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Pervert Park (2014)
An indulgent piece of crypto-advocacy
As well made as the film is, it has bad intentions. We are presented with paedophiles telling their own life stories. They dwell massively on their own misfortunes and when compelled to divulge their heinous crimes, portray them as the result of, in 5 individual cases, entrapment, Lolita-esque provocation, one's own incestuous abuse, the stresses of being secretly homosexual, and work stress in general.
It goes without saying that none of these are even slightly mitigating factors. Entrapment might be morally dubious, but when offered to have sex with a young girl by an anonymous chatroom member, a normal person refuses. A normal person would not respond to the perceived "provocation" of a young girl. Being a closeted homosexual does not win any "oppression points" that can be discounted against the rape of young boys. Must I continue?
The real point is that none of these people are shown to have faced their true culpability: they indulge in victimhood narratives, and the filmmakers indulge them too. They still identify with the demons inside them, rather than being willing to cast them out. They attempt to win sympathy and to glom onto a liberal narrative that protects the outcasts.
Those who judge this film "thought provoking" have to tell the rest of society just how much sympathy, built into them by this film, they can have left once the damage these people have done is plainly accounted for. Under the presumption that we should take a philosophical mode of thought on this issue, why don't we ask ourselves what magnitude of evil could then not be forgiven, so long as the perpetrator was sufficiently downtrodden himself?
Zateryannyy v Sibiri (1991)
A lost classic
I think this is one of the best films never to be watched. Despite an epic scope, artistic eye and emotional power in the storytelling, the film never found an audience and it's hard to find the film with English subtitles although it was an English co- production. I had to watch it with German subtitles, and the subtitles were frustratingly absent for more than a handful of lines spoken in Russian.
The story begins in Iran in the immediate wake of WW2, where the lover of the Shah's wife is granted permission to continue an archaeological excavation over the requests of the Russian army to use the same space for artillery training. The Russians eliminate this threat by abducting the archaeologist, Andrew Miller, and sending him to the secret police, who interrogate him and judge him a spy. Despite realising they have captured the wrong man halfway through the case, they decide to cover their mistakes by sending him to Siberia anyway.
Thus begins a descent into hell, temporarily relieved by a romance with a female doctor, which when discovered only unleashes the jealous revenge of the camp warden. Along the way we see the state of Stalinist society: money is worthless and so people engage in direct bartering. The only entertainment is violence and sordid sexuality. Left so ignorant, the Russians cannot distinguish an Englishman from an American; calling Americans "fascists", and their idea of intellectual debate is to argue the merits of various past party figures.
The film covers ugly subject matter yet is beautiful in its execution. All the mud, the sweaty wood hut walls, the barbed wire, the worn out clothes, the creaky wire frame beds and sallow, sunken faces of the inmates are captured in realistic detail.
In spite of the mood of pervasive hopelessness, my emotional investment was maintained by the glimpses of humanity in the inhuman surroundings: a young girl, who gave help to the dying Miller on his first day, is saved by Miller after being left breathing in a morgue by unfeeling camp guards. Miller befriends a like minded young intellectual and teaches him English after being saved by him from a sudden suicidal drive. At first bullied by the camp fool, Miller regains his manhood and asserts his self-respect. Though the beautiful young widow, Anna, must prostitute herself to the camp warden for her own political safety she finds a fleeting love in Miller. In a moving scene towards the end, after being summoned back to the secret police HQ in Moscow, Miller rediscovers his dignity and becomes human again upon learning of a chance bargaining chip: a forgotten ally had somehow escaped the gulags and made a point to bring the scrutiny of the world upon Andrew Miller's abuse.
The film does an interesting trick towards the end, first allowing you the relief of seeing this delivery from evil, but then subjecting you to the cruellest possible emotional reversal - seeing this amnesty taken back in front of your eyes (a striking scene involving the ghosts of the gulag entering the glittering ballroom of the upper crust) - before finally awakening for a second time to allow you to feel relief again. Juxtoposed with this strange double-awakening is a scene of a drunken secret police head turning the choice over in his mind. The impression of the tyranny of evil men, spinning the fate of their victims between their paws, is unforgettable.
