The Last American Virgin

 

One of my most watched but least favorite genres growing up was that of the teen sex comedy, especially those made in the glorious, round, jiggling, natural 1980's. On the one hand, the values on display in these flicks tend to be completely out-of-step with my own. The typical set-up of an attractive guy, fat party animal, and middle of the road audience member stand-in doing everything in their power to see glorious, round, jiggling 18-going-on-32-year old titties while terrorizing nerds and being completely entitled upper middle class homophobic assholes to a new wave soundtrack is not something I can particularly relate to. I attended high school once, and I remember these guys (exchange the new wave soundtrack for some emotive hardcore or gangsta rap, granted)...the popular date rapists who threw massive parties and called guys like me "fags" when they would attack us half-naked in the locker room. On the other, these films provide all kinds of wishful-thinking scenarios, and more importantly, titties, be they sagging and unconvincingly high school aged- big week-old grapes that would look more appropriate in front of a suckling infant than accidentally torn off at a sock hop- or those rare cases of a young actress with a bad agent and the most perfect set of natural, perky knockers that make an entire Animal House retread worth the hour and a half of stale "bitches are dumb, nerds are fags" "humor" for that one divine reveal (which, depending on format, you either pause or put on A-B repeat and then reach for the Kleenex). Also some nice asses, occasional bush, but yeah, mostly mammaries. Anyways, The Last American Virgin has many of the hallmarks of the teen sex comedy genre. It has the trifecta of fat party animal, attractive guy, and slightly more generic audience member stand in. It has the same attitudes toward women, both deeply misogynistic but completely true to the mentality of a teenage boy on the cusp of puberty/college age date rapist. It even features much in the way of insanely cruel nerd abuse, which is always good for a laugh, homo. What sets Last American Virgin apart, however, is that the sex feels somewhat more grounded in something approaching reality, the acting is a few notches above what the genre would typically require, the soundtrack is the holy grail - THE eighties teen new wave soundtrack to end all eighties teen soundtracks - but mostly it's the ending; one of the most heartwrenching, sobering, and altogether RESPONSIBLE endings to any film about young love and sex period, let alone something greenlit because of the runaway success of fucking Porky's.

The threadbare plot of Last American Virgin, as with most films of its ilk, concerns the plight of virginal Gary, a guy not quite as studly or funny and fat as his friends Rick and David, respectively, and his and his friends' efforts to get laid. Rick has little trouble in this department, looking like a less amiable Dennis Quaid (also looking about 27, though to the film's credit, a number of the films teenagers, including Lawrence Monoson, who plays Gary, actually look the part), and the guys land themselves in all kinds of wonderful set pieces, from the opening scene of substituting Sweet N Low for cocaine to convince a trio of girls to party at Gary's house to a visit to the local lonely Latin sexpot Gary encounters on his pizza route. This scene is particularly interesting as it has a certain sexual openness that I'm sure betrays the films origins as a remake of director Boaz Davidson's previous Israeli hit Eskimo Limon. Gary first encounters the dimestore Charo when making a pizza delivery and upon realizing she would like nothing more than to jump his bones, rushes off, calls his friends, and invites them over (is he scared? Perhaps sharing is caring?). Rick, of course, takes the lead, and his friends strip to their boxers and watch through the peephole to her room (with no mention made of sloppy seconds...these guys are nothing like my own friends) (and I can't say I've ever excitedly watched a friend having sex) (or have gotten sloppy seconds for that matter- eww). David is up next, and the fully nude sex glimpsed through the peephole is a tad more realistic and fully naked than I, for one, am used to seeing in these films. Of course, Gary being the Last American Virgin of the title and all, is cruelly interrupted before having his chance by counterfeit Charo's lover, on return from the Navy. Mucho hilarity ensues. Also of note as far as set pieces go is the perplexing but refreshingly male-appendaged scene early on when Gary and the rest of his gym classmates walk in on the resident nerd spying through a peephole which somehow leads to a boner-measuring contest set to "Whip It" by Devo. You will never hear the song again without picturing a marching line of bulging, bouncing boners straining through tighty whities (between this film and Love Exposure I wish there were more boners in teen angst cinema - it is a natural fact of life every guy deals with that is oft-ignored in these movies, or at least only hinted at and not shown. An erection is way more common to a teenage boy than using a remote controlled airplane to rip off a blouse housing Double D's, I would think). And best of all, the nerd wins! Though they do dump a bucket of water on the dweeb, fag.

As these misadventures are underway, Gary notices virginal, angelic Karen (played by Diane Franklin, the foreign exchange babe from Better Off Dead, maybe my other favorite eighties teen flick), whom he first meets by stalking to her home, popping the tire of her bike, and then offering a ride to school. For Gary, it's love at first sight. For Karen, love at first sight comes in the form of Gary's best friend Rick, the hot douchebag to end all hot douchebags. Gary comes to this realization at a party early on in the film, and a scene of him drunkenly attempting to talk to Karen as well as watching them kiss during a slow dance are performed wonderfully by Lawrence Monoson, who earns the pathos of his character with the perfect combination of pretend confidence, teenage assholishness, and affected puppy dog stares that eventually gives way to crushing defeat of the worst kind. As the film progresses, Gary becomes more and more resentful of the situation, but helpless to do anything due to loyalty to Rick. This plotline serves to address some real truths about young love and lust and is what bumps Last American Virgin up to classic status.

SPOILERS ABOUND

 For starters, there is the scene where Gary tries to distract Rick from taking Karen on the date in which he plans to take her virginity, inviting his friends in desperation to see a prostitute. It is here that Gary loses his Last American Virgin status, to a weathered, bitter whore who berates him the entire time within earshot of his friends, before leaving all three boys with genital lice. But where the film really takes off into unexplored territory within this genre comes after Rick deflowers Karen and dumps her promptly upon learning that she's pregnant. Gary promises to help Karen and he gets into it with Rick, severing their friendship. As Rick, making out with a new girl, David, and the rest of the class leave for a ski trip, Gary spends every last dime and then some to help Karen fund an abortion, and cleans out his grandma's house so she has a place to recuperate over the weekend. At the end of the weekend, he confesses his love to her and they share a kiss, but come time for her birthday party a few days later, Gary will learn that it is rarely the nice guy that gets the girl, and the film ends on a note that is incredibly surprising for something that up to a point just seems like a typical teenage-titty show. The montage in which Gary is raising the funds for the abortion and Karen is getting it performed, I must say, is one of the strangest I've ever seen in a film of this class. It is your typical "taking care of business", scrounging together every last dime in a sometimes comedic fashion eighties movie montage, only intercut with a sobbing Diane Franklin being readied for her procedure (to the tune of U2's "I Will Follow" no less?!). The film also begs some major questions, like sure, it sucks that the hot douchebag gets the girl in the end, but isn't using an abortion as an excuse to get close to a girl and popping her tire as a "meet cute" kinda creepy and all sorts of wrongheaded? Maybe the only lesson that Gary need take away at the end is not that nice guys finish last but that he acted like a creep, so fuck him. Either way, it's a sobering and responsible end to a teen sex movie to show that love and romance can also lead to itchy genitals and broken hearts.

