Cinematic Violence: Can Anything Be Justified?

[Kellen]

This can't be real. No one would seriously go here. would they?

Sadly, I watched the trailer last night in my dorm room. Uwe Boll needs to go away. Anyone has the right tackle historical events and what not but seriously it totally looks like the guy is going about it the wrong way..

[John Cope]

Uwe Boll needs to go away.

Maybe but not just yet. His Darfur is one of my most anticipated films this year.

[Kellen]

Uwe Boll talking about the reaction to his new film trailer:
From: Vice/VBS

Uwe Boll’s Auschwitz came out of nowhere. The German director, widely reviled for his video game adaptations, once again faced the wrath of the internet when he stuck a teaser trailer online the other day, featuring himself as a Nazi guard standing in front of a gas chamber.
The general consensus is that the film will be tasteless and exploitative. Critics don’t like Uwe Boll. I’ve never seen any of his films but wanted to know what he was doing with Auschwitz, so last night I got in touch on Facebook, called him up, and we talked for half an hour. Or, I should say, he talked. He was angry.

Vice/Alex: Hi Uwe, it’s Alex.
Uwe: Hi.

Vice/Alex: So I saw the trailer yesterday, which went viral pretty quickly.
Uwe: What’s pissing me off is if anybody else made a movie like this it would be in the running for an Oscar. I do it and I get bashed by everybody. Especially people who totally ignored the last six, seven movies I did. Rampage or Stoic or Tunnel Rats are really realistic, political, fact-based movies. So is my new Max Schmeling movie. But when people write about me, they still center on House Of The Dead and Alone In The Dark, and they completely ignore the 15 movies I made after them. They would never do that with any other filmmaker. You cannot judge a guy based on two movies shot six, seven years ago. Ron Howard said my film Darfur was a masterpiece. Amnesty International said it’s the best film made about Africa. I just don’t get it any more. If people have eyes in their head and saw these movies, they could not say "Uwe Boll is a trashy filmmaker, the worst filmmaker on Earth," whatever, it is completely absurd. Rampage and Darfur went to 30 film festivals and were sold to 100 countries. WHAT THE FUCK! Why do I get counted as an idiot, I’m a Doctor of Literature! I studied economy! I’m not Robert Rodriguez or Quentin Tarantino in a fucking coffee shop and only have knowledge about film journalists. The public opinion about me is completely on the wrong track. Sorry that you’re getting all my frustration, because you’re the only guy I’ve had a conversation with about this.

Vice/Alex: It’s OK.
Uwe: Everything I make gets completely ignored. Fifty percent of people don’t even think the Holocaust happened, and I make a movie about it and I get criticised for it. Half of my crew for 22 movies have been Jewish! My best friend where I live in Vancouver, Jonathan Shaw, is Jewish. It’s completely absurd! They put me in a corner, saying it’s an insult to the Jewish community, it’s totally bullshit! It’s the opposite! I could be celebrating how much attention the movie’s getting, but really it’s pissing me off, people are just not getting what I’m doing, they just don’t watch the movies, and they’re not aware of what my agenda is. Look, I’m not a subsidised filmmaker. I did a movie, Heart Of America, about school violence, and it made no money, and again Ron Howard said it was a great movie, everybody should see it. The next movie I did, in 2003, was House Of The Dead, the worst movie I’ve done. But it made over $30 million and it cost $7 million. So is it a big surprise that after that I made more video game-based movies? No! It’s absurd that the worst movie I ever did made the most profit. That’s when the Boll-bashing started, and I became known as the worst filmmaker of my generation. But then I started writing my own movies again, Postal, Seed, Tunnel Rats, AND THESE ARE ALL GOOD MOVIES! But the Boll-haters slam every film I do, and normal journalists close their eyes and follow in their footsteps. I’m a film enthusiast, I know what a good movie is, and my movies like Rampage and Stoic and Darfur are not good movies, they’re great movies! Darfur is better than The Hurt Locker! People watching it at film festivals were crying!

