Part Two: Dawn of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead, which was made in 1978, picked up where Night left off: a world thrown into chaos at the hands of the living dead. Instead of dealing with issues such as racism and a crumbling family unit, Romero has, instead, used gentrification, consumerism with a hint of morality as his main subtext. Consumerism has a more prominent role in this film, but Romero used gentrification as his set up of the film.
Dawn follows the plight of four people on the run from the carnivorous horde plaguing the city of Philadelphia. There are two couples here: Stephen, a helicopter pilot for WGON, and Fran, a producer for WGON. They are lovers who were planning to start a life together. The other two are Peter and Roger who worked as SWAT for the city. Dawn opens with a television studio, you guessed it, as chaotic as what is going on outside of the studio. They are filming a “talk show” trying to figure out what is happening and how to stop it. What is interesting is that morality of the situation seemed to be the hot button issue and why the disaster had spun out of control. One can parallel this to modern day media where morality seems to be the justification to why the world is where it is today. Another aspect in the opening scene that also parallels today’s media is confusion that arises over a catastrophic event. One example of confusion in today’s media is 9/11 and the events following. It’s not to say that Romero was foreshadowing how today’s media handles situations in the world and it’s events. Like Night and Dawn who tries to explain the phenomena with explanations of voodoo to an outer space virus whereas today’s media tries to put into context of world conflicts as everything from opposition to western freedom to the gay lifestyle. One fine example of this choice in morality comes from the station manager who has kept up an old list of stations that serve people trying to seek shelter from the living dead even though some of the stations have closed for whatever reason. Fran tells the board operator to put up an updated list.
Here is the dialogue between the two:
Fran: Are you willing to murder people by sending them to places that have closed down.
Mr. Berman: Every minute that list isn’t up, people won’t watch us, they’ll tune out.
Mr. Berman has the mindset that the station is still going for ratings and not that it is just an emergency broadcast station. This isn’t too far from today’s media which has the mindset that they are all about the ratings and not what they are there for.
We then go into the second scene where the SWAT is stationed around a public housing high-rise waiting out a standoff between leaders of the housing high-rise and the negotiators. The whole scene in the apartment building is a metaphor for gentrification at that time. The military acting as the housing authority pushing its residence into central areas of the city much like it was back in the late seventies and early eighties. In one scene, there was an explanation for why the tenants kept its dead in the basement.
“They still believe there’s a respect in dying,” says Peter. The dying could be construed as the gentrification of all major U.S. cities at the time where the lower income families were being forced into the cities while the upper class were moving away from the cities.
After awhile, the four land on the roof of an indoor mall. It was the late seventies and the indoor mall was a new concept in the lives of consumers. The mall would be a key character in DOTD. For the rest of the film, all characters would represent an aspect of the consumer culture of America.
“What are they doing? Why do they come here?” Fran asks Steven.
“Some kind of instinct, a memory. What they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.”
Steven’s line invokes a subtext that is prevalent in the rest of the film; that the zombies are representatives of the consumer collective. Romero says on the commentary found on the theatrical cut of the film that, “It is a satire on consumerism. We want all this stuff. It isn’t enough and somebody wants it too.”
Tom Savini, who was the head make-up artist, stuntman, and plays Blades at the end, reinforces Romero’s comment about the consumers and how the commentary still holds up to the present, “go to a shopping mall today and there are zombies walking around lulled by the muzak into shopping.”
Even of the close-ups on the zombies, you see their wide-eyes staring ahead turning slowly trudgingly toward the hall of shops ahead. There is even a hare chrisna zombie that subconsciously reflect a sort of religious rite of being in the mall.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Living in a World of Excess: The Living Dead Quadrology of George A. Romero
George A. Romero’s most identifiable work came during a time when America was being reshaped. Romero’s four films showed an underlying subtext of: capitalism, economical, gentrification, and geopolitical points of view. Romero’s living dead was not only the medium for which he used to underscore this ideal, but his living dead was also his metaphor for explaining his rational in each of his four films.
Night of the Living Dead, which came out in 1968, was the first film in which Romero showed a world thrown into chaos. This point never more clear from the first scenes of the film in which we see a car driving up on a gravel road heading toward a cemetery. We are introduced to Johnny and Barbara, brother and sister, who have come to lay flowers at their father’s grave. As Barbara prays, Johnny begins to tell a story about the times that they used to come up here when they were children. Johnny goes on to tell Barbara how he used to scare her. It is the classic story of an older sibling scaring his younger sibling.
"They are coming to get you Barbara," Johnny says to Barbara, who is soon attacked by a zombie. Johnny tries to stop the zombie only to come up short in that fight. Barbara runs away as fast as she can. Romero once said of his quadrology that the zombies represent, "the new society eating the old society." Barbara's running represents her running away from her old world. Barbara, herself, represented the classic 50's woman.
Barbara finds a farmhouse, a symbol of rural America and a part of the American dream, and barricades herself inside. Later, she runs into Ben. At this point, Barbara is catatonic; a sort of silence that represents a segue into what the world is slowly evolving into. Ben, an African-American, soon takes over and boards up the house. Night represented something that was unheard of in the film industry at the time and that was having an African-American actor playing the lead in a film. Night was released after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The fact that an African-American played the lead also reinforces Romero’s ideology of the “new society eating the old society.”
As the film goes on, we are introduced to five new characters: Tom and Judy, a young twenty-some couple, and Harry, Helen Cooper and their daughter Karen, who has been bitten by a zombie. Harry does represent the “old society” in being a racist. Harry wants to do things his way and sees Ben as a threat. Harry and Helen Cooper represents the ideal of a nuclear family, but as the film goes on, we are made aware that their marriage has already fallen apart. “We may not like living together, but dying together isn’t going to help things,” says Helen Cooper. We are made aware that they may have only stayed married for the sake of their daughter, which was common among couples back in those days.
The characters: Tom and Judy represent another kind of couple and that is the young unmarried lovers. They act as a kind of moderator between Ben and Harry who engage in a struggle for control of the house and the fate of the people inside. Tom is the voice of reason between the two. Night, among other things, is a study of human relationships. We are given three sets of couples who represent the spectrum of human dependency. I mentioned that Harry and Helen depend on each other to raise their daughter. Tom and Judy, the young lovers who depend on each other for support. Barbara who relies on Ben for protection and Ben relies on Barbara for having someone to protect.
The fighting inside represent a microcosm of what was going on in the United States at the time. Like I mentioned before, the zombies represent a sort of change in the social structure of America, while inside Ben and Harry fight to establish their own identity of how things should be run.
The people inside eventually come to the agreement of getting out of the farmhouse. The plan fails when Tom and Judy are killed. We are shown a shot of the zombies, one by one, feeding on a little bit of the young couple. A countenance of the old taking back some of the new society.
Ben staggers back to the house weaving through a hoard of zombies. The conflict between him and Harry escalates into Ben shooting Harry which is his own way of bringing in a new society. The zombies at this point have started to overrun this new society that the people inside turning into. Harry manages to find his way into the cellar where he wanted to be in the first place and collapses on the floor. Helen finds her way down to the cellar only to find her daughter feasting on daddy. Helen soon falls victim to her daughter as well. The killing of the parents at the hands of their daughter represents the beginning of a time where kids were becoming more independent and less reliant on their parents.
