Masterworks of Cinema #8 - 'Irreversible'

On many occasions there have been films that have remained lodged in my consciousness for an inexplicably long period of time, but none with quite the same visceral grip or intensity as Gaspar Noe’s ‘Irreversible’ which, for several days after I saw it, dominated my thoughts to an obsessive degree before eventually retreating back to where it now lurks in a shadowy recess of my psyche.

‘Irreversible’ is a film that represents an immediate quandary for me – it is a film that is so staggeringly difficult to watch that I have real doubts about recommending it to others, and indeed anyone who (having read this essay) decides to watch it should do so advisedly. I first saw the film with my girlfriend (by no means a novice when it comes to extreme cinema), who was actually physically sick; the only time I’ve ever seen a film elicit such a reaction. It is not entertainment, it transcends that, as all masterpieces of an artistic medium should do.

On the other hand, I grapple with the strong conviction that this is a film everyone should watch if only ever once (and once, for most, will be enough). It is a film I consider to be of vital importance in terms of philosophy and temporality, and demonstrates a filmmaker pushing at the very outer edges of what cinema is capable of expressing. Perhaps more importantly, it is a commentary on sexual politics, on masculinity and femininity, and whilst I would very cautiously apply the label of a ‘feminist film’, it certainly observes the credo of J.G. Ballard when he said he aimed to “rub the human face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror.”

Ostensibly a film about rape and revenge, the narrative progression is reversed so that we see segments of time over the course of a night moving from the future to the past. We begin and end with the dictum that ‘time destroys all things’, which is the overriding mantra being explored (more on this later). 

 Explaining the night forwards, Alex (played by Monica Bellucci) and Marcus (Vincent Cassell) are an amorous new couple who attend a party with Alex’s ex-partner Pierre (Albert Dupontel). Tiring of Marcus’ intoxicated state Alex decides to head home, on the way passing through a subway tunnel in which she is subjected to a horrific and brutal sexual assault. Learning of this, Marcus and Pierre proceed to try and track down the perpetrator which leads them to The Rectum, a Dante-meets-Sade S&M gay club, in which they carry out their violent revenge.

Reversal of time:

The technique employed by Noe in reversing the chronological sequence of events is profoundly effective, changing as it does the entire perspective through which the audience respond to the later brutality towards Alex. From the start we are plunged into a claustrophobic and hellacious sex dungeon, disorientated to the point of nausea by Noe’s flailing camerawork and Thomas Bangalter’s mind-scraping low-frequency soundtrack. The sickening act of violence carried out by Pierre on a man (mistakenly) believed to be ‘la tenia’ (the tapeworm), is seen by the audience entirely out of context, such that we can only recoil utterly uncomprehending of how such savagery can have been remotely justified.

By separating the act of revenge and so forcing us to view it in isolation from the act that inspired it, we approach it with none of the moral difficulties that would otherwise be applied. What this means is that by the time we have endured the horror of Alex’s assault, we are transplanted straight into the reactionary psyche of Marcus and Pierre and are forced to view the earlier act of violence through the prism of our subsequent moral response.

By the time of the scene at the party, and we see Alex properly for the first time, she is the very epitome of sensuality and femininity. In complete opposition to the previous scene she is in complete control of herself, dancing with girlfriends gracefully and unselfconsciously, whilst Pierre and Marcus can only watch from the sidelines. As it is though, just as our perception of revenge is inverted by the chronology, so too is our perception of sexuality, as we now view Alex on the dancefloor very much separated through a transparent screen (another recurring image) by our awareness of her fate.


Masculine vs feminine:

It is this damning emphasis of scopophilia (deriving pleasure from watching) that magnifies the film's judgement on masculinity and femininity. In Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' she views the passive role of women in cinema as a means of arguing that the film provides visual pleasure through scopophilia and identification with the onscreen actor. The woman's inherent 'to-be-looked-at-ness', as Mulvey puts it, is a central issue in reducing her role to being the 'bearer of necessity' not the 'maker of meaning'.

In 'Irreversible', the fact that Alex is placed so prominently is integral to her centrality as the 'maker of meaning'; in contrast to what the philosopher Jacques Derrida would term 'phallocentric' representation - the privileging of the masculine in the construction of meaning.

Earlier I wavered on the idea of 'Irreversible' being a feminist film, but at the very least it is a profoundly anti-male one. Every male character is reprehensible and weak in their own way - they are lustful, brutal and desperate to exert power over others no matter how destructive the consequences. They are obsessed with pride and status (the rapist repeatedly refers to Alex being of a 'higher class' than he). They are, in the case of Marcus, obnoxious and loutish; or, in the case of Pierre, pseudo-intellectual and persistently lewd as he presses Alex for details of her and Marcus' sex life.



Indeed it is significant that Pierre is the character who carries out the dreadful violent assault that we see at the start of the film given that in the following scenes he is desperately trying to reason with the uncontrollable Marcus who is bent on immediate revenge. Pierre is the reluctant companion, high-minded and aware that violent retribution is futile yet unable to do anything to divert its inevitability. This can be seen as a damning analysis of man's inherent duality; the philosophic and intelligent may try to rationalise or ameliorate the aggressive anger of the more impassioned, but ultimately they perpetuate, and in many cases, end up enacting violence anyway. The means and route taken may be more convoluted but the bloody end is much the same, this is the lesson of man's history.

