So I've been working on a project for the past two months or so. I love rock and roll, baseball, and television, about all of which I've written thousands of words. I've always loved movies just as much, be they hilarious, horrifying, or just plain real- yet I haven't written a word about them. I didn't want to just churn out a "here's my ten favorite movies" post, because that's kind of a malleable list and I wouldn't learn anything from typing it. So in an effort to sound informed, I combed list after list of great films. I took movies from AFI's 100, Oscar history, cult classics, modern day masterpieces... whatever. If I hadn't seen it and felt like I should, I listed it and watched it. After a few weeks of this, I got bored because if a movie was a total waste of time (I'm looking at you, Paul Thomas Anderson) I didn't really feel like it earned the right for me to type a paragraph about it. If a movie was truly something special (Mystic River, Network) my thoughts could be distilled down to "OMG see this immediately." If it fell somewhere in between, I would end up convincing myself I loved or hated it by the time I was done writing about it. In the end, I was happy I'd put the time into watching those movies, but I wasn't the least bit happy with the writing results.
How do I change that? Simple, I have to care more. I have to have passionate feelings about anything I write about, and "Anyone who doesn't think this is an amazing movie can go suck eggs!" is not a passionate feeling to me. It's fanboyism, and if I want to be a fanboy I'll just start writing about bands I like. So I needed to figure out how to care- a common theme in my life- and this time I found the solution in my past.
I've dealt with mental illness for about half of my life, but at the time I saw Requiem for a Dream back in early 2002, I was unmedicated, unchecked, and as unstable as I ever was. My taste for substances was not yet mature, but through sleep deprivation, the occasional smoked bowl, and various other habits it was not uncommon for me to experience both ends of bipolar in a single day, or even an hour. It was a Sunday afternoon, at the top of one of these downswings, that a friend suggested we watch Requiem for a Dream. Even though I plunged into a severe depression after viewing and I complained incessantly about the people who 'made' me sit through the movie, it was a learning experience for me. The lessons took years- way longer than I'd like to admit- but eventually I realized that A) fiction can't hurt you, and B) movies don't have to make you feel good to be good. It is these lessons that I'm putting to work here, because in a silly, nostalgic, bored, and emotionally reckless way, it makes me sad that no movie since has impacted me the way Requiem for a Dream did. I've been actively avoiding aggressive negativity, protecting my own contentment with tenacity that surprises even me. I've decided, in order to be a more psychologically rounded person, that it doesn't have to be that way. So I did some research on lists titled various things like "Movies you'll never want to watch more than once", or "The most disturbing films of all time", and the early results have been very promising as far as the stated objective goes. Based on how I've recommitted myself to the idea, it would appear I'm more excited to watch French Horror than anything starring Humphrey Bogart or Liz Taylor. Sue me. So, I'm five movies deep into the "messed up movies" list, and here's what I've uncovered so far. Let me make it clear before I continue that these movies are NOT for everyone. In most cases, you can make the argument that they never should have been made to begin with in order to protect the greater good, and I don't disagree with that. So don't watch 'em; you'll regret it if you do.
Requiem for a Dream (2000): This is sort of cheating, because I haven't seen this movie in about 11 years. On the other hand, I never would have started this project without it. So here's the synopsis: Ellen Burstyn is a lonely widow, obsessed with TV infomercials and her own weight. She eventually resorts to starving herself and taking amphetamines to control said weight. Also, the infomercial host is none other than the guy who played the bad guy in both Happy Gilmore and Norm MacDonald's tour de force Dirty Work. Jared Leto plays Burstyn's son. He, his girlfriend Jennifer Connelly, and his friend Marlon Wayans are all hardcore drug users. Their lives revolve around speed and blow, but mostly smack. There's your setup, and for the next hour and a half, everything gets much, much worse. No spoilers here, but the final sequence of the film brought so much disgust, fear, and outrage to a 20-year-old Everlasting Dave that it was a couple of days before he was willing to speak again. Particularly, there is something that The Everlasting Dave enjoyed greatly at the time, and still enjoys greatly to this day, that was very nearly ruined by the end of Requiem. Now, I can't give it too good a grade because I consider it completely unwatchable. But in the words of Hawk Harrelson, it was "right size, wrong shape." It's one of the most powerful movies I'm aware of in terms of direction, acting, and editing, and just because it took me somewhere I didn't want to go doesn't mean it didn't get there. I gotta give it a B. If I was less of a pussy it'd be an A.
Funny Games (2007): I chose the remake over the 1997 original because, well, that's what was available. Naomi Watts and Tim Roth play a couple who take their young son up to a lake house for the weekend. Two preppy-looking young men (Michael Pitt is the leader, Brady Corbet the lackey) show up claiming to be working at a neighbor's house, and asking to borrow eggs. They 'accidentally' drop the eggs, they 'accidentally' drop Naomi Watts's phone in the sink, disabling it, and they 'accidentally' drop the eggs a second time. Then, as Watts and Roth begin to show frustration, the young men demonstrate what has got to be the single biggest overreaction to impoliteness of all time. I was struck by the film's nihilistic slow burn, the general air of unpredictability that comes from good actors playing well-written psychotic roles, and the gen-x parody of human behavior shown by the antagonists. At various points, Pitt turns to the camera and asks the viewer directly what (s)he'd like to see. It's a middle finger to sadists and psychopaths everywhere, to throw up a mirror and say "This is what you are. Do you like it?" But for a legitimate movie, loaded with acting talent, to play with conventions as abruptly and decisively as Funny Games does is kind of exhilarating in a cheap thrill kind of way. I'm giving it an A- for originality and the deliberate, chilling pace at which all avenues of escape are closed for the victims.