Vice: Right.
Uwe: Every single movie about the Holocaust concentrates on one character, stories of survivors, heroes, whatever. And I wanted to show the Holocaust for what it was. In Auschwitz, more than fifty percent of people who went there were dead in two hours. Four thousand babies got shot in the head in front of the gas chambers. So for me, it was time–when not only the Iraqi President but a lot of people are going sloppy on genocide issues, I think it’s important to make the movie. And much of the movie is documentary–I did a lot of interviews with school kids about the Holocaust, and that’s the start of the movie. It starts with that, and then we go on a normal day in Auschwitz, where you see what I showed in the teaser, you see the killings, and it’s super shocking, but this is how it was, in reality. We see the selection process, when the train comes in, and so on. And then I go back to the interviews. In German schools, I interviewed people who had no fucking clue what Auschwitz was! In German schools! So you can imagine in other countries it’s already forgotten. And that’s also part of the movie. The trailer is shocking, but I wanted to show what the purpose of the movie is. And I only played the guard because in Croatia, where we filmed, we couldn’t find German speaking actors for the smaller parts, so I said I would do it. And the sequence ended up in the teaser not because I wanted to feature me, but because it’s a heavy shot.

Vice/Alex: Stanley Kubrick abandoned the Holocaust film he was making because he said to make an accurate film about the Holocaust it had to be unwatchable.
Uwe: I agree. And I think my movie will be almost unwatchable for most people. But personally I think it’s necessary to show this stuff. An Auschwitz movie like this would never get any financing, I made it because I was shooting Bloodrayne: The Third Reich in Croatia, and put a few hundred thousand on top of that budget to make this because we already had all the set-ups, the concentration camp, the train station. It was an opportunity to make something that nobody would ever finance, but is necessary to make. To make people ask how people can do something like this, planned, organized, calm killings. The really scary part of the movie is that it all went down like a normal day in the office. Only 15 or 20 minutes of the movie are the killings, 60 minutes are organizing things, who picks people up off the train, what’s the selection process, and it’s all done calmly because there was no way out. It was like a meat factory, it’s the same procedure. There were no big revolutionary fights, no big goodbyes, it just happened. You come in and then you’re ashes. The main reason I made the movie was to show the craziness of what humans are capable of. I saw a British documentary with interviews with SS people who worked in the concentration camps, people in their 90s, and they weren’t regretful, they slipped through the net, so they didn’t get put in jail, and when the BBC asked why they killed Jews, they had no clue. They didn’t know why Jews were supposed to be bad, they just thought it was a fact. They didn’t question orders.

Vice/Alex: Is the film an idea you’ve had for a long time?
Uwe: Yeah. I’ve had it for years. But I never had the opportunity to do it, especially as a German. And I’m not loved in Germany either. But to be honest, what is Germany doing? If you make a Sophie Scholl movie or an Anne Frank movie, you get subsidies, you get into the Berlin Film Festival because everybody’s happy that you’re showing that there were Germans in the resistance. But that is bullshit! The reality is that everybody went with it. Only 40 percent voted for Hitler, but then 90 percent went with it and didn’t question why Jews were getting deported. And after the war they said they thought the Jews were in working camps or being sent to the front line. Everybody had an excuse. And if you make a movie now you only get support if you show Germany in a positive light. The real hate I’ll get will come from Germany, because I don’t show any Germans in the movie who have any doubt, who think they shouldn’t be doing this. You see how it was. I wanted to show a totally normal day in Auschwitz, which was completely unemotional, like a butcher basically, who has no bad feelings about cows or pigs getting killed. This makes it scary, but that’s the point of the movie, to show what humans can do.

Vice/Alex: But inevitably people will call it torture porn and say it’s exploitative.
Uwe: But it’s not true. If you see the finished movie, you’ll see there’s only 20 percent where you have that violence in your face. Eighty percent is the daily routine in the camp, and the documentary and the interviews. So it will not satisfy Hostel fans.

