Scraps
A Short Stay in Hell has left a long lasting impression. It’s an overwhelming premise, both horrific and wonderful, layered with human nature and social consideration.
It resubmits to you the idea of eternity, and presents a vision of hell that could be more terrifying than anything written by Dante.
At points I was reminded of Jose Saramago’s dystopian novel, Blindness, which as a social thought experiment is messy and devoid of hope. This is more lithe, yet will ultimately inject about the same amount of abject despair.
Yet, despite this, there is a lot to love here.
How large is a library with books that are exactly 410 pages long with 40 lines of exactly 80 English characters on each page?
This is the Borges Library of Babel and it has a book to cover every possible combination of characters.
A book with all blank pages? There is exactly one. A book that covers nearly the first half of War and Peace? Yup, there’s one of those too. The second half… it’s there somewhere.
This exact math, along with each book’s dimensions creates a hell that is unfathomably spacious.
Now find exactly one book that perfectly describes your life in all of this.
This novella does a great job at setting up a simple premise forging philosophical depth, and then creating simple plots and scenes that almost belie that complexity and depth.
It is simultaneously deep and simple, complicated and easy.
There is punctuated imagery that requires the above absurd setting. Imagine, for instance, all the fun things you can do while descending in a terminal velocity in free fall for years on end.
The math and consideration of this eternity, the inability to die but the anchoring in visceral biology creates a setting that is entirely unique. It created a lasting impression on me.
It is a short story (can be read in a few hours) but it leave a strong impression with a long half life.
The author is Steven Peck, a biologist at Brigham Young University. He has an varied background with a degree in entomology, a stint in the Vietnam war and involvement with the church of Latter Day Saints.
He’s must be a Mormon, and I’m off put by that, but this story has such a unique premise that i have to concede his religious affiliation has enriched the story.
Even if this does not have a similar impact, the brevity of the read makes it worth your time.
Watching this file I was struck with the idea that the French love the absurd. I find that good French art and philosophy is often born from some wacky premise meant to upend the viewer and challenge the solid assumption of the ground you stand upon.
This avant-guarde tendency, like all barrier crashing impulses, runs the risk of catastrophic failure… and even when successful, alienates a giant portion of your potential viewership.
What is so treacherous of this image of a pipe? Of course it’s a damn pipe; why are you wasting my time with this nonsense?
The dismissal from the audience can only be over-come if the auteur is so bold that the thumbing their nose creates a vortex strong enough to pull in a requisite portion of the curious.
Well, Titane I think achieves this balance very well. With hyper-violence, erratic imagery, sexually explicit scenes, deeply disturbing and uncomfortable situations, confusing and otherworldly plots lines. It’s a frenetic mix of extremities that surprisingly binds the viewer to a tender and humane portrait.
Consider the purposeful casting of our main character, Alexis, as an inhuman monster; someone who is born wrong. A deviant whose heinous acts seem beyond redemption.
Then consider the subtle touch of her relationship with her father. After Alexis had been absurdly impregnated with what can only be considered chrome semen from a demon Cadillac, we find her sitting on the couch eating a bowl of cereal while watching television. Her father slinks around, clearly uncomfortable with her presence.
He’s not so much in tuned with her psychopathy as he is a cold and distant parent who doesn’t protect and shelter his child. Whether this can be seen as a failing or a reasonable reaction is the question posed to the user.
The graphic nature of the cinematography is both a feast and a clever juxtaposition. It paces perfectly with the movie. The hyper violence is utilitarian and is meant to en-rapture us. And from this over contrasting a strong them of sexual stereo-typing emerges. Men are macho, women are sex objects.
And though it appears obvious at first, we find that our protagonist is neither gay nor straight, and more animal, or possibly machine than human.
Or rather, that is the fundamental question the film posits.
Alexis is clearly an animal at her base, and is confused by human reactions. Maybe not so much heartless as she is untamed, and potentially unloved.
She is also a killer, first justly, then rampantly, destroying any assumption of her humanity.
It is both a plot device, pushing the story along, and a narrative device, helping explain the character’s motivations.
Alexis has a titanium plate embedded on the right side of her head, and the exposed scar resembles a brain. That organic metaphor aligns with a sub-theme of the story, where objects are biological and humans are cold and mechanical.
