fuck you, hype.

And none of this griping even takes into consideration Colonel Landa’s unmotivated character change at the film’s end, or his reasons for leaving Mélanie Laurent’s character alive while killing the rest of her family. (Actually, her escape lazily sets up the film’s entire plot, because without her, there’s no movie theater in which to kill Hitler at the end of the movie.) And I won’t even get into the whole sequence in which Pitt and a German soldier discuss what constitutes a Mexican stand-off, except to say, “Hey, I know! This time, let’s have a Mexican stand-off in which everyone talks about what makes up a Mexican stand-off! I am so pushing the envelope!” And the other distracting casting: Mike Myers as a Colonel Blimp-like British officer. Barf.

No, the gripe ends here, with Hitler’s untimely death at the hands of Tarantino’s basterds. Yes, they kill Hitler. Which would have been great if he’d died, along with Goebbels, in 1944. But Hitler and Goebbels didn’t die then. And the manner in which they’re killed is childish. It’s the pipe dream of a 10-year-old who wants to rewrite history. It’s so ball-breakingly petulant, stupid and contrived and — let’s see, stupid — that it cheapens an already cheap genre exercise: Spaghetti Western masquerading as WWII flick.

The film’s opening grosses will do nothing to slow down Tarantino’s march to film history. (Neither will the fact that it’s called Inglourious Basterds but isn’t about the basterds, who are barely on screen.) Tarantino will never be the craftsman that Scorsese is — or Bergman was, or Spielberg is, or even, say, Michael Haneke is. And sadly, he doesn’t want to be. He wants the fame and accolades and all that other bullshit (read the Village Voice interview if you don’t believe me) and he has no interest in doing anything that means anything.

Maybe that’s not the point of cinema. Maybe it truly is to escape, and nothing more. Hopefully Tarantino’s audience will realize they’re being played for suckers, wise up and demand he do better, or better yet, desert him.

That likely won’t happen. As long as there’s a fan-boy culture, critics willing to blow him and actors who think he’s just, like, the greatest, we’re stuck with him as he is. He can set up a shot and place a camera well and (mostly) let an actor act well, but the work is just empty. It’s ruining movies.