Even more damning perhaps in its symbolic resonance is the moment during the rape scene when our eye is drawn to the figure of a man enter the tunnel, see the act taking place and yet walk away; a devastatingly simple yet effective condemnation of masculine cowardice and instinct for self-preservation.

By contrast, Alex is sophisticated, graceful and refined; eager, not for there to be animosity or recrimination between her past and present lovers but for them to get along on good terms. Of course, being introduced to her via the horrific attack, her subsequent words take on additionally poignant texture. After play-fighting she tells Marcus, "I'm always the woman who decides", and on the train tries to explain the key to good sex to Pierre as not being dependent on focusing on the other person's pleasure - "you have to be selfish...if you focus on the other person's pleasure you freeze". 

What the film attempts to expose is the thin ice between selfishness and dominance, pleasure at the expense of another, and the body language of lovers - Marcus' hand covers Alex's mouth during play-fighting in the same way as the rapist's, and on the train his arm is locked across her body in a casual display of possession as she wistfully gazes elsewhere.


The rape scene: 

At the centre of the film is the scene which unsurprisingly generated a furore upon its release and led many to reactively condemn it as obscene. Alex enters the glowing red subway underpass, itself more than perhaps any other feature of the built environment is so evocative of insecurity and implied threat, where she is viciously assaulted in a scene lasting 9 unbearable minutes. 

From a stylistic point, the applied techniques are arresting in themselves, with Noe's frenetic and disorienting camerawork settling completely still and unflinching for the duration, forcing you to experience the entire event shorn of any filmic manipulation or tropes. As a piece of direction then it is handled masterfully, with absolutely none of the purposefully difficult ambiguity of something like 'Straw Dogs', you are left simply with the unfolding horror of aggressive domination. 

One of the primary reasons why I am convinced that everyone should watch 'Irreversible' and yet find it so hard to recommend is because of this scene. Firstly, because if we can contentedly stomach action-packed war or horror movies with all their glamorised death sluicing through our glazed minds, we should as part of a moral imperative be prepared to watch the representation of an act that is perpetrated in reality every single day.

Secondly, because it would render impotent the kind of adolescent 'rape porn' fantasies, and the 'rape culture' that is so worryingly prevalent among young males in today's society, where the idea of enacting sexual violence on women is seen as a 'soft crime' or subject matter for laddish 'banter'. Moreover, it might help in rendering inert the troublingly common instinctive response across society to lay implied blame at the feet of the victim, to believe that in some way 'they had it coming'.

Precognition: 

Essentially the rape-and-revenge narrative serves as a dramatic subtext for the real thematic exploration - that of the nature of time itself. The book that Alex refers to in the elevator, and that at the end we see her reading on the grass is J.W. Dunne's seminal 1927 text 'An Experiment with Time', which despite being involute is nonetheless something of a revelatory read. 

He thought that time was multidimensional and that in dreams our associational networks had the ability to explore our experiences in both the past and future time fields, giving rise in our waking life to sensations of déjà vu. He thought that the universe was 'stretched out in time and that the lopsided view we have of it - a view with the 'future' part unaccountably missing, cut off from the growing 'past' part by a travelling 'present moment' - was due to a purely mentally imposed barrier which exists only when we are awake. So that in reality the associational network stretches, not merely this way and that in Space, but also backwards and forwards in Time...' 

When Alex awakes with Marcus she sleepily recalls dreaming of a "long red tunnel" that breaks in two, but discards it as irrelevant as we have all involuntarily conditioned ourselves to do throughout our lives; limiting ourselves to one strictly linear progressive field of consciousness that can only be freed whilst in a dream-state.

Extrapolating on this then, one interpretation could be that all the events that take place are diffracted parts of a dream in the mind of the ‘higher’ observer, perhaps the version of Alex that we see at the end. It might even be the final thoughts of a comatose Alex before her death..?

The tautology that opens and closes the film – ‘time destroys all things’ – can then be seen as appropriate regardless of whichever way we view time, forwards or back. The forward progression of time destroys all matter, degrades beauty and fades consciousness moment by moment. But so does the reversal of time, in that we see the object after we’ve seen its destruction, we see how the love and happiness of Alex and Marcus has been destroyed by irrevocable future events, symbolised wonderfully by the shower curtain that hangs between them as they kiss. 

(Alternatively, if you wanted to pursue the condemnation of man theme, you could interpret the mantra as referencing the fact that time is a concept man invented to assign order to the world, ergo it is man that destroys everything; the world will continue regardless of time being conceptualised.)

Hope or futility?

To those thinking that this film, or my interpretation, is too depressing, can be reassured by the more hopeful way in which the film tries to reconcile itself to the future. At the beginning of the film, the two men whose identity is ambiguous speak of there being “no bad deeds, just deeds”, and “we have to go on fighting, go on living”; in itself almost an (im)moral code for man’s inherently destructive nature.

The men who approach Pierre and Marcus after Alex’s attack, tell them that “blood calls for revenge...vengeance is a human right”. And yet it could be said that the moral message of ‘Irreversible’ is that this cycle of violence and retribution is doomed to ‘destroy all things’, no matter how natural the instinct for revenge may be.

