No, seriously, it was a movie. In my opinion, it was a terrible, pretentious, dull, underachieving movie that accomplished nothing. This is from a person who loves movies (movies, moving pictures, which is all these are) and appreciates the feelings they can create and the ideas they can inspire. That being said, this movie inspired feelings of laughter and the idea that the filmmakers have their heads so far up their bums they can see out their mouths.
Specifically, the plot of the movie is minuscule and stretched so thin I spent two hours looking at the wall behind the TV. The cannibalism of the main character, Carlos, is almost completely useless to the actual events of the movie, which center around fixing up a rug for a church parade and buying somebody's parents an apartment. I could not begin to sympathize with Carlos since we had no emotional connection to him, mostly because he had no emotions to connect with. His "acting" consisted of keeping a straight face no matter what he was doing. He was bored at his job, bored in the sauna, bored talking to his love interest, bored murdering people, and it got to the point where I actually did began to sympathize with Carlos, because I too was incredibly bored. Such a brilliant use of irony.
There was no explanation of his cannibalism, which took up about 5% of the movie, and the scenes of him being a cannibal were so awkwardly shot that we didn't even care. What was the point of watching two people wander around a gas station parking lot for 5 minutes? Why? They just stiffly paced back and forth until they drove away. Then Carlos runs them off the road and steals the dead woman's corpse from the wreckage.
The second murder we see him commit takes place on a beach, and his victims are a seemingly foreign couple skinny dipping. The girlfriend looks an awful lot like Carlos' love interest, Alexandra. Okay, quite a coincidence, but whatever. He hot-wires their car, and drives it over the naked boyfriend when he runs to investigate. The girlfriend, still in the water, just watches. We then spend 5 minutes watching him watch the woman watch him, asking him "what do you want?" over and over until she starts to swim out into the open waters... Just turns around and swims away... Sure, there wasn't really much she could have done, if this sort of thing happened in real life it would surely be kind of awkward for both parties involved, but the thing about making movies (in my amateur opinion) is that it's very important what you DON'T show. We didn't need to see the awkward mess of an attempted kidnapping because it ruins the tension brought on by a successful vehicular homicide. It went from thrilling to silly.
There are a few very long and focused scenes taking place in and around a church, including one long take of a statue of Jesus Christ being carried through the streets in a sort of parade... Don't ask me why, if blatant Jesus imagery is good enough for Zack Snyder, it's good enough for some Spanish cannibal movie. I theorized that it was supposed to allude to the whole "eat this bread, it is my flesh" thing which was not clever... Like, at all. I'm no theologian, but I'm sure it's impossible to compare a Spanish cannibal who never says more than two words at a time to Jesus "Everything I say is a quote" Christ. Because, as all hack filmmakers know, a great way to substitute personality is to make the audience think your protagonist is the Second Coming. GENIUS! SUCH ART! NOBODY'S EVER PUT RELIGION IN A FILM, I'M SO SMART!
Don't let the silliness mentioned here make you think this film is an unintentional comedy, it is DULL. Shot after shot of Carlos eating alone, sitting in a sauna, staring out his window, set to no score and with no clever use of Mise en Scene, the vast majority of this film is pointing a camera at nothing and forgetting to turn it off. Bland, uninspired cinematography with no acting or writing to back it up, the film just feels hollow. There were a few really good shots of the snowy mountains at the VERY END, but the filmmakers didn't make those mountains to they get no credit. Once again, just pointing a camera at something. Bland, lazy, nothing to take from this movie except the sores on your ass that you got from two hours of boredom.
But hey, if you liked it then wonderful. But your opinion of this "film" is your OPINION, which means that it is not objective fact. Really, the only reason I wrote this review was because of the overwhelming smugness I saw by this films proponents, how one person was just flat-out insulting somebody's intelligence, and insulting an entire country of people, just because they had different taste in moving pictures. It's like they thought they were better human beings for sitting still for 120 minutes and staring at a TV.
Psst, hey, film snobs, guess what? Your tastes in art are worthless. They're F***ING worthless, they mean nothing. When the universe eats itself into oblivion billions of years from now, your precious little "films" will already be long forgotten, and nobody's life will be any less fulfilled for having not watched it. You're not a better person for liking something, and talking down to others for not liking something makes you a worse person. We're all a**holes, especially you and especially me, let's try and change that.
