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Mongo comments on SIFF and I STAND ALONE!
Well, good ol Mongo here is still smarting from a few of them Candygrams that the mean ol sheriff plopped in his burly little hands, but once again he files another report from the back of his yak, and the boy seems a bit worn with the standard and the mundane. Be wary...
Yo King Geek,
Mongo here again with a report on SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FEST, commonly
known as SIFF.
Well, Harry, I've found the trap, the one thing that kills the theatre going
experience, what pulls most films down and what rockets those rare, few
films up.
TAKE NOTE FILMMAKERS!!!
IT's THE MUNDANE!
IT'S THE STANDARD!
After seeing at least one film a day for a month (3 or 4 on Sat. & Sun.), I
can say that the films start to bleed together, push together like warm
play-dough turning into an odd sort of filmic grey bleeding mass.
After all this I longed for a *sharp_visual*, something to shake me out of
the ordinary, the mundane.
Every film I have seen, I think to myself, I've seen it somewhere before.
It takes a rare film indeed to break this chain. One film that rocks that
boat was the Archival Presentation of AGUIRRE: WRATH OF GOD.
*IMAGES*
*THOUGHTS*
THINGS NOT SEEN OR HEARD OR FELT BEFORE.
Well, I've run across another film. A disturbing film indeed that breaks
into new territory with a rough hewn brand of reality that is more
pornography than art to some and more gut wrenchingly honest to others.
It's the *twisted and gristly* I STAND ALONE.
One the outset I gotta say, IT AINT FOR EVERYONE - CERTAINLY NOT CHILDREN.
Here's a test, if you can NOT stand reading the C-Word, then don't even try
watching I STAND ALONE. The level at which it will offend you is so *FAR*
off teh scales, I doubt it could be registered. That being said, it is a
jagged sharp portrait of the monsters that society creates.
***SPOILER FILLED REVIEW AHEAD***
Writer director Gaspar No'e has created in his feature debut a movie that
hovers on the periphery of TAXI DRIVER and bites it's meaty fangs into BAD
LIEUTENANT. This is the internally told story of a man bent on survival
with no understanding of how to do so.
Brought up, we are told in a quick overview by the state and later earning
his living as a butcher and single parent of a daughter, he's sent back to
prison after driving a butcher knife into the face of a man falsely accused
of raping his daughter. The image thrown onto the screen to depict this is
of the daughters bloody panties - his daughters first period the butcher
finds out later. But his temper is his master and he strikes out - off
screen mind you.
In and out of the pen, he quickly finds shelter with a cow of a woman who
still lives with her mother. The woman holds him in check through $green$
and the threat of an impending pregnancy. Boiling over with rage and lack
of control he beats his pregnant woman into miscarriage and then runs off
with the family handgun, back to his old stomping grounds - Paris.
The butcher is more afraid than violent, the venom and anger spew more from
his psyche than from his physical being, he's a beat man torn down by
society and "they" can smell it - kicking him at every step knowing there
will be no payback from this beat down bitch... that they can see.
The dialogue comes fast and furious, reading it is like a subliminal
experience, catching at times only the mood of the vile and venomous
dialogue.
When he hears a Parisian barista berate an arab "towel head", he quickly
finds his patriotic, racist internal voice.
During the screening, I counted at least 5 couples that walked during the
first 30-45 minutes of the screening and later, after the WARNING SIGN WAS
THROWN ON SCREEN, more left.
With about 20 minutes to go in the film, the butcher *STOPS THE FILM AND
WARNS THE AUDIENCE - IF YOU ARE SQUEEMISH - YOU HAVE 20 SECONDS TO LEAVE
THE THEATRE*... and after listening to his internal spew, watching him beat
on the disdended belly of his pregnant wife, then going into a porno
theater and SHOWING US the penetration on teh porno screen, I knew it was
*NOT* a false warning sign. Needless to say, many left before the movie
dives headlong into his mind - showing us what he's thinking, how he's
feeling, bleeding it pulsingly onto the screen...
People don't like to admit they live in a society that breeds such monsters
but Gaspar No'e throws us into the head of one particular individual who is
afraid of a society he'd readily like to destroy and it's a frightening,
gut wrenching experience that is not for the squeemish but I will say this
- THIS MOVIE WILL QUICKLY FIND A FOLLOWING AND WILL BE WITH US FOR AS LONG
AS FILM IS AROUND. Like a bucket of maggots thrown into your brain that can
never be retrieved, always chewing on tissue and growing. If you think
NATURAL BORN KILLERS was a serious film and not a comedy, this flick will
hip you to the clue that it was just a comedy. To be serious and
unflinching, you have to dig as No'e does into the corroded mind of a
social psychopath slamming the audience around inthe walls of his skull.
It's a rough experience that'll blow your tires, I know it did mine.
mongo
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Actually, I'd rate it slightly above Urban Legend (which was this year in Britain, where I Stand Alone - or "Seul Contre Tous" - already came out in April). I've got lots of essays on at the moment, but my fucking God as soon as I finish my work I'm going to write you a review of this utterly dire film because I'm so fucking angry about how lauded it is throughout the media over here. I remember watching The Late Review and this incredibly impressive guy whose opinion I had always totally respected, made the grave mistake of casually referring to this as part of the same group of films as Happiness and Your Friends & Neighbours AND I GOT SERIOUSLY UPSET. Go and see Nil By Mouth instead. Make sure you never ever ever see I Stand Alone, it really will put you off serious films for a long time. Clue: it isn't that it is shocking, IT IS THE MOST EYE-BENDINGLY BORING AND STOMACH-SQUEEZINGLY PRETENTIOUS BAG OF WANK I'VE SEEN FOR A LONG TIME. Right "up there" with My Dinner With Andre.
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Who was the reviewer on Late Review?
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I don't know the guy's name, I don't usually watch the programme, often just catching it part of the way through, stumbling across it. But he was bald and thin and tall and young and black and always well dressed, this particular programme (featuring Happiness and 8MM) he was wearing a cream coloured suit.
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i saw "i stand alone" a few weeks ago and i've got to say that it is one of the lamest movies i've ever seen. it's an obvious ripoff of taxi driver from scene one. the movie tries very very hard to shock the audience and rarely succeds. this movie is about as shocking and watchable as 8mm. the best part of the movie is when the action stops and the countdown begins, warning people that they should leave the theater if they're easily offended. the reason this was so good is a) it validated my opinon that this movie is a gimicky piece of crap that's more concerned with shocking people than it is with telling a compelling story and b) this was stolen from william castle who not only invented these kinds of gimicks, but actually did them one better by making people who can't get through the movie sit in a roped off portion of the lobby called "coward's corner". if you're gonna steal, steal from the best.
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Take note, I never said this film was for everyone.
It will however appeal to some in the same way that (yes) Nil by Mouth or Bad Leutenant does.
It is does have it's gimmicks but it's done with a strong flair that worked for me. As a first feature, this is a strong work about a sickening mind that resorts to being a social predator - read: raping his daughter.
mongo -
I was there at SIFF and would have walked out if I hadn't drifted to sleep toward the end. This was a hackneyed, heavy-handed film, and would have worked much better as a short -- say, five minutes in length. The violence was not shocking, and the nearly continuous voice-over -- meant to be this man's inner thoughts but sounding like the dialog from a bad french film (hmmm) grated on ones ears and eyes. I would actually have to say (grudgingly) that Natural Born Killers was the better of the two.
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