/SPOILERS

One last thing of note- the soundtrack. Holy fuck, it's the holy grail of eighties teendom! The aforementioned Devo, The Cars (with particularly great use of "Since You're Gone") (best break-up song ever, by the way), Human League, The Waitresses, Journey, U2, REO Speedwagon's "Keep on Loving You" and much, much more. It's kinda like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City only instead of watching the murder of pedestrians and prostitutes you witness the murder of one young man's soul! And some great titties. Even if one pair of those titties are during a certain hard-to-stomach doctor's office scene, but, yeah...b-o-o-o-i-i-i-i-n-g.

-Jon-Christian

Metropolitan

When it comes to releasing the masterpieces of world cinema, the Criterion Collection valiantly gets the job done well. However, when it comes to releasing modern films by the cinephile company, the films are usually hit or miss. I am still perplexed by the fact that Criterion Collection found Michael Bay's Armageddon and The Rock worthy of a lavish DVD release. Criterion certainly made the right decision when they chose to release Lars von Trier's Antichrist, a spearheading film that is destined to be revered as one of the greatest masterpieces of the early 2000s. I, however, cannot give praise to Criterion for releasing the mediocre 1990 film Metropolitan directed by Whit Stillman, a filmmaker known for influencing fellow "quirk-loving" auteurs of banality, Wes Anderson and Noah Bambauch. All three of these filmmakers have a personal love for the slightly wealthy bourgeois; a class that tends to be less interesting than a lonely intercity laundry mat.  After watching Metropolitan, a film that follows proletarian Tom Townsend as he reluctantly engages with an impotent pack of bourgeois socialites, I can say that I much rather watch a film portraying Spike Lee's side of town.  

The whole tone and feeling of Metropolitan can be summed up in a scene where a young bourgeois named Charlie decries the bourgie-parodying nature of Luis Buñuel's classic The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Charlie explains that after hearing the title of Buñuel's film, he was presumptively relieved that a filmmaker had finally documented a film about the charm of the bourgeoisie.  Of course, as he explains to his friends, little lily Charlie was far from charmed by Buñuel's sensual surrealism. Not only does Charlie boy prove that he has no appreciation for the art of cinema; he also gives credence to Bunuel's ridiculous cinematic representation of the bourgeoisie. After telling his clique of debutantes and beaus about the horrors of The Discreet Charms of the Bourgeoisie, they all join in a verbal assault against surrealist artists, pretentiously describing them as "social climbers." Of course, the "social climbing" protagonist of Metropolitian, Tom, first finds the "proper" etiquette of his new friends to be rather ostentatious and patently ridiculous. Unfortunately, by the end of the film, Tom has grown fond of debs and begins to shed his political leanings associated with the color red (citing Charles Fourier's as his greatest influence on his political views). 

During a scene in Metropolitan featuring Tom sleeping in his bed after a wild night with the urban haute bourgeoisie (Charlie's coined phrase for his group), a volume of Oswald Spengler's magnus opus The Decline of the West can be seen sitting next to an alarm clock. Of course, I could not help but to think of Spengler's theories whilst unenthusiastically viewing Metropolitan. Spengler saw a cultural decline in all classes of Western civilization and the characters of Metropolitan are certainly systemic of it. The closest thing to an antagonist in the film is a young baron that "doesn't like taking things seriously," aside from running a train on some naive teenage patrician (which is obviously not featured in the film, that would be too risque). Long gone are the days of heroic young aristocrats like the Red Baron (Manfred von Richthofen) and the Bloody White Baron (Roman Ungern von Sternberg), for the baron of Metropolitan is about as threatening as a 7 year old black girl. I can only assume that the director of the film has given an accurate portrayal regarding the slow and monotonous times of the NYC bourgie. After all, Metropolitan director Whit Stillman is the godson of E. Digby Baltzell, the man that popularized the acronym WASP. After suffering through the film, I have come to the conclusion that Karl Marx may not have been such a bad guy after all.

-Ty E

Satantango

 

Begin for a moment, will you, to idealize the enormous growth of joy subsiding in my heart after finishing the morally exhausting Sátántangó in two sittings. This Hungarian arthouse epic is directed by Béla Tarr, a man of immense critical acclaim known for (or not) his surreptitious black and white portraits of lower to middle class life; Sátántangó falling into the former. The disconnected narrative of Sátántangó involves a central character whispered among cattle farmers. The return of he, Irimiás, shocks all of the surrounding farmers as he and his cohort, Petrina, were rumored to have died some time ago. Add in a pinch of scheming swindlers to this messianic tale and you got only the shell of what is known as, arguably, Béla Tarr's pièce de résistance. Opening with a scene of a pasture, Sátántangó makes no attempt to hide its creeping composition. Béla Tarr estimated that there are in fact only about 160 separate scenes in the film. Uniting this with the prior knowledge of Sátántangó's exhausting run time (7 and a half hours) and you got the smug gesture of your choice. You never really grasp the situation at hand until the final scene, which lends to the ambiguity of the grand picture. Of course you'll have your theories and your alliances but in the end Sátántangó is just as likely to surprise you as it will leave you in awe. Concerning itself with several layers of manipulation is what drives the progression through the torrential waves of tragedy and copious amounts of boozing. But hey, that's the Communist era for you.

Allow me to switch relevance to Béla Tarr's utterly unique and intimate sense of directing. As highlighted in the opening scene, Béla Tarr leaves his film victim to circumstance. Shot over 4 long years, Sátántangó features many scenes of coincidental, yet genius touches. Simple facets of coexistence lead to scenes of such grave realism that the camera could have been in no way manipulated to capture these naturally occurring instances. For example, flies buzzing about the grimy peasants or newspapers in the wind defying the presence of Irimiás and his almost-prophetic resurrection. These simple touches speak volumes for what you're about to experience. Béla Tarr utilizes a sneaking zoom for focusing on a single subject then slowly retracting the perspective to initiate long-winded segments of lower class turmoil. Tarr's camera movements, rare as they are, act as soft strokes whether balancing bovine or tracing the fields surrounding them. If I were to choose a favorite condition of weather, it would, without a doubt, be rain. For this reason, Sátántangó is now an obvious and ideal escape from the warm heat of a summer afternoon. Every single scene lingers and loiters about and this isn't even grazing the self-appointed art form Tarr has created out of his sinematography.