But hey, at least we're not cannibals, right? There's a good start.
Specifically, the plot of the movie is minuscule and stretched so thin I spent two hours looking at the wall behind the TV. The cannibalism of the main character, Carlos, is almost completely useless to the actual events of the movie, which center around fixing up a rug for a church parade and buying somebody's parents an apartment. I could not begin to sympathize with Carlos since we had no emotional connection to him, mostly because he had no emotions to connect with. His "acting" consisted of keeping a straight face no matter what he was doing. He was bored at his job, bored in the sauna, bored talking to his love interest, bored murdering people, and it got to the point where I actually did began to sympathize with Carlos, because I too was incredibly bored. Such a brilliant use of irony.
There was no explanation of his cannibalism, which took up about 5% of the movie, and the scenes of him being a cannibal were so awkwardly shot that we didn't even care. What was the point of watching two people wander around a gas station parking lot for 5 minutes? Why? They just stiffly paced back and forth until they drove away. Then Carlos runs them off the road and steals the dead woman's corpse from the wreckage.
The second murder we see him commit takes place on a beach, and his victims are a seemingly foreign couple skinny dipping. The girlfriend looks an awful lot like Carlos' love interest, Alexandra. Okay, quite a coincidence, but whatever. He hot-wires their car, and drives it over the naked boyfriend when he runs to investigate. The girlfriend, still in the water, just watches. We then spend 5 minutes watching him watch the woman watch him, asking him "what do you want?" over and over until she starts to swim out into the open waters... Just turns around and swims away... Sure, there wasn't really much she could have done, if this sort of thing happened in real life it would surely be kind of awkward for both parties involved, but the thing about making movies (in my amateur opinion) is that it's very important what you DON'T show. We didn't need to see the awkward mess of an attempted kidnapping because it ruins the tension brought on by a successful vehicular homicide. It went from thrilling to silly.
There are a few very long and focused scenes taking place in and around a church, including one long take of a statue of Jesus Christ being carried through the streets in a sort of parade... Don't ask me why, if blatant Jesus imagery is good enough for Zack Snyder, it's good enough for some Spanish cannibal movie. I theorized that it was supposed to allude to the whole "eat this bread, it is my flesh" thing which was not clever... Like, at all. I'm no theologian, but I'm sure it's impossible to compare a Spanish cannibal who never says more than two words at a time to Jesus "Everything I say is a quote" Christ. Because, as all hack filmmakers know, a great way to substitute personality is to make the audience think your protagonist is the Second Coming. GENIUS! SUCH ART! NOBODY'S EVER PUT RELIGION IN A FILM, I'M SO SMART!
Don't let the silliness mentioned here make you think this film is an unintentional comedy, it is DULL. Shot after shot of Carlos eating alone, sitting in a sauna, staring out his window, set to no score and with no clever use of Mise en Scene, the vast majority of this film is pointing a camera at nothing and forgetting to turn it off. Bland, uninspired cinematography with no acting or writing to back it up, the film just feels hollow. There were a few really good shots of the snowy mountains at the VERY END, but the filmmakers didn't make those mountains to they get no credit. Once again, just pointing a camera at something. Bland, lazy, nothing to take from this movie except the sores on your ass that you got from two hours of boredom.
But hey, if you liked it then wonderful. But your opinion of this "film" is your OPINION, which means that it is not objective fact. Really, the only reason I wrote this review was because of the overwhelming smugness I saw by this films proponents, how one person was just flat-out insulting somebody's intelligence, and insulting an entire country of people, just because they had different taste in moving pictures. It's like they thought they were better human beings for sitting still for 120 minutes and staring at a TV.
Psst, hey, film snobs, guess what? Your tastes in art are worthless. They're F***ING worthless, they mean nothing. When the universe eats itself into oblivion billions of years from now, your precious little "films" will already be long forgotten, and nobody's life will be any less fulfilled for having not watched it. You're not a better person for liking something, and talking down to others for not liking something makes you a worse person. We're all a**holes, especially you and especially me, let's try and change that.
But hey, at least we're not cannibals, right? There's a good start.