The zombies have now gotten inside. Barbara, breaking out of her state, tries to hold back the group. She, in turn, breaking out of her 50’s role and asserting herself. We now have Johnny coming back to get her sister. The zombies run off with Barbara essentially destroying the ideal women of the 50’s.
At the end of the film, we are shown images of a posse that is formed for hunting down the zombies. We are shown bloodhounds and their handlers hunting down these zombies. It is an image that was too often shown during the civil rights movement. Romero said that he did not intend for this analogy. The final shot we are given is Ben coming out from the cellar and being shot right in the head mistakenly for a zombie. We are then shown a number of stills depicting the posse posing with the bodies of the dead.
Night is a film that delves into issues that were prevalent when the film came out. The film holds up today as a masterpiece and the issues of that time still hold water to this day.
Next: Dawn of the Dead: A film that deals with issues of gentrification, and consumerism.
Night of the Living Dead, which came out in 1968, was the first film in which Romero showed a world thrown into chaos. This point never more clear from the first scenes of the film in which we see a car driving up on a gravel road heading toward a cemetery. We are introduced to Johnny and Barbara, brother and sister, who have come to lay flowers at their father’s grave. As Barbara prays, Johnny begins to tell a story about the times that they used to come up here when they were children. Johnny goes on to tell Barbara how he used to scare her. It is the classic story of an older sibling scaring his younger sibling.
"They are coming to get you Barbara," Johnny says to Barbara, who is soon attacked by a zombie. Johnny tries to stop the zombie only to come up short in that fight. Barbara runs away as fast as she can. Romero once said of his quadrology that the zombies represent, "the new society eating the old society." Barbara's running represents her running away from her old world. Barbara, herself, represented the classic 50's woman.
Barbara finds a farmhouse, a symbol of rural America and a part of the American dream, and barricades herself inside. Later, she runs into Ben. At this point, Barbara is catatonic; a sort of silence that represents a segue into what the world is slowly evolving into. Ben, an African-American, soon takes over and boards up the house. Night represented something that was unheard of in the film industry at the time and that was having an African-American actor playing the lead in a film. Night was released after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The fact that an African-American played the lead also reinforces Romero’s ideology of the “new society eating the old society.”
As the film goes on, we are introduced to five new characters: Tom and Judy, a young twenty-some couple, and Harry, Helen Cooper and their daughter Karen, who has been bitten by a zombie. Harry does represent the “old society” in being a racist. Harry wants to do things his way and sees Ben as a threat. Harry and Helen Cooper represents the ideal of a nuclear family, but as the film goes on, we are made aware that their marriage has already fallen apart. “We may not like living together, but dying together isn’t going to help things,” says Helen Cooper. We are made aware that they may have only stayed married for the sake of their daughter, which was common among couples back in those days.
The characters: Tom and Judy represent another kind of couple and that is the young unmarried lovers. They act as a kind of moderator between Ben and Harry who engage in a struggle for control of the house and the fate of the people inside. Tom is the voice of reason between the two. Night, among other things, is a study of human relationships. We are given three sets of couples who represent the spectrum of human dependency. I mentioned that Harry and Helen depend on each other to raise their daughter. Tom and Judy, the young lovers who depend on each other for support. Barbara who relies on Ben for protection and Ben relies on Barbara for having someone to protect.
The fighting inside represent a microcosm of what was going on in the United States at the time. Like I mentioned before, the zombies represent a sort of change in the social structure of America, while inside Ben and Harry fight to establish their own identity of how things should be run.
The people inside eventually come to the agreement of getting out of the farmhouse. The plan fails when Tom and Judy are killed. We are shown a shot of the zombies, one by one, feeding on a little bit of the young couple. A countenance of the old taking back some of the new society.
Ben staggers back to the house weaving through a hoard of zombies. The conflict between him and Harry escalates into Ben shooting Harry which is his own way of bringing in a new society. The zombies at this point have started to overrun this new society that the people inside turning into. Harry manages to find his way into the cellar where he wanted to be in the first place and collapses on the floor. Helen finds her way down to the cellar only to find her daughter feasting on daddy. Helen soon falls victim to her daughter as well. The killing of the parents at the hands of their daughter represents the beginning of a time where kids were becoming more independent and less reliant on their parents.
The zombies have now gotten inside. Barbara, breaking out of her state, tries to hold back the group. She, in turn, breaking out of her 50’s role and asserting herself. We now have Johnny coming back to get her sister. The zombies run off with Barbara essentially destroying the ideal women of the 50’s.
At the end of the film, we are shown images of a posse that is formed for hunting down the zombies. We are shown bloodhounds and their handlers hunting down these zombies. It is an image that was too often shown during the civil rights movement. Romero said that he did not intend for this analogy. The final shot we are given is Ben coming out from the cellar and being shot right in the head mistakenly for a zombie. We are then shown a number of stills depicting the posse posing with the bodies of the dead.
Night is a film that delves into issues that were prevalent when the film came out. The film holds up today as a masterpiece and the issues of that time still hold water to this day.
Next: Dawn of the Dead: A film that deals with issues of gentrification, and consumerism.
Return of the Living Dead
There have been more than a handful of films that pay homage or been influenced one way or another by George A. Romero. The Return of the Living Dead, not only pays homage to Romero, but bases its film around Romero's masterpiece Night of the Living Dead.
Return of the Living Dead was released in 1985 without much fanfare in the zombie genre, but has steadily become a cult hit among fans of the genre. The story revolves around a medical supply warehouse and its two employees: Frank, played by character actor James Karen, and Freddy, played by Thom Matthews (grown up Tommy in the Friday the 13th series). Frank is showing Freddy the ropes at the warehouse when Frank confides in Freddy that "Night of the Living Dead" was based on a true incident.
Apparently, one of the reanimated corpses was put into a barrel and accidentally shipped to the warehouse where it is still housed.
Frank takes Freddy down to show him the barrel, but they end up releasing the corpses while at the same time breathe in the fumes from the barrel. Time passes and the two wake up and find out that some of their stock has suddenly come back to life.
One scene involves a test cadaver being reanimated. The other part of the movie focuses on a group of punks who are going to meet Freddy after he gets off work. One of the more memorable scenes from Return involves Trash, played by B-horror movie icon Linnea Quigley, as she does a strip tease while shouting her manifesto of what she fantasizes about happening to her. It's safe to say that she gets her wish.
Fast forward and the film moves into Frank calling his boss Burt, played by film veteran Clu Gulager, and telling him what happened. Burt decides to take the reanimated cadaver to the crematorium where Burt's friend Ernie, played by Don Calfa, runs the place. They turn the body into ashes, but the smoke that comes out is carried through the air and an ensuing rain washes it down to the nearby cemetery and here is where the film gets going.
Basically, the dead return to life, but only crave the brain of the living. All hell breaks loose and everyone is split up. We get the fundamentals of the zombie genre with Return of the Living Dead, but with a new twist: they crave brains instead of the rest of the body. Return is a great film because it tries to rework the whole genre without betraying its roots.