The correlation between the desolate community (if you can call it that) and the impoverished dwellers is touched upon with our first contact of human life. The events of Sátántangó literally begin to unfold with a scene of a larger woman squatting over a water pan and cleansing her dry cunt with a wet rag. This introduction sets the standard of development as Tarr makes no excuses in showing a human life during the most tender and obscene of moments. Soon after it is revealed that this woman, Mrs. Schmidt, was having an affair with a man known as Futaki, a terrible plan of thievery sets in place. What next occurs is the primary phase of Sátántangó and that is the large sum of money rewarded to those all for a hard years work. Deceit is amidst the tightly woven collective of people incapable of independent thought. The only person exempt from this category is Futaki, slyly spoken of in the final report of Irimiás. Not only are his people left disenfranchised and caught in a never-ending cycle of "government allocation" but his role as savior is both challenged and enforced; a game of gray-scale tug of war. Since Sátántangó is told from many perspectives it does indeed become a chore up until the second hour mark. The trials of the Doctor and his quest for fruit brandy evolve into a meandering scene of walking & coughing; only to take a break with the local whores. Disapprove of Béla Tarr's slinking sinematography if you must but his unwavering commitment to unearthing a shining point in each and every degenerate is something I could never reciprocate appreciation to in words, without bathing in pretension, of course.

Your persistence will be paid off most handsomely, I can promise. The several scenes in which something of a thrilling nature is divulged marks a sobering change of pace. Going from a lonely child, skulking in an abandoned attic, admiring the rain and holding in contempt the mother who favors male company more, Béla Tarr switches sights on the possibility of a mental illness being born under the same conditions most serial killers are victim to. This little girl soon takes a stray feline nearby and submits it to a power-play in which she grasps its forelegs and rolls around with it, slamming it into the floorboards. This punishment is necessary to her as the poor cat "crapped". Soon after rat poison is brought into the mix, quite literally. Lacing a dish of milk with the poison, she forces the cats face into the bowl who has no choice but to ingest the sweet milk. Following this aggressive and harrowing scene, the girl backs off slowly. This allows the cat some peace of mind before it lowers its head into the dish and perishes. This scene admits the films second half of notoriety, the first belonging to the daunting runtime. Don't worry though; the cat's ability to act was likely the fault of a sedative and Tarr admits to adopting the beast after the film was shot. Another critical aspect of Béla Tarr's filmmaking is how in tune with rhythm he is, judging by his musical performances and technical achievements within. The quick-drip percussion is caught with applying wandering drops of rainwater to tin. Did I mention the fact that Sátántangó is one of the more soothing, therapeutic pieces of cinema? I shouldn't have to; watch any random clip on YouTube for proof of that.

A lonely light on the horizon whispers to the little girl, named Estike, but she knows better. What awaits her isn't a worried mother or a call for supper but an oppressive, drunken wench. Estika's path will soon mesh with the Doctor's, and his with Irimiás's. This slug-like progression of a simple story does Tarr's film wonders. Often throughout Sátántangó I had hoped for a minds eye peek into the thought processes of these pained creatures, wagers of sin. When not practicing avid voyeurism, Béla Tarr makes plenty time to drag surrealism out of the most bare and stricken scenes of bland activities. All of this retrospect upon my viewing of Sátántangó must spark fear in the eyes of preordained cinematic disciples, for it is quintessential viewing but selective towards attention spans. To ease the promise of an enthralling experience, I'd like to promise that once the film hits the second hour mark Sátántangó softens to the senses and becomes pliable to many calibers of cinephile. A curious thought hit once I began observing the transfer, apparently supervised by Tarr himself. Sátántangó was filmed in 35mm and me being a film projectionist, am blessed with knowledge of the format. Now if 35mm runs at approximately 24 frames per second, equating to 1,440 frames a minute, that means that the 450 minute long Sátántangó is around 648,000 frames. A Christie platter system couldn't even fit half of the films runtime. The changeover method would be the only possible way to screen Sátántangó and we're looking at about 26 reels worth (if the reels are evenly split).

If Sátántangó succeeded at anything besides raw beauty it would be encouraging me to seek the shelter of the bottle. An escape that will surely devour the lot of them, myself included. Do not be fooled by the small offering of scene transitions. Tarr commits to making each more engaging than the last. A scene to discuss would be the Headmaster's dance with the husky Mrs. Schmidt. He tangos with the goblin, offering in a hushed tone a comfortable life in return of courting her. The Headmaster then praises her tenderness; The joke being that this aspect of her doesn't exist. Mrs. Schmidt is, after all, the village whore. You might have found this review chock full of examples following the uniform, "Béla Tarr [is]...." The reason being that he does so much for us within this indelible 7 hour epic and what did we ask of him? Nothing. At the very least, we requested a competent cult classic but to call Sátántangó a cult film would be to shepherd the film into a class unworthy of its presence. And on another note, please, that damn doctor will outlive them all. Sátántangó is a film to be stared at in awe for Tarr's (ash)thetic is enough to fuel any feasible genre this film can be sorted in. I greatly look forward to Béla Tarr's swan song, The Turin Horse, due out this year. I can say without a doubt in my mind that Sátántangó is one of the most rewarding cinematic excursions that I have partaken in.

-mAQ

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

Out of all the Beat Generation writers, William S. Burroughs is the only one that has left a serious lasting impression on me. W.S. Burroughs, being Harvard-educated and a little older than his fellow writers, also acted as the unofficial teacher of the Beats. Heavily inspired by the pessimistic historical theories of German philosopher Oswald Spengler, Burroughs saw Western civilization as being in the final cycle of its existence. In Spengler's essays Pessimism?, the warrior philosopher displayed annoyance in the fact that people would use his apocalyptic philosophies as an excuse to accept cultural defeat and inaction. The Beat Generation writers (especially Burroughs and Jack Kerouac) saw Spengler's prophecy as an opportunity to find unique contemporary minds that expressed the end-cycle feeling of Western Civilization. For a man that saw dying in battle during war as the height of nobility, Spengler would have undoubtedly been disgusted with the active hedonism and nihilism that the Beats fully advocated and shamelessly practiced. I do not think it is even the slightest stretch when I say that the Beats created a virtual religion that reflected the complete and utter degeneration of the Occidental world. In the 2010 documentary William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, novice director Yony Leyser rapturously documented the unquestionable influence junky High Priest W.S. Burroughs has had on the Western world for over half a century. I see it as no big surprise that while Oswald Spengler has been virtually forgotten in the intellectual world; William S. Burroughs has become almost a household name. 

