Out For A Kill (2003)

Director: Michael Oblowitz

Screenplay: Danny Lerner, Dennis Dimster and Sam Hayes

Cast: Steven Seagal, Michelle Goh, Corey Johnson, Tom Wu, Ozzie Yue

90 minutes

Synopsis: An archaeologist Prof. Robert Burns (Seagal) finds himself an unwitting accomplish to a Chinese drug cartel. Jailed on the other side of the world, and his wife and female archaeological assistant killed, Burns travels across the world followed by two agents (Goh and Johnson) to take his revenge of the leader of the cartel and his various henchmen, following an arcane Chinese alphabet and busting heads in as he goes along.

It might be a surprise to see Steven Seagal making an appearance on a blog about abstract movies, but neither was referencing him in the Last Year In Marienbad (1961) conventional either, the influence that led me to cover this film. Action films are as likely to be as strange in their content as in other genres, usually because of the trends and influences that can distort them into the final results seen on cinema screens or DVD. I originally choose Out For A Kill as a perfect example of the straight-to-video films of the Millennium with 80s heroes at their most extreme, when individuals like Seagal could make four films a year in hectic pace on low budgets. It's plot is simple, sewn together from details seen many times before and stripped down to an extreme, and the result including how the film was put together left me perplex when I first saw it lumber along my TV screen.

I'm not that fond of Seagal. Whether it says something about a person or not, I'm a Jean Claude Van Damme fan. With Seagal, I went through a binge of his films at one, from the classics like Out For Justice (1991) to his straight-to-video work, only to suddenly find a complete disinterest in him. Seagal as an individual is head scratching, somehow able to be cross interaction with the Dalai Lama and a friendship with Vladimir Putin within the same life, able to go from a music career to being a part of a police force and having part of it recorded onscreen for reality television. Then there are more controversial aspects. I'm not making a cheap swipe at Putin - in fact I'd want to be a fly on the wall whenever the two were in the same room. No, I'm thinking some of the controversies including a certain lawsuit that, without knowledge of the full details, could sound liable. There's also the fact that, out of the many eighties action stars he's gone Colonel Kurtz in terms of his public persona. With Van Damme, after the ego, the drug addiction and straight-to-video films, there is a possible happy ending where after the least expected redemption, a meta-film about him called JCVD (2008), he's shown a self deprecating sense of humour and humbleness, legitimate acting talent now he's much older, and gets to rock a mullet and a Canadian tuxedo on the cinema screen. (It's in Coors Light commercials admittedly but still a wonderful sight to see, and makes suffering through all the trailers worth it to see them.) Seagal, to purposely avoid character assassination, has the baggage of jokes made at his expense about his increased waistline and his fashion sense you have to push to the side, and even then there is an issue of his ego. Compared to Van Damme at his worse, even the characters Seagal played in his classics had something that put me off him. A lot of it is that he rarely has roles where he was in real danger or was harmed by the villains. Probably the most accomplished, real martial artist in the eighties American action films, he however always seemed to plough through villains without a scratch on him, lessening the potential excitement of fight scenes, and how wanton the characters' act of violence was, worse when the non-violent and Eastern philosophy appeared in his later work, caused further problems. He then became stoned faced very quickly making it harder for me to like him. Neither does making your directorial debut On Deadly Ground (1994) help and forcing the viewer through a prolonged environmental message at the exact end which would put people off conservation.

Speaking only of the figure played in the film, former thief and archaeologist Robert Burns is the most absurd part of the entire thing. With a deep and serious voice, permanent expressionless face and the trademark ponytail, Seagal does come off as a caricature. His fighting style since the classics in his career was already less interesting to me because he was always in control, no blow landed on him, and knowing the restrictions that came about with these later films in terms of stunt doubles or editing hasn't helped suspend disbelief. The revenge course Burns takes is surface deep like in a lot of action films, his wife a hollow prop and his assistant complete forgotten, but its confounding here because he merely walks into a room with each henchman, says his wife was killed and kills them without any scratches on him. This completely offsets the tone of an action film, feeling more like a slasher movie where you are on the killer's side. The addition of the detectives is pointless as well because, while Michelle Goh is very beautiful, they are both useless and were even responsible for Burns' wife dying in the first place. They stand out only more than the random French detective that briefly appears in a grey Paris set, or anyone else, because of the amount of screen time Goh gets.