I recall reading several reports of rape victims who have described a tremendous feeling of catharsis and emotional release from their torment by facing their attacker and extending their forgiveness, thereby achieving a far higher plane of humanity. After all, physical pain through violent revenge, though overwhelming, lasts only a relatively short time and quickly dulls. Whereas, it is thought that an attacker being faced by their victim and forgiven by them may experience an exacerbation of their own internal guilt, condemning them to far longer-lasting trial by the jury of their own conscience.

It is this heightened response to such viciousness that I believe provides humanity, as of course is maintained through the teachings of Jesus Christ, with a chance to transcend its baser motivations and achieve profound spiritual well-being. This is also the significance of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ poster being on the wall of Alex and Marcus’ flat – the ‘starchild’ represents the concept of eternal hope that manifests itself into every newborn child but also into the collective weight of humankind trying to elevate itself to some notional ideal.

With ‘Irreversible’, Gaspar Noe created a film that is still deeply troubling, traumatic and yet uplifting all at once. It is a film that whilst featuring perhaps one of the most distressing scene between two people, also contains one of the most beautifully natural scenes of love between two people as well.

Whether it is, as I have speculated, a feminist film, or a film condemning masculinity for all its undeniable flaws, it is an example of a film that pushes at numerous boundaries in the conceivable limitations of an art form and challenges the audience to reassess their own moral judgements, and for that reason it is a film that should really be seen by everyone.

Masterworks of Cinema #7 - 'Inland Empire'

It’s about “a woman in trouble”, was all the enigmatic auteur David Lynch was prepared to elucidate regarding, to date, his last feature film; and in a sense that is about the sum total of what you should, and possibly can, hope to understand about ‘Inland Empire’.

In a sense nothing happens in ‘Inland Empire’ and yet at the same time in its 3-hour stretch it seems to encompass almost everything.  The whole film is a colossal illusion, a pregnant womb of confusion and wonder in which one simply has to bask in the amniotic fluid of Lynch’s warped reality.

My first viewing of the film was through a notable haze of intoxication that accentuated my conviction of its genius to such an assured level that a month or so later I had to return to it sober, and was relieved to come away still deeming it to be one of the finest films I have ever seen.

To try and summarise the plot with any kind of lucidity would be foolish, and yet I feel it necessary to make an attempt all the same.  Laura Dern plays Nikki Grace, a film actress who wins the role of Susan in a film called ‘On High in Blue Tomorrows’ alongside the handsome Devon as Billy (played by Justin Theroux).  The film’s director (Jeremy Irons) reveals to them both that it is actually a remake of a Polish film called ‘47’ which was abandoned when its two lead actors were murdered, with those involved believing it to have been cursed by folklore.

As they begin shooting, the illicit affair embarked upon by Susan and Billy appears to permeate into reality, at which point Nikki’s train of consciousness starts to become severely derailed; as she appears to relive aspects of the original Polish production and her troubled past, culminating in a fatal encounter on Hollywood Boulevard and the ambiguous aftermath.

At a reductive level, ‘Inland Empire’ can be said to be a film about the illusions inspired by Hollywood – ‘a place where dreams make stars and stars make dreams’ – that fracture into paranoia and madness.  This is surreal ‘Sunset Boulevard’-esque terra firma for Lynch given his 2001 film ‘Mulholland Drive’, but whereas that film relies upon the clever ‘Mobius strip’ conceit, ‘Inland Empire’ seems of an almost bipartite structure; the culmination of a lifetime’s imaginative endeavour, an aesthetic and narrative form in which nothing makes sense and possible interpretations are myriad, like staring at an endless series of mirrored reflections. 

Whilst promoting the film, Lynch would quote from the Hindu teachings ‘The Upanishads’ – ‘we are like the spider.  We weave our life and then move along it.  We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.  This is true for the entire universe.’ 

Hollywood being the epitome of dreams, the place where dreams are made real, it is the perfect mise en scene in which Lynch can weave his web of illusions.  It is my interpretation that the character of Nikki Grace is a cipher for a host of other lives and situations, spun together by the spindly thread of spirituality, perhaps even by the transmigration of souls across time and space.

An opening scene in which Nikki is paid a ‘neighbourly’ visit by a disturbing Polish woman is highly significant.  She tells of two folk tales; the boy who, after passing through a doorway, “caused evil to be born”, and a girl who, wandering lost through the marketplace “discovers a palace”. 

If the glamour of the palace can be read as the glittering success of movie stardom, then Lynch seeks to penetrate through that illusion with notions of the ‘troubled woman struggling in the marketplace’.  This could be interpreted through the whores plying their trade on Hollywood Boulevard; the young Polish woman demonized by the lecherous older man (the ‘Phantom’), who himself doubles as the shadowy and possessive husband of Nikki Grace; not to mention the allusions to childhood sexual abuse that Nikki makes in her ‘confessions’, where she tells of the various men she has known throughout her life.

There are recurrent thematic phrases that ripple throughout the film; from repeatedly imploring strangers to “tell me if you’ve known me before”, to referring to “an unpaid bill that needs paying”, certain people having “always been good with animals”, and “actions having consequences”.  Not to mention the stylistic tropes that Lynch relies on to striking effect – the pulsating red lampshades, the malevolent backlots of film studios, the foreboding corridors and dark doorways.