Return of the Living Dead was released in 1985 without much fanfare in the zombie genre, but has steadily become a cult hit among fans of the genre. The story revolves around a medical supply warehouse and its two employees: Frank, played by character actor James Karen, and Freddy, played by Thom Matthews (grown up Tommy in the Friday the 13th series). Frank is showing Freddy the ropes at the warehouse when Frank confides in Freddy that "Night of the Living Dead" was based on a true incident.
Apparently, one of the reanimated corpses was put into a barrel and accidentally shipped to the warehouse where it is still housed.
Frank takes Freddy down to show him the barrel, but they end up releasing the corpses while at the same time breathe in the fumes from the barrel. Time passes and the two wake up and find out that some of their stock has suddenly come back to life.
One scene involves a test cadaver being reanimated. The other part of the movie focuses on a group of punks who are going to meet Freddy after he gets off work. One of the more memorable scenes from Return involves Trash, played by B-horror movie icon Linnea Quigley, as she does a strip tease while shouting her manifesto of what she fantasizes about happening to her. It's safe to say that she gets her wish.
Fast forward and the film moves into Frank calling his boss Burt, played by film veteran Clu Gulager, and telling him what happened. Burt decides to take the reanimated cadaver to the crematorium where Burt's friend Ernie, played by Don Calfa, runs the place. They turn the body into ashes, but the smoke that comes out is carried through the air and an ensuing rain washes it down to the nearby cemetery and here is where the film gets going.
Basically, the dead return to life, but only crave the brain of the living. All hell breaks loose and everyone is split up. We get the fundamentals of the zombie genre with Return of the Living Dead, but with a new twist: they crave brains instead of the rest of the body. Return is a great film because it tries to rework the whole genre without betraying its roots.
An Ideology of Fear: Prince of Darkness
Arguably one of John Carpenter’s most underappreciated and underated films of his career, Carpenter delves into theology, science, and mixes in a skeptic paranoia that produces an effective and horrifying experience for his audience.
Prince of Darkness, which was released in 1987, tells the story of a priest that discovers a mysterious cylinder in the basement of an abandoned church. The priest enlists the help of physics graduate students to explain the cylinder and end up opening up a doorway that they could only imagined in their worst nightmare.
POD was a film before it’s time. Carpenter ‘s film broke away from the conventional horror film that only explained evil in black and white terms like William Friedken’s The Exorcist or Lucio Fulci’s The Gates of Hell. In those two films, it was the devil or zombies that were the root of the evil throughout the film.
One of the most fascinating aspect of POD is how science is incorporated into this film. Carpenter doesn’t try to justify this as just a good vs. evil type of film. He uses science as another explanation in the film to give reason for the cylinder. There are two sides on the issue of the cylinder: one you have the theology aspect being explained by Father Loomis (played brilliantly by Donald Pleasance) and then the science aspect being explained by Professor Howard Birack (played by Victor Wong).
What makes POD even more horrific to sit through is the score done by both John Carpenter and Alan Horwath. Each scene has it’s own distinct underlay of music or sound. The music gives you the feeling of uneasiness like one feels something unearthly while they watch the film.
Prince of Darkness, which was released in 1987, tells the story of a priest that discovers a mysterious cylinder in the basement of an abandoned church. The priest enlists the help of physics graduate students to explain the cylinder and end up opening up a doorway that they could only imagined in their worst nightmare.
POD was a film before it’s time. Carpenter ‘s film broke away from the conventional horror film that only explained evil in black and white terms like William Friedken’s The Exorcist or Lucio Fulci’s The Gates of Hell. In those two films, it was the devil or zombies that were the root of the evil throughout the film.
One of the most fascinating aspect of POD is how science is incorporated into this film. Carpenter doesn’t try to justify this as just a good vs. evil type of film. He uses science as another explanation in the film to give reason for the cylinder. There are two sides on the issue of the cylinder: one you have the theology aspect being explained by Father Loomis (played brilliantly by Donald Pleasance) and then the science aspect being explained by Professor Howard Birack (played by Victor Wong).
What makes POD even more horrific to sit through is the score done by both John Carpenter and Alan Horwath. Each scene has it’s own distinct underlay of music or sound. The music gives you the feeling of uneasiness like one feels something unearthly while they watch the film.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Bob Clark
Bob Clark
To those who haven't heard, one of the more creative directors has been killed in a car crash. Bob Clark was probably more famous for directing, producing, and writing A Christmas Story which has become a holiday staple. Clark also directed the first two Porky's films which had become a film that became the anthem of the teenage male libido in the eighties. He started off doing horror films in the seventies like Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things which has a cult following to this day, Dead of Night, and the original Black Christmas who was also a producer for the remake. Clark then moved on to comedies such as Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton, and the Baby Genius Series. Bob Clark also showed a knack for doing dramas such as Turk 182 and The American Clock. Clark had been working on a remake of his film Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things at the time of his death. Bob Clark had a unique vision and will be missed.
To those who haven't heard, one of the more creative directors has been killed in a car crash. Bob Clark was probably more famous for directing, producing, and writing A Christmas Story which has become a holiday staple. Clark also directed the first two Porky's films which had become a film that became the anthem of the teenage male libido in the eighties. He started off doing horror films in the seventies like Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things which has a cult following to this day, Dead of Night, and the original Black Christmas who was also a producer for the remake. Clark then moved on to comedies such as Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton, and the Baby Genius Series. Bob Clark also showed a knack for doing dramas such as Turk 182 and The American Clock. Clark had been working on a remake of his film Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things at the time of his death. Bob Clark had a unique vision and will be missed.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
300
I saw this film this afternoon and I have to agree with some of the comments on here, but I have a slightly different take and I realize that some on here will not really agree with what I have to say. I don't necessarily agree that this is Zack Snyder's attempt to state his viewpoint on the Iraq War, but I couldn't help but feel that this film does address the issue of occupation in the middle east. I really have not been a fan of Snyder's since I saw his take on Dawn of the Dead, but I feel with 300 that he has grown up as a director.
300 has its flaws which obviously show up through the course of the film. The biggest flaw has to do with the overall tone of the film. The film starts off strong with an explanation of how the best of the Spartan men are picked out among the newborns, but as the film plays out we are not given more about how these men go about after they are "chosen", but we are thrusted into the main plot. One quarter of the way through, my friend turned to me and made the gesture that he wanted to blow his brains out.
We are force fed what the overall message that Snyder was trying to get across and that is that no one will occupy us and we will stand up for our freedom. The connection to the situation in Iraq is evident with why the Spartans set out to take on the whole Persian army. The Spartans make war with the emissary of the Persian army then Leonidas goes up to the elders to get their permission to take on this war which he is denied. Leonidas is confronted before he and his men embark on their mission, but he tells the council that he is not going off to war, but to "stretch their legs."
There are some underlying messages that water down this film. Even from the start, the message that if a child is born and has some sort of flaw then the child is either banished or destroyed. This is evident by the hunchback that shows up halfway through the film and gives a monologue about how his mother and father were banished for even having him. Discrimination is evident in Sparta in this film as all of the 300 are nothing but physical specimens. Leonidas even goes so far as banashing the hunchback because he doesn't fit his ideal of the warrior. The hunchback's heart and will is there but his physical is not.