What made the film originally jarring was how, like a frayed rope, it was in continuous danger of the strands finally snapping and breaking. Part of the entertainment is how unexpected plot flourishes appear that would seem utterly out of place in other genres. A fight in a Chinatown barber shop could be like many others but the goon left to fight Seagal is depicted as practicing monkey style kung Fu, to the point of mimicking scratching herself and apprehensive twitches, and can run on all fours vertically on the mirrors and walls in the room. A trip to Bulgaria and sinister nightlife includes Goh's character trying to play off lesbian, drug addicted tattoo artists for information, a random tangent just for the sake of titillation. A death of an important character near the end is completely nonsensical, starting with their abrupt internal monologue, about back-story never mentioned before, and ending with abrupt editing the moment they die which confuses the viewer. Things happen merely because for most of the plot. There is a vibe of The Cannon Group, Inc., the company known for ridiculous eighties action films, and that is not surprising since the producers of Out For A Kill were Millennium Films, a company built by former employees or individuals who worked at Cannon during the Golan-Globus era until its bankruptcy.

Technical Detail:

A significant factor to the film's chaotic presentation is its locations. The story travels from New York to Bulgaria to France and places in-between across the world, but there is an artificiality enforced by how restricted the locations are externally whilst interiors are continually used. The film is an American co-production with Aruba, an island country IN the southern Caribbean sea, a country which I only learn the existence of through this film and others shot there. There are only a few Arubian films in IMDB, and nearly all but two are a low budget action film, including Jean Claude Van Damme's Knock Off (1998) and two Seagal movies including Out For A Kill. This is problematic, especially as there are Arubian filmmakers and an Aruba International Film Festival in existence, causing one to wonder why there are no other entries on IMDB then the few on there, but the odd way I discovered the existence of this island emphasises the same strange feeling of seeing the Bulgarian sets for the first time with their machine grey paint design. The film regardless of where the story goes to feels like it exists in its own world even when New York aerial shots are used.

The film is incredibly small in terms of production design and it rushes through plot points for a simple story. Excessive use of editing and establishing shots bombard you to the point that you do get lost by what's going on if you over think it. I originally thought the CGI was incredibly obvious but instead it's the obvious green screen which sticks out, the character suddenly disconnected to their background. An image of Seagal brooding over fire imposed in front of him with a blocky jaw and the ponytail has an almost farcical nature to it. I had always considered that director Michael Oblowitz purposely made an action film that, rather than a parody, was one that felt like it was whittled down to its most eyebrow raising images. I thought this because he came from the No Wave movement in the late seventies and early eighties that lead to Jim Jarmusch and the Cinema of Trangression directors like Nick Zedd. Revisiting the film, this is up to debate completely now as a theory.

Abstract Spectrum: Psychotronic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Exactly like Belly of the Beast (2003), Ching Siu Tung's Thai set film with Seagal, the star becomes a prop for a film around him that is continually close to falling off the rails as it goes. Sadly Out For A Kill manages to restrain itself before this happens. I choose the film to cover because I thought it was a chaotic mix of weirdness, but most of the film revisiting it is the same as many other of Seagal's straight-to-video films I've seen. Belly of the Beast in hindsight would've had a greater chance of getting an Abstract Rating. "Psychotronic" is apt as it usually denotes films which attempt to cater to the widest audience but are effected by influences during production that encourage the oddest things to take place. This does mean however that, while a film can be strange, it's not necessarily more than that.