Not only is William S. Burroughs' extensive writing career a perfect example of cultural decay in the Occident; his destructive personal life as a rootless wanderer certainly is as well. Burroughs was from a somewhat wealthy background, due to his great Grandfather William Seward Burroughs I inventing the adding machine and founding the Burroughs corporation. Despite being born with "a silver spoon in his mouth," Burroughs took an entirely different route than what was expected of someone from his background. Showing a relentless disdain for bourgeois mores and "proper" conventions, W.S. Burroughs became a full-fledging libertine during his early adulthood, fully embracing homosexuality and a lifelong heroin addiction. Revolutionary psychoanalyst C.G. Jung once theorized that the growth of homosexuality in the modern Western world was nature's way of weeding out those genetic lines that were no longer fit to reproduce healthy stock. As discussed in William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, Burroughs was most likely molested in his childhood by the boyfriend of a maid that worked for his family. Regardless of the true driving force behind Burroughs' sexual vice; the Beat writer certainly embodied a lifestyle and literary career that even Oswald Spengler would have not foreseen as becoming culturally popularized in the future. In the documentary William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, various important modern day artists speak very respectively of Burroughs; giving him credit where credit is due, as being the man that opened Pandora's box and unleashing a word virus that will never be "cured." 

Despite his commitment to male buggery, William S. Burroughs was married (as a common law wife) to fellow drug addict Joan Vollmer. Burroughs displayed his occasional interest in the meat curtain by having a child, William S. Burroughs Jr., with the wife that mostly disinterested him. Reading Oswald Spengler's theories must have put a curse on W.S. Burroughs, as his own family disintegrated before his very eyes. Whilst living in exile (to escape detention from a Louisiana state prison) in Mexico city, William S. Burroughs accidentally shot and killed his wife during a drunken game of "William Tell." In William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, this tragic yet senseless tale is hilariously commented on by the Baltimorean "Pope of Trash" John Waters. Canadian auteur David Cronenberg, who is also featured in the documentary, would portray this accidental act of wife killing in his adaptation of Burroughs' Naked Lunch, a film that combines biographical details from the writer's life as well excerpts from the book. It is also made patent in William S. Burroughs: A Man Within that Burroughs' writing career is basically the artistic result of killing his wife. William S. Burroughs would later comment on the event that sparked his writing career, "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out."

William S. Burroughs' drug of choice may have been shooting heroin, but his son enjoyed the comfort of alcoholic beverages. Also establishing himself as a writer, Bill Jr. spent most of his life in a drunken state, prolonging his alcohol-fueled virtual suicide. After all, who could blame the poor lad, being the son of a junky homosexual that killed the Mother he never knew. The short life of William S. Burroughs Jr. is briefly talked about in William S. Burroughs: A Man Within. Despite having a liver transplant (one of the first ever performed), Billy Boy soon died in a drunken stupor. Before his death, Billy Jr. wrote an article in Esquire magazine condemning his Father for ruining his life and setting him up for failure. Despite his dysfunctional family/friends dying throughout his life, as well as never abstaining from his sexual/drug vices, William S. Burroughs managed to die an elderly, albeit lonely, man. As discussed by Burroughs' friends and former lovers in William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, the writer was especially careful when it came to his own life. Despite killing his wife with one, Burroughs held a lifelong obsession with guns and shooting, always carry a piece, whether it be in bed or whilst picking up a much cherished prescription at a local pharmacy. Burroughs' "shotgun art" is also discussed in the documentary, an abstract "art" that Burroughs has no pretensions about, admitting that creative process merely involves shooting spray paint cans. Despite his unconventional love for tract-lines and assholes, Burrough's also never managed to contract AIDS. During William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, friends of the junky admit that he also made sure to take the first shot of heroin. In the documentary, various friends also admit that Burroughs, like Andy Warhol, had very keen survival skills due to being a open homosexual; during a period when such things world unheard of, let alone "cool," like they are today. 

After watching William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, it will be apparent to the viewer that W.S. Burroughs was a true artist and visionary. Yet, to call Burroughs merely an artist would be a disrespectful understatement. As recognized in the documentary by Burroughs' comrades; the man was a religious figure that, for better or worse, completely reinvented Western culture and morality. In fact, Burroughs was a major influence on the occult "organization" Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) and their bible unholy THEE PSYCHICK BIBLE. Aesthetic terrorist Genesis Breyer P-orridge, the warped tranny behind TOPY, gives the most intimate commentary regarding the personal life William S. Burroughs in the documentary. Proving that "her" sex change is complete, P-orridge speaks of Burroughs like a kind Grandmother. P-orridge mentions that right before Burroughs died, he wrote that the only important thing in this world is love. Of course, William S. Burroughs influenced countless artistic movements, not just wack-job trannys. After all, if William S. Burroughs had not existed, David Cronenberg would have never made films with monstrous body crevices resembling assholes and vaginas. William S. Burroughs: A Man Within also goes into depth about how Burroughs was the perfect antidote for hippies and political correctness, proving that you do not have to be a leftist to be a libertine. Burroughs' influence on punk rock has also never waned, beginning with proto-punks like Iggy Pop and still influencing various anti-social musicians today. Quite fittingly, the score featured in the documentary was created by members of Sonic Youth, real-life friends of Burroughs.

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within is a commendable tribute to the personal and creative life of William S. Burroughs. For a more detailed portrait of Burroughs' life, I recommend the fairly objective biography Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs by Ted Morgan. For what it is, William S. Burroughs: A Man Within is as great as retrospective documentaries get, full of credible artists that were friends of the writer as well as those people closest to him. Burroughs was certainly a "man within," a very distinct and introverted fellow who most likely did not even completely understand himself. After reading most of his novels and essays, it is apparent to me that only a truly original and uncompromising individual could have written such works. As recognized in William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, to truly enjoy Burrough's work, one must have a distinct sense of humor. I like to think Burroughs had a decadent "Faustian" wit, the kind that is able to laugh knowing that Armageddon is around the corner and a worldwide civil war is imminent. Novels like William S. Burroughs are quite inspiring in these uncertain times.

-Ty E

Star Vehicle

The last I had seen Canadian director Ryan Nicholson he had been bowling strikes with his grotesque neo-revival of some odd, extreme horror circuitry in Gutterballs. Skipping right on over Hanger, a film Nicholson directed previously, I tackled Star Vehicle without either a care in the world or a care for the synopsis. This led me down a sinister road pertaining to dismal line delivery and deadbeat violence. Star Vehicle is one of those strange occurrences in horror where the violence isn't amped up past 11 and the storyline fails to hold a candle to Tommy Wiseau's The Room. A significant problem with Star Vehicle is that its attempts to channel meta but transcends an homage and becomes redundant and completely blinded by the love of horror films. You could at least consider Star Vehicle a passionate film, albeit devoid of any talent that Nicholson had hinted at in his discotheque thriller Gutterballs. 