If you speak German, please search for this film under the name "Gulag: Straflager Der Verdammten." It's also apparently available in Polish, if you speak that language.
Zoo (2007)
A sanitized intellectualisation
This documentary about the death of a group of zoophiles whose club disbanded with the death of a Boeing engineer, "Mr. Hands," illustrates phone interviews with the perpetrators with dreamy imagery of dew- sprayed orchards, rolling mid-western highways and slow motion panoramas of farmstead porches.
The film makes no judgement of the men, who were not found guilty of any crime due to the niceties of state-specific lawmaking. The love of horses is portrayed as a mystical, philosophical longing to connect with nature. A dissenting voice, an investigator who first visited the scene of the non-crime, gives her reaction of horror and sympathy for the animals, but her case is not strongly made, since the sordid details are left out of the film. By so emphasizing the mystical-philosophic- longing-nature side of things, the film seems unnaturally sanitized and the elephant in the room looms large throughout (probably with its back to the wall):
Watch the infamous video and you see a man with a manifold metal-studded ballsack eagerly prostrating himself in front of a member the size of a man's extended arm. The horse's penis is guided into Mr. Hands by a second man who asks "yeah, you like that, don't you?" in a lascivious tone, to the man soon to die. In the film, Mr. Hands is portrayed as a family man who had a bright future... I find it more convincing that he had a strong drive towards death, and that at least his sexual being was pleased to die in this way.
My negative opinion of this film is not so much about its filmic aspects, but of its morality. Sure, the film does not explicitly endorse what these people did. However, I find the film perverse in its avoidance of simple questions that spring to most peoples' minds: what did they do with the horses? what sexual history did these men have? how did they get started? Typical of over-intellectualized analyses, these simple questions are discarded in favour of equivocation and obfuscation of the moral matter.
Outside of these general questions, specific questions posed by the interviews themselves are unanswered or obfuscated by a chronology that seemed to have been cut up and stuck back together at random for a shallow intellectual effect. Who is "Cop #2" and what film was he hired for? Who was the boy who died? Who did the horses belong to? How can two horses give and receive a blowjob? Were they trained to do it? I'm barely scratching the surface because so little of the historical information hinted at is given it's proper providence, and so falls easily out of memory.
As its fundamental moral angle and narrative loose ends are so dissatisfying for me, that stylish visual elements and overall technical quality is abundant was more irritating than it was palliative, for me. I wondered even more, on account of this, why such a film could even be made by intelligent, resourceful and skilled filmmakers, without thought for what they were implicitly advocating. Still, for the quality and style alone it is a convincing package, but is the lush surface texture an indication of its profundity? A loud "neigh" from me.
Worms Armageddon (1999)
Essential Gaming
I gave up gaming midway through 2006 with the PS2, I sold it along with the majority of my games (15 or so) to a friend for £80 or so. It was an expensive and shallow hobby, and I didn't miss it. However, out of nostalgia, I recently bought an old PSOne cheaply from a market stall (£8) and re-bought, what I think was the best game on the console (or any other!); 'Worms: Armageddon' ,which has since I last played it become a rare item. The game has almost endless replay value, with multiplayer in particular, with dozens of themed maps and a random land generator. Funny, charming and instant enough for brand new players, and intricate enough to spend forever on perfecting tactics and accuracy. The perfect worms game. While the move to 3D was an interesting development, and was a very fun game, undoubtedly; there's nothing that can challenge the satisfaction of landing a holy hand grenade right on top of your opponent's head, with nothing they can do to stop it, or burrowing deep underground and unleashing the eponymous 'armageddon', (the most destructive weapon in the game), or prodding the enemy into the briny depths, or dropping a stick of dynamite into their midst and so on and so on... The most perfect multiplayer game ever.