Inferno (1980)

 

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Dario Argento

Cast: Irene Miracle as Rose Elliott; Leigh McCloskey as Mark Elliott; Eleonora Giorgi as Sara; Daria Nicolodi as Elise Stallone Van Adler; Sacha Pitoëff as Kazanian

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) / An Abstract Re-Review

 

Continuing on from Suspiria (1977), Inferno builds up the mythology of the Three Mothers, three powerful witches who control the world: Mater Lachrymarum (The Lady of Tears), Mater Suspiriorum (The Lady of Sighs) and Mater Tenebrarum (The Lady of Darkness). Mater Suspiriorum, who occupied Germany, was central to Suspiria, whilst Mater Lachrymarum, who appears briefly in this film, occupies Rome and is central to the 2007 Argento film Mother of Tears. Mater Tenebrarum, who rules New York, is central to Inferno, which follows a very simple plot mechanic that a diary from an architect and occultist about the mothers is being suppressed violently through bloody murders to acquire all the published copies of it. One such case in this film leads to music student Mark Elliot (McCloskey) travelling to the USA after learning of the distress of his sister Rose Elliot (Miracle) upon discovering the knowledge of the Three Mothers herself, and finds himself on route to meeting Mater Tenebrarum herself.

Inferno overcomes probably one of the biggest issues with a genre film in structure. A narratively driven film can fall foul of being merely dragged along by the plot exposition and having to cover the narrative beats far too much, and as much as I have come to love many for this flaw, their desire to explain everything rather than let you drift through the film by your own intuition is a scourge for a lot of horror films if you want to appreciate them not for a humoured charm. Inferno's solution could be bluntly described as dream logic, but it is different from this. A very simple, concise plot unfolds but both enough is explained to the viewer whilst plenty is not, letting in moments which do not make sense in logic but do in the nightmarish form transpire, and leaving one to travel through the events with enough knowledge to grasp it but a lot more being discovered alongside the characters. Splitting the film up into situations following different characters has a pronounced effect. Everything connects together but the segments unfold as their own narratives, usually leading to gruesome death. While Mark becomes the lynchpin to keep it all together, events can unfold without him, having a drastic effect on how the film is watched. Every character introduced not only stands out but many get central focus for many minutes, and as a result, you get plenty of incredibly memorable sequences but also an unpredictable tone, all whilst they find themselves interconnecting into each other's lives or uncovering strange pockets into their world.

There are plenty of moments in Inferno that stand out, all of which interconnect under this loose plot completely seamlessly. You begin the film with a standout and elaborate underwater sequence in a submerged room and it gets better from there, beginning the movie with an appropriate sense of anything being possible. Since this is a Dario Argento film the murder sequences are extremely stylish and heightened, but since Suspiria was a supernatural horror film, its sequel follows in the unconventional and fantastical mixed with symbolism from his down-to-earth giallo thrillers. Not only do you have the Grand Guignol of the more conventional murder sequences, brutal and unsettling, but also you have sequences like people being savaged by cats or eaten to death by rats, all of which manages to be both beautiful but utterly foul and horrific, only with the issue that, whilst not showing actual animal cruelty, these scenes especially with the cats need to be warned about for certain viewers. Unlike other Italian genre films which come off as cheesy, even if adored by myself, Argento's from this era still sting when it comes to depicting the deaths, and the morbid nature around his films in general has retained potency from this.

With Inferno, you have the same heightened tone that is shared with Suspiria, very artificial set around an elaborate apartment complex where the evil is centred yet fully immersive at the same time. Genre filmmaking should effortlessly flow. It should use its narrative to lead the viewer through a journey, especially if the film is entertainment first, having the virtue of effecting a viewer's emotions directly if done well. I have changed my mind and contradicted this only because this statement can be challenged as subjective, and because the films that fail I have grown to appreciate and find their own logic with, but with those striving for the best of genre tropes, this is an ideal worth trying to achieve even if you fail. One of the best virtues of the Italian genre films in their heyday was their dreamy tones which allowed one to accept the irrational, thus avoiding distractions of logic in semblance to the real world that break the visage. Cinema is inherently an unrealistic medium, and unless one attempts to be as realistic as possible, it should negate the stumbles and falters as much as possible that take place when exposition and plotting block the steady flow of time. Inferno does not attempt to fully explain what is going on but this is for the better, as a quick witted viewer can build up enough from what they see onscreen and instead worry about the labyrinth of turns and abrupt ends that takes place for the characters, as much a film about travelling through various layers as one finds out the apartment complex has secret pipes and entrances within itself. Various strands from petty greed to the Three Mothers mythos interlink tentatively, and as various memorable casting choices like Nicolodi and Alida Valli pass onscreen, the film is able to work as a tense, eerily aired horror movie whilst ditching anything that would drag the film down into a mere plod.

Suspiria itself was an exceptional film just for how its use of colour and lighting took the viewer into a supernatural world, which left a huge task in attempting to match it, but Inferno's aesthetic manages to go even further in some ways by becoming even more coloured and bold in its look. This would one of the last things the great director Mario Bava worked on before his death, behind the optical and visual effects, and in many ways, as a tip of the hat from Argento to the innovator who helped build the Italian genre industry, this film reflects the bold colours of his work like Blood and Black Lace (1964) incredibly. Like Suspiria, terror is not just to be found in the darkness but in colour itself, at their brightest and lurid during the most unsettling incidents. With Argento's work during his golden period, the colour saturation (or lack of colour as in Tenebrae (1981) fully envelops and becomes one with the haunted moods of his films.

Instead of Goblin, the music changed for this film, with Keith Emerson from the prog band Emerson, Lake and Palmer as composer. That band is an acquired taste, but Emerson's film scoring career is a cult following still waiting to happen - alongside Inferno you have the notorious anime blockbuster Harmagedon (1983), Nighthawks (1981) with Sylvester Stallone and Rutