FILM OF THE DAY :



George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968)



All films seen on Saturday 22nd October in Vienna during the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival)

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Manderlay : [5/10]
Denmark (Den/Swe/Fr/GB) 2005 : Lars VON TRIER : 139m (feature) : seen at Urania cinema

   The latest provocation from japester-sh*tstirrer Von Trier is, perhaps needless to say, another fascinating, frustrating, ultimately dumbfounding cinematic experience. Sequel to Dogville sees Bryce Dallas Howard replacing Nicole Kidman, who perhaps understandably turned down the chance to reprise the harrowing role of well-meaning Depression-Era gangster's daughter Grace (Reliable rumour has it that the third part of the trilogy - intriguingly announced as Wasington - won't now be made, as Manderlay has failed to find much favour since its Cannes premiere).
   Howard's Grace comes in for some rough sexual treatment late on, but otherwise she gets off rather lightly for a Von Trier heroine. This is otherwise typical Lars: a discombobulatingly flippant, archly stylised romp through some savagely serious issues: the pros and cons of slavery and democracy, specifically as applied to America past and present (parallels with the Iraq "situation" are as numerous and blatant as in George Romero's Land of the Dead.)
   As with Dogville, the drama plays out on a near-empty ‘set' (often seen, vertiginously, from above courtesy of Anthony Dod Mantle's fine camerawork) though all of the characters' costumes are period-detail exact for 1933 Alabama. And once again the action is divided up into sections ("eight straight chapters" is how the opening titles put it) with John Hurt providing copious wry omniscient narration. The plot sees Grace discovering Manderlay - nothing to do with Daphne du Maurier, rather a walled estate where slavery seemingly continues over half a century after Abolition. Despite the grim predictions of her father (Willem Dafoe replaces James Caan), Grace makes it her business to bring democracy to the former "slaves". Perhaps needless to say, things don't work out according to her plans...
   There's something in this cross between The Crucible, Uncle Tom's Cabin and Lord of the Flies to offend pretty much everyone (though the planned, notorious donkey-killing sequence is thankfully nowhere to be found) and many viewers have taken pretty serious offence. But that seems to be too easy and simple reaction to what Von Trier is serving up. He seems so desperate for us to lose our patience with him: not for nothing is one of his characters (figuratively) branded "diabolically clever", nor that a travelling conman arrives in a van which promises "honest" pranks.  
   And while two hours twenty is definitely an overstretch of Von Trier's material and a little long to endure his smart-alec hectoring, the ending is a bit of a corker - a nasty twist-in-the-tale leading us into an end-credits photomontage set to (just like Dogville) David Bowie's Young Americans: like the film itself, the montage proves a beguiling mixture of the chilling, the thought-provoking, and the downright, groan-inducingly absurd.

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Romantico [5/10]
USA 2004 : Mark BECKER : 80m (documentary) : seen at StadtKino cinema

   Fairly watchable but ultimately so-so character study of Carmelo, a middle-aged Mariachi guitarist/singer who can't decide whether to stay with his family in poverty-stricken Mexico or earn a relatively healthy (illegal) crust north of the border in San Francisco. We see him in both locales, and learn about the various travails that have afflicted him and his loved-ones. His history and circumstances do give his Mariachi numbers a bluesishly tragic undercurrent of authenticity, but his lot clearly isn't an enviable one by any means. Nor is it, on reflection, as especially remarkable: Becker's sensitive, observational approach breaks no new ground, and he could have trimmed a couple of the numerous musical numbers.
   The most arresting sequence explores Carmelo's sideline manufacturing and selling "snow" on the streets of his home-town - no, he isn't branching out into illicit narcotics, rather a refreshing flavoured-ice concoction flavoured with cinnamon and fruits. Health inspectors may raise their eyebrows at Carmelo's methods when we see him breaking up the ice on the ground - surely not the most hygienic of practices - before selling it on to thirsty children. Yuck! Romantico perhaps, sympathetico, at least from this point on, perhaps not.