Vice/Alex: Well that’s where the trailer is possibly misleading then, because it only projects that part of it.
Uwe: Yeah, you’re right, it is a little misleading, but it was important for me to make a point with the trailer. This is the strategy of the movie, there are no heroes, it’s not one person’s story, it’s really like a documentary. And it needs to show what happened for real. There has never been a movie with a camera inside a gas chamber. In Schindler’s List there is for two seconds maybe. But this is how it was. I have, for example, a very good scene with a father and his six year-old son. And the moment they get separated, there’s no screaming, no big music, no saying goodbye, it just happens in one second in the crowd during the selection process, and then it’s over, and the son gets gassed and burnt. I think it’s the opposite of torture porn, it will make a lot of people cry because it’s so unemotional. I’m sad that people don’t give my movies a shot, they’re worth it, I put my money and heart into them, and I hope I’ll get the same chance as other filmmakers.

Vice/Alex: What sort of reactions did you get from people in Germany when you started talking about making the film?
Uwe: I never talked about it. Nobody had a clue until I put the teaser up. And people are flipping out in Germany. The distributor working on the release of my Max Schmeling boxing movie, which is coming out in October, said the Auschwitz trailer is a disaster for them. They said, "This has ruined your reputation, we had such good press for Max Schmeling, and now you’ve released this Auschwitz trailer." But Auschwitz is a way more important movie than Max Schmeling. And it’s way better. And people on websites have complained that I’m doing this to make money–if I wanted to make money I would have kept my money and not spent it on this. It’s totally absurd to think a movie like this is for box office. It’s the opposite, we all know that it will be really tough to get any cinemas playing it.

Vice/Alex: Are you concerned about upsetting Holocaust survivors and their families?
Uwe: No. Because we talked to Holocaust survivors, and we talked to [Israeli Holocaust memorial center] Yad Vashem to get stock footage for the documentary material. They know that it’s good to make sure that nobody forgets what happened. So even if it’s disturbing and shocking, it’s better that it exists than it doesn’t exist. So I think they will hopefully step up and support the movie when it’s done.

Vice/Alex: When will it be done?
Uwe: I think November, and I will try to get it into the Berlin Film Festival. But I don’t think they’ll take it.

ALEX GODFREY

[colinr0380]

It sounds like the same confused argument that Andrey Iskanov put forward for his four hour historico-torture film Philosophy of a Knife.

[mfunk9786]

But let's not forget: Saló's a-OK

[Alphonse Doinel]

I’m not Robert Rodriguez or Quentin Tarantino in a fucking coffee shop and only have knowledge about film journalists

Poetic.

I understand his reasoning, but I don't see the purpose of recreating something for the sake of recreation. The documented photos and films are devastating enough. I don't need to see all the gory details to know this was one of humanities great atrocities.

And if Dr. Boll really thinks this is what has to be shown to make people understand the Holocaust, he really has no faith in people.

[Morbii]

And if Dr. Boll really thinks this is what has to be shown to make people understand the Holocaust, he really has no faith in people.

That's kind of the impression that I got from what he said - and why should he?

[dad1153]

Every single movie about the Holocaust concentrates on one character, stories of survivors, heroes, whatever. And I wanted to show the Holocaust for what it was.

What's wrong with following a specific character during a Holocaust movie as a storytelling technique? I just saw "The Pianist" on HD-DVD over the weekend and it's a great, disturbing movie precisely because of the randomness with which Władysław Szpilman's life was spared (like when he didn't get shot among the construction workers because he didn't cross the street) and the possibility of death and/or deportation to a concentration camp was a 24/7/365 reality. The scenes where Szpilman's family eats their last meal (a tiny candy bar) before he tells his sister he wished he knew her better as they're boarded on the train was every bit as devastating (to me) as it would have been to see the family burned alive or executed. I honestly don't know why I'm wasting my keyboard strokes typing a reply to anything Uwe Boll does or says. But, given how Polansky and his crew (along with Brody's excellent lead performance) pulled off making a Holocaust movie last decade that could still shock me about a done-to-death sub-genre of Award-bait movie/TV dramas, Uwe decrying a filmmaking technique that's a proven tool for effective conveyance of a bigger meaning than what we're limited to seeing on-screen is just further proof the man deserves every bit of scorn he gets.

