Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Curious, Unsettling, and Highly Questionable, May 18, 2005
When I rented Twentynine Palms, I knew it would showcase Bruno Dumont's taste for dispassionate portrayals, violence of various sorts, and shock. In spite of this mental preparation, this very atmospheric film built to a grotesque resolution that left me, a seasoned viewer, rattled. Unfortunately, the shock and awe that the film achieves is short lived. Twentynine Palms is modeled on the horror film, but, like many of its American cousins, the horror it achieves failed to haunt me. The film as a whole left me with an unsettled feeling, as if a cynic had just talked my ear off. I also had the sense that this was more about the worldview of the director, rather than the world his film creates.
Sam Peckinpaw's STRAW DOGS is in ways a similar but superior film. I can admire STRAW DOGS based on its many strengths, so long as I avoid viewing it as the MAN-AS-ANIMAL fable that Peckinpaw intended. It isn't that I disagree with his view of humans as domesticated animals. I see the film as a rare example of violent drama and technical virtuosity transcending the simplicity of its maker's defense. Whether Peckinpaw has a point or not seems beside the point. Of course, the trick with any argument is in having good evidence. In pressing one's point of view, there is, almost inevitably, an artful description of a scene, one that reflects the viewer's position. In this way, films have the strange ability to create their own myths; their own arguments. To invest a film with one's views too forcibly can dull the work's independent life, its peculiar logic, with the sententiousness of fables.
Watching Twentynine Palms, it seems impossible to avoid questioning Dumont's personal views. This is because so many of the events described in the film are implausible. Lacking believable characters and action, one naturally develops a sense that the director is revealing something to us that we haven't seen; something unique to his vision. If the strange behavior of the two principles was about their uniqueness and their relationship (e.g. as outsiders) then why would Dumont undercut their characterization, denying us a belief in them as individuals, or, more profoundly, as points of identification? I gradually came to view the two principles as an every-couple, with private rhythms and misunderstandings that might appear absurd if made public. This seemed like a worthy focus, but Dumont forces it to play against a theme of violence, both seen and unseen. The violent atmosphere of the film was something I couldn't account for until the resolution, and even then with difficulty.
Toward the end of film, we're given a horrific equation of two orgasms: that of the male protagonist and that of his rapist, the film's principle antagonist (aside from the desert). Both orgasms are shown to be dangerous, powerful, and unspeakable (or, at least, not clearly worded). This equation discounts the context in which the orgasms occur, leaving the viewer with no reliable distinction of the protagonists from their insanely hostile environment. Clearly, the bourgeois, carefree lifestyle of the couple is set up to be cut down (a horror convention), but Dumont makes the attack personal in the most perverse way. From early in the film on, the protagonists suggest an inner horror, which is unmitigated by their lovemaking, and perhaps even feeds on their relationship. The irrationality of their environment makes the couple our most recognizable guides on this strange road trip, but they demonstrate their own measure of insanity. The male half of the couple betrays an undercurrent of sadism that eventually explodes as an act of sexualized murder. The female's deviance is less clearly defined, but there are several scenes in which she is shown inviting harm. If our trip, as it seems, is through a kind of anti-Eden, and our guides are an every-couple, with no structured identity of their own, then their deviancy would suggest a kind of universal infection, or nature, rather than an aberration of character. This would also render the criminality of the final scenes uncertain, in light of their amoral setting.
Some would say that the best criterion for judging a horror film is whether it horrifies, regardless of how. This is an unsettling film. It is also an especially tasteless one. In watching this DVD, it may be useful to some viewers that Dumont can be found rationalizing his use of violence (indeed, his violence as an artist) in an interview, in a director's statement, and in the course of the film itself.
|
|
|
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"there are no beautiful women; there are no strong men", September 30, 2004
Referencing the American remake of Breathless and Deliverance (and not in the obvious way) without commenting on them, Twentynine Palms offers up shocking finale for which even the promise of a shocking finale will not prepare you. Often, sudden and violent endings feel desperately tacked on so that audiences have something to talk about and distributors have something by which to sell the film. In this case, however, the finale really causes you to reexamine the material. Bruno calls this an experimental horror film; his interview and statement of purpose are a bit overly-grave and under deep-he repeats himself on but a few points and says very little beyond the idea that he thinks people are really animals. Though that is basic stuff I give the benefit of the doubt to him and assume that we are getting a poor translation. In short, I think the point of the film is better realized in this film itself than it is in Bruno's translated discussion of it.
The demonstration of every human's vulnerability in this film is so graphically and unexpectedly rendered as to make it, in fact, one of the more terrifying films I've seen as an adult. It doesn't mean to remind us of the monster in the closet or the monster in our own hearts so much as it means to remind us that we are flesh and blood exposed to all the monstrosities of the world, regardless the strength of our minds, the intelligence of our emotions. In the end, brutal death is waiting and "deserve has nothing to do with it".
It brings to mind the Charles Bukowski quote: "There are no beautiful women; there are not strong men". For in this film, everything is broken down.
|
|
|
29 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The worst movie I've seen in the past 5 or 10 years, March 5, 2005
Others have already described the movie; so I shall not repeat what has already said.
Dumont makes a movie, somewhat reminiscent of the late 60s early 70s "road" movies, in which a couple, gets in a car and drives off, to nowhere in particular. I hated those movies, but at least, in those movies the emotions the characters exhibited had some kind of rationale to it. Here the emotions are totally disconnected from reality, have nothing to do with what is going on in the screen, and seem only to be there to move the plot, if there is one, along.
Katia, the girl, who seems quite psycotic if you ask me, keeps getting angry for no reason whatsoever; for instance, she entices pair of dogs to follow their moving car, then gets p#$sed at her boyfriend, when he hits one of them. By the time the movie approaches its dismal end, I did not care anymore how the director was going to wrap it up.
The DVD includes a "Director's note of intent" (always a bad sign) A mix of Felliniesque dialog, blended with Sun Tzu; not a good combination. At the end of the "note of intent" the director finishes with "Envisage this film only in relation to the means employed and so only work from instinct"
Well, instinct will not get you a viewable movie; I don't think you could make a worse movie, if you were trying to achieve it. It is not the violence or sex, other movies have that but still have some redeeming values, photography, artistic creation. There is no redeeming value in this. Just a waste of the DVD plastic.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
DVD ~ Petra Morzé
DVD ~ Charles Berling
DVD ~ Rocco Siffredi
DVD ~ Yumeka Sasaki
DVD ~ Gry Bay
