bengssimon Reviews

The Thing from Another World (1951)

The "Thing" is actually just reality

[6/10 · 25 January 2024]

A group of patriotic, american soldiers fight off an organism that can regenerate and propagate with the matter on earth. The political battle is between one crazy scientist who understands that evolution is inevitable and the patriots who with a good spirit and attitude wants to fend off this monster that will disturb the piece and life as they know it.

The real question of the movie is do we accept reality or fight it off. Reality is something that often times scares us because it is utterly immoral, completely unrelenting and reeduces all of our historicity to something pointless. The soldiers fight off reality for another day, and our good journalist warns the american public "Look to the skies!". Keep looking out for reality, it could kill your mind, similarly to how it nearly killed our scientist.

Oldboy (2003)

Very strange

[8/10 · 10 April 2022]

As many others, I discovered this film quite early on in my now film-obsessive life, and it's one of the stages you go through to understand cinema in a different way. You watch Oldboy once and it sticks with you. You learn something from it. Watching it again for the first time in a long time is a very strange experience. It left me with some thoughts.

One thing I wonder about is why this movie is so loved and so famous. The story is so niche and so deranged that I wonder what people really think they're watching. Do people really understand the precariousness of the subject in this film? This is why I must applaud this movie. No other movie that so clearly spells out such dangerous ideas have had the success of Oldboy. So either it subconciously connects the message to the audience who respond, or people simply respond to the technical part of the filmmaking.

I think this movie is directed to tire us out, and I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing. The melodrama sometimes made me laugh, but the scene of the brother letting go of the sister also made me extremely emotional. It was all very strange. In many ways I think the direction is a mess and the film focuses on way to much nonsense for it to work, but damnit, in the end it really got to me. I understood of the existence of a love that only works when nothing else exists.

An interesting aspect is how the villain is the one I instantly sided with and the one I understood. This is in many ways his story. His pain comes from someone judging his inner love and consequently he sets out to prove that this love brings everyone the same pain. This is why our main guy cuts out his tongue. This passion inside cannot be talked of by others. This is what ruins it. The brother has already lost his sister and his aim is to share what he feels with the world.

However infuritating this film is to watch, it is such an emotional anomaly that one simply has to appreciate it. It is an attempt to look under the skin of ourselves and each other, and instead of whispering and judging we need to love. I'm convinced this movie touches anyone that understands themselves, and this is what cinema exists for. I'm happy this film exists.

Look Who's Back (2015)

Terrifying and revelatory

[8/10 · 13 March 2022]

The scary thing about Hitler is that he's a mirror of people's views. He's not a human. He's an actor, a storyteller. People ask him in the film if he ever breakes character. He doesn't. He's Hitler. Hitler is a force amongst the people from places cursed with a historicistic culture of downplayed racism, imperialism, oppression and fascism. And this is not only Germany, but the entirety of the west. Behind the masks, in the ugly subconscious. That's where Hitler is. If he came back, this film argues, people would not realize this horrific truth but still follow him. Therefore, in imperialist society nazism is consistent as something that only needs a spearhead to show itself.

Let's look at ourselves.

Quest for Fire (1981)

I did not expect a love story

[9/10 · 6 March 2022]

But a love story I got. And one of the most beautiful sex scenes I've ever seen. Instead of bending her over violently, she turns around and opens herself up to him so he can look her in the eyes. The first two people ever to fall in love with each other. A hegemony realized and resymbolized. The meaning of life. Materia as absolute power over man. Female as absolute power over male. This is what this movie truly is about. Nothing is really for man to conquer, but all holds power over man. Hence "Search" for fire.

There is a wonderful scene where this conversion of woman's hold over man and the creation of fire is showcased in an almost hypnotic sequence (one of those scenes that makes your blood run cold). A woman is witchlike in her absolute control over the materia that create fire. It is so beautiful and so powerful that Noah sheds a real tear, because what he sees is God right in front of him. Mother nature as dialectical materialism. Absolute change.

A truly honest, transcendental film that tackles the biggest question of what humanity is and what we're really doing on this silly blue dot.

The Terrorizers (1986)

Relationships as a robbery of life itself

[9/10 · 3 February 2022]

Edward Yang is not the romantic type. In fact, The Terrorizers shows us romance as a crime. To use your partner for your own gain and thus robbing them of themselves. A man consumed by his identity as a cog in the capitalist machine has no chance of finding himself after he's used, been used and consequently drenched without him even knowing it. He no longer exists.

This movie is so philosophically sound, and its beauty lies in its loyalty to its message. The theme of terrorizing romance overlaps in every single frame of the movie. A wife leaving her oblivious, ignorant husband is the same as a hooker robbing her customer.

I think what we learn from this movie is that for a relationship not to be a crime, a collective direction is needed. The young girl knows this. Don't steal things from each other, steal together, from others.

Lesson of the Evil (2012)

It's all about what you can stomach - and take from it.

