A Truth About Relationships
The other day my good friend Amanda told me a pathetic story about her friend Cindy. It seems Cindy got involved with a married man. Scratch that – a married man whose wife was pregnant with their first child. One month after the baby was born, this guy left his wife and newborn for Cindy’s carefree arms.
Of course, not long after shacking up together, Cindy found herself pregnant by this guy. “Oh, things will be wonderful between us,” Cindy likely thought as she rubbed her belly. Nine months later, Cindy popped out an adorable baby girl. A month later, the guy left her, too.
This story goes to illustrate one of the great truisms of human relationships: NEVER get involved romantically/sexually with someone who is currently in a relationship. Why would anyone want to be involved with a person that was willing to cheat on a relationship? If they did it to someone else, they’re willing to do it to you, too. You cannot change someone’s diseased mentality with your desperate genitalia.
The saddest aspect of this entire episode is that poor little girl, who will now live in shame and doubt for the rest of her life because Cindy failed to understand this basic fact of life.
Lucky Guy
That Aaron Johnson is a lucky guy if he gets to bone a beautiful MILF like director Sam Taylor-Wood. While I agree with Jeff Wells’ opinion that Johnson should wait to marry her, I encourage him to get as much poonie as he can from her while the gettin’s good.
Is ANTICHRIST Art?
This year’s Cannes film festival has been mostly uneventful. A few sales, perhaps one break-out hit, nothing spectacular. Of course, leave it to Lars von Trier to shock the place into action.
His newest kick to the groin is ANTICHRIST, which is shaping up to be von Trier’s ugliest and most controversial film yet. It features a married couple played by Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsburg who, after the accidental death of their child, retreat to their cabin in the woods (named Eden, of course) for healing. Then all sorts of bizarre things happen. Here’s the trailer:
Reviews have been all over the map.
The Bad:
Variety: “Lars von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with Antichrist. As if deliberately courting critical abuse.”
Reuters: “Antichrist elicited derisive laughter, gasps of disbelief, a smattering of applause and loud boos …”
Hollywood Elsewhere: ” … easily one of the biggest debacles in Cannes Film Festival history and the complete meltdown of a major film artist in a way that invites comparison to the sinking of the Titanic.”
The Good:
Movieline: “beautiful, violent, and cringe-inducing … Antichrist is the most original and though-provoking work von Trier has done since Breaking the Waves. That said, I might entirely change my mind tomorrow — yet another reason why this film is remarkable. RATING (out of 10): 9?”
The Wrap : “an utterly strange and deeply perverted take on the horror genre … At first, it’s an elegant grief drama. Then — suddenly, shockingly — it transforms into “The Shining” meets Evil Dead with green politics, torture porn and a fair amount of Lynchian abstractions … Gripped by the calculation of the design, I think I loved it, but might have been blindsighted by the sheer audacity of its twisted conception. Like many audience members from tonight’s crowd, I need to let it sit for awhile — in my nightmares, most likely.”
Just when you thought movies were becoming too safe, along comes von Trier to fart in the closed elevator and irritate everyone.
According to most accounts, this film features graphic sex and even more graphic violence (including genital mutilation) that pushes the farthest edge of the NC-17 rating into a new rating: LVT. That rating describes a Bermuda Triangle-like area of filmmaking that lies between torture porn, sexual porn, and twenty hours of Gitmo waterboarding.
My question is this: What is the point of being shocking merely for the sake of shock? Does the shock itself make it art?
I could go out and film myself cutting the head off of a cute little bunny rabbit – is that art? What if I then intercut that with shots of Ron Jeremy buttfucking a starlet in a field of spring flowers? Is that art? At what point do shots of graphic sex and violence tip over the line of provocation and become art?
Clearly, von Trier believes his film is art; the whole film reeks of it. A man and a woman … a lost child … a trip to the woods called Eden … sex at the base of a tree … hints of nature and evil everywhere. All that’s missing is an apple dropping onto Defoe’s wrinkled brow (I haven’t seen it yet – that might even be in there). Everything about this film screams BIG IMPORTANT STATEMENT. But is it art simply because it thinks it is?
This film and its reaction remind me of Piss Christ, a prize winning photograph by Andres Serrano that depicted a plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of urine. Serrano received $15,000 to support this “work,” which then outraged the religious when it won several awards. While I understand Serrano’s desire to create a firestorm of controversy, I’m less confident that such methods themselves constitute art. In this instance, what is considered artistic – the photograph, or the method employed?
In ANTICHRIST, von Trier lingers on graphic displays of sex and violence – is that art in and of itself? Is the fact that most Cannes reviewers were repulsed by the film enough to justify it as art?
In my mind, art should not merely trigger our basic instincts for revulsion or excitement – it needs to trigger our mind. Did von Trier do that here? Certainly the reviews indicate an audience left shaken, disturbed, and in a thoughtful mood. Perhaps he managed to rise above the horrors in a way that a hack like Eli Roth could never manage in a thousand careers.
If nothing else, we should applaud von Trier for being bold and attempting new ideas and film forms. He won’t be directing a TRANSFORMERS movie any time soon. In a cinematic world that is seemingly in a post-Apocalyptic wasteland, von Trier continues to be Thunderdome. Art or not, we should be grateful for that.
Dumb And Dumbest
Some of my favorite comedies of all time are the so-called “dumb” ones: Dumb And Dumber, Kingpin, Ace Ventura, etc. I know I’m supposed to be more sophisticated than that, but … they make me laugh.
Despite the fact that those films look ridiculous, it’s a tough formula to replicate properly. Go too far, and the film becomes annoyingly infantile … nto far enough, and the film is boring. It remains to be seen how close the upcoming sex comedy Miss March comes to some of the classics, but I must admit, this trailer made me laugh a little.