The joy of ‘Inland Empire’ is the sheer unease and intrigue it inspires and manages to sustain without dissolving into portentous disarray as it most likely would through the lens of a director less well-versed in the language of surrealism.  Of course, to less discerning viewers, it would be very easy to quickly get caught in the frustrating quagmire of Lynch’s vision.  What, for instance, is the significance of Nikki being stabbed on Dorothy Lamour’s sidewalk star?  What of the peering through the veil into some alternate realm of reality?  And what the hell to make of the anthropomorphic rabbit stageplay that recurs throughout, constantly watched on screen by a crying girl (the overarching ‘troubled woman’ perhaps?)  

I can only ruminate on the notion that the rabbits represent a sublimated and incomprehensible level of the subconscious mind in which the most bizarre manifestations of reality seem to make some kind of sense.

Perusing the vast swathes of online interpretation, several bring to bear the influence of Ambrose Bierce’s classic short story ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’, in which the exact moment before a man is hung becomes exploded into an elaborate alternate realm in which he manages to escape his fate.  (Along similar lines of temporal experimentation I would reference Chris Marker’s short film ‘La Jetee’ as a possible influence.)

It is possible that Nikki Grace as an entity is nothing more than a last eruption of imaginative thought sparked by the benile conversation of the people around her as she lies dying, with connotations of Icarus, in the gutter of Hollywood Boulevard.

Throughout the maze of ‘Inland Empire’ there are, round numerous corners, scenes of real invention that appear to be either dead ends or to lead into yet more mazes of possible interpretation.  Chief among them is after the consummation (real or otherwise) of Nikki and Devon’s affair, and her confrontation with a red neon roomful of Devon’s past lovers, displaying their perfect breasts and discussing his sexual prowess; an inspired visualisation of the paranoid ‘internal voices’ that can threaten to overflow and drown out rationality.

Of course, the climactic scene on the intersection of Hollywood & Vine, scored to Penderecki’s ‘The Awakening of Jacob’, is wonderfully unsettling, yet it is the final section that has inspired the deepest thought for me personally.

Instead of the ‘big reveal’ of the studio set after Nikki’s death calling into question the actuality of her fate, it is my interpretation that actually it serves to confirm all that went before in terms of the Hollywood film production being little more than a glamorised illusion.  After all, if (as the cliché goes) all the world really is a stage, then we all hope to leave to the applause of our peers and the reassurance “you were wonderful”, as Nikki does before entering a transient state ‘passing through’ the empty auditorium.

From there she descends into a hellish realm (Room 47) where she must confront her personal demon in the lecherous ‘Phantom’ before ascending, newly unburdened by fear, to the halcyon room in which her metaphysical self is migrated into the body of the crying woman, presumably releasing her from her tormented ‘limbo’ state.  Only once this final state of ataraxy is attained can Nikki truly be her ‘perfect self’, as in the final shot we see she has now become.

This is only my interpretation, and very possibly I have followed an erroneous scent down a Lynchian rabbit hole.  It is clear though that Lynch is something of an animist, and with this in mind I believe ‘Inland Empire’ represents the transient and web-like structure of dreams and spirituality that, from an animist’s viewpoint, exist just through the veil from, and beyond comprehension of, our illusion of linear reality.

Top 10 Films of the Year

In compiling this list I have decided to include films that may have been released internationally in 2013 but which I saw upon their release in UK cinemas in 2014.

10. 'Her' (Spike Jonze)

Spike Jonze's 'Her' is a compelling depiction of a near-future in which human relations have become fragmented and challenged by the development of 'sophisticated software' that has the faculties to emote and provide some kind of companionship for the lonely and disaffected in a digital world.

Whilst its premise may be contentious, there are certainly societal trends manifestly unfolding that render 'Her' a useful extrapolation of possibilities. For a film ostensibly about a man falling in love with his computer system, I found it rather affecting and an interesting view of where technology may be heading.


9. 'Calvary' (John Michael McDonagh)

Despite its flaws, 'Calvary' is a very worthwhile watch, in that it escalates tension to a satisfying conclusion and cleverly examines the resilient faith and conviction in the Stoic individual when all that seems to surround him is a cumulus of apostasy.

Read my full review of 'Calvary' here.


8. 'Blue Ruin' (Jeremy Saulnier)

A low-budget, independent American film, 'Blue Ruin' is a taut and effective revenge thriller with little in the way of genre pretensions to keep it from seeming either fresh or involving. It attempts to take the Peckinpah vigilante drama, as in 'Straw Dogs', and push it into oft-unexplored recesses of motive and retribution.


7. 'Norte - the End of the History' (Lav Diaz)

Lav Diaz's 'Norte' is a film that requires perseverance and patience; many shots linger interminably (despite the cinematography being constantly wonderful), and many scenes appear to languish unnecessarily; but the overall impact is of a sprawling, novelistic investigation into the lives and fates of two disparate men woven together by the strands of situation and circumstance.

Read my full review here.


