DEATH, AND DESTRUCTION AT
THE MOVIES
by Bennett Campbell Ferguson
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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