Star Vehicle concerns the story of a one Don Cardini, a "movie driver" whose eventual outburst of psychopathy is as awkward as Dan Ellis' perm. Given the task of driving around the hot-to-trot cast and crew of a new horror film, Don woos scream queen obsession Riversa Red into reading his screenplay, making a jealous fool out of the director obviously styled after Nick Palumbo. What transpires are clumsy events igniting a homicidal rage that takes the lives of cast, crew, and co-workers. Now, for a film of this caliber you'd think the catalyst to such an outrageous display of produced on-screen effects would have been something of tangible evidence. The truth is farther than it seems, however, as everyone is a pawn in a game entitled as manipulation. For Nicholson to pull this stunt, to keep us guessing assuredly, isn't far past his previous films. Gutterballs pulled the same string but had the raunchy rape to accompany it and gallons of silly syrup to spill all over the alleys. Star Vehicle could be considered Nicholson holding back, restrained from achieving desired effect, if you will. Not once does the scale tip towards over-the-top; even during the bloody and degrading showdown. No doubt Cardini is an obsessive fan, we all have our obsessions. But the line is drawn once Nicholson's previous obsession with meta reaches outrageous proportions and dozens of slapstick references and winks towards the genre flurry out of the television set.

My main problem with Star Vehicle is the dead delivery of lines. The characters never exude the wit delivered with Nicholson's carefully crafted quips. The actors besmirch the attitude and suave posture that one would uphold in such a situation. Instead, we're given lines sneaking out from between gritted teeth. Another foul mediation of filmmaking that Nicholson needs to work on is the handling of his actors. Nicholson is a man of a good heart, this I can tell. This also plays a part in his perhaps all too passive role as director. Residential egotistical director Nick Palumbo wasn't afraid to push whores and men past their limits in the arguably excellent Murder-Set-Pieces. Neither was David Cronenberg when he smacked around Susan Petrie in order for her to simply "emote" on the set of Shivers. Quite frankly, if Nicholson ever hoped to blow by this cycling niche he is entrapped in, he must learn to push his actors to desired result instead of just shrugging mediocrity off. Unless of course he doesn't very much care about creating quality over the obligatory quantity. Star Vehicle is what must be an arbitrary detractor from the immediate continuation of the Gutterballs franchise. I bless the concept of originality but condemn the diseased rodent.

-mAQ

Lady Vengeance

 

The final film in Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy; Lady Vengeance is a stifling femme fatale hiccup in Chan-wook's otherwise remarkable career. The trilogy began quietly with the poetic Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. The trilogy then took a sharp turn with the uproarious Oldboy. With word of Chan-wook developing a contemporary noir epic, the word excitement can only construe so much. Having watched Lady Vengeance around 4-5 years ago with a roommate, my initial sentiments were most crude. Lady Vengeance had what it took to bore an impressionable foreign fanatic beyond the realms of the unreal. Said roommate swore that it needed an additional viewing to fully set in the effects and thanks to Suncoast's 40% off all new DVDs sale, this wish of his became a reality. Before I had set out to rewatch Lady Vengeance I tried earnestly to remember details from the film. All I had drawn was blanks except for the final lengthened scene of familial justice. Here, deep within my blank memory banks, exists evidence of the wretchedness of Lady Vengeance. The introverted background of the character Geum-ja is so fatally flawed that it kills not only sympathy for the character but even her realized "white" form, as highlighted by Park Chan-wook's Fade to Black and White edition of the film. Now I fully understand why the title was trimmed from Sympathy for Lady Vengeance to the simplified Lady Vengeance. There isn't a shred of decency in this film, not for Geum-ja and certainly not her irrational, horrendous daughter. 

Lady Vengeance follows a woman named Geum-ja fresh off a 13 year stint in a women's prison for a crime she didn't commit. For 13 years, Geum-ja sat in the corner of her strange cell with many other women, watching as her cell-mates were sexually assaulted by a grotesque troll of a woman portrayed by Go Su-hee. This time was bid terribly as Geum-ja concocted her master plan boasting one step, a simple "kill Mr. Baek". Upon release, Geum-ja lingers about, visiting former cell-mates who are mostly connected as being a victim of sexual assault to Go Su-hee. Since Geum-ja since poisoned her for three years with bleach, a certain kind-hearted notoriety surrounded her. The film basically boils down to repeated instances of Geum-ja "winging it". Her plan is nil, the fruit of her preparation is an aesthetically pleasing N.Korean firearm, and the story is as convoluted as possible. If my short, fractured summary seemed at all confusing, turn back now as the narrative digresses much more than my seemingly-ramble dictated. This intricate pattern of feminine clockwork makes an interesting attempt at painting a mural of sinners but Park Chan-wook's ideal masculinity behind the camera smudges the intended effect. Despite suffering effects similar to what cancer can do to the nervous system, the shell of Lady Vengeance is what one would expect coming from the international sensation that brought us Oldboy and J.S.A. It is a technically efficient film that includes several examples of surrealism and symbolism, the former being more worthy of screen-time than the latter. The argument of the intended symbolism during the final scene springs to mind. A scene in which defies filmmaking logic as we witness smoke billowing out of a room and Chan-wook musters the gumption of ambiguity and calls "symbolism." Obviously hinting towards a house fire, the finale wraps up with Geum-ja reuniting with her daughter in the alleyway outside of her house. For those who need the dots connected, when I see smoke and two parents blissfully asleep, only to switch setting to a girl barefoot in thick snow outside her house, a fire is the only thing that explains the events that have just transpired.

This clever ruse that Lady Vengeance is ignorantly putting forth on display attempts to instill a sense of righteousness into vengeance. Simpler means of vengeance, including all of the Death Wish films, did it far simpler and to much more effect. Another terrible condition plaguing Lady Vengeance is an atrocious script. I found myself in severe agony during the translation scene in which Geum-ja uttered the word "atonement" over and over, dizzying my already stewed hatred for every character in this film. It was bad enough that Geum-ja was raping repetition but to have Choi Min-Sik repeat it over her words created a cinematic likeness to a 16 car pileup. The first half of the film scrambles to juxtapose flashbacks with present day character vignettes, ultimately creating a beast of cinema whose scruffy exterior could be comically reported as suffering from "bed-head". I understand Chan-wook's decision to include these scenes cause if executed correctly, could conjure a means of clarity. Since I am writing negatively about this aspect, you can presume that it failed against its own advantage. The collective of post-dyke characters that Geum-ja meets all represent deus ex machina in the sense that their existence is only to bring together a plan that is never seen to fruition. Geum-ja scraps the plan once she finds herself unable to kill again. Atonement for her sins? "Bad atonement...good atonement"? "Big atonement...small atonement"? You get the picture.