Snyder uses action to drive home the point that war is not pretty with CGI images of blood flying in all the battle scenes. The battle scenes are choreographed beautifully suggesting that even in battle that the Spartans fight war with a beautiful flair. Snyder even manages to acknowledge how war will harden man that is evident with the the death of Leonidas's Captain's son. After the son's death, Captain changes to a more bloodthirsty fighter. The change is handle with a gregariousness that seems to change the overall tone of the war with the Persians.
Clearly, the overall tone of 300 deals with the horrors of war and how that effects a country engaged in war. Not just the men fighting it, but the people that are back home. We are given a scene toward the end when Leonidas's Queen is addressing the council on sending more troops to help Leonidas's army. She engages in a heated argument with Dillios when she does him in and the council finds out that he has been taking money from the Persians for his undermining Leonidas. It is clear that Snyder is going for the viewpoint that war is profitable.
The final act of 300 has the final battle between Sparta and Persia. The final shot of Leonidas on the ground with all of his men in a symmetrical pose on the ground harbors images of the great painters of the past, but Leonidas is sprawled out in a crucified position suggesting that he was more of a god and now a possible religious figure to rally around. The final scene shows the lone soldier sent back by Leonidas inspiring his army which is clearly bigger than what Leonidas had suggesting that you do need numbers to overcome a great obstacle.
300 has its flaws which obviously show up through the course of the film. The biggest flaw has to do with the overall tone of the film. The film starts off strong with an explanation of how the best of the Spartan men are picked out among the newborns, but as the film plays out we are not given more about how these men go about after they are "chosen", but we are thrusted into the main plot. One quarter of the way through, my friend turned to me and made the gesture that he wanted to blow his brains out.
We are force fed what the overall message that Snyder was trying to get across and that is that no one will occupy us and we will stand up for our freedom. The connection to the situation in Iraq is evident with why the Spartans set out to take on the whole Persian army. The Spartans make war with the emissary of the Persian army then Leonidas goes up to the elders to get their permission to take on this war which he is denied. Leonidas is confronted before he and his men embark on their mission, but he tells the council that he is not going off to war, but to "stretch their legs."
There are some underlying messages that water down this film. Even from the start, the message that if a child is born and has some sort of flaw then the child is either banished or destroyed. This is evident by the hunchback that shows up halfway through the film and gives a monologue about how his mother and father were banished for even having him. Discrimination is evident in Sparta in this film as all of the 300 are nothing but physical specimens. Leonidas even goes so far as banashing the hunchback because he doesn't fit his ideal of the warrior. The hunchback's heart and will is there but his physical is not.
Snyder uses action to drive home the point that war is not pretty with CGI images of blood flying in all the battle scenes. The battle scenes are choreographed beautifully suggesting that even in battle that the Spartans fight war with a beautiful flair. Snyder even manages to acknowledge how war will harden man that is evident with the the death of Leonidas's Captain's son. After the son's death, Captain changes to a more bloodthirsty fighter. The change is handle with a gregariousness that seems to change the overall tone of the war with the Persians.
Clearly, the overall tone of 300 deals with the horrors of war and how that effects a country engaged in war. Not just the men fighting it, but the people that are back home. We are given a scene toward the end when Leonidas's Queen is addressing the council on sending more troops to help Leonidas's army. She engages in a heated argument with Dillios when she does him in and the council finds out that he has been taking money from the Persians for his undermining Leonidas. It is clear that Snyder is going for the viewpoint that war is profitable.
The final act of 300 has the final battle between Sparta and Persia. The final shot of Leonidas on the ground with all of his men in a symmetrical pose on the ground harbors images of the great painters of the past, but Leonidas is sprawled out in a crucified position suggesting that he was more of a god and now a possible religious figure to rally around. The final scene shows the lone soldier sent back by Leonidas inspiring his army which is clearly bigger than what Leonidas had suggesting that you do need numbers to overcome a great obstacle.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Paranoia and Loss of Identity: John Carpenter's The Thing
Paranoia and Loss of Identity: John Carpenter's The Thing
In the midst of a horror explosion of the film industry in the eighties with the likes of Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween leading up today with the popularity of remakes of The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Hitcher, one film still holds up to this day handling issues such as paranoia, and identity or a lack thereof. John Carpernter’s The Thing weaves these together along with paralleling one of the biggest issues of the eighties. The Thing is more than a film that deals with twelve men fighting off a being from another planet. Carpenter tackles what is core to The Thing and what came out from that film.
The Thing, made in 1982, tells the story of twelve men stationed at an Antarctic research station. They soon come under attack from a being that will take you over and imitate you perfectly. Soon, they realize that they do not know who is still human and who isn’t. A lack of trust soon turns into a paranoia nightmare where Fuchs, played by Joel Polis, suggests to MacReady, played by Kurt Russell that, “everyone should cook their own meals and only eat out of a can.”
It is apparent that what is one of the central themes of The Thing is how identity is addressed. One of the scenes in the film shows the remaining members of the research team huddled around a fire outside bundled up which only their faces are shown. With the lighting being the fire, it is difficult to tell who is who in this scene. And soon, each one of the men soon realizes that they cannot tell who is who either. The theme addressed in this film can be found in other films addressing this issue such as Don Siegel’s 1952 sci-fi film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of the same name and in Abel Ferrara’s 1993 film Body Snatchers In those three films, aliens have come to earth and start taking over people’s bodies. The aliens kill the original while creating a perfect copy devoid of emotion. One of the underlying parallels that Invasion of the Body Snatchers of the fifties makes is the Communist Crusade by Sen. McCarthy. Like The Thing, the characters soon realize that they cannot trust one another and tell who is real or a copy. What draws this feeling together is Ennio Morricone’s score which is devoid of any high or low tones, but a series of bass beats and underlying music.
Another aspect in the film that Carperenter plays on is the notion of paranoia and its effect in his film. One of the earlier scenes in the film shows most of the men hanging around one another having a good time. Once the scene involving the Norwegians is played out then the tone of the film changes. Carpenter lack of lighting shadows the camp now as a snow storm is approaching. The mood is now more tense as they try to figure out why the Norwegian went insane. As the film goes on, it’s apparent that this camaraderie has now desisted turning into a struggle to find some sort of trust. A scene in the movie involves the character Blair, played by Wilford Brimley. Blair has torn up the camp after finding out what would happen to the outside world if this thing came into contact with the populated world. Blair is put into a shack and Blair says, “I don’t know who to trust.“ MacReady replies, “Trust is a hard thing to come by. Just trust in the lord.“ This line suggesting that the only one that anyone can trust is from a theological standpoint. One of the biggest scenes in the film involve MacReady where he is cut off from one of the men who thinks he has turned into one of these things. He forces his way back in and the rest of the men surround him. It is this kind of paranoia that drives The Thing.
Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers used the McCarthy hearings as a parallel to the film, The Thing makes a parallel to another issue that dominated the eighties and that was AIDS. AIDS was a fresh disease that was baffling the health and science community. The disease infected all kinds of people to the point that no one could tell who had the disease and who didn’t. With AIDS and The Thing, a lack of identity, paranoia, and blood was what these two things had in common. In The Thing, one of the tests that was determined to be effective in seeing who was human or not was to draw blood and poke it with a hot implement. Like AIDS, a blood test was the only thing that could be done to see who had the disease and who did not have the disease.