Personal Opinion:

Out For A Kill has diminished on this viewing, at least in terms of being a strange little action film which shambles on through its plot, something which I held with delight. Now it feels quite predictable in places and reviewing it enforces that only a few films can ever really quality as "guilty pleasures", if you feel guilt watching them or not, only those which stay with you and have something you are interest in retaining some quality to you, while others will diminish if you watch them over and over again. Out For A Kill is one such film for myself.

Music of the Abstract: Goat $hit by Shit and Shine

Something more current for this mini-feature. I came across the band's 2015 release 54 Synth-Brass, 38 Metal Guitar, 65 Cathedral in an alternative music and book store in Sheffield, and was immediately interested in it from its bold cover design and a band name that is certainly censored on iTunes. Like with cinema, it's difficult for me to keep up with current music especially as I want to keep looking out for older material I've yet to discover and that, honestly, I find my tastes usually the completely opposite of most critics and popular opinion. I fear its snobbery continually when I think this, but its more that like many people my personal taste is very distinctive of myself, and that what is seen as popular in a consensus online is a culminated opinion which excludes the tangents in personal taste many have. That you have to balance out how expensive buying CDs, even MP3s, can be and the time it may takes to give something a chance even for free on a site like Spotify, nothing to get the cellos out to play a tragic song for, but meaning that I prefer to gamble with something older that I've heard great (or notorious) things about or have a moment of curiosity for, like with purchasing 54 Synth-Brass, 38 Metal Guitar, 65 Cathedral because the cardboard sleeve the disc is in looked interesting.

The album is great, which shows that over a century or so of electronic based music there is still so many unique sounds you can produce in the genre let alone others like rock etc. It's a great album just for the hellishly thick beats in each track, the sort of tracks that would be awesome to dance to in a nightclub, and there is no sense of repetition each one. Willing to use anything from real instruments, vocal samples, even a krautrock inspired use of a repetitious drum beat, some of the lengthy tracks on this album switch rhythms halfway through themselves almost creating two different songs within the same one. That this particular choice is a remix of another song, Hide From The Sun by Goat, shows how much cool music there still is being made either as a new composition or a new composition which rifts from a pre-existing one to create a hybrid. 

Music of the Abstract: Daddy Cool by Boney M.

If there is a music genre that led to such divisive opinions about it, disco is up there. On one hand, an unbelievably popular genre of music. On the other hand, how many other genres of music have had a campaign against, such as when on July 12, 1979, at the Chicago baseball stadium Comiskey Park, a D.J. called Steve Dahl blew up disco records in a promotion that ended up with riots?. Like any other genre when it becomes very popular and mainstream, disco became like what would happen to punk after and progressive rock before, forced back into the underground or diverge into various sub-genres. I confess though that, just listening to a disco compilation album, you realise how good the music actually is. After growing up with Disco Stu from The Simpsons as a child, it's amazing for me to see even how mainstream disco songs could be very experimental or very odd. Donna Summer's I Feel Love managed to be proclaimed the future of music by Brian Eno, and the influence is still profound to this day. Also think of Rasputin by Boney M., the story of the infamous Russian monk, who was tricked into drinking cyanide and was shot multiple times before his assassins even managed to kill him, set to an insanely danceable beat using balalaikas. It managed to get to number 2 in the British charts and has a folk heavy metal cover version by Turisas. How many songs today would be so esoteric in their subject matter and sound compared to the countless party tracks of now?

Boney M as a group has aspects that might surprise some. German music producer Frank Farian put the group together and also provided most of the vocals in the studio. Also the original Love For Sale album cover would've be eyebrow raising back in the seventies let alone now. Yet the music is good and knowing how beloved it is, members of the group touring performing the songs long after Boney M was officially disbanded, makes how enjoyable of the songs greater. While a bit of a left term for this article in terms of being very well known, a song like Daddy Cool really stands out for how its constructed as music, very danceable indeed but also very unconventional compared to a lot of pop music now. My interest in Boney M also has a filmic connection. One of my most beloved scenes in any film I've seen, from one of my favourite films of the last decade, comes from the incredible comedic-drama Tulpan (2008), a film from Kazakhstan directed by Sergey Dvortsevoy, where the protagonist and his best friend drive through the Kazakh desert at high speed singing and bopping along to Rivers of Babylon. If anything else, that and the sets in the video above are appropriate for this site, giant mushroom in the background of the video and all.