By the end of the film many glaring inconsistencies are made aware. Perhaps if Chan-wook's master plan was, in fact, to encapsulate a human interaction with trial and error then Lady Vengeance might have came out as another scorned girl-with-a-gun picture. Sadly, this wasn't the case the largest smear on Chan-wook's near perfect track record is born. With my prior exposure to Lady Vengeance being sour and my now current revisit to the arthouse director's choice in the Fade to Black and White version, I feel as if a terrible scab has been reopened. My body has since began detoxing itself slowly, making haste to scrape the remains of the radical feminization that Lady Vengeance planted. While the whole film is not to blame and the final scene involving Mr. Baek's punishment became quite rousing, it was not enough to save this picture from being such a flop of whimpering proportions. Lady Vengeance is a textbook example of what not to do when gifted with artistic freedom. This coming from a director who has always employed such demoralizing projects in masculinity (Not including I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK). Geum-ja is a vile woman, of whorish intent and inane means to reach her goals. If she even had any. Her frequent abuse of cinematic angst and shock value overloads the screen. No matter how many times she wears leather or eyeshadow or even how often they mention either the intended effect will never rub off on me. In short, Lady Vengeance was D.O.A.

-mAQ

Howl

It has been a while since I saw a film that left me in a state of revulsion-based inebriation. The 2010 film Howl, based on the 1957 obscenity trial regarding Allen Ginsberg and his putrid poem Howl, indubitably induced an acute case of cinematic nauseousness in my otherwise healthy body. It has been a couple days since I had the displeasure of watching this piece of excrement entertainment; which gave me enough time for my health to once again reach equilibrium. To get over the cinematic sickness created by Howl, I consumed the 2010 documentary William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, a wonderful tribute to the greatest mind of the Beat Generation. In the documentary, Allen Ginsberg narcissistically (in a completely pointless and petty manner) questions W.S. Burroughs about the former love he had for the obnoxious poet. In Howl, James Franco (who plays the young Allen Ginsberg) somehow manages to capture a very similar type of repellent narcissism that the real Ginsberg so shamelessly flaunted. Despite watching uncountable horror films last week; Howl was the only movie that left me in shock, conjuring up what I can best describe as the cinematic equivalent to AIDS. 

In 2001, James Franco somehow was able to capture the troubled spirit of Jimmy Dean in the biographical TV movie James Dean. Mr. Franco must be a meticulous method actor, as he was also able to capture the all-encompassing ugliness of Allen Ginsberg in Howl. Throughout the film, Franco recites the perverted poetry of Hebrew Marxist Allen Ginsberg. Despite the fact that it is taboo nowadays to associate Jews and Marxism as two heads of the same unholy kosher beast; Ginsberg synchronized these two seemingly different identities within his poetry. Howl reaches a peak in putridity when James Franco recites the following line from the poem: "Where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha." Of course, Howl is more like a conglomerate of perverted Judeo-Marxist psycho-babbling, and far from a howl of hallucinating poetry. James Franco must have put in his complete vigor as an actor whilst attempting to duplicate the distinct accent, sporadic speech patterns, and peculiar pantomimes of Kaddish-obsessed Allen Ginsberg. 

Like most good Jewish boys, Allen Ginsberg took after his mental Marxist mother. In Howl, it is revealed that Ginsberg's Mommy exposed him to Communism and unhappy stays at mental institutions. To Ginsberg's credit (as well as the directors of Howl), his poetry makes more sense when you put it in context with his upbringing. I certainly have no doubt that Ginsberg was truly expressing the psychosis-ridden spirit of his subconscious/conscious mind, thus resulting in authentic personal art. After all, art is subjective and relative to the eye of the beholder. Of course, I found it hilarious when various literary experts in Howl de-construct Ginsberg's poem as being without artistic merit. The Beat generation writers (especially William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg) successfully popularized literary libertinism in America. William S. Burroughs was surely a sagely teacher of Occult studies whose influence seems infinite. I cannot say the same about Ginsberg. As expressed (whether the filmmakers were conscious of this or not) in the film Howl, it seems that Ginsberg was only talented in regards to offending decent folk. Although Howl portrays the 1957 obscenity trial as a triumph over American Puritanism; the event really just signified an all-time low for American art. Howl portrays Allen Ginsberg as heroic rebel, yet the 1957 obscenity trial was probably the best publicity outlet that the word-shitting poet ever had. In style and form, Howl certainly compliments the anti-linear lunatic lyricism of Allen Ginsberg. It is without question that James Franco deserves an Oscar for the relentless struggle he took up in portraying Allen Ginsberg; the retarded Rebbe of nonsensical poetry. 

-Ty E

In Their Sleep

Having heard only a mutter as to the existence of In Their Sleep, when on the contrary, similar films such as Martyrs and À l'intérieur scream across horror outlets, I found myself wandering into an experience that I'd be woefully revisiting, even after an extended period of rest. Co-starring the ferocious Jean-Hugues Anglade, In Their Sleep primarily banks off the equally intense performances throughout. Having a perpetual fault in predictability, In Their Sleep assures you that being in the know isn't very much different than being blinded. The emotional core is continuously throbbing, allowing scenes to metamorphosize into truly nefarious examples of the French and their increasing lack of apathy towards family life, and that might very well be the shocking secret to their success. In Their Sleep opens with Sarah (Anne Parillaud, La Femme Nikita) dealing with a minor instance of turmoil as her son is upset with their relocation into the country. After pouting for a short amount of time, Sarah brings a tray of desert up to his room, finding only an open window. Assuming he might have snuck out, as I would, you see Sarah shed a slight emotion of panic and briskly walks to the window peering down. What awaits her is her son impaled on several reinforcing bars, gasping and choking on his own blood.

Flash-forward a year later and Sarah is still visibly shaken to the point of societal detachment. Scolded by the head nurse for amping a dosage and near-injuring a patient, Sarah is sent home on leave for several days as to collect her emotional baggage and come to terms with her loss. Things unfortunately spiral into disarray soon after, as we find Sarah hitting a young man with her automobile. Carrying him to her car, it becomes apparent that this boy, roughly the same age as her sons, is fleeing from a maniac. News of this collides with the mention of a burglar on the loose but by this point it's too late. Sarah is ultimately ensnared into a psychotic confrontation between two strangers and their words and pasts violently clashing, testing Sarah's committal of preservation entirely. Not to issue too much of the film's plot away and to preserve the integrity sustained by the cast, especially Arthur Dupont's dark gravitas. In Their Sleep suffers from the very typical mistakes of first time directors. The co-directors, also siblings, Caroline du Potet and Éric du Potet, made sure to craft their film around the basis of minimalistic, yet jarring, violence. This in turn propels In Their Sleep into a film encompassing upsetting scenes of shedding mortality and chastising the all-too vulnerable viewers into a submission.