[domino harvey]

I actually agree with him, but I've long held that he's a reasonably intelligent man making bad films as some sort of performance art (how convenient to see a Gallo thread right below this)

[mfunk9786]

Blu-ray.com review of the heavily censored A Serbian Film aka "Can Anything Be Justified?" UK Blu-ray

I've never written at length about this film since I saw it at the Philadelphia Film Festival, but I was out and out surprised by it. It is no four-star film, as there are awkward filmmaking choices made and occasionally ridiculous acting, but I am coming down in the camp of saying that it is art rather than garbage (and this is coming from someone who still struggles with this same question regarding Salo). I wouldn't recommend buying the UK Blu-ray due to the censorship, because this is truly a film that should be seen in its original form. As you will be able to tell by the screenshots in the Blu-ray review, the production values are high and the locations are often gorgeous. Underneath that facade, this film is an essential look at the dangerous directions that pornography are headed in not only in Serbia, but worldwide. I know this is oft-discussed, but the internet has made pornography so accessible and plentiful that the ante is frequently upped, most disturbingly not in the arena of physical feats (I think we already have an infighting thread about the rise in popularity of anal sex) but in the psychological torture (or portrayed psychological torture) of women. What began as videos of women being treated very blatantly as pieces of filth to be used and thrown away in increasingly verbally and physically abusive ways are constantly transforming into more and more disturbingly violent semi-snuff films, portraying women being hit, choked, near-drowned, and faux[?]-raped in the name of the sexual ecstasy of the films' younger and younger male viewers, predominantly those who have serious problems with women to begin with.

Even more than a decade ago in the late David Foster Wallace's journalistic essay "Big Red Son" - about his visit to the 1998 AVN Awards and time spent with now-jailed one man horrorshow (and huge porn success) Max Hardcore

Spoiler

[arrested and convicted in 2008 to 4 years in prison for distributing films domestically that contain urination, most notably his signature routine that involved (and surely will still involve after his release however he can manage) using a speculum to open a woman's anus as wide as possible, urinating in it, and forcing the woman to suck up his urine from her own rectum with a long straw - while she portrays a character that is far less than 18 years of age throughout, by the way]

- it was pointed out that pornography was only going to continue to get more and more psyche-demolishingly awful as time went on, until the line between a mere skin flick and an out-and-out snuff film would become progressively (or regressively) blurrier. A Serbian Film represents to the viewer a world in which this is already taking place (and the filmmakers' contentions are that it is, indeed, already taking place). A retired porn actor (all the scenes shown from his films represent a goofier time in porn, in which he played a cop or a lifeguard, etc - similar to some of the porn scenes portrayed in Boogie Nights) is our main character, a very happy family man who is glad to be out of the industry. He is offered the old cliche of 'One Last Job' and cannot turn his back on the money, which would go a long way to secure his wife and young son's future.

