Friday, October 4, 2013

Essay: The Popularity of "Dark" Movies


THE ALLURE OF DESPAIR: WHY WE CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF PAIN,
DEATH, AND DESTRUCTION AT THE MOVIES 
by Bennett Campbell Ferguson


Above: Superman gets strangled in a brutal scene in a mainstream film
 
As some of you know, I recently went to see Denis Villeneuve’s film “Prisoners” and found it so horrifically sickening that it was just barely watchable.  Indeed, I was so disturbed by the film that as I exited the theater, I considered writing an editorial encouraging viewers to boycott the picture, condemning its depiction of cruelty and torture as inhumane.  But in the end I simmered down and wrote a calm, levelheaded piece about the movie’s failings and merits.  Case closed.

            Still, I found myself thinking about more than just the film itself.  I had based my criticism of “Prisoners” on the fact that it was too painful to watch and while I was confident in the soundness of that judgment, a nagging question lingered.  Why was I so particularly enraged by Mr. Villeneuve’s movie?  After all, my shelves at home are crammed with DVDs of dark and disturbing dramas.  So what was it about this new one that had particularly gotten under my skin and what made the horrors shown in other films (in my opinion) forgivable?  For that matter, why are there so many movies about violence and cruelty in the first place? 

After thinking about all of these queries, I have some answers which I wish to submit.  You may not like them but I hope they will contribute to conversations about why we are all willing (myself included) to watch so many terrible things happen onscreen.

 

“Well, it’s better than the alternative.”

Whenever I watch a particularly disturbing film, the first thing I feel is anger.  For instance when I saw “Requiem for a Dream,” immediately found myself asking what right Darren Aronofsky had to show a woman being electro-shocked onscreen.  Subjecting an audience to such a display struck immediately struck me as wrong.  And yet there is something else that strikes me as wrong as well.  American cinema presents a world of happy endings and while I’m glad of that, a number of them feel deeply disingenuous.  While the brutality of Mr. Aronofsky’s work is sickening, there is something equally repellent about a film whose depiction of happiness feels hollow, forced, or even, like a lie.

            A key example of this can be found in Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s 2010 film “It’s Kind of a Funny Story.”  The movie is about Craig (Keir Gilchrist), a depressed teenager who desperately checks himself into an insane asylum before he can kill himself.  This leads to a series of adventures in which Craig finds love and gains confidence, allowing him to re-enter the world with a powerfully positive outlook on life.

            In the end, “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” offers an optimistic narrative that makes it a thoroughly likable and moving film.  And yet it’s not just hopeful—it’s aggressively upbeat to the point of leaving you infuriated rather than uplifted.  In the beginning, Craig’s frustrations (which are mainly with his obnoxious friends) are comforting because they ring true, reassuring you that such anguish is commonly felt.  But by the end, Craig is so positive that he doesn’t have an ounce of bitterness or frustration left, so much so that he becomes downright annoying.

            You may ask—what’s wrong with this hopeful outlook?  In the real world, nothing.  But seeing Craig so overjoyed that he’s willing to accept even his horrible friends (who are arrogant, lying, and manipulative) made me feel rather lonely.  I couldn’t help feeling that while Craig had started out seeming like an everyman, a troubled but compassionate boy for all of us to relate to, he had turned into something else—an emotional superman worthy of bitter envy.  He wasn’t even convincing as an inspiring example for us to emulate because his triumph felt so false.  So I ask you—how can you can you connect with or even root for a character who is not only no longer troubled, but shows no sign of facing pain or sadness ever again?

In “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” that question is ignored, making it the antithesis of a cynically violent film like “Prisoners.”  And yet while I find the former more likable, I don’t think it’s more comforting.  The almost puritanically upbeat tone of the movie is alienating and suggests to me that in order to be relatable and revealing, a great film needs to be infused with a certain amount of sadness and pain. 

 

“Wait, did I actually enjoy watching them die?”

To say the least, the notion that horrifying images and emotions can enhance a great film is a difficult one to accept.  Why?  Because on some level, we all go to movies to experience pleasure.  Certainly the kid who goes to see “Transformers” for the cool robots and the film student who geeks out over the 65 mm cinematography in “The Master” enter the theater with different mindsets, but they’re both trying to enjoy themselves, albeit in very different ways.  But what happens when we experience pleasure while watching a brutal film like “The Dark Knight”?   Does our reaction make us sadists?  Or are we simply experiencing a natural human response that is rooted in the world’s love of grim tragedies as diverse as “Hamlet” and “Medea”? 

