The Rock Blogger

Having just seen Lars von Trier’s "Anti-Christ", I was compelled to research one of its supposed influences. "Haxan " (1922) was an elaborate silent film from Sweden that depicts scenes of demons, witchcraft and occult rituals. This video takes some visually stunning scenes from Haxan and sets them to songs from Coil’s Horse Rotorvator , easily one of the most disturbing industrial albums I’ve heard.

A film review by Tyson Stewart
Antichrist (2009, dir. Lars von Trier)

If you’re sick of the now-too-familiar vérité-style horror cinema that has permeated theatres for the past ten years or so, perhaps von Trier’s art-house horror Antichrist will give you something to think about. While Paranormal Activity, a generally vapid remake of a film that is scarcely 10-years-old, resorts to a kind of trendy derivativeness, Antichrist reaches all the way back to films like Haxan (1922), The Seventh Seal (1957), and Mirror (1975) to mount its vision of evil.

A couple’s child accidentally dies while they’re having sex. To help Her (Charlotte Gainsbourg) mourn, He (Willem Dafoe) takes her to the place where she is the most afraid: a cottage in Eden, a forest outside of town. As He treats her with logic and reason, utilizing his skills as a psychologist, She starts tapping in to the mystery and chaos of the surroundings, of nature. Soon enough, we are given new (often very creepy) revelations and things eventually take a violent turn.

What I like about the film is its complex views of nature. For the most part, it treats it like a mirror that we project our own feelings onto. Nature is never the embodiment of evil—only mystery. This is illustrated by a key shot near the beginning, in the hospital room where She is being treated for grief. While the two characters exchange what amounts to sweet nothings, the hand-held camera suddenly locks itself into place and zooms in to some flower stems in a vase. Soon, the entire frame is filled with green, liquid, and long shafts of dark. Moments like this bring about more questions than they answer. And the film builds slowly like this, allowing new things to enter the mind without explicitly saying what they are.

Having two intellectuals (she has an unfinished thesis on the go) at the centre of this horror parable is, of course, no mistake. At the start, we think it’s going to go down the usual route: He, clinging to logic and reason all the time, will get his comeuppances through Her unreason. And this is indeed how most reviewers interpret the film. But notice the shift halfway. When he discovers the pages of her thesis in the attic, we might now be led to believe that she too employs her own brand of reason and logic onto him. She has just as much a powerful intellect as He. It may be subjective and a descendant of medieval practices, but it is reason nonetheless. This is what makes the film scary. Both protagonists appeal to a reason that is in direct contradiction to nature (recall what She does to her son’s feat).

Antichrist is a fitting way to end the last decade of cinema—it’s effectively a reminder and recap of the best art cinema from the past 50 years, pulling together elements from Bergman, Tarkovsky (to whom the film is dedicated), Lynch, and I would add Antonioni (think of those moments when the surroundings become overwhelming and push the characters aside, like her imaginings and the entry into the woods in the car). It might just be the best looking film I’ve seen in over a decade too. Certainly it has the best use of slow-motion in a film for years.

The drawbacks are the usual things of von Trier’s work. Why does he so stubbornly keep to gender roles? And some of the metaphors, when put explicit, are way too easy. I don’t buy how the beginning is dealt with again later on, for instance. But that might already be saying too much.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992). Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion . 1944.

Below is a fascinating documentary about one of the most influential figurative/surrealist painters of the 20th Century. His work contains overwhelming dread, transmogrification, and decay. He once described his paintings as the residue of life, like the slime behind a snail.

I thought I would provide some context for my previous post. Stan Brakhage (1933 - 2003) was a renowned experimental filmmaker whose innovations included hand-painted celluloid frames that would produce phantasmal imagery. The following are some samples of his work.

A Film Review by Tyson Stewart

Starring Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood. Written and Directed by Woody Allen.

This is Allen’s funniest film in the last ten years. Well-acted, funny, smart, and even romantic, the year’s first worthwhile film combines the talents of two giants of comedy. The humour may be a tad out of date, but, in a strange way, this is also its strength. It has the pace of his earlier films, like Sleeper and Annie Hall, and the zany antics and exaggerated characterizations of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex…But Were Afraid to Ask or Broadway Danny Rose. In short, it doesn’t have the sluggishness and bad timing of his comedies from The Curse of the Jade Scorpion onwards. A possible reason for this return to form: the script was written in the 1970s and Woody quickly updated it before the potential actors’ strike last year!

David’s Boris is full of opinions and complaints about modern times, and the film’s satirical elements work the best when it lovingly scorns dumb Southerners. In fact, I’d take this kind of satire of American culture over the National Lampoon films any day. David is more of a moaner than a joke-teller (like Allen) but somehow this works. Their worldview is basically the same, and this is maybe why the film plays out so smoothly. Unrelenting pessimism and anger at the world have never been so enjoyable: it’s much harder to find humour in death and the meaninglessness of life than, for example, a hangover. Woody Allen belongs to the 20th century, not the 21st but it is important that his worldview remains forever on offer: it is the sensibility of the Jew as witness to death.