What follows is an increasingly disturbing project that does not even seem like a porn film at first, as non-sexual scenes involving children being scolded and women slapping one another angrily are being filmed while he watches, and his reactions to those scenes are being filmed at every moment. As time goes on, his visits to the set become more and more horrible, to the point that he decides to rip up the check and go home. What follows is obviously terrible, but never shot for the sexual gratification of the film's viewers (honestly, there are no glamour shots here, and the much ballyhooed "infant porn" scene is very brief and very fake-looking, and played to absolutely provoke the audience's sense of revulsion towards the direction that the film is going in - it suits the story at the moment that it comes up and while I would have never thought of it myself, I cannot criticize what it is trying to do). The man is forced to perform in the remainder of the film, and his personal life and professional life are merged in absolutely terrible, irreparable ways. I would be remiss to give away too much in case anyone is actually interested in seeing this, but I hope that young men who stumble across this hoping for a fun, ultraviolent film with a sexual bend are in a state of shock as the credits roll as they are supposed to be, and that they think twice the next time they see a film with a woman being forced to say hello to her mother and father as she's being choked and slapped in front of the camera. This, like Haneke's Funny Games, is a film that demands a lot from the viewer, and is useless material for the viewer who does not need it. To paraphrase Haneke, he was glad that people walked out of Funny Games, because he would have walked out too - the people who walked out were not the people that he felt compelled to make the film for. I'm not sure what it says about me that I stuck it out for all of A Serbian Film, but hopefully even those who shut off their televisions or leave the theater can see why there is a very important place for it.

[Mr Sausage]

Does not your point actually make this film impossible as a piece of criticism because it is what it's criticizing, and thus hypocritical? Hear me out:

Your point is that a Serbian film shows the inevitable (future) result of the one-up-man-ship going on in transgressive pornography. Fine. But then is not A Serbian Film open to the same criticism, that it is itself the inevitable result of the one-up-man-ship going on in transgressive horror movies? Is it not itself the the product of that impulse to push horror further and further into what you call "violent semi-snuff films?" I haven't seen the film so I can only phrase this in the form of a question, but from what I've read, the movie seems to enact the impulses it condemns. And if so, its making is a moral failure along the lines of committing a crime as a means of condemning criminals. If there is one thing criticism requires, it's critical distance, and you cannot both have that and enact what you're criticizing.

[mfunk9786]

It's not made in the guise of a horror film the way something like The Human Centipede was, and the only reason it is grouped into that genre is because of the same reasons that Funny Games and Saló were - by the nature of its content, it is an "I dare you" film. It was not made for this purpose the way that the bratty and ridiculous post-film school project Man Bites Dog was, but it cannot avoid that categorization due to the nature of its content.

[matrixschmatrix]

Isn't enacting that which you're critiquing the whole concept of acting to heighten contradictions? It seems as though if anything, this movie is looking to get itself banned or otherwise rejected; embracing it is ironically against the movie's interests.

I always had that problem with Funny Games, actually, that it seems as though in embracing the movie you are either declaring yourself superior to the criticism the film levels at the audience- saying, in effect, that you can see the movie's point about violence and thus admire the movie without actually being turned on by it yourself, which is at the very least somewhat supercilious- or using the movie as an example of the very thing it seems to be horrified by.

[mfunk9786]

The film does not enact what it is critiquing, as it is just a movie, after all. By "actually showing" what it finds reprehensible, it is able to provoke a negative response from a viewer that might otherwise be jaded by it.

However, this is a general argument about provocative films, and I would love to engage in conversation with someone who has seen the film in question.

Trust me guys: I did not expect to have the reaction I did to this film, nor do I feel holier-than-thou for doing so.

[Mr Sausage]

It's not made in the guise of a horror film the way something like The Human Centipede was, and the only reason it is grouped into that genre is because of the same reasons that Funny Games and Saló were - by the nature of its content, it is an "I dare you" film. It was not made for this purpose the way that the bratty and ridiculous post-film school project Man Bites Dog was, but it cannot avoid that categorization due to the nature of its content.

Well, the horror part is incidental. I was talking more about the one-up-man-ship attitude you claimed the movie was critiquing. I mean, from what I understand it is a film that pushes boundaries while at the same time warning you about what happens when other people push boundaries. It struck me as a contradiction. Especially because your point does not seem to be that the movie is indicting itself or its viewers, saying "look at me, you made me this way and that makes you sick." It's saying "look at me, you made the subjects of my movie and their real-life counterparts do the things they're doing. You are sick."

Perhaps I've misunderstood?

