Customer Reviews

Wax: Discovery of Television Among the Bees [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's fun to see the wildly divergent reviews below. Some people obviously "get" this film, and others are left bored and uncomprehending. Should you watch it? Did you like "Eraserhead"? Did you like 'Being John Malkovich"? Do you listen to alternative music and read William Burroughs novels and SF and Charles Bukowski? Are you on drugs? Answering "yes" to any two of the preceding questions qualifies you as a good bet for WAX. Blair put a lot into this, and the right viewer will get a lot out of it. I loved it.

I recommend this movie. Though I have not seen "Wax" in about 10 years, it made an impression on me... There is a particullar scene where the protagonist is sitting at home in his living room, wearing his bee keeper outfit and mask. This made him look similar to an astronaut. On his tv was nasa mission control, co-ordinating a space flight... Now, this movie constantly defies space and time within its own storyline. Characters from different locations and eras of time are in action "simultaneously" if you will. It is as if time is just a physical distance like miles or inches are, and this idea became quite effectively expressed in this scene, as the main character sat messing with some little knick-knacks or whatever in front of his tv, while on the tv nasa fiddled with their stuff while in front of their own tv's and I think there was maybe the astronauts in their capsule as well, plus the activity of characters from another time-era going on... I saw the reflection of my friends and myself in the glass of the tv screen we were watching, and at that moment it occured to me that we were engaged in the same sort of activity the characters all were, but in our own space, in front of our own tv monitor and doing our own small activity... Collectively, we were in different places and times, but connected and present in a single timeless central moment-location, as it were, with the characters on the tv and it was, breifly but rather profoundly, very real and unsettling.

Wax's 100-percent unique story suceeds for the sober-minded viewer as well, but there's no denying its full gestalt when absorbed on other levels. Between its space-time-continuum-conquering protagonist and its eerie sense of nostalgia laced with destiny -- this ambitious film attempts to answer some of life's deepest questions while still remaining understandable to any open-minded viewer. In terms of its fidelity to its plot, it plays fair -- which is quite an accomplishment for its trippy aesthetic. It encompasses so many genres (mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, stream-of-consciousness, etc.) that it trancends them all. The result is the kind of rich, one-of-a-kind cult film that one can be proud to share with his or her friends -- because chances are, they haven't seen it. Wax derives part of its unnerving feel from its documentary-esque exposition: the unsettlingly-voiced narration unfolds like a campfire lecture, and combined with its complementary visuals the effect is nothing short of spellbinding. The plot is complex, to be sure, but it is so well crafted from a technical standpoint (with mesmerizingly effective use of repetition). Critics of Wax can never call it boring, because its plot is so full of effective twists that it will crawl under your skin and stay there. And again, if one wishes to enjoy it without the use of mind-altering anythings, simply turning out the lights will do. This film deserves more widespread viewership, for nothing else than its originality and the sheer mastery of its craft.

This is the student film I always wished I hade made in college. Despite being more or less opaque on the first viewing, it has a deep and strange undertow. It is dreamlike, in that it has recurring characters but no linear plot. Instead, the narrative seems to mutate, exhausting a series of permutations which take place simultaneously in Babylon 500 BC, New Mexico 1945, and Iraq 1991. The film gave me the impression of being subtly manipulated by force just beyond my awareness. When it ended and the lights came on, I half-expected to awake in a North Korean re-education camp, or on a UFO. For fans of Kurt Vonnegut, Phillip Dick, and David Cronenberg. A powerful memetic mutagen...

(I actually meant to give it four stars)This is a movie to watch alone with headphones. You have to let the narrarator hypnotize you with the very sound of his voice. You've got to be calm and hold no expectations of action, violence, etc... Just pay attention to the story and it will unravel itself naturally. Some of the computer graphics get annoying because they are so low-budget, but the story itself takes the attentive viewer on a trip they will not soon forget. sometimes you have to turn something completely inside-out to see what is inside of it. This movie explores the human psyche in that sort of fashion. Bringing the inside to the outside.

Marshall MacLuhan says that artists are the first ones to feel the omens of the times. Like with Picasso's Guernica, artists are nutting out how to express in a definite form a premonition that something is not quite as it seems before the general population are aware that something is changing.

Burn the video tape at the store? It's disturbing when audiences and reviewers mock what they don't understand, and then wish to destroy it.

First of all, to enjoy or understand this film on any level you must throw all of your preconceived notions about what a movie is or should be out the window and prepare to experience something that is a cross between the History Channel, an Errol Morris film, the X-Files, a computer going through a violently potent acid trip and a novel alternately written by William Gibson, J. G. Ballard and William Burroughs. Wax is a movie that goes through spasms of psychedlic highs and banal stretches. It can be tough going at times: while the computer graphics are occasionally dazzling they are just as often repetitive or cheesy (an unavoidable outgrowth of the low budget combined with high ambitions); the narration is nausetatingly deadpan (although in a weird way this seems to add to the movie's alien, unsettling nature); for the first 30 minutes or so it doesn't seem to understand where its going, or what its purpose is. And anyone who makes it through the opening sequence (which looks and sounds like a new-wave music video from the early 80's that even MTV would have rejected) without laughing or rolling their eyes deserves a big pat on the back and a cookie. BUT...

The movie really is innovative and thought-provoking once you dive under the surface, and its genuinely worth sitting through the shaky beginning to see where the story goes (although it takes patience and commitment-even I didn't watch it all the way through in one sitting during my first viewing) It also benefits from repeated viewings because it takes a while for the film's mode of storytelling to seep into your bloodstream and each successive watching will allow you to gather facts and details that you will inevitably miss the first time around. Admittedly this movie will forever lurk in the dusty, shrouded realms of the "cult" film because the average moviegoer doesn't want to deal with the existenial or with abstract concepts. At the end of this film I felt refreshed despite its many flaws; this was truly not the same old, same old. David Blair has done something nearly impossible: he has conbined the worlds of literature and of the motion picture (often quite seamlessly, I might add); another way to look at it is that David Blair has created the autobiographical dream documentary, a totally new and unique genre!!!! For the adventurous willing to overlook various cinematic blotches, but not for those who thought Armageddon was deep.

What's not to love in such a combination? Okay, the effects and transition and computer-generated sequences show their age today, but the idea content of this film is just as timely today. Smart bombs over Mesopotamia? Check. Style-based politics? Yep. Some view this as a fictionalized documentary and others as a science fiction film. Either way, it's a beautiful mystery of the interface between mankind's actions and nature.

This is a very thought-provoking movie. I am primarily writing this in defense, as I have seen there are some who are too mindless, insensitive, or heartless to understand it; like all great, interesting things, its message is hidden, but that shouldn't be a demerit.

And, alas there clearly wasn't enough money to do it justice. Nonetheless, I encourage anyone to see it; it has a profound message.

A terrific psychedelic art film with a creepy, universal conclusion. Also includes bonus humor. I assume many hours were spent rendering effects.