John Carpenter’s
The Thing will continue to stand the test of time in the horror/sci-fi genre for dealing with these issues.
In the midst of a horror explosion of the film industry in the eighties with the likes of Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween leading up today with the popularity of remakes of The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Hitcher, one film still holds up to this day handling issues such as paranoia, and identity or a lack thereof. John Carpernter’s The Thing weaves these together along with paralleling one of the biggest issues of the eighties. The Thing is more than a film that deals with twelve men fighting off a being from another planet. Carpenter tackles what is core to The Thing and what came out from that film.
The Thing, made in 1982, tells the story of twelve men stationed at an Antarctic research station. They soon come under attack from a being that will take you over and imitate you perfectly. Soon, they realize that they do not know who is still human and who isn’t. A lack of trust soon turns into a paranoia nightmare where Fuchs, played by Joel Polis, suggests to MacReady, played by Kurt Russell that, “everyone should cook their own meals and only eat out of a can.”
It is apparent that what is one of the central themes of The Thing is how identity is addressed. One of the scenes in the film shows the remaining members of the research team huddled around a fire outside bundled up which only their faces are shown. With the lighting being the fire, it is difficult to tell who is who in this scene. And soon, each one of the men soon realizes that they cannot tell who is who either. The theme addressed in this film can be found in other films addressing this issue such as Don Siegel’s 1952 sci-fi film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of the same name and in Abel Ferrara’s 1993 film Body Snatchers In those three films, aliens have come to earth and start taking over people’s bodies. The aliens kill the original while creating a perfect copy devoid of emotion. One of the underlying parallels that Invasion of the Body Snatchers of the fifties makes is the Communist Crusade by Sen. McCarthy. Like The Thing, the characters soon realize that they cannot trust one another and tell who is real or a copy. What draws this feeling together is Ennio Morricone’s score which is devoid of any high or low tones, but a series of bass beats and underlying music.
Another aspect in the film that Carperenter plays on is the notion of paranoia and its effect in his film. One of the earlier scenes in the film shows most of the men hanging around one another having a good time. Once the scene involving the Norwegians is played out then the tone of the film changes. Carpenter lack of lighting shadows the camp now as a snow storm is approaching. The mood is now more tense as they try to figure out why the Norwegian went insane. As the film goes on, it’s apparent that this camaraderie has now desisted turning into a struggle to find some sort of trust. A scene in the movie involves the character Blair, played by Wilford Brimley. Blair has torn up the camp after finding out what would happen to the outside world if this thing came into contact with the populated world. Blair is put into a shack and Blair says, “I don’t know who to trust.“ MacReady replies, “Trust is a hard thing to come by. Just trust in the lord.“ This line suggesting that the only one that anyone can trust is from a theological standpoint. One of the biggest scenes in the film involve MacReady where he is cut off from one of the men who thinks he has turned into one of these things. He forces his way back in and the rest of the men surround him. It is this kind of paranoia that drives The Thing.
Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers used the McCarthy hearings as a parallel to the film, The Thing makes a parallel to another issue that dominated the eighties and that was AIDS. AIDS was a fresh disease that was baffling the health and science community. The disease infected all kinds of people to the point that no one could tell who had the disease and who didn’t. With AIDS and The Thing, a lack of identity, paranoia, and blood was what these two things had in common. In The Thing, one of the tests that was determined to be effective in seeing who was human or not was to draw blood and poke it with a hot implement. Like AIDS, a blood test was the only thing that could be done to see who had the disease and who did not have the disease.
John Carpenter’s
The Thing will continue to stand the test of time in the horror/sci-fi genre for dealing with these issues.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
The Living Dead in a Post 9/11 World: George A. Romero's Land of the Dead
The Living Dead in a Post 9/11 World: George A. Romero's Land of the Dead
The fourth installment of George A. Romero's dead series was 2005's Land of the Dead. The film follows a small city living among the dead which, at this point in the series, has overrun the world. The film takes place in a city based on Pittsburgh where there are two classes living inside the walls of the city. One class consists of the upper class which lives in a high-rise called Fiddler's Green run by a man named Kaufman and the other class consists of a lower class that makes runs to the outlined towns raiding the towns for basic needs: canned food, medicine, etc…..
The zombies in this series have evolved to the point of being able to communicate with each other. The film does open up with seeing that the zombies seem to be "living" and carrying on with their daily "lives". The main zombie, a former gas station mechanic, comes out of the gas station when hearing the bells near the gas pump. The evolution of the zombies is a continuation from Day of the Dead where Dr. Logan says that he can domesticate them. The zombies have, in fact, become more like the living at this point.
Romero has said that he wrote the script to address such issues as poverty and AIDS, but when 9/11 happened, he shelved it because America was not ready to deal with such hard issues. After a couple years, Romero pulled the script and said that the issues today was relevant to do Land. Land, indeed, addresses the issues of a post 9/11 world. Every aspect of the film is a metaphor to what is happening with the government and the world around us.
Fiddler's Green is a huge metaphor for how the rich and privilege live so much above the rest of the society. The people in Fiddler's Green live their daily lives forgetting about what is on the outside of their walls. The upper class like the zombies have gotten back to a kind of normality. One can make the parallel of today's society where the upper class has basically forgotten how bad the world is outside of their walls. The character of Kaufman, played by Dennis Hopper, is basically a Rumsfeldian caricature overlooking his society. Kaufman is the leader of a quasi-government. He has a group of advisors that give him ideas about how to run his "country". He doesn't seem to be worried about the zombies or the people on the outside of his tower. One thing that Kaufman does is to get rid of people who pose a threat to him and his world.
The most obvious metaphor the Romero innacted in Land was his use of military as the main defense of Fiddler's Green. The military in this film is primarily made up of a ragtag group of citizens who basically botch their defending of the city. One could argue that this military is in itself a metaphor for the botched wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
The people on the outside of Fiddler's Green basically live in a slum and fend for themselves. The only thing that Kaufman has done for them is to give them vices to keep them in line. The character Riley, played by Simon Baker, has taken upon himself to protect the people living in the slums and is a leader to them. When Cholo, played by John Leguizamo, steals Dead Reckoning (which was the former title of Land), Riley with a group agrees to steal it back for Kaufman. Riley isn't doing it for Kaufman, but knows the consequences of Cholo's action if he fires upon the city.
The zombies make their way to the city and finally make it to and thought the walls of Fiddler's Green. They represent a metaphor of the middle class coming to devour the upper class and take away what was theirs in the first place. They overrun the people inside, in a way, make a way back to normality to them and the world that they exist. At the end of the film, the group see the zombies leaving the city and he decides not to kill them. The character Slack, played by Asia Argento (daughter of Dario Argento who helped with Romero's Dawn of the Dead) asked Riley why he didn't fire upon them. Riley responds by saying, "They are just looking for a place to go." Riley's line reflects a subconscious yearning of where do we (the American populous) go from here.
Romero has always defended his work by saying there is something political about his films, in particular, his dead films. He goes on by saying they are ultimately about revolution. Land is probably Romero's most political film up to date with everything a metaphor for what's happening in a post 9/11 world.