6. '12 Years a Slave' (Steve McQueen)

It would be a stubborn philistine who managed to come away from Steve McQueen’s adaptation of Solomon Northrup’s harrowing autobiography without feeling some degree of emotional turmoil, and there are few films that really do demand mandatory viewing. The performances are outstanding and the overall handling of the subject is very well achieved.

 

At times I felt that McQueen’s direction was in danger of skirting over the line into the realm of gratuitousness, instead of maintaining a cold, affectless and ‘observer’ eye. Nevertheless, '12 Years a Slave’ is one of the hardest-hitting films of the year and certainly one of the most essential.

5. 'Two Days One Night' (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne)

As a portrait of resilience amidst despair and self-belief amidst doubt, 'Two Days, One Night' is an engrossing and affecting story about one woman facing redundancy unless she can convince her fellow colleagues to stand in solidarity and support her. As an example of natural realism it is reminiscent of 'Bicycle Thieves' in its instilling of justice and dignity in work, along with the assortment of ordinary people with their principles, convictions and foibles.


4. 'Citizenfour' (Laura Poitras) (documentary)

Set almost entirely within the claustrophobic confines of a high rise Hong Kong hotel room, as a unique insight into the life and circumstance of a man surrendering his life as he knows it for a principled cause, ‘Citizenfour’ is easily the most important documentary film of the year, if not the decade.

Read my full review here.


3. 'Boyhood' (Richard Linklater)

Richard Linklater’s ‘Boyhood’, 12 years in the making, is one of the most life-affirming films I have seen in a long time.  It is thoroughly well-observed, poignant and tense in all the right places and succeeds in pretty conclusively cordoning off the coming-of-age film as unsurpassable territory for quite some time.

2. 'Blue is the Warmest Colour' (Abdellatif Kechiche)

I can scarcely think of another film I've seen that captured so accurately the exhilarating high of falling in love, and the suffocating low of subsequent loss.

Read my full review here.


1.  'Under the Skin' (Jonathan Glazer)

Scarlett Johansson is superb in this bizarre and disturbing depiction of alienation and separation, an examination of the void that permeates between our sensibilities and emotional attachments. 'Under the Skin' is almost impossible to categorize, slithering as it does from one stylistic trope to another like an only slightly more restrained David Lynch film. From the homage to Kubrick in the opening 'birth' sequence onwards, the film presents a delightfully ambiguous commentary on modern society, exploring the vacuity of existence, the struggle to relate and the pervading sense of feeling decidedly 'other'.

'Citizenfour' - Edward Snowden, NSA, GCHQ and the death of privacy

There’s a moment about midway through Laura Poitras’ ‘Citizenfour’ which is loaded with such dramatic potency that by comparison any fictional thriller released this year is left looking like hyperventilating melodrama.  It comes as whistleblower Edward Snowden has just revealed himself as the public face of the scandalous intelligence leaks from the NSA and GCHQ. 

 

He stands tentatively gazing out of his hotel window at the Hong Kong cityscape, the urban arena of absolute anonymity juxtaposed with the fact that Snowden is now one of the most famous faces in the world.  He is the news that is currently breaking.  The camera remains trained on his back as he silently contemplates the ramifications of his actions, realising perhaps for the first time that the plate glass window separating him from the world beyond is now symbolic of the barrier impeding him from ever freely re-joining it.

 

Set almost entirely within the claustrophobic confines of a high rise Hong Kong hotel room, as a unique insight into the life and circumstance of a man surrendering his life as he knows it for a principled cause, ‘Citizenfour’ is easily the most important documentary film of the year, if not the decade. 

Hastily edited and completed in time for the climax of the London Film Festival, the film barely puts a foot wrong in 114 minutes, skating over the surface of such fast-moving events with a prickly nervous adrenaline. It begins with the thin lights of a traffic tunnel sinewing along in rhythm with the bristling static drone of Nine Inch Nails, that appear like the transoms of digital information coursing through cyberspace.  It is a revelatory moment in itself when this mysterious informant steps out from the shadows of his avatar and the cryptic email exchanges between himself and Poitras, and is revealed to be a young, self-assured but slightly edgy American guy  in a hotel room. 

His conviction that his actions are justified and moral is instantly tangible and only gains its legitimacy and strength as the film proceeds. For this is the real Snowden laid bare; eloquent, intelligent and apparently completely unblemished by any egotistical drive for infamy or fame.  The film manages to emphasise the glaring contrast between the very human reality here documented (becoming jittery with paranoia as a hotel fire alarm repeatedly sounds, for instance), and the farcical media portrayals of him being a Chinese and/or Russian spy, and having wantonly exposed swathes of American operatives to immediate danger.

While Poitras remains off-camera, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill initially seem slightly wary of Snowden, perhaps thinking to themselves that the whistleblower is too good to be true.  Indeed as they begin to trust him and he relates the audacious scale and implication of the intelligence networks, you can detect a definite sense of restrained excitement as though already imagining this to be their ‘Pentagon Papers’, their Woodward & Bernstein moment.  Not that I mean to question their motives, but nevertheless as career journalists you can sense them almost imagining the Pulitzer Prize that The Guardian would go on to win for the story.