Isn't enacting that which you're critiquing the whole concept of acting to heighten contradictions?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. My point is: if your criticisms are only reflexive, then you can enact what you're against, I guess. But if you're enacting something in order to criticize other people--ie. using one form of transgressive cinema to indict a different form of transgressive cinema for being transgressive--then you're being hypocritical to the point of immorality.

[mfunk9786]

Sausage: I think you've misunderstood. Sometimes showing with clarity what is being critiqued is a necessary evil of critiquing it, even if it isn't something as boundary pushing as the themes/content of this film.

[Mr Sausage]

Sometimes showing with clarity what is being critiqued is a necessary evil of critiquing it

There is a difference between showing what you're criticizing and criticizing others by performing their crimes yourself. It is the difference between showing someone else's atrocity to critique that atrocity and criticizing an atrocity by committing one yourself.

If a Serbian film is criticizing porn by showing that its continued mobilization of base and dangerous instincts as a selling point will escalate into atrocity given time, then there is a problem, because A Serbian Film itself mobilizes base and dangerous instincts as a selling point, and therefore is equally contributing to the escalation of representations of graphic sex and violence that could well lead to exactly the circumstances it warns us about.

The one thing that might mitigate that is that, unlike the porn, you indicate is it not using its awful images to titillate. Unfortunately, it still may be using its imagery as a way to gain publicity, notoriety, and thus an audience, which is not a point in its favour. And even if the filmmakers did not set out to do so, it will happen anyway, in which case their choices may have worked against them.

[swo17]

Sometimes showing with clarity what is being critiqued is a necessary evil of critiquing it

I get your point, but depending on the severity of the thing being critiqued, I would argue that there are certain things that don't need to be shown with clarity to demonstrate that they are evil. Most rational people would agree that these things are evil prima facie, and those that remain unconvinced are probably more likely to be titillated than dissuaded by an explicit dramatization.

[mfunk9786]

Looking at a film outside of itself, in terms of attempts to gain an audience or advertise, etc is one of my qualms with film criticism in the first place. I had heard very little about this film before I saw it, and I think it would be unfair to approach it with preloaded cynicism about its intentions.

Swo: what the film portrays is not shown for excruciating lengths of time or lingered upon beyond initial reveals of what is taking place.

I just feel as if I'm at a disadvantage debating with a whole bunch of people who haven't seen the movie I've seen.

[Mr Sausage]

Looking at a film outside of itself, in terms of attempts to gain an audience or advertise, etc is one of my qualms with film criticism in the first place.

Well, judging the intention behind a film's content is not looking outside of the film. That said, given that I've not seen the film, you're right that I'm putting you at an unfair disadvantage. That wasn't my intention, however. My actual intention was to interrogate an idea you raised because I see a corollary to it that makes the idea problematic. I was trying to judge the film as you saw it rather than in and of itself. Granted, that's proven hard to do, and you'd be right to feel annoyed.

Anyway, if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'll rephrase this all in the form of some general questions because they seem to me worth answering (I will withhold actual judgment on A Serbian Film until I've seen it, and will use it below only as a hypothetical example, not a real one):

it was pointed out that pornography was only going to continue to get more and more psyche-demolishingly awful as time went on, until the line between a mere skin flick and an out-and-out snuff film would become progressively (or regressively) blurrier. A Serbian Film represents to the viewer a world in which this is already taking place (and the filmmakers' contentions are that it is, indeed, already taking place).

If the above is true, is it not fair to say that these sentiments can be turned back on the film itself when it also attempts to represent things of "psyche-demolishing" awfulness, things which it has itself invented? What is distinguishing it from what it is allegedly criticizing? Historically, opponents of the depiction of extreme violence and sex in film claim such depictions will degrade the morals of its viewers and lead to actual atrocities like snuff films. If it is your claim that A Serbian Film engages in this very same critique, does that not make its critique problematic and its motives divided, especially since the critique is of an industry it does not consider itself a part of even when it enacts the transgressions it loathes in the other?