I am also struck by the raw imagery of her naked body. I feel it is used to punctuate her animal and human frame to prime us for the contrast of the mechanical. This dichotomy of machine vs human, animal instinct vs humanity.
There is no love or care from her father, so she finds identity and sexual gratification from the inanimate. It provides fuel for her animal lust. She later fucks a fire-truck for good measure. Alexis has a type.
The film states things quickly... her relationship with her father is broken, she is a problematic child, she operates in a society that values her body as an object... all of these things justify her actions. Even killing a potential female lover.. this is done to kill your expectation of her as a lesbian and as a human, before rebuilding her into a character deserving empathy.
There are two very difficult scenes where Alexis mutilates herself. The first to end her pregnancy, instigates an instant empathetic response from anyone with a pulse. The second is when she breaks her nose on the bathroom sink to escape the law.
A sporadic and filtered intro, with a fragmented memory montage, sets up the history. The absolute heaviest of subjects. A sexually abusive father, controlling, violent and oppressive.
These montages never cease.
One sister runs away. Our protagonist, Lidia, can swim, and finds her freedom with a university scholarship.
But Lidia's personal histories will plague her wherever she goes. Drugs and alcohol, rage and insecurity lead our poor swimmer down a predetermined path.
She escapes her inflicted horror only to find and dwell in a maybe lesser one. It’s about constantly searching for escape and finding dead ends.
We dive deeper into the father’s sins and his constant reemergence sets an unsettling tone.
Every scene is constructed to maximize your discomfort.
Lidia is a human that feels deeply, but is an exposed nerve.
In act two, cue the scene for Ken Kesey, played by Jim Belushi, who reads Lidia’s trauma like an article.
“Before my father was my father, he was beautiful”
There is a strong sense that Lidia is never safe. Kesey is a father figure, and in this film father’s are monsters, and maybe unfairly, maybe not, our fears never abate.
But act two is brief, and Lidia continues into act three, a woman severed from her past, ventures toward her future in act four.
"Fathers are often uncontainable while the little women swam for their lives."
This film has so many subjective flash scenes that the constant disorientation is clearly meant to reflect a portrait of Lidia's turmoil. She cannot escape the trauma. In this sense, the water both cleanses and fills all cracks and crevices.
"You can tell a lot about a person by seeing them in the water"
The catharsis of this movie comes when she confesses to a student, very plainly, that "My father was abusive." In a movie where the dialogue and writing is of such a strong ethereal and poetic nature, the straight bluntness of this exchange is a pace distortion that creates an almost perfect resolution.
"How so?" says the student
"Sexual" answers Lidia
"That sucks!" -- such perfect ironic simplicity
Kristen Stewart, her directorial debut, orchestrates this exchange perfectly. Surrounded by movie creation for decades, I suppose this skillful flourish shouldn't be that surprising, but I'm amazed anyway.
"I'm not speaking out of my asshole when I say this, but come in, the water will hold you"
The Chronology of Water is a near perfect movie but many audiences will likely struggle. But if Stewart follows this up with something of similar quality, in the next decade we all may label her an auteur and place her on a pedestal.
Of course the opening is over the top. Just bludgeoning you with severity. A man's daughter is missing, and we're listening in on his call with the 911 operator who is trying to keep the man focused on logistics.
This exchange is a clear attempt to heighten your senses and generate an emotional attachment to the story. But our protagonist's pleas are just way over hammed. We're not watching Sean Penn in Mystic River, but by God he sure is trying hard to make us believe that.
It's fine, I can take a few hard punches and keep in going, but the urge to abandon the campy review is strong.
The mise-en-scène is compelling if you can dismiss it almost certainly is over-washing the bleakness with a cold and stark, undersaturated and over contrasty colour pallet. Still, I'm a sucker for a forest water fall scene. The flock of white egrets, though likely unintentional, helped balance the phone call.
During the lengthy stylized opening credits, the music booms with pathetic resonance. The man’s name is Sam, and he is now in a cabin in the woods, moving through rooms with a focused, steady and vengeful determination. He’s planning something.
It's not an altogether terrible setup, but the fucking phone call continues to overdo it, and his infernal pleating is cloying.
So from this relentless scene, we cut suddenly to a group of three friends who are clearly about to meet the bereaved at the cabin. Something unpleasant is in store for these hapless bastards, otherwise why would we be here?