The fourth installment of George A. Romero's dead series was 2005's Land of the Dead. The film follows a small city living among the dead which, at this point in the series, has overrun the world. The film takes place in a city based on Pittsburgh where there are two classes living inside the walls of the city. One class consists of the upper class which lives in a high-rise called Fiddler's Green run by a man named Kaufman and the other class consists of a lower class that makes runs to the outlined towns raiding the towns for basic needs: canned food, medicine, etc…..
The zombies in this series have evolved to the point of being able to communicate with each other. The film does open up with seeing that the zombies seem to be "living" and carrying on with their daily "lives". The main zombie, a former gas station mechanic, comes out of the gas station when hearing the bells near the gas pump. The evolution of the zombies is a continuation from Day of the Dead where Dr. Logan says that he can domesticate them. The zombies have, in fact, become more like the living at this point.
Romero has said that he wrote the script to address such issues as poverty and AIDS, but when 9/11 happened, he shelved it because America was not ready to deal with such hard issues. After a couple years, Romero pulled the script and said that the issues today was relevant to do Land. Land, indeed, addresses the issues of a post 9/11 world. Every aspect of the film is a metaphor to what is happening with the government and the world around us.
Fiddler's Green is a huge metaphor for how the rich and privilege live so much above the rest of the society. The people in Fiddler's Green live their daily lives forgetting about what is on the outside of their walls. The upper class like the zombies have gotten back to a kind of normality. One can make the parallel of today's society where the upper class has basically forgotten how bad the world is outside of their walls. The character of Kaufman, played by Dennis Hopper, is basically a Rumsfeldian caricature overlooking his society. Kaufman is the leader of a quasi-government. He has a group of advisors that give him ideas about how to run his "country". He doesn't seem to be worried about the zombies or the people on the outside of his tower. One thing that Kaufman does is to get rid of people who pose a threat to him and his world.
The most obvious metaphor the Romero innacted in Land was his use of military as the main defense of Fiddler's Green. The military in this film is primarily made up of a ragtag group of citizens who basically botch their defending of the city. One could argue that this military is in itself a metaphor for the botched wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
The people on the outside of Fiddler's Green basically live in a slum and fend for themselves. The only thing that Kaufman has done for them is to give them vices to keep them in line. The character Riley, played by Simon Baker, has taken upon himself to protect the people living in the slums and is a leader to them. When Cholo, played by John Leguizamo, steals Dead Reckoning (which was the former title of Land), Riley with a group agrees to steal it back for Kaufman. Riley isn't doing it for Kaufman, but knows the consequences of Cholo's action if he fires upon the city.
The zombies make their way to the city and finally make it to and thought the walls of Fiddler's Green. They represent a metaphor of the middle class coming to devour the upper class and take away what was theirs in the first place. They overrun the people inside, in a way, make a way back to normality to them and the world that they exist. At the end of the film, the group see the zombies leaving the city and he decides not to kill them. The character Slack, played by Asia Argento (daughter of Dario Argento who helped with Romero's Dawn of the Dead) asked Riley why he didn't fire upon them. Riley responds by saying, "They are just looking for a place to go." Riley's line reflects a subconscious yearning of where do we (the American populous) go from here.
Romero has always defended his work by saying there is something political about his films, in particular, his dead films. He goes on by saying they are ultimately about revolution. Land is probably Romero's most political film up to date with everything a metaphor for what's happening in a post 9/11 world.
Susperia
Susperia
One of the most horrifying movies of the last thirty years, Susperia has redefined the horror genre and continues to be a film that scares its audience. Susperia tells the story of Suzy Bannion, played by Jessica Harper, an American, who has traveled to Europe to attend a famous ballet school run by Madame Blanc, played by Joan Bennett and Miss Tanner, played by Alida Valli, Bannion cross paths with a woman who has fled the school only to be brutally murdered by something and when Bannion attends the school strange things begin to happen. She soon realizes that the school is being run by a coven of witches.
Susperia, directed by legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento, is the first film in the Three Mothers trilogy along with Inferno (1980) and La Terza Madre (2007). Argento, along with Goblin who wrote the musical score, and Luciano Tovoli who did the cinematography achieved a symbiotic masterpiece that has been scaring audiences since 1977.
Argento has collaborated with the band Goblin since Susperia on projects such as: George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (which Argento did his own edit of the film) and Tenebre (1982). Goblin's score of Susperia lends another character to the film. The opening scene where Suzy Bannion is walking out of the terminal to the street in order to hail a cab has a schizophrenic feel to it while Tovoli's camerawork of breaking up the POV of Bannion. As the film continues, Goblin almost has a split personality with two contrasting musical scores in some scenes where you get an almost serene underlying of sound with a frightening overtone. Some of the score reinforce what Argento is doing in Susperia by adding a soundtrack that conveys a sheer uneasiness of some of the other characters such as when Bannion is walking down the hall passing one of the cooks and the little boy. Another aspect of Goblin's score that is brilliant in Susperia is how unnerving the music which lends to the overall feel of the film. Goblin's score is a masterpiece lending Susperia an unknown character that underlies what Argento and Tovoli are doing in the film.
Luciano Tovoli's cinematography in Susperia lends Argento another character that truly makes Susperia one of the all-time horror films. Tovoli has since worked with Argento on Tenebre (1982). Tovoli's use of color, red in specific, gives Susperia a hallucinogenic overtone. The use of red also symbolizes not only blood, but also a madness that Suzy Bannion soon realizes throughout the film. Tovoli's use of color also reinforces the emotional settings in certain scenes as in the blue hue of the attic giving it a cold demeanor.
What Argento does in Susperia that makes this film truly horrifying is not letting up on the suspense that Bannion goes through from the time she comes in contact with the student who is brutally murdered to the very end when she discovers the coven of witches. Argento is brilliant at setting up every scene with a style and using movement to convey the simplest of messages. For example, the scene where the blind man and his dog are walking through a wide-open square with two buildings in the neo-classical style of architecture. Tovoli's complex camera shots convey the sheer terror of the scene. One might say that this is Argento's statement of fascism. The scene has a buildup of its own with Daniel walking with just a simple score of bells that turn from being very calming to a pounding of drums that heighten the suspense of what comes next in the scene. One of the more horrifying aspect of Susperia that Argento brings is how he uses a very calm and control movement of the camera to frame his characters in the film to buildup the suspense and horror. The scene where Sara slowly climbs the boxes to slip through the little window to escape the witches and falls into the coils of barb wire. The frame is still while Sara struggles in the wire. The terror on her face is Argento needed to capture such a horrific shot. One of the most brutal visions of Susperia happens at the beginning of the film where the student that ran away from the school is brutally murdered. The murder is one of the most gruesome in modern horror films. The climax of that scene where she falls through the glass ceiling being hung by the curtain rope is one that has been copied in such films as Demoni (1985) which is a film that Argento co-wrote with Lamberto Bava.
Susperia is one of the most horrifying films to come out in the last thirty years. It's influence can be traced to such films as Scream, The Witches, and even Halloween II. Susperia will continue to be an influence in future directors that are making the next truly horrifying film. Susperia's symbiotic use of color, sound, and movement make this a very unique horror film and one that continue to horrify the next generation of horror fans.