Since much of In Their Sleep rides the train of suspense/thriller, red herrings are utilized in scenes challenging already cemented perspectives. This will have either two effects on you. You will be genuinely surprised, maybe shocked or you will just get pissed you off. Perhaps I'm being too kind of this film, a film that has done nothing for me but bring to light a feeling of utter melancholy, which soured my mood. But as it stands, In Their Sleep is a very rare breed of film that strafes past the violence and into the consequences of these acts of brutality. You may think to yourself that these acts signify what modern convention has smeared as a "terrible ending" but you'd be shocked at how poetic the finale of In Their Sleep is. A warm feeling spreads through your body with a tune of divine opera fluttering throughout the credits. If not for the violence or the substantial hype most new age French horror collects, see In Their Sleep for that evidence of emotion weaved through each character. The directors have created a film that bleeds as its characters do and mourns as well. In terms of pure psychopathy and the remove of a killer burned onto celluloid, even one as frenzied or empathetic as the culprits, In Their Sleep is a marvel of sick intentions with some of the more disturbing hospitality towards a sleeping family I've seen yet.

-mAQ

Stag Night

 

Ghost House Underground's Stag Night intends to do good with the very similar construct of Midnight Meat Train and Creep. Starring popular television actors Kip Pardue and Vinnesa Shaw, Stag Night concerns itself with the fates of six socialites as they disembark off a train at an abandoned station and in turn, are abandoned. Their problems do not stop there, however, as they witness a police officer get hacked to death by subterranean vagrants wielding machetes. Stag Night is utterly implausible as to prevent any sense of entertainment. Upon mentioning and discovering that the branch of the subway system has been closed since the fifties, then wandering down the line to witness a cop getting murdered, Stag Night takes a steep drop into the realm of the silly. Not only would the disappearance of a New York City police officer set off a chain of search/destroy but why were these vagrants hassling a vending machine in the first place? After all, Stag Night's synopsis boasts "cannibal dwellers" and that is what sets it apart from being grounded in reality. Oh well. All is forgiven because surely there will be scenes of cannibalism later. Wait, what's that? They feed the flesh of the victims to their dogs?

Plastered on the artwork of the DVD is a quote that states "One of the most enjoyable chase thrillers of recent memory." Rather than using a blurb from any reputable source of fan base, Stag Night chose to quote Netflix, the broad-shouldered bastard of user reviews on the Internet, second only to IMDb. This incident reminds me of a Canadian film stooping even lower than Stag Night to collect quotes from YouTube. One Week was the title and its shame will shine through the darkest corners of Earth. To ingratiate is one thing but to force ideas from faceless sources who haven't even seen the film is a completely different ballgame. For what Stag Night is appraised for, the action, I find the confusing mixture of "fight" and chase scenes to be muddled up with a condition known as "shaky-cam syndrome". The events that transpire within the tunnels under New York can really only point to idiocy. These lad's prenuptial celebration, or Stag Night, is hampered down by our lead character's brother portrayed by Hollywood pussy Breckin Meyer. Now for Breckin Meyer to test his chops at the horror genre is fine. As long as we're safe from another rendition of Garfield, I suppose. It's when his character is superfluously imposed as a barroom brawler that things start to steer away from its own control.

The subterranean colony of murderous vagabonds is a situation I've seen before in several films; the only ones I can recall off the top of my head are Demolition Man and the film adaptation of Super Mario Bros. Both of these examples managed to craft life out of something degenerate and desperate, even if for short segments. Stag Night had all the time in the world to manipulate a beast to boast towards horror fans. Yet, alas, we're delivered this conniption of trite cinema. The only thing worse than Stag Night's everything is the "hyperkinetic" editing that disrupts the fluidity of scenes in an attempt at, what I guess, a jolting effect. It's not even the self-assuming quality of this film that leaves me keeled over with abdominal pains. It's the condition of Stag Night's being. What kind of director, one prominently known for writing Flightplan, a film considered big-budget, castigates a genre by filming something as devoid of emotion or purpose as Stag Night? This breed of film has me wondering aloud in a heated spit. Did Peter Dowling suddenly awake with a cold sweat? Did Dowling feel bestowed with a sense of purpose and the need to craft his nightmare into a medium as to share his darkest fears? I highly doubt it and if that was the case I'd say it's safe to assume Dowling has since relapsed into a mommas boy. Stag Night reminds me of a famous quote of Alfred Hitchcock's - "The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture." This rule does not apply to Stag Night. There is nothing extraordinary about these dwellers; they are neither subhumans or gifted with any incredible senses. The villains are as inconceivable as Dowling's nerve to put forth such banality to the video market.

-mAQ

Triangle

I had no intention of reviewing Triangle as its qualities speak for themselves and don't require further recollection. This changed when a follower of Soiled Sinema requested me to review a film of Christopher Smith's. As I haven't seen his recently released period plague film, Black Death, I decided to scribble down the often wondrous effects that Triangle had me experience. Released in 2009, Triangle has often caught crossfire of being too much like Timecrimes or downright thieving the idea, when in fact, Triangle was slowly realized in 2004. Starring the gorgeous Australian bird Melissa George, Triangle takes her character of an overworked single mother far into the reaches of the supposed Bermuda Triangle. Christopher Smith had at one point clear references to the strange Atlantic phenomenon but abandoned them for subtlety. Smith then christened the yacht "Triangle" as to allude to something different all together. Contrary to his actions, though, everyone is still on board for a film that can't have too much competition for best film adapted to the Bermuda Triangle occurrences.

Despite boasting many of the films secrets in the trailer, Triangle is still a tightly wrapped film that contains many more surprises, even surprises of which couldn't be spoiled with text. When I had begun watching Triangle, within the first half an hour, a looming sense of dread had crawled its way up my back. I was enticed and excited, giving way to the pleasing subgenre of nautical terror. The first thing you must understand is the nature of Triangle. Very much like Timecrimes, Triangle takes the same fear of reliving trauma and striving to alter the future and propels it past science and into the paranormal. In Timecrimes, a time machine plays villain in Héctor's quest to right the death of a woman whereas in Triangle, a somber woman goes to extreme lengths to rejoin her autistic son. Since I've only grazed over the general idea of Triangle, allow me to lay the story straight. The film opens with a working-class single mother cleaning up a mess left by her autistic son. Today is the day, she recalls from a post-it note left on the refrigerator door. She packs a large bag, hoists it into the trunk, and meets a potential love interest at the docks before setting sail. Call it mother's catharsis, if you will. The soft crashing waves don't last, however. Soon an enormous electrical storm looms over them and disrupts the breezy getaway by capsizing the yacht, thrusting a woman into the abyss and shaking up the survivors. Their grief is interrupted suddenly as a large ship passes by, giving way to board.