Last Year At Marienbad (1960)

From http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmedsf
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Director: Alain Resnais

Screenplay: Alain Robbe-Grillet

Actors: Delphine Seyrig; Giorgio Albertazzi; Sacha Pitoëff

94 minutes

Synopsis: In a hotel, a man named X (Giorgio Albertazzi) tells a woman called A (Delphine Seyrig) that they met the year before and have been in an adulterous relationship away from her husband M (Sacha Pitoëff). A denies this as their reality continually distorts and the figures in the hotel's halls occasionally freeze in time.

From https://ktismatics.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/marienbad-pistols.png

Last Year At Marienbad, despite being firmly part of the European art cinema that would be dominant in the sixties, is still very unique besides them. It shows the elliptical nature of many of these films, the experimentation, the existentialism, and for those who despised these films, an absence of surface level "entertainment", but the result is bold in its execution even compared to the more bolder experiments of the era like Jean-Luc Godard's films. Films like ...Marienbad are "entertaining" to me for their experimentation, and melodrama is still there in these films only in bitterer and more post-modern forms. ...Marienbad is one of the few openly puzzle-like entries of the French New Wave, others I've seen even if they were unconventional in structure still retaining a clear narrative guideline or a clear theme. ...Marienbad is inherently disorientation, the meeting of a bold experimental film maker in Resnais meeting a bold author of experimental literature in Robbe-Grillet.

Large portions are a horror film in the robbing of its characters of control. X at times shows the ability to manipulate the film to his desires as the narrator, altering the world in his own image, but when his memory slips or brutality steps in he is powerless. A film of an unbroken, fluctuating dream, it traps its characters in an illusion. The difficulty one can find with such presentation can be lightened when you picture the scenes in the context, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, of the characters being unstuck in time. The only clear, tangible thing is the hotel the drama takes place in, set around the 1920s or so, and that there has likely been an act of adultery or unfaithfulness even if nothing has been committed physically or X is merely trying to instigate a fictional one. It's not out-of-place to reference Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) - if Kubrick's story is about a family being haunted by the ghosts in the hotel they are staying in, ...Marienbad be it about ghosts who are already dead or living statues being haunted by their never-ceasing cycles. A stasis is felt with amnesia effecting X eventually as much as for A. A horror film is apt as a description as, while it is depicted in beautiful monochrome by cinematography Sacha Vierny, the bearings of what ever happened if anything, or even if there was a last year, is less and less clear as the film goes along. As the film distorts its timeframe, various events are evoked subtly in the editing and shifts between locations and periods that show the worse scenarios that could happen, including sexual violence, that horrifies X and A equally.

From https://ktismatics.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/marienbad-mirror.png

It's redundant and irritating to merely view ...Marienbad as an "arty film", art for art's sake without emotional connection. The drama is varying depending on the viewer but there. Clues of the situation are there. The game played continually that X keeps losing to M suggests an inevitability of fate that will undermine X the same way as will happen to Max Von Sydow playing chess with the Grim Reaper. The duplication of a specific object pulls the film into science fiction and also shows the endlessness of this reality onscreen that X tries to break, though he is as much into question as scenes show him as being as monstrous to his own horror as he is in love with A sincerely. ...Marienbad is different to other films that share these themes and concepts because it doesn't placate to simple little treats for the viewer to indulge in which even terrible movies can replicate, entertaining or not. There is no cheap sentiment, no dumb laughs or anything easy for even a dreadful film to be able to achieve well. With ...Marienbad one has to work, but most of the work is accepting that it has no clear narrative end, left a mystery, and that its use of editing and tone will have to settled with at first.