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Captain Milkshake [6/10]
USA 1970 : Richard CRAWFORD : 98m (feature) : seen at Urania cinema

   Out of distribution for over 30 years due to major legal wrangles, Captain Milkshake is now belatedly building the cult following it deserves. Reminiscent of Easy Rider at some points, Targets at others, it follows cleancut marine Paul (Geoff Gage, an earnest Russ Tamblyn lookalike) over several days' leave in scenic San Diego. He arrives in his home-town fresh from a harrowing stint in Vietnam, and grisly flashbacks indicate he has a nasty case of what would now be termed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He obtains relief through unexpected means when falling in with an anti-war bunch of peacenik hippies: dope proves an effective cure for his mental turmoil, and the attentions of the lovely Melissa (striking flower-child Andrea Cagan) also help unbend a chap who'd previously been a distinctly straight straight-arrow.
   Though currently rather eerily topical in its 'why-are-we-over-there' rhetoric, Captain Milkshake - audacious and groundbreaking in its stance at the time - is very much dated in terms of execution: the low budget hurts, with some very variable performances (worst offender: David Korn as intentionally-annoying firebrand Thesp), rudimentary camerawork, overenthusiastic editing (Korn again!), some clumsy "effects" (mucho slomo; gratingly arbitrary shifts from BW to colour) and standard-issue trippy-dippy hallucinatory interludes. But the picture's heart is very much in the right place, and despite the generally cobbled-together feel that pervades the enterprise writer-director Crawford does manage to "get his shit together" for a surprisingly hard-hitting finale. Well-chosen contemporary tunes on the soundtrack(including an early incarnation of the Steve Miller Band) don't do any harm either, Crawford again saving the best till last.

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Night of the Living Dead : [8/10]
USA 1968 : George ROMERO : 94m (feature) : seen at Kunstlerhaus

   A big, appreciative audience turned up for this suitably midnight-ish screening. All these years, all these sequels, and all these rip-offs later, Romero's wonderfully economic low-budget debut still has the power to inspire audible reactions. Guffaws early on ("They're coming to get you, Barbara!!!"), giving way to gasps and yelps of jolty shock as the tension mounts. Romero has always admitted his debt to Richard Matheson's (stunningly bleak) novel I Am Legend, replacing the book's noctambulant neo-vampires with flesh-munching "ghouls" - the word zombie is never once used here.
   After a striking cemetery-set prologue - in which a brother and sister are attacked by a member of the shambling (but surprisingly fast-moving) member of the undead, the action shifts to an isolated farmhouse where a bickering band of survivors are besieged by dozens of ambulant, malevolent cadavers. Romero's masterstroke is to have the humans relying on mass media for information about their plight - first through the radio, then through the TV. These bulletins - deadpan in their grotesque, apocalyptic absurdity - are superbly handled, building a palpable sense of impending dread.
   There's also a significant degree of element of political satire here: the American spirit captured at some pivotal midpoint between the gun-wielding machismo of the frontiersman and the passivity of the McLuhan-era couch-potato - not for nothing does Romero's opening-titles "directed by" credit accompany a graveside shot of the fluttering Stars and Stripes.
   But it's the racial element which packs the biggest punch thirty-odd years on: Night of the Living Dead is famously one of the first American films to feature a black leading man - the strapping, imposing, level-headed Duane Jones. The script makes no overt reference to Jones's colour, but ethnicity is a crucial subtext factor in many of the scenes. And it gives the startlingly bleak final stills-montage - which strongly recalls real-life photographs of Deep South lynch-mobs - an atmosphere much more disturbing than anything evoked by the zombies' grisly exploits.  



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Neil Young
reviews initially written 23rd October; updated and expanded 29th October

click HERE for the following day's coverage

or HERE for full A-Z of all films seen and Jigsaw Lounge's Vienna/Viennale overview








Falco ..................
........ Fritz Lang .................
....... W H Auden ..................
..... Narrenturm ............
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