 

By the time the film is over, you can’t help but leave the cinema and impulsively want to hurl your mobile phone against the nearest brick wall, or embark on a paranoid frenzy like Gene Hackman at the end of ‘The Conversation’.   The sense of hopelessness in the face of such vast and unaccountable power is palpable and inevitably is what fuels the wilful apathy of the masses to this day.  For what is perhaps the most striking and maddening legacy of the whole affair is the deafening chorus of shrugs that the story was met with.

Amongst my personal peer group, I remember angrily arguing to try and elucidate the outrage and indignation that was crystallised by the leaks, and finding myself outnumbered by the meek rejoinders of “what’s so wrong with it?”, “it’s hardly a revelation”, and (the most infuriatingly ovine) “if you’ve nothing to hide, what does it matter?!”

 

Far from being exceptional, this kind of apologia was the default mentality it seemed of the population at large.  It is telling, I think, of the current societal malaise that exposures can be released of an endemic and indiscriminate surveillance far broader and more pervasive than any Orwellian nightmare, unprecedented in the whole of human history, and, far from the chairs on the deck of the ship being rearranged, they barely seem have been budged at all.

 

James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, delivered a barefaced lie to the Senate Select Committee in March 2013 on the question of NSA’s civilian data collection, and yet astonishingly remains in his job; President Obama having assured him of his full confidence.  Leaks revealed that the NSA and GCHQ have infiltrated the users of World of Warcraft and Angry Birds; that using the crowbar of coercion they have backdoor entry to major internet companies including Facebook, Yahoo and Google; and, perhaps most insidious of all, have developed a programme of ‘Smurf’ apps that enable high-precision geolocation and devices’ microphones to be activated remotely.

The response of governments was telling in its own way. The US government instantly moved to revoke Snowden’s passport and brand him a traitor on the grounds of having threatened national security. In the UK, the government went to the ludicrously draconian lengths of entering the offices of The Guardian and personally overseeing the destruction of laptops and other hardware that might have contained encrypted materials. That they chose to undermine the principle of a free press in this manner as well as detain Greenwald’s partner David Miranda at Heathrow Airport for 9 hours on spurious grounds of carrying sensitive security information illustrates the deluded panic that they had been thrown into by the leaks.

 

In Germany, the response was relatively muted until it was revealed that Angela Merkel’s phone had been placed under surveillance by US intelligence at which point they assumed the mantel of outrage. This is telling because it demonstrates a lack of adequate concern regarding the privacy of civilians, but plenty when it concerns the highest echelons of power (who surely can’t have been that surprised that foreign interests were trying to spy on them?)

Meanwhile, Putin has mooted the idea of cleaving away from the internet and establishing an exclusively Russian alternative devoid of foreign infiltration.

Whatever the long term ramifications, it’s hard not to see this as being the end times for the internet as we know it; an epoch destined to be seen as a brief Eden-like glimmer when information was freely available and largely unmonitored, when the notion of privacy as a citizen of a western state hadn’t become so tattered and threadbare.

 

 

The close of the film shows Greenwald relaying to Snowden the news that a second whistleblower has emerged, inspired by his brave example. He shows him a figure representing the number of people on the US government’s watchlist, currently under surveillance as a potential threat or suspect. The number is a gargantuan 1.2 million.

Regardless of the extent of any additional leaks, that figure tells you everything you need to know about the heightened state of American paranoia that has possessed them since 9-11, resulting in the impinging upon constitutional rights and liberties on a scale that must have so astronomically exceeded Osama Bin Laden and the other terrorist plotters’ wildest dreams.

The multiplier effect of the metadata from one person’s connections to the next allows for a colossal outreach in the agencies’ dragnet. So if you have, say, 200 friends on Facebook, if you are inexplicably labelled as a ‘potential threat’ for some arbitrary reason, that means they can also access those additional 200 people as well (potential ‘accomplices’ perhaps?).

It is depressing to realise that there is so little prospect of change on this issue of data freedom and online privacy. Sadly, it just doesn’t seem to be of pressing concern to western civilians, who are far more easily distracted with the perennial matters of Europe, immigration, the odd political scandal or inquiry, and the constant crisis with the NHS. But be that as it may, it is reassuring to know that people with ethical principles and courage such as Edward Snowden are willing to come forward to enlighten us as to the crooked and pernicious practices of the powers-that-be, and in that spirit ‘Citizenfour’ is a thoroughly worthy celebration.

Masterworks of Cinema #6 - 'Martyrs'

Regarding films, as well as art in general, the very finest are frequently found to levitate above the landscape of the medium, held aloft by the ballast balloons of cultural critique so that it is almost impossible to approach them free of expectation. So it was that I viewed Pascal Laugier's 'Martyrs' with scarcely any awareness of its content or subject matter aside from it being held within the crude crucible of the New French Extremity movement, alongside others such as 'Inside', 'Livid', and 'Trouble Every Day'.

The gratification to be gained therefore from discovering it to be one of the most visceral and transgressive films ever made was magnified intensely. It must be said that I don't approach it lightly, singing the praises of such a film given that its gruellingly graphic violence and harrowing content will surely alienate and repulse many viewers. Indeed, the scythe of opinion sliced audiences markedly in two upon its release, and have remained divided ever since.