From https://ishootthepictures.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/
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Technical Detail:

Vital to the success of ...Marienbad is the location, shot with two German castles and French studio sets to make up the one looming environment, with its perfect symmetrical garden and elaborate decor, that becomes as much part of the puzzle of the narrative chunks. It is a literal labyrinth with no sense of true geography, a flux of rooms and corridors that could easily switch places. Corridors blur with other corridors and the scale overwhelms the individuals perpetually in evening suits and gowns. The cinematography by Vierny ground these despondent locations into one single, workable whole. It is exceptional, both in the visuals and the use of long camera pans, the camera as much a visitor inside the hotel lost between the characters. The locations themselves in their decoration, from the statues to floral carvings, bring a viewer to a level of aesthetic joy but there is a stilted decay, obsoleteness, to it all in the extravagance that is choking. As with the figures within these sets, awkward and straight-jacketed in their arch mannerisms and performances, this decor becomes a suffocating environment felt by the viewer too as it follows the camera.

The editing is also absolutely vital for the film's puzzle structure to allow ...Marienbad to work as the elusive film it is. Flashbacks intermingle with flash forwards, and time takes place in various forms at the same time as the character suddenly appear in one place to another in the same spots. Editing alongside the camera is one of the most important tools of cinema, its use and absence, if my amateur education in cinema has taught me anything. Films like this show why, with editors Jasmine Chasney and Henri Colpi perfect in constructive what was needed for Resnais and Robbe-Grillet's cinematic game. Interestingly Robbe-Grillet put many directorial and camera instructions in the script, which would be seen as taboo in any other circumstance like in modern mainstream cinema, but Resnais followed the instructions faithfully only adding his own touches including in areas not considered in the screenplay. The result is the marriage of two strong auteurist voices supported by talented individuals working on their puzzle. Out of both figures, Robbe-Grillet's films when he decided to become a director soon after would run with the same manipulations of time and identity biting at the extremes of this one.

The music, which intermingles classical and modernist compositions, stimulates further intensity to the material. Especially with the organ heard numerous times throughout this is the score of a horror film, its jarring nature against the compositions implicating audibly the trap the participants are in.

From http://images1.laweekly.com/imager/last-year-at-marienbad
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Abstract Spectrum: Abstract / Expressionist

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

The ending resounds with an attempt to escape the hotel and the film's structure itself. The issue is, however, whether this escape is at all possible or if the overlaying repetition will start from the beginning again with X and A in their original places, like pieces in an elaborate board game or a toy construction. The results of each previous event has led to tragedy only to start again. It is only because the film itself ends that we don't see if anyone has escaped permanently.

But the film can be interpreted another way, and far from a cop-out, this deliberate lack of a clear meaning is powerful, because the idea is the hotel itself stuck in a time bubble, the outcome depending on the viewer as if they were in it as participants themselves. The conflict in the film is shown poignantly when X and A discuss, as X narrates, a pair of statues in the garden, the male protecting the woman or the woman pointing out a distant object or both. Like these statues its actively encouraged by the editing and chronological distortions to see scenes in multiple ways. My opinion of what ends the plot could be different from yours, and that is not problematic because the film is designed, like for the characters, for all viewers engaged with the film to appear back out of it through different "corridors" and exits. The result has never been replicated from any film I've seen yet and it'd take a one-off like ...Marienbad to be its mirror. The Shining comes off as its more genre based blood sibling with different intentions. Robbe-Grillet's own films from the few I've seen don't reach this level of abstraction but work their own grooves. David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (2006) is the closest thing and is a film few will be patient with as with ...Marienbad.