[MichaelB]

If the above is true, is it not fair to say that these sentiments can be turned back on the film itself when it also attempts to represent things of "psyche-demolishing" awfulness, things which it has itself invented? What is distinguishing it from what it is allegedly criticizing? Historically, opponents of the depiction of extreme violence and sex in film claim such depictions will degrade the morals of its viewers and lead to actual atrocities like snuff films. If it is your claim that A Serbian Film engages in this very same critique, does that not make its critique problematic and its motives divided, especially since the critique is of an industry it does not consider itself a part of even when it enacts the transgressions it loathes in the other?

I've also seen the film, so I'll try and answer this.

You're absolutely right that there's a danger when dealing with material like this that the filmmaker can legitimately be accused of exploiting the very material that he's affecting to be horrified by, and it's all too clear that Srdjan Spasojevic is influenced at least as much by Roger Corman as by recent Serbian history. In fact, this very thread is exactly the kind of "marketing" he was presumably eagerly hoping for - and he was "rewarded" by the fact that this is one of the only Serbian films to gain any kind of international profile, let alone distribution, in recent years.

On the other hand, the film goes to considerable lengths to mitigate the impact of the onscreen atrocities. First of all, as with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, they're actually pretty brief, and you think that you see a lot more than you actually do (I argued in my Sight & Sound review that the film's most notorious scene is actually more disturbing in the censored version, as the onscreen 'baby' is laughably fake). So as masturbation material (a genuine concern of censors in some countries), I'd say it's pretty worthless.

Secondly, virtually all the really extreme stuff is viewed from the perspective of Milos, the protagonist, days after the events have occurred, via a pile of videotapes - and he's as horrified by its content as we are. More so, in fact, because he's a deeply unwilling (and amnesiac) participant and each successive scene demonstrates where formerly mysterious cuts and bruises originated on his body - he's already been physically scarred prior to the subsequent mental scarring. Which is, to a certain extent, a response to your point about critical distance - there is no doubt whatsoever where Milos and the filmmakers stand on this material, and I genuinely don't think they're going down the ultra-cynical "OK, let's revel in atrocity and then tack on a finger-wagging message that can easily be tuned out." You can't tune it out here, as it's embedded in the film's entire structure - which is why I have much less of a moral problem with it than I do with the vast majority of US-made "torture porn".

For what it's worth, DVD Outsider's is the most intelligent take on the film that I've come across to date - and it's revealing that both its authors are honest enough to confess how deeply conflicted they are about the film. Like it or not - and in total contrast to the impressions given in the earlier part of this thread, when we were discussing its reputation rather than the work itself - it's a fiercely intelligent, angry, startlingly well made piece of work, and while I don't really buy its claim that it offers a unique insight into the Serbian psyche (it has rather less to say about that than the vast majority of recent Serbian films that I've seen), it's certainly more of a Salo than a Hostel. Not that I'd recommend sitting through a double bill with either.

[mfunk9786]

Great write-up, Michael. No offense, Sausage; but I was beginning to feel as if I was banging my head against a brick wall, defending a film to someone who had never seen it. I did not expect to have a positive (if you can call it that) reaction to it, but I was pleasantly (again, if you can call it that) surprised when I did. I think that actually seeing this film before weighing in is key, only because it's one of those instances where it is a completely different piece of work on paper (most films are).

it was pointed out that pornography was only going to continue to get more and more psyche-demolishingly awful as time went on, until the line between a mere skin flick and an out-and-out snuff film would become progressively (or regressively) blurrier. A Serbian Film represents to the viewer a world in which this is already taking place (and the filmmakers' contentions are that it is, indeed, already taking place).

If the above is true, is it not fair to say that these sentiments can be turned back on the film itself when it also attempts to represent things of "psyche-demolishing" awfulness, things which it has itself invented? What is distinguishing it from what it is allegedly criticizing? Historically, opponents of the depiction of extreme violence and sex in film claim such depictions will degrade the morals of its viewers and lead to actual atrocities like snuff films. If it is your claim that A Serbian Film engages in this very same critique, does that not make its critique problematic and its motives divided, especially since the critique is of an industry it does not consider itself a part of even when it enacts the transgressions it loathes in the other?

First off, what I was discussing in that quote was Wallace's essay, but this film has a similarly grim viewpoint, so. Six; half dozen. Anyway:

Making a fiction film in which things that already are taking place in the porn industry are portrayed and then a character turns to the camera and says "and things are going to get a lot worse, guys!" is not making an effective work of fiction at all. The filmmakers behind A Serbian Film obviously went to dark places, but they didn't do it to get their jollies, nor does portraying it do so for the audience (unless, I presume, someone is irreparably damaged - I cannot imagine what it would take to be aroused by this film). The film needs to invent the awfulness it is portraying, otherwise there would not be a film. And, not to twist into too much of a pretzel here - but you can't make a film without making a film.

Discussing A Serbian Film really brings out my desire to use the word "film" as often as possible, apparently. Film.

[colinr0380]

I personally found A Serbian Film to be far less morally upsetting (and far less interested in trying to absolve its main characters of culpability) than Waltz With Bashir even though both use amnesia as a kind of metaphor for coming to terms with having unthinkingly committed atrocities.

[knives]

I have to agree with Colin on that. The violence is short and poorly done so it's bothersome more in theory than in action. That said really odd acting and poor film making just in general turned this one off for me. It's surprisingly okay if unmemorable which is probably the most shocking thing to say.

[Quot]

I think the film is most effective when it uses the theme of the rapidly escalating transgressive nature of pornography as context for the larger theme of victimization for profit. The point is made early on that “Victim” sells and the current marketplace merely facilitates the growth and profitability of such victim economies. If the showing of the transgression in order to critique said transgression was the only goal, then I think the film fails in that regard, if only for the brevity and relatively non-explicit nature of much of the transgression. Someone earlier correctly stated that you come away from this film feeling as if you saw a lot more that you actually do. I do believe there’s more going on under the surface here than just criticism by imitation.

The filmmakers go to great lengths to create a sympathetic, but flawed, protagonist for the purpose of audience identification, and they are very successful in this endeavor. It is easy to root for the character of Milos: he’s not perfect (he drinks a little too much), but he’s basically a good guy everyman who just happened to be a successful porn star back when costume porn was still par for the industry’s course. A lot of time is spent early in the film showing us his flaws, worries, ambitions, and especially his connection with his family, with whom he only wants to provide a comfortable life.

This is how the film successfully treads the thin line between being a product of transgression and critiquing the product that you are portraying. In the former, the viewer is in total control of whatever transgressive acts he chooses to view (and presumably get off on). In A Serbian Film, that insulation is removed as soon as the viewer begins to identify with the main character. Another unsettling quality of the film is the slick and stylish look of the film – lulling viewers into a false sense of security since it closely resembles any Hollywood film with similarly high production values. The bond between Milos and the viewer is forged so tightly that he reacts as most of us would when presented with some of the atrocities portrayed on-screen: he is repulsed and tries vainly to escape the world he finds himself in.

On the surface, the film can be read as vilifying both the new generation of porn makers and the audiences that their material attracts, which in and of itself could be viewed as hypocritical by definition. But the filmmakers are doing more than that. They’re making a statement on the corrupting range of influence of victimization. So, instead of being allowed to get their jollies off, this film’s viewer becomes (as does Milos) the primary victim. In the grand scheme the filmmakers portrayed in this film are already financially victimizing their intended audience by exploiting their prurient interests. A Serbian Film subverts any possible expectation of viewer titillation by letting them live though a hell they’d probably just as soon not encounter.

I thought it was a very smart, well-made film, though far from perfect. But it’s a tremendous “food for thought” film. And on that front alone, I’d give it an ‘A’.