On the aesthetic-technical side, we enjoyed the title song pulled from Animal Crackers, the breezy New Orleans jazz score used throughout, and the signature long-duration shots without too much coverage. I appreciate the way Allen shoots his scenes: one take is the general rule: this allows the actors to really become the character for it doesn’t completely break up the “life” of the character into little ad-like bits.

When Boris addresses the audience, I asked myself if this type of self-reflexivity still works. The opening monologue is probably longer than the one that opens Autumn Sonata: it’s fucking long. Maybe he should have utilized voice-over throughout to frame things. Only a few lines in the direct address moments are interesting, and they go something like this: “Why do you want to know my story? Do we know each other? Do we like each other?” and, near the end, “There were people in the audience at the start. I don’t know how many are left though.” Lines like these remind us of how most other films are so confident in their ability to relate a character’s story even if they use the same old conventional narrative practises to do so. Boris has a point: why do we see films about people we can’t stand made by filmmakers that are complicit in their characters’ development?

Finally, don’t believe those critics who say it’s one of his worst films. And while you’re at it, don’t believe those (like me) who say it’s one of his best. But a good film it is. And I’d take this over any other movie out right now. I know that’s not saying much…Anyway, go see it.

“Ringing Bell” is an obscure anime feature from the late seventies that tells a cautionary fairy tale about the laws of nature and the futility of revenge. What initially seems like a simple children’s story soon takes on darker dimensions. The theme song in particular is surprisingly beautiful.

The additional segments can be found here.

Tarkovsky’s Mirror set to Arvo Pärt’s Mirror in the Mirror

Tarkovsky’s images have always had a poetic resonance to them. His most famous sequences are slow, lyrical, symbolic, and can sow melancholia in an instant. The effect of these moments, when coupled with Arvo Pärt, becomes all the more deeper.

Review by Tyson Stewart: Let the Right One In
(Screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Dir. Tomas Alfredson. Perf. Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson. 2008.)

Who would have thought the Euro art film renaissance would come in the form of a teen vampire flick? But it has. Here are filmmakers totally in control of their craft. It is a horror film and the great thing is we don’t mind the manipulation that goes on—the film’s style of Less is More prevents the kinds of condescension that are the mainstay of mainstream horrors. From the first lines (“Squeal like a pig! Squeal!”) on the film maintains a perpetual suspense and a disarming confidence.

The setting is an apartment complex in the dead of Winter in Sweden. Oskar, a 12-year-old boy, is a target of bullies. Eli is a strange girl who doesn’t go to school and sits on a fucked up jungle gym without shoes on at night. They soon start talking and become friends. Eli gives Oskar advice on how to handle his bullies. Oskar deals with the boy that gives him the most trouble in a way that seemed like the best solution. Meanwhile, Eli deals with her own problems—basically, she has a bizarre need of blood and lots of it. Their relationship grows at a natural pace and the acting (by Kare Hedebrant as Oskar and Lina Leandersson as Eli) is tremendous too.

There is a real evolution in terms of how he looks at her. From a casual demeanor to a childlike obsession with deeper undercurrents that signify a brutal resistance to the adult world’s sheer banality, Oskar’s falling in love with her comes at the sublime cost of falling out of society. Moreover, this is a cruel world full of drunks (Oskar’s father) and bullies. In a Nietzschean turn, Eli’s victims have a purpose that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.

The moments of action are very successful because the filmmaker shows only what is necessary for story comprehension and thus carry much potential. The perspective of the viewer matters enormously in these moments. There is a shot in the pool scene, for instance, that allows the viewer to imagine practically 80% of the action. Generally, much isn’t seen directly. Eli’s flying is never shown. And better yet, a whole lot isn’t explained, like the presence of the egg in her barren apartment or when Eli starts bleeding everywhere because Oskar failed to be polite by not asking her to come in. This Less is More principle doesn’t work like other horror films, i.e. Signs or The Blair Witch Project.

The meaning is never in question in these films. But here, the filmmaker controls and manipulates, to build suspense, and then avoids a full control of the meaning of other things, thus giving the audience member room to build the meaning. It is a more complex style of filmmaking. I would label it a mix of the Hollywood formulaic coupled with a slipping of autonomy from the director toward the audience member. The film is completely effective because it gets in you and you get into it: a truly vampirist act: cinema as bodily exchange. Another filmmaker that does this is Robert Bresson, who the filmmakers may be referencing when Oskar taps on the wall to communicate with Eli—this is reminiscent to how the inmates communicate in Bresson’s prison flick A Man Espaced. Bresson’s shots elicit a surplus of connotation, often not showing the action but gesturing toward it through sound or other creative means.

Let the Right One In may be my favorite fiction film of 2008, but it has nothing to do with its totality of vision. In fact, it doesn’t have a singular vision at all. It is too clunky (the last scene on the train is pure fat and evaporates all exuberant energy) and exploitative (it can’t resists certain gross-out shots) in parts to assume a stately perfection of vision. The complexity remains in the give and take of the filmmakers—and this is why it is an accomplished horror film that harkens back to the best tenets of European art cinema.

A minimalist documentary consisting mainly of live performances and beautiful images of the Icelandic landscape. Pagan traditions, punk culture and experimentation are some of the central themes explored. Many strange and exciting acts are featured along with major names like Sigur Ros and Bjork.
A fine, leisurely film to have playing in the background.