From http://screencrave.com/wp-content/uploads/2013
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Personal Opinion:

Is there entertainment is the film considering how its described? Yes, as a depiction of an endless fluctuating maze. Horror films dabble with mazes and endless cycles, but ...Marienbad has the most dreamlike and effecting. So do fantasy and science fiction movies connect to the film. If a genre is to be attempted haphazardly to be placed on the film, it's at least existential and opulent. A story of beings trapped in a labyrinth of time, a film of a film itself in conflict with itself. Far from navel gazing this is willing to have the film pull itself to pieces and while there is a way to interpret the theme as about cinema, it also works in the context of a person existing in deathless ennui, drifting through corridors not sure where they were the year before. Its only not entertainment if one comes into Last Year At Marienbad expecting a romantic comedy or Steven Seagal to appear amongst the living statues, but the DVD cover at least on my copy should warn you neither of the following appear anyway.

Befittingly, this puzzle has a cameo from the Master on the right.
(From http://scrapheap.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Marienbad-1.jpeg)

Music of the Abstract - Osaka Bondage by Naked City

How much can you cram into a single minute of a song? In the Eurovision Song Contest each entry has to be around three minutes maximum, forcing one to have to create the perfect ditty to win. Three minutes is said to be the perfect length for a song, but punk managed to need less time than that. Napalm Death managed to encapsulate the concept of suffering in 1.316 seconds. The latter might sound absurd, but the grindcore subgenre of metal is not only responsible for some of the most intense music I can hear, but it enforces how much you can cram in only a minute or so and still make a full song with multiple complex structures to it. Sprinkle its influence over avant-garde jazz, and you get Naked City, the second time musician John Zorn appears here and will likely not be the last for him either. Probably what makes this selected song better is knowing there's a great sense of fun behind it as well like a lot of great confrontational music, especially when the jaunty piano piece kicks in...

The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (1991)

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rtUL6hJZR6I/TryULR0w5yI/
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Director: Jan Švankmajer

Scriptwriter: Jan Švankmajer

Out of all of Jan Švankmajer's short and feature length animated and live action films, The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia is the only one that has been openly political. Christened a work of "agitpop", it stands out in the Czeck surrealist's career when his themes are usually universal in theme. Originally I feel in love with his films for turning everyday objects into living entities: animal tongue slithering along onscreen, tables enjoying picnics in the countryside, and people made of vegetables in reference to the art of Giuseppe Arcimboldo amongst other images that are only seen in his work. Soon after I found appeal in how he used to tackle themes such as sexual taboos (Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)) to conformity (The Garden (1968)), or transformed literature from Lewis Carroll to Edgar Allen Poe into his own vision. The Death of Stalinism... is still very much a surreal work as his other films, juxtapositions that should not be coming to life and reflecting subjective symbolism. But in depicting its theme of the history of communism in Czechoslovakia from the later 1940s to the Velvet Revolution of 1989, this becomes the most openly political work he had made yet with detailed references to real events and political figures.

The film begins this journey through history with the statue of Joseph Stalin being placed on an operating table, his head opened up and the bust of Klement Gottwald, head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1948 until 1953, being birthed from inside his head. The film despite its more noticeable political content is still unequivocally Švankmajer's interpretation of them, his trademarks of stop motion animation representing the emotions about his country during these decades and the then-future, the statue of Stalin still haunting the Czech Republic disguised in the country's colours at the end. The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet tanks is depicted by rolling pins for example, moving on mass in various sizes from giant to small one crushing stones and other things in their path down a hill. If one had a good knowledge of the history of Czechoslovakia during the later forties to 1989, or was born in the country, this short would have immense meaning, a matter-of-face absurdity to these images which do not trivialise the severity of them.

Far from didactic it still presents the material through Švankmajer's grim if quietly black humoured tone, a grotesqueness in the ordinary. The farcical nature inherent within this real history, images of bullet holes suddenly appearing in brick walls, is comparable to Juraj Herz's The Cremator (1969), both difficult to laugh with in their humour knowing real people died outside of the cinema screen. The film succinctly depicts the end result of the history with a prolonged scene of gloved hands, faces not seen, crafting workers out of clay and moulds, the creations going on conveyor belts to their own executions by hanging, the bodies falling back into the bucket of clay used to create them. A skull eating through pictures of Stalin or the infamous Soviet leader developing eyes emphasises the director's visible rage at what took place during his lifetime, but it interconnects with acts of violence that take place in his other short films like Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) or Virile Games (1988), in the most innocuous of places like the latter's depiction of a football match as much as in political events that shape a whole country. If there is a danger of the meaning of the short being lost as people forget the history being retold, there is still this general absurdity and violence in normalcy that runs through many of the director's films, linking with his Surrealist views.