One of the most horrifying movies of the last thirty years, Susperia has redefined the horror genre and continues to be a film that scares its audience. Susperia tells the story of Suzy Bannion, played by Jessica Harper, an American, who has traveled to Europe to attend a famous ballet school run by Madame Blanc, played by Joan Bennett and Miss Tanner, played by Alida Valli, Bannion cross paths with a woman who has fled the school only to be brutally murdered by something and when Bannion attends the school strange things begin to happen. She soon realizes that the school is being run by a coven of witches.
Susperia, directed by legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento, is the first film in the Three Mothers trilogy along with Inferno (1980) and La Terza Madre (2007). Argento, along with Goblin who wrote the musical score, and Luciano Tovoli who did the cinematography achieved a symbiotic masterpiece that has been scaring audiences since 1977.
Argento has collaborated with the band Goblin since Susperia on projects such as: George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (which Argento did his own edit of the film) and Tenebre (1982). Goblin's score of Susperia lends another character to the film. The opening scene where Suzy Bannion is walking out of the terminal to the street in order to hail a cab has a schizophrenic feel to it while Tovoli's camerawork of breaking up the POV of Bannion. As the film continues, Goblin almost has a split personality with two contrasting musical scores in some scenes where you get an almost serene underlying of sound with a frightening overtone. Some of the score reinforce what Argento is doing in Susperia by adding a soundtrack that conveys a sheer uneasiness of some of the other characters such as when Bannion is walking down the hall passing one of the cooks and the little boy. Another aspect of Goblin's score that is brilliant in Susperia is how unnerving the music which lends to the overall feel of the film. Goblin's score is a masterpiece lending Susperia an unknown character that underlies what Argento and Tovoli are doing in the film.
Luciano Tovoli's cinematography in Susperia lends Argento another character that truly makes Susperia one of the all-time horror films. Tovoli has since worked with Argento on Tenebre (1982). Tovoli's use of color, red in specific, gives Susperia a hallucinogenic overtone. The use of red also symbolizes not only blood, but also a madness that Suzy Bannion soon realizes throughout the film. Tovoli's use of color also reinforces the emotional settings in certain scenes as in the blue hue of the attic giving it a cold demeanor.
What Argento does in Susperia that makes this film truly horrifying is not letting up on the suspense that Bannion goes through from the time she comes in contact with the student who is brutally murdered to the very end when she discovers the coven of witches. Argento is brilliant at setting up every scene with a style and using movement to convey the simplest of messages. For example, the scene where the blind man and his dog are walking through a wide-open square with two buildings in the neo-classical style of architecture. Tovoli's complex camera shots convey the sheer terror of the scene. One might say that this is Argento's statement of fascism. The scene has a buildup of its own with Daniel walking with just a simple score of bells that turn from being very calming to a pounding of drums that heighten the suspense of what comes next in the scene. One of the more horrifying aspect of Susperia that Argento brings is how he uses a very calm and control movement of the camera to frame his characters in the film to buildup the suspense and horror. The scene where Sara slowly climbs the boxes to slip through the little window to escape the witches and falls into the coils of barb wire. The frame is still while Sara struggles in the wire. The terror on her face is Argento needed to capture such a horrific shot. One of the most brutal visions of Susperia happens at the beginning of the film where the student that ran away from the school is brutally murdered. The murder is one of the most gruesome in modern horror films. The climax of that scene where she falls through the glass ceiling being hung by the curtain rope is one that has been copied in such films as Demoni (1985) which is a film that Argento co-wrote with Lamberto Bava.
Susperia is one of the most horrifying films to come out in the last thirty years. It's influence can be traced to such films as Scream, The Witches, and even Halloween II. Susperia will continue to be an influence in future directors that are making the next truly horrifying film. Susperia's symbiotic use of color, sound, and movement make this a very unique horror film and one that continue to horrify the next generation of horror fans.
What Are the Limits to Our Depravity
What Are the Limits of Our Depravity: Hostel
There has been times documented throughout history of how far human beings will go in appeasing their depravity. Whether it was the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, or even today's question over torture of terrorists, human beings walk the fine line between torture for information vs. torture for pleasure. It's this depravity that is brought up in Eli Roth's Hostel.
Hostel, released in 2005, tells the story of two American backpackers along with an Icelandic friend that back pack all over Europe. The Americans are sowing their wild oats before settling down into their careers or the end of their education. They soon learn about a place where the women are virtuous and will not say no to foreigners. The three do not realize that the place they're going is a place where business men pay to torture and kill other humans. It is this idea of paying to be able to inflict physical pain to appease their masochistic and depravity that make Hostel on the few truly horrific films to come out in the last few years.
One of the main themes in Hostel is a very anti-American sentiment throughout the film. The two Americans: Paxton, played by Jay Hernandez and Josh, played by Derek Richardson, are seen as very naïve in the countries they visit. The two get into a fight at one of the disco's and pick a fight with a guy who was defending his girlfriend. Roth paints the picture that is felt throughout the world where America is viewed as a country that uses violence to solve their problems. Roth portrays Paxton and Josh as the aggressors and the indigenes as the passive ones.
Roth uses a slow buildup to reinforce what his audience is in for; a kind of pseudo-torture for his audience. The first half of the movie Roth is portraying his characters having the time of their lives and the lighting of the film reflects the mood. It's not until the three arrive in their final destination that the lighting and sound change the tone of the film. When they arrive in Slovakia, the surroundings are harsh and uninviting. They travel into the country where there is not much color there. When they check into the hostel they pass a TV showing a scene of Pulp Fiction whose infamous scene contain images of abject depravity. Everything has a harsh appeal to it. Roth has said that he didn't mean for the film to be offensive to Slovakia, even though it was shot in the Czech Republic, but to show "American's ignorance to the world around them." What is ironic in Hostel is how the moral choices the three characters which some say is evil is what leads them to their torturers.
Some can argue that Hostel can be compared to a show like 24 for the common theme of torture. The only difference is that in 24 torture is used to extract information where Hostel torture is used for pleasure. An argument can arise whether or not Hostel is a growing sentiment about the Bush Administration and its use of torture. The question still remains whether torture is the right technique to gain information. In a way, the torturing to gain information is a different kind of pleasure than in Hostel.
There are various images contained in Hostel that reinforce whether we have gone to the limits of depravity. As the story unfolds, the Icelander Oli, played by Eythor Gudjonsson winds up missing ending up in a dark and wet basement. We are then shown his fate and as the camera pans back we are shown the blurred image of a woman and all we hear is her screams. We know, now, what is going to happen to her. As the film moves along, Paxton and Josh, meet up with their two female roommates who take them to another disco. Josh gets up to leave feeling very dizzy and then cutting to a scene where he is laid down on his bed. We are shown Josh full framed, but at the bottom we see someone coming into frame giving its audience an uneasy feeling. The next scene is from Josh's point of view which is just through an eyehole focusing on a person dressed in a cross between a butcher and a surgeon. The room that Josh is in has a very harsh tone to it. He pans down to see a tray of surgical and non surgical tools which are also very harsh looking. The camera pans back as he sees who is doing the torturing and recognizing him as someone he has met before. Josh's realization makes this scene even more horrific and unnerving.