Inside,’ or ‘A l’interieur (2007): Most of the movies that constitute this project come with a warning, something to the effect of "This movie will scar you." I ignore those en masse, because I like to think of myself as so jaded nothing gets me off except freebasing ground-up moon rocks. Inside sure did its best to scar me, though. It's the story of Sarah (Alysson Paradis), a pregnant woman whose significant other dies in a car wreck in the first scene of the film. Four months later, both mother and fetus are healthy, and she is set for induced labor on Christmas Day. The film takes place on Christmas Eve, when a mysterious- and unnecessarily gorgeous- woman (Beatrice Dalle) arrives on her doorstep asking to use the phone. Depressed and paranoid, Sarah had told everyone from her family, work, and private life to stay away, and refuses the woman's request as well. At this point the other woman reveals she knows quite a bit about Sarah, and is really there to steal her baby. That's when the breaking-and-entering scenes begin, which are well executed in their play with calm and tension. When the mysterious woman finally makes it inside, one saddening and shocking piece of violence after another is the result, with the movie twisting and turning in all kinds of surprising ways, leading to a final shot that out-haunts Requiem for a Dream and probably every movie ever made. If you see it and find a way to get it out of your head, please let me know. I'm unlikely to ever watch this one again- the shock value would have worn off and the blood would get tedious- but I'm not sad I watched it once. It gets a B- from me. It's no higher because you'd have to be more messed up than me to 'like' it in any sense of the word I'm familiar with. I can't put it any lower because it does everything you want in horror- it makes you forget you're watching a movie, makes you care about the victim, and truly, viscerally, horrifies the viewer.
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008): Every movie I plan on watching for this is original and lacks comparables, but someday there will be another Requiem or Inside. Hopefully, there will never be another Dear Zachary, as it's the only nonfiction documentary currently on my list. Knowing these things really happened makes it just a little harder to escape the brainspace of the film. In making this film for MSNBC- Yes, they televised it- Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne tells the story of his lifelong friend Andrew Bagby, who is found dead in a park in his hospital scrubs, shot seven times. The obvious suspect is the correct one: Dr. Shirley Turner, one of Andrew's coworkers, an ex-girlfriend thirteen years Andrew's senior. After the arrest, Shirley reveals that she's carrying Andrew's child and the film from that point follows two disconnected, but related, threads: Kuenne tours the entire United States and Newfoundland, Canada, talking to anyone he can find who knew Andrew or Shirley. Meanwhile, he covers the struggles of Andrew's parents as they fight the Canadian legal system to keep Shirley in prison and gain custody of baby Zachary- a story that takes place during the filming and contributes 100% of the gut-wrenching drama. Kuenne edits his documentary much like Michael Moore would, relentlessly bombarding the viewer with interviews, photographs, and the rapid-fire progress of the legal story while allowing his emotions to overcome his narration multiple times. It's a depressing and frightening story, but right up to the third-act twist and beyond, Kuenne's storytelling shines a spotlight on what I can only call the humanity of the story. I'm giving Dear Zachary a solid B, mostly on the strength of Kuenne's aesthetic rather than the story he tells.
Irreversible (Le Temps detruit tout (Time Destroys Everything)) (2002)- (*THIS MOVIE CANNOT BE DISCUSSED WITHOUT SPOILERS. YOU ARE WARNED*.) Of all the plots in all the world, the one that least lends itself to reverse storytelling is the rape revenge story. This doesn't stop writer/director Gaspar Noe, who starts with our hero Marcus (Vincent Cassel) being carted out of a gay club and driven away in an ambulance. He's brutalized and barely alive, with the EMT's and police all calling him a "fag". As each scene draws out more of the story, we find that Marcus's girlfriend Alex (the breathtaking Monica Bellucci) has been beaten and raped and Marcus's investigation led him to the gay club, looking for a man known as "The Tapeworm". The rape itself is what makes this film a shock piece. It's nine straight minutes of The Tapeworm holding Alex down on the ground in a subway tunnel while he struggles to stay on top of her. The camera does not look away, even though it's almost impossible to watch the entire sequence. The told-in-reverse background to the incident adds almost nothing to the story: Marcus's friend Pierre is Alex's ex, but he bears no ill will. Marcus is a childish hedonist, but Alex likes him anyway. And of course, Alex is pregnant with Marcus's child, and they want to keep the baby. Seeing these meaningless setup scenes at the end rather than the beginning made this movie, especially the second half, feel like a total waste of time. I'm giving it a D, for "Don't bother".
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