Ultimately, I argue for the latter.  I believe it is possible to enjoy a tragic and horrifying film without laughing cruelly at the suffering of its characters.  What makes this widespread phenomenon possible is what I call the Agony Catharsis.  The Agony Catharsis is my name for the positive feeling we experience while watching a character suffer on film.  In my opinion, the journey is not about taking pleasure in the pain of others, but experiencing a sense of release while watching that pain displayed onscreen. 

For me, one of the best provocations for such a catharsis occurs toward the end of “Superman Returns,” when the titular hero (Brandon Routh) lands on an abandoned rock island and is nearly beaten to death by his nemesis, Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey).  It’s a truly nightmarish sequence—we’re forced to watch Luthor punch and kick Superman repeatedly before having him suffocated and stabbing him in the back.  But though I never want to see Superman hurt, I still enjoy the scene.  Why? 

Believe it or not, it all comes down to screaming.  When Luthor stabs his opponent, Superman screams in agony, and it’s enough to make you want to shriek as well.  What I believes makes this matter is the fact that movies are one of the only places where we can scream in horror.  As filmmaker Eli Roth explained to Premiere film critic Tom Roston back in 2007, “There’s no outlet [in our culture] to scream: You can’t scream at work, you can’t scream at home.” 

            This statement deserves careful consideration.  What Mr. Roth explains in his summation is that in a world where people are desperate to scream, movies offer an outlet for them to do so.  And while he was referring to horror films in particular, I believe his philosophy can applied to other genres.  Of course I don’t literally scream while watching Lex Luthor stab Superman, but a part of me still cries out internally.  When I watch the movie, it gives me an excuse to experience the kind of pent up emotional anguish that often lies buried under the oppression of calm routines and polite conversation.  To invoke Mr. Roth, just as you can’t scream at work, you can’t really emote on the city streets or even in most social situations.  But you can unleash as much sadness as you want in dark movie theater, whether that means full-on crying or just crying a little inside.    

                                                                   

“Me?  A voyeur?”

At the end of the day, I believe “Superman Returns” offers one of many examples of how a dark and disturbing film can offer an Agony Catharsis that allows you to experience suppressed emotions that desperately need to be released.  But the question remains—why doesn’t “Prisoners”?  The film is rife with pain.  Kids get kidnapped; parents seek revenge; suspects get tortured; and in the end, we’re left with the knowledge that the film’s protagonist may or may not bleed to death while trapped underground.

Theoretically, “Prisoners” sounds like a master class in suffering but in this case that’s not a good thing.  Why?  Simply put, because it’s a realistic movie.  By keeping the music to a minimum and making the gray muck of the film’s setting look sharply focused rather that shadowy and romantic, Mr. Villeneuve prevents suffering from looking tragically beautiful.  Whereas Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” sends blood spurting in poetic slow motion, “Prisoners” lets it lie dully on beaten skin.  It’s awful to look at, just like in real life.

I can imagine a thoughtful moviegoer arguing that “Prisoners” is superior to “Drive” because it shows violence as it really is, rather than milking it for eloquence.  But the fact is that movies are not real—only the experience of watching them is.  To that end, “Prisoners” seems to thrust pain upon you by immersing you in a hellish experience; the film exists to shock and wound you emotionally.  But beautiful craftsmanship allows “Drive” (which offers a richly heartbreaking saga of revenge and lost love) and “Superman” to become something far more satisfying—movies that bring sweet sadness bubbling to the surface, drawing you out.  You may feel melancholy afterwards, but you might also feel a little lighter, a little freer. 

“It’s Kind of a Funny Story” and a number of mostly mainstream films (“Oz the Great and Powerful” is 2013’s most notable offender) bury and dodge darkness and resentment, causing them to build up even more.  But better films encourage you to feel it, to let it out, to not be constrained.  I do believe that some things—like torture and kidnapping—should be left off-screen and free from the maelstrom of pop culture.  But some horrors can be as beautiful as they are awful, which is why I’ll be in line for the next movies from Mr. Refn, Mr. Singer, and their compatriots.  They are the dream makers of our times and though those dreams are dark, they depicted through beautiful lenses.  It is only through those eyes that a hero’s violent defeat can be as poetic as it is tragic, in a world where even a drop of blood can be beautiful, if only for a brief moment.   

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