When Paxton goes to find Josh, he is led to the place where all this torture is taking place and there is nothing but silence as Paxton and his female roommate Natalya is riding in the back of a car. Paxton makes eye contact with a Japanese man, played by Takashi Miike, who is well known for his masterpiece Audition. Audition (1999) is using torture to gain revenge for wronging a right. Miike uses a slow buildup to one of the most famous scenes of torture in film. The silence gives the audience a feel of emptiness and helplessness because we know what is in store for Paxton. When Paxton comes across the German businessman, played by Jan Vlasak, and realizes what he is doing to his friend, Paxton backs out and all we get is Natalya laughing which reverberates through the hallway giving a feeling that Paxton is now trapped in this hellish world.
Paxton is strapped into a chair and enters a bodyguard showing someone who he might be torturing. The man is dressed in the same garb as the German businessman. What makes him more ominous is that he revokes images of the Nazi's and their use of torture of the Jews in the concentration camps. He is just this frail man who is conflicted on how to torture and what to use to do the torture which makes the audience uneasy.
One of the most horrifying scenes in Hostel is the scene where Paxton meets up with a businessman, played by Rick Hoffman. What is horrifying is not that his is going to torture someone, but his attitudes towards it. Hoffman is very gung-ho in wanting to do it right that his masochistic needs are already satisfied. He questions Paxton on how he should do it. He holds up a shiny silver gun and says, "Yea, yea, no, no fuck that shit. Fuck this. This is too American. I'm going old school" Again, Roth displays an anti-American sentiment that the world sees. The fact that Hoffman's character is getting so much pleasure in the thought of how he is going to torture makes this scene so terrifying. He is also so impressed with the fact that Paxton says he paid for an American and that Americans are worth more gives off more of the same anti-American sentiment.
Hostel is not about the notion of paying for the right to torture, but evokes an ever growing question of how we would go in satisfying our masochistic and depraved needs. Would we ever pay for the right to torture? The vast majority would say no, but there are some who could not fully answer that. What are the limits to our depravity? Are they just rolled up in a dark fantasy that would not see the light of day? Have we seen the limits of depravity?
There has been times documented throughout history of how far human beings will go in appeasing their depravity. Whether it was the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, or even today's question over torture of terrorists, human beings walk the fine line between torture for information vs. torture for pleasure. It's this depravity that is brought up in Eli Roth's Hostel.
Hostel, released in 2005, tells the story of two American backpackers along with an Icelandic friend that back pack all over Europe. The Americans are sowing their wild oats before settling down into their careers or the end of their education. They soon learn about a place where the women are virtuous and will not say no to foreigners. The three do not realize that the place they're going is a place where business men pay to torture and kill other humans. It is this idea of paying to be able to inflict physical pain to appease their masochistic and depravity that make Hostel on the few truly horrific films to come out in the last few years.
One of the main themes in Hostel is a very anti-American sentiment throughout the film. The two Americans: Paxton, played by Jay Hernandez and Josh, played by Derek Richardson, are seen as very naïve in the countries they visit. The two get into a fight at one of the disco's and pick a fight with a guy who was defending his girlfriend. Roth paints the picture that is felt throughout the world where America is viewed as a country that uses violence to solve their problems. Roth portrays Paxton and Josh as the aggressors and the indigenes as the passive ones.
Roth uses a slow buildup to reinforce what his audience is in for; a kind of pseudo-torture for his audience. The first half of the movie Roth is portraying his characters having the time of their lives and the lighting of the film reflects the mood. It's not until the three arrive in their final destination that the lighting and sound change the tone of the film. When they arrive in Slovakia, the surroundings are harsh and uninviting. They travel into the country where there is not much color there. When they check into the hostel they pass a TV showing a scene of Pulp Fiction whose infamous scene contain images of abject depravity. Everything has a harsh appeal to it. Roth has said that he didn't mean for the film to be offensive to Slovakia, even though it was shot in the Czech Republic, but to show "American's ignorance to the world around them." What is ironic in Hostel is how the moral choices the three characters which some say is evil is what leads them to their torturers.
Some can argue that Hostel can be compared to a show like 24 for the common theme of torture. The only difference is that in 24 torture is used to extract information where Hostel torture is used for pleasure. An argument can arise whether or not Hostel is a growing sentiment about the Bush Administration and its use of torture. The question still remains whether torture is the right technique to gain information. In a way, the torturing to gain information is a different kind of pleasure than in Hostel.
There are various images contained in Hostel that reinforce whether we have gone to the limits of depravity. As the story unfolds, the Icelander Oli, played by Eythor Gudjonsson winds up missing ending up in a dark and wet basement. We are then shown his fate and as the camera pans back we are shown the blurred image of a woman and all we hear is her screams. We know, now, what is going to happen to her. As the film moves along, Paxton and Josh, meet up with their two female roommates who take them to another disco. Josh gets up to leave feeling very dizzy and then cutting to a scene where he is laid down on his bed. We are shown Josh full framed, but at the bottom we see someone coming into frame giving its audience an uneasy feeling. The next scene is from Josh's point of view which is just through an eyehole focusing on a person dressed in a cross between a butcher and a surgeon. The room that Josh is in has a very harsh tone to it. He pans down to see a tray of surgical and non surgical tools which are also very harsh looking. The camera pans back as he sees who is doing the torturing and recognizing him as someone he has met before. Josh's realization makes this scene even more horrific and unnerving.
When Paxton goes to find Josh, he is led to the place where all this torture is taking place and there is nothing but silence as Paxton and his female roommate Natalya is riding in the back of a car. Paxton makes eye contact with a Japanese man, played by Takashi Miike, who is well known for his masterpiece Audition. Audition (1999) is using torture to gain revenge for wronging a right. Miike uses a slow buildup to one of the most famous scenes of torture in film. The silence gives the audience a feel of emptiness and helplessness because we know what is in store for Paxton. When Paxton comes across the German businessman, played by Jan Vlasak, and realizes what he is doing to his friend, Paxton backs out and all we get is Natalya laughing which reverberates through the hallway giving a feeling that Paxton is now trapped in this hellish world.
Paxton is strapped into a chair and enters a bodyguard showing someone who he might be torturing. The man is dressed in the same garb as the German businessman. What makes him more ominous is that he revokes images of the Nazi's and their use of torture of the Jews in the concentration camps. He is just this frail man who is conflicted on how to torture and what to use to do the torture which makes the audience uneasy.
One of the most horrifying scenes in Hostel is the scene where Paxton meets up with a businessman, played by Rick Hoffman. What is horrifying is not that his is going to torture someone, but his attitudes towards it. Hoffman is very gung-ho in wanting to do it right that his masochistic needs are already satisfied. He questions Paxton on how he should do it. He holds up a shiny silver gun and says, "Yea, yea, no, no fuck that shit. Fuck this. This is too American. I'm going old school" Again, Roth displays an anti-American sentiment that the world sees. The fact that Hoffman's character is getting so much pleasure in the thought of how he is going to torture makes this scene so terrifying. He is also so impressed with the fact that Paxton says he paid for an American and that Americans are worth more gives off more of the same anti-American sentiment.
Hostel is not about the notion of paying for the right to torture, but evokes an ever growing question of how we would go in satisfying our masochistic and depraved needs. Would we ever pay for the right to torture? The vast majority would say no, but there are some who could not fully answer that. What are the limits to our depravity? Are they just rolled up in a dark fantasy that would not see the light of day? Have we seen the limits of depravity?
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