I was a fan of Christopher Smith's Creep. His vision of subway horror became a film I could frequent within a year. Despite obvious pacing issues and the general malaise accompanying the horror genre, Creep managed to excel in suspense and a sliver of claustrophobia. Having recently watched a similar film entitled Stag Night, I realized just how golden Creep was, for what is was. Here in lies the problem with most contemporary horror. "Genre fans" are searching for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, so to speak. While I love and often crave horror, it is an appetite that is rarely appeased. Every once in a while a film will come along and change my perception of horror for but several days. This interim gives me time to catch up on low-budget driftwood and realize why my hope is so far gone. Triangle is excluded from this category though so the tirade seems pointless. I wouldn't consider Triangle a horror film any more than I would a science fiction film. The events are indeed fictitious and the bloodletting ample, but Triangle poses something so far from the very basics of science and questions the human motive. This is much more than a slasher film for within the shells of Jess' incarnations, a humanity is sensed, albeit of a brutal and merciless variety.

Don't confuse my delving into the deeper nature of Triangle as an assertion of perfection. The film may showcase its brighter moments with zeal (such as the grotesque impromptu Sally graveyard) but it suffers mainly from the premise itself. Given the film is wrapped unto a cycle, many scenes are repeated over and over again to the point of mental exhaustion. I felt the same during Timecrimes but that Spanish time travel film featured an exquisite pair of breasts. You really have no idea how far nudity can further the excitement of an idea based on repetition into a territory that is pleasurable. Triangle's shortcomings are the fact that it is limited but this isn't the fault of Christopher Smith, rather, the strange subject matter he managed to tackle head on. Other than the reprehensible repeating playlist, Triangle is rare with fault. It's a gloomy take on a terrifying "Groundhog Day". Having a friend who hit a drunk Negro crossing the street and witnessing first hand the guilt consume his social life, I know, off-hand, the effects of taking a life. Now imagine that void multiplied and you got a strong opposer to the definition of desensitization. Triangle sure isn't perfect but it dies trying. Just peruse the many theories surrounding the fate of Jess, Jess, or even Jess and you'll see exactly what I mean.

-mAQ 

North Face

After discovering the 2008 German mountaineering film North Face, based on a true story involving a team of mountain climbers (two Bavarians and two Austrians) that attempted to climb North Face of the Eiger mountain in 1936, I immediately went to the local library and rented a copy. I was intrigued to see how modern German filmmakers would handle the historical relationship mountaineering had in promoting German national pride for the government of the Third Reich. After all, before the National Socialists ever established total power, the "Mountain film" was very popular in Germany. In fact, the Third Reich's greatest propagandist (not to mention, greatest female filmmaker in film history), Leni Riefenstahl, started her cinema career by starring in Arnold Fanck's The Holy Mountain (1926). Upon viewing The Holy Mountain for the first time, I was spellbound by the Nordic mysticism and völkisch aesthetic of the film. Before initially viewing North Face, I wondered if the film would somehow echo back to the Teutonic spirituality of the original German mountain films. After watching North Face, I can honestly say that my hunger for organic German cinema (not the globalist films that are considered "German" cinema nowadays) was fulfilled. 

One of Adolf Hitler's most imperative goals (as outlined in Mein Kampf) was to unite all Germanic people around the world. In North Face, two Germans and two Austrians unite to climb the Eiger as a symbolic act of pan-German unity. Two years after the 1936 mountaineering expedition featured in North Face took place, Germany annexed Uncle Adolf's homeland Austria; which was no surprise considering 99.73 percent of Austrian's welcomed the Third Reich. Unlike most modern German films about the Third Reich, North Face is not completely drenched in defeatist apologies for Nazism. Instead, the film focuses on the strong wills of the individual mountain climbers. In fact, the two German mountaineers, Toni and Andi, decide to quit the German Wehrmacht (army) after they are denied leave for their expedition. Mountaineering, unlike most popular team sports like Football and Basketball, is a true expression of the Faustian spirit. European man, the Faustian man, has always had the instinct to conquer nature and the world. In an undeniable display of bravery and nobility, the mountaineers featured in North Face are willing to risk their lives just to be the first to conquer the North Face of Eiger.

The Italian philosopher Julius Evola once wrote a book (Mediations on the Peak) on his mountaineering experiences. Baron Evola saw mountain climbing as a metaphor for a spiritual quest. Although in agreement with Evola's inspiriting mountaineering philosophy, I believe that mountain climbing can be a spiritual quest in itself. Very few recreational physical activities are comparable to mountaineering, where the individual has to be completely in tune and at the behest of nature. As so wonderfully portrayed in North Face, one wrong move in mountain climbing can result in instantaneous death. I can only imagine the gratifying and life affirming feeling that climbing to the top of a mountain would bestow upon a person. That being said, I really have to give praise to North Face director Philipp Stölzl and the courageous cast/crew of the film. North Face does not feature a "videogame aesthetic" and humdrum CGI special effects like most modern day action-adventure films. When watching North Face, it was hard for me to fathom the fact that the filmmakers were able create a movie that takes place mostly on a genuine snow and ice-covered mountain. On top of the dangerous and laborious camerawork featured in the film, the actors utilized the original mountaineer equipment used in the 1930s. The cinematic adventure featured in North Face makes 127 Hours feel like a trip to a plastic Hollywood playground by comparison. I certainly cannot imagine any Tinseltown filmmaker or actor taking a death-defying Faustian gamble just to create a breathtaking film like North Face. It is no coincidence that the same country that produced Werner Herzog and his mesmerizing film Fitzcarraldo, also produced North Face. 

I have no problem admitting that I have always had little interest in action and adventure films, including films involving mountaineering. To be quite honest, I had no grand expectations for North Face, as I expected it be another cheap and shallow action-adventure film, except with Nazis. After watching this adrenalin-driven mountain climbing picture, I consider it a worthy tribute to the German mountain films of yesteryear. North Face may not have a happy ending tacked on like your typical Hollywood movie, but the sorrowful conclusion is quite fitting when you put the film in historical context. Like the protagonists featured in North Face, the Third Reich may have failed but the German people gave it their all and fought to the irreconcilable end. 

-Ty E