In my view, 'Martyrs' easily surpasses almost the entire undergrowth of exploitation or 'torture porn' horror films that have perforated the mainstream over the last couple of decades, by constantly confounding expectations and by daring to tackle weighty Manichean enquiries of embattled light/good and dark/evil.

The chief success of the film is in the way it manages to contort itself away from conventional horror tropes in a way expressly designed to disorient and confuse the audience. So the first hour proceeds as a more orthodox genre piece - a harrowing opening sequence of a bloodied and bruised child fleeing a rundown industrial complex, and the tormented dreams and delusions of the child in a care home thereafter. Fifteen years on, an apparently normal family are slain in cold blood at the breakfast table by a ruthless assassin who we subsequently learn is the young girl Lucie come to wreak her ambiguous vengeance.

Still she is possessed by terrifying visions of a monstrous being that compel her to brutal blasts of self-harm. Anna, her friend (and we are lead to believe lover), clings to her conviction of Lucie's victimhood but, like we the audience, cannot help but play host to the doubt that she may in fact be deranged. Gradually though we come to realise that the demon possessing Lucie is the psychological manifestation of an extreme guilt harboured for failing to help another young girl escape her torture 15 years previously, and for which the slaughter of the family (presumably the perpetrators) is her attempt at atonement.

It is this deconstruction of our formal belief systems regarding victimhood that resonates so powerfully for contemporary society, with the Yewtree investigations and the Rotherham sex gangs being such pertinent issues. So quick and adeptly are we to claim the role of victim for ourselves and our own misfortunes, but so equally swift to admonish those that may have a more legitimate and needful stake to the claim.

It is around the hour mark that the film begins to diverge away from this more familiar territory, as Anna is taken prisoner by a mysterious sect led by Mademoiselle who reveals to her their real intent. They seek to administer periods of methodical and systematic suffering to their victims in the hope of eventually cultivating their 'transfiguration' and making them a martyr.

The term 'martyr' derives from the Greek word meaning 'witness', and as Mademoiselle explains to Anna, 'martyrs survive pain, survive total deprivation. They bear all the sins of the mortal world, they give themselves up, they transcend themselves.' Upon achieving this transcendence through extreme suffering they might just glimpse through to 'the other side' and in so doing perhaps obtain the fundamental truths behind our very existence.

Accordingly, Anna passes through various stages of rebellion, despair and insanity to an eventual state of complete dehumanisation, her own self having been decidedly eroded. She is kept alive and beaten by anonymous operatives who proceed with a workman-like efficiency devoid of sadism, instead acting in the vein of Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' dictum.

It is at this point that audience members will enter an internal wrestling bout with the film. Although the first act surpasses any of the 'Saw' or 'Hostel' gore-fests, it does so in a more familiarly squeamish manner. By contrast, the second act's relentless envelope-pushing in terms of documenting pain as a means of empirical investigation is a deviation into jarring, and purposely alienating, moral terrain.

Of course, what imbues the film with its legitimacy in my view and prevents it from appearing exploitative or flippant, is the historical nature of martyrdom and the all-too-recent examples of pain deployment in the name of some higher cause that continue to disturb our collective sensibilities.

Traditionally, martyrs were deemed to be holy and held in high regard by their followers for 'bearing witness'. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Christians were martyred for their faith by public burning by the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th and 17th centuries; and of course, the most famous martyr of all is Jesus Christ, the emblems of whose pain and suffering stare you in the face almost the instance you enter a church.

But it would be an error, as Mademoiselle tells Anna, to regard martyrs as an exclusively religious phenomenon. During the Holocaust, Drs. Mengeles and Rascher conducted twisted pseudo-scientific experiments on camp inmates such as exposing them to extreme temperatures and altitudes, performing transplants and vivisections, and using them as guinea pigs for a whole host of poisons, gases and other medical drugs. This was carried out with the same cold and calculated obedience as is portrayed in the film, with the deluded aim of attaining greater knowledge through others' suffering leading to some kind of enlightenment.

Consider as well, Unit 731 which was a covert research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII. Between 3,000 - 12,000 people (mostly Chinese) were systematically killed in experiments involving amputations, deprivation and biological weaponry. (As a side note, after the Imperial Army surrendered, the American government assisted them in covering up these wretched atrocities in exchange for the research data which they deemed to be of value in their on-going conflict with the Russians...)

The communistic social experiments of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot that claimed the lives of untold millions throughout the 20th century, also indicate a despotic authority ruthlessly engineering progressive policies that were designed so that the stated aims would justify the harsh means by which they had to be employed.

Look as well, at how humans have long utilised animals as a means of testing whole pharmacies of drugs and other products that aim to further our scientific understanding and subsequent enrichment of life.

Anna, once broken down fully and flayed alive by a surgeon, begins to transcend her physical reality in a wonderful '2001'-esque sequence gazing briefly through some mystic portal, that cosmic dimension which we all may eventually traverse. Similar to '2001', Laugier closes the film with an ambiguity that throws up a myriad of theories and conjecture - Mademoiselle, having had Anna's insight imparted to her, chooses to commit suicide, telling the congregation of her organisation to "keep doubting".

Perhaps Anna relays the fact that there really is nothing on the other side, that all her searching has been in vain; or perhaps she is told of the eternal damnation that awaits her for her crimes. Personally, I like to think that she was told of something so beyond the realms of our earthly comprehension, something either so sublime, evil or alien that she was simply not able to continue living a human existence in the full consciousness of such a revelation.

In the end this is, I believe, the film's overarching message; whatever it is that lies beyond, whatever can or cannot be attained through martyrdom, it is simply not knowledge to which we should be privy, we are mentally ill-equipped to fathom the boundless possibilities of whatever lies beyond this world and so indeed we are compelled, for the sake of our own humanity, to keep doubting.

Masterworks of Cinema #5 - 'Bicycle Thieves'

There are a certain few films that carry such a weight of cultural significance that it becomes imperative that the individual take measures to absorb them. ‘Bicycle Thieves’, in my view, is one of these films. Indeed, so highly do I rate the film’s merits that I believe it to be one that should almost be made compulsory viewing.

Made in 1948 by Vittorio De Sica, the film is perhaps the apotheosis of Italian neo-realist cinema; a movement leant significant traction by 1945’s ‘Rome, Open City’ (certainly, the two films could almost be seen as a custom-made double-bill).

Set in post-WWII Rome, the city’s workforce are struggling amidst the incessant drudgery of low employment, with scores of men hankering after each menial opportunity that arises. Ricci is just one forlorn face in the multitude of desperate men, so when he is offered the job of poster-sticker he is overjoyed at the fortunate hand that has been dealt him and his young family.

Maria, his long-suffering wife, makes one more, in what one senses is a long line of sacrifices, and trades in the family’s bed linen for a bicycle that is a stipulation of his job. But the hot springs of optimism are swiftly doused when it is stolen by an opportunist thief on his first morning of work.

The narrative tags along at the heels of Ricci and his young son Bruno on their desperate hunt across the city, becoming increasingly despondent and frantic as the chances of retrieving the bicycle dwindle into hopelessness, culminating in a dramatic moral balancing act upon the handlebars of Ricci’s conscience.

Following the neorealist lead of his forebears, De Sica filmed on the beleaguered streets of Rome, casting amateur actors whose real life circumstances were not dissimilar from those of his protagonists, thereby infusing the drama with an affecting documentary-style undercurrent.

Throughout the film, the simple bicycle comes to symbolise the sought-after bridge of opportunity between disparate points of reality; whilst representing mobility, not only in the physical but in the socio-economic sense as well.

It becomes an instrument of industriousness and enterprise, to be cherished with pride and sorely coveted when dispossessed. In one scene, Ricci and his friends hunt around a marketplace where bicycle component parts are piled high in such a way that the rows of disembodied frames, racks of tyres and miscellany of small parts come to engender wagons of food through the eyes of the starving.

The superfluity of things bearing down on everyone is painfully documented; from the mass anonymity of people going about their business in the city, pushing and shoving onto tramcars, to the perverse multi-storey racks of pawned bed linen that have been horded away by officials.

As well as this, the film highlights the predictable institutional roles that are found in times of austerity: conditional charity offered by the church; socialists pontificating on the struggles of the common man during evening gatherings; and people finding themselves resorting to irrational delusions as a means of hope, in this case a local fortune teller.

The gulf between social classes is never more salient than when Ricci decides to treat Bruno and himself to a meal in the restaurant, only to be looked down upon by a wealthy family scoffing and slurping through pasta and champagne. The artifice of Ricci’s bonhomie doesn’t hold up for long under the forensic glare of such ostentatious inequality.

The bicycle becomes potently emblematic of the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, to the extent that in the climactic scene, the sight of such an abundant mass overwhelms and corrupts Ricci’s good sense. Anguish scars his face as he acknowledges how the desperate circumstances forced upon him by an impoverished society, have cost him not only his job but his dignity and self-respect as well. Bruno taking his father’s hand is a gesture that is at once heart-breaking and, in some small way, redemptive.

Aside from the film’s aforementioned merits, it is the density of resonance with contemporary society that makes ‘Bicycle Thieves’ essential viewing. With the Keynesian work/leisure promise having proven false, people working as long and hard as ever, and the scourge of unemployment afflicting most western nations post-financial crisis (in particular, Italy); the film encapsulates the harsh realities that tangle like barbed wire through the labour markets.

I have seen in South Africa the morning queues of men waiting by the roadside hoping for a day’s work; together with the swathe of zero-hours contracts blighting this country today, are evidence of the same demoralising imbalance of powers between worker and employer.

What ‘Bicycle Thieves’ succeeds in reinforcing is the real dignity that is invested in work, the self-inflicted penitence when it is withdrawn, and the universal desire simply to earn a living and provide for one’s family.

In times of inevitable war and economic upheaval, it is incumbent on society to resist the all-too-common (and often government-instigated) tendency to scapegoat and demonise those hit hardest. Doing so only succeeds in stripping us of our human decency whereas, if this film demonstrates anything, tolerance and solidarity ought to be the virtues that are promoted.

With that in mind, I think ‘Bicycle Thieves’ is a film that all politicians should be forced to watch, perhaps on an annual basis, as a rejuvenating top-up of their compassion levels like emotional vampires. For if the implied values promoted in the film were adhered to, it could well act as the empathetic pin to burst any over-inflated ideological bubble.