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Fox's unilaterally waged "War on Christmas" (it was really more like a delcaration of faith-based economic sanctions than an all-out retail-religious Crusade) has been put away until next year, when they will again resurrect it for the purpose of cynically pimping baby Jesus to help sell more consumer products. But if there was any spectre more depressing than the ongoing factual disaster of Bill O'Reilly this Yuletide season, it may have been -- for some critics, anyway -- the cannily counter-programmed Christmas Day opening of the Australian horror film "Wolf Creek." (Those Weinstein brothers are nothing if not tricky! And you thought I was going to say Michael Medved, didn't you?)
Roger Ebert gave it zero stars and compared it to a carnival geek show where a guy bites the heads off chickens: "No fun for us, no fun for the guy, no fun for the chicken. In the case of this film, it's fun for the guy." Sometimes a critic's job comes down to something just that simple: to watch the movies so that you don't have to.
Seattle Times film critic Moira Macdonald didn't review "Wolf Creek." She walked out of it 2/3 of the way through, and instead wrote about why she bailed:
As I sat in the theater, barely able to look at the screen, I thought of how someone's real death inspired this "entertainment" — opening in theaters, ironically, on a holiday that traditionally reflects joy and goodwill. And I realized that, unlike the characters, I did have a means of escape. To stay, I would have had to become numb: to look away, to remind myself repeatedly that this wasn't real, to remove myself from the experience entirely. And that's not how I ever want to approach a movie.I tend to like horror movies, in part because the genre is dark and disreputable. Like science fiction, horror can also be the perfect vehicle for very ambitious filmmaking that mainstream movies are just too afraid (or lazy) to try. But, in this case, I sympathize with Moira. I walked out on "Porky's 3: Revenge" for many of the same reasons she cites. That was years ago, when I was on assignment to review it for The Seattle Times. (Small world.) And, like Moira, I fully admitted that in print.
Sometimes people ask me if critics get hardened to movies — if we never laugh, cry, or gasp in horror; if the images that we see are simply passing before our eyes, to be noted rather than experienced. I can only speak for myself, but the answer is no. What I see in a dark theater often stays with me long afterward, for good or ill. "Wolf Creek" sickened me, to the point that I couldn't be in the same room with it any more.
Perhaps that means McLean's film did exactly what it was intended to. So be it [...]
Having walked out once, I've no intention of making a practice of it. But I'm not sorry I made an early exit from "Wolf Creek." I only wish I'd done it sooner, so the sound of that screaming wouldn't still be echoing in my head.
It was the relentless misogyny that finally drove me out. (Misanthropy, on the other hand, is fine -- at least it's fair and balanced loathing -- and I'm a big admirer of Stanley Kubrick.) Not that misogyny is an uncommon commodity in movies (or pop culture in general -- from "Hustle & Flow" to gangsta rap to sitcoms and reality shows), but in "Porky's 3" there's a cartoonish "ugly girl" character who was the dehumanized butt of so much of the movie's cruel and nasty (failed) attempts at "humor," that my despair for humanity (which is never far from the surface of my psyche to begin with) overtook me, and by the time the movie's inevitable Big Game started in the final act ("No, please -- not the cliche of the climactic Big Game! Anything but that!"), I was ghost like Swayze. (See item.)
I wrote in a recent post about watching Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" and how it upset my dog Edith even more than me. I turned it off (to quiet Edith) and grabbed my laptop to find what people had to say about the movie. I found a fascinating quote from Haneke in a Chicago Reader review:
In an interview in Sight and Sound it was suggested to Haneke that a viewer who wouldn't want to watch or participate in a real act of violence would just walk out of this movie. He agreed, adding, "Anyone who leaves the cinema doesn't need the film, and anybody who stays does." In a statement included in the movie's publicity materials he describes the complicated relationship between representations of violence in both documentaries and fiction and our perceptions of the reality of violence, then spells out his intentions for "Funny Games": "How can I restore to my representation the value of reality which it has lost?...How do I show the viewer his own position in relation to violence and its portrayal?"I felt like I'd passed Haneke's "test" without knowing it. I didn't need it. But Haneke's statement made it easier for me to go back and finish the movie (which I did the next day). I'd felt like I was being taught an abusive and presumptuous (and rather dillettantish) lesson about violence as entertainment that I'd already thought through at least as much as Haneke had. Consequently, I didn't really feel I needed this film to show me my own position in relation to violence and its portrayal, because I'm hyper-aware of it as it is.
"Funny Games" does function, at least in part, as he seems to have intended. Yet I'm not sure this isn't the result of context as much as content. If the movie were programmed at multiplexes, would viewers react any differently than they might to the "Scream" movies? These movies seem to insist that they're doing something other than simply representing a highly codified genre -- the old-hat self-reflexive terror movie -- when in fact that's all they do.
So, I just didn't feel like playing his "Funny Games" -- but, as I said, I eventually completed his abstract experiment in terror and I think it's... a deliberate and provocative exercise in cinematic voyeurism and sadism that tries but fails to rise to its own challenge, which is how to avoid becoming the very thing it's trying to criticize and deconstruct. (Truth is, it feels "old hat." The "Be Black Baby" experimental theater documentary segment of Brian De Palma's 1970 "Hi Mom!" is a far more effective examination/exploitation of the viewer's "position in relation to violence and its portrayal" -- as are Hitchcock's "Rear Window," "Psycho," and "Frenzy," to name a few.)
As for "Wolf Creek," I don't know if I will eventually see it. But I doubt it will be before the DVD or premium channel release.