The edit and writing is clumsier than a 2am drunk, and adjusting to the broship of this trio is emotionally disorienting. It appears to be some form of comedic relief, dudes making fun of their dude friends, with punches to the shoulder and a quick unsuspecting snap to the balls. But we haven't achieved any emotional tension for this transition and I'm starting to wonder if I should blame the director or the editor.
More on that. The camera movements and sound effects are just corny circus level art direction. I can't blame the actors just yet, the choices so far by the creative team are an incoherent mess. I suspect, after watching a few awkward line deliveries that bad acting will also be on this greasy menu.
So quickly it's clear that we have a Reservoir Dogs styled plot to smoke out a killer and extract a confession through any means necessary. This is the equivalent of bringing a black light to a motel room. If you don't have professionals on staff, the execution is going to be worse than bad.
Yeah, this plot is insanely poor. The sequences and scenes are full of errors. At one point Sam is openly speaking to his sister-in-law on speaker, trying to verify information, but none of his prisoners, Barry, Mike and Jay think to call out to her?
It’s not even mentioned to keep their mouths shut, even though they’re all strapped to chairs within whispering distance. A caller should have at least asked if anyone else was in the room, since being in a secluded cabin in the woods makes hearing a pin drop reasonable.
So a bunch of other random time wasting events happen. Honestly, the idea here was to write something fun and campy, but maybe I don't have the wherewithal to push through shitty movies. The frequent b-shot of a spinning ceiling fan breaks all hopes that there might be some intention behind these camera angles, and movements, scene cuts and plot twists. But there just isn’t. It's almost as if the director didn’t bother telling the cinematographer or art director what the movie was about.
So now Mike is suspect numero uno, and Sam decides to drag him into another room. There are one three suspects, one of the HAS to be the murderer, or what's the point.. and obviously it's Mike. So anyway, Sam wants some alone time, and the his prisoners are jumping from an anxious mix of pleading for their lives to seething vengeful anger, and it's all bad and incoherent and pocked full of mistakes.. but then a scene happens that was clearly someone's half baked idea of a cool shot, and I cannot understand why no one thought to squash this brain fart instead of give it life.
Sam grabs Mike by the mouth with his bare hand, and drags him into a separate room. Why Mike does not bite down in self-defence is a level of absurd confusion that can only be explained as a the entire cast and crew being drunk and high on crack cocaine.
And Scottish Sam. Sheesh. I have no doubt that he's a true Scott's man, because that origin adds absolutely nothing top the story, but his acting is so bad that it sounds like he’s faking his accent. Serious... the real Scottish accent in this movie sounds terrible.
As we delve deeper there are a few silver linings for my cerebral investment. The movie is an excellent example of how poor scene building produces the reverse intended emotional effect.
Sam beats Mike for a confession, and the sound guy attempts to build tension with mounting buzzing resonant sound effects, while the camera man slowly zooms in to an uncomfortable distance attempting to increase the general malise. , but all i want to do is laugh.
Maybe they should have tried to write some comic relief here to invoke feelings of sympathy for these characters. There is not ethical or moral question here, though the writer or director is trying to make you believe there is one. It's just some unintentional slap stick. A person who tripped and fell down the side of a hill and is still flipping and flopping through the thicket to this very day.
And I guess let's talk about the dialogue.. sweet Christ. I suspected this movie would be more about challenging myself to maintain attention and to complete the tasks I set out on…. But the dialogue is making me abandon all hope.
Here’s a ridiculous exchange
“I got an idea, maybe we can chew through this tape?”
Ok genius, or maybe just rip it apart with a quick tug?
Oof… so contrived, everything is so contrived.
Finally Jay unties himself, seriously ripping off a single layer of duct tape … the effort so monumental I’m almost surprised he could manage it, but then he leaves his friend in the basement.
Jay just rumbles through the house, and tries to escape by himself, with Sam in hot pursuit. Or should i say in massively delayed pursuit. You’d think you’d jump to attention as two of your prisoners are strapped down in a room you haven’t checked on in 20 minutes.
Barry is about to talk to his wife, but he’s laughing hysterically on drugs.
Mike getting shot in the head, and his brother saying “Mike listen to me, are you ok?” Makes no sense.
So Mike is the murderer everyone… it was him all along. He also mustered someone else from their childhood.
I’m done… not all posts can be winners right? I’m done here. I just can’t find the motivation or the discipline.