[9/10 · 4 October 2021]

The teacher has no empathy. The students are graduating. He might aswell shoot them, one by one. Why? Because that's basically what they've learnt to do in school. Be better than the other students, get into the better school, earn more money so you can live. Don't worry about the lives of the others.

If it upset you to see a teacher slaughtering a school - that was the point. This is what teachers do. A teacher's job is to fail students. Think about it. How can a person fail education? How can a person fail life because of the judgement of others?

"He's not crazy, he's just starting the next game". All Hasumi's doing is showing us an extreme version of what schools do to us all. He's just a product of it. He has no empathy. Have you any empathy for him?

There's no point in being angry at Hasumi. Try to understand why his doing what he's doing. Otherwise nothing will change.

This is a wonderfully put together movie that makes us feel part of the school. I felt as if I knew every single one of the students when their lives ended. Teenage romance, jealousy, hope, spirit, inspiration - everything alive ended on the day of their graduation, and after that they'd just be part of the capitalist machine.

Enjoyable on all levels, intelligent and painfully conscious.

Syskonsalt (2000 TV Movie)

Gut-Wrenching Drama of Prohibited Nature

[9/10 · 17 February 2021]

This movie is about the underlying, structural and dark grounds on which family perpetuates a human being and its potential, and the inevitability of destructive consequense when mixed with social aspects. It's really about the different personas and roles human beings have in this mysterious world. The portayal of incest is just one of many things you could put on screen here, but wow, does it make for unnerving and powerful viewing.

As a person you are formed out of whatever happens inside your family. Here, the mother had constantly been working because the dad had left and that left the siblings to learn and come to conclusions about everything together. It's the mixture of natural laws and societal flaws that has created their attraction aswell as the unbearable feelings of shame.

When the siblings commit their feelings towards each other, it is extremely powerful. What they together realize is that the love they share is the one constant in their lives. The actors are sensational and a factor of why is that they portray "normal" teenagers, people we all see everyday. What is so strong is that every human being has this passion that has been created from how they've grown up, whatever it may be, but socially what they do is completely off-limits. They try but inevitably can't escape from what formed them. They can't escape from themselves. If there ever was true love...

Now, the fact that they suffer so incredibly is something that shows the societal lack of sympathy for identity. They know they can't keep doing it but since it's been formed from when they were babies they're helpless to the fact that it's unchangeable. When it's just them together they begin to give up the illusion of the free will, and dare I say it, they are extremely content together. Controversially, a relationship between people who've shared each other during the years that's shaped them, creates an almost optimal way of living. There is inevitable things about us as humans that we cannot change. If we grow up like Vanja and Linus does, we end up just as they do. Now, Cue Mother.

If you started to warm to the fact of them being together I think that the film wanted you to. What they have together is in a clichéd way to put it, "Pure". Completely sheltered from "them". The mother is off to Greece for a week and completely isolated from society the siblings can love each other. When the mother comes back and sees them together in bed it all falls apart. Mother plays 2 roles here. Firstly, she has been more of a spectator of them growing up and she represents every other spectator and incidentally "them". The shame now overflows the siblings and everything that was silent and pure is now filled with whispers and screams. Mother gasps for air as she is so afraid "they" will find out and claims it's "not her fault". She has absolutely no understanding of herself so she can't make out why it could happen. This results in her almost shapeshifting into her most natural form, which is to try to be with her closest male suitor and shutting down every other rival. It makes for extremely unsettling viewing to see her lock Vanja in her room and try to seduce Linus.

I think this movie tries to tell us to first of all, take care of our family and children when they grow up. But ultimately what people need is to know themselves. The siblings both know that they're in love but wish that they weren't siblings, which is exactly why they are in love. They get so beat down by the mother who represent all the factors that aren't able to create understanding, like jealosy, ignorance, selfishness, uninspiration and conservative values. How are they ever going to be ok again after this? Their ability to understand is undermined by all of these societal issues. When it was just them two together, they learned, understood and experienced something that was unchangeable in both of them. Everything else was simply distraction. So much of what mankind has created has ended up getting rid of the reality of ourselves. Even if the siblings hadn't yet found a full understanding they had something that was truer than anything the mother and ultimately society stood for.

The Sopranos: Pine Barrens (2001) Season 3, Episode 11

The Adventures of Paulie and Chris / Fargo 2?

[6 July 2019]

This episode stands out because of the quirky tone. I fully understood why this was the case when I saw it was directed by Steve Buscemi, who's undoubtedly taken notes from the Coen brothers. The tone works so well with the 2 main characters in the episode, Chris, and especially Paulie, who often stand for the laughs.

It's got all the ingredients for a great dark comedy. Paulie and Chris get lost in the woods while looking for a crazy russian they thought was dead. They keep calling Tony for help and this results in him having a steak thrown at him.

While the drama is there, this is the first time 'The Sopranos' has felt like a mostly comedic attempt to make fun of the characters, which is exactly what the show sometimes need.