From https://wondersinthedark.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/death-of.jpg

Technical Detail:

Openly, Švankmajer is one of the most profound influences on my film tastes as they were developing. With this comes a knowledge as well of the incredible determination and exhausting hours of time that were likely spent to create a ten minute short like this. Even his last feature film Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) (2010), which used paper cut-outs, looked like it was laborious and time consuming to get each scene and moment done right. Švankmajer even more so then the similarly talented Quay Brothers is concerned with aesthetic textures in his films as part of depicting his ideas. The camera is usually static for each shot but he channels the cinematic qualities deprived from the restriction to the content onscreen in the animation and production design.

A statue of Stalin is given threatening life, and when the two birthing sequences happen, you get the disgusting texture of entrails being moved aside by gloved surgeon's hands to birth the child of Stalin's politics, right down to an umbilical cord being cut and a slap on the back of the statue bust's head to make it cry. What Švankmajer learnt, in his life as a puppeteer, an animator, an artist, and a film director, with the many skills he learnt over the decades, is deceptively simple yet ignored to a horrifying extent in a lot of cinema, that in real life the world as a person views it in texture and "coarseness" is as much part of our existence as our thoughts and relationships are. That a floor can be dirty or clean, a hand can have arthritis or dirty finger nails, that objects are chipped or splintered, details you rarely get in realistic drama and fantasy films equally. Far from mere surface detail, it is instinctively part of people's perceptions of their environments, and it's important here in this film too. The starkness of the film in these small details adds to the importance of its message, the rudimentary decoration of where the clay workers are made and hung, the knife used to cut the nooses the same one used to spread mustard on the godlike hands' meal, to the intersplicing of images of propagandist sporting activity with De Sadian illustrations of orgies.

Abstract Spectrum: Surrealist;  Expressionist

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

The overt political tone of The Death of Stalinism... does reduce the abstract tone of this film compared to others in Švankmajer's filmography. When he is dealing with more universal themes or adapting other artists' work like in Jabberwocky (1971) he allows it to be starting points for very unconventional imagery and juxtapositions, which are simple in their execution of the ideas but still startling and uneasy to the viewer. The surrealism that does exist in this particular film is still poignant, used to emphasis the message of the film.

Personal Opinion:

Originally I was cold to The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia for many years compared to other Švankmajer short films. I'd recommend, if you explore Švankmajer's short films, to begin with Jabberwocky and Dimensions of Dialogue, while personal favourites like Food (1992) to Virile Games also stand out as the next ones to watch. The Death of Stalinism... would've had greater power originally if my knowledge of Czech history was stronger, but it has grown in significance as a stronger production. Inherently the level of quality in the creation of the short and it's execution of ideas is as strong as in all the other films, and as the one overtly political film in his filmography, it stands out greatly on its own terms.

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tISPdmVwM00/UCjC-X0dUAI/AAAAAAAAE1M/
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Music of the Abstract: Kokoro by Far East Family Band

Ethereal Japanese space rock that literally sounds like one is travelling interplanetary when listening to it. I was lucky enough, during my various volunteer jobs during a long stretch of unemployment, to meet an older male volunteer who specialised in electronics who collected numerous and incredibly obscure bands and musicians on CD and in various forms. Sadly not long after we started sharing a bond for the type of music today's choice represents, the place we volunteered at descended into petty politics and I have sadly not been able to keep in contact with him. I thank him however, if I ever bump into him again, for introducing me to this song and various other bands who'll appear in these posts, and opening me up to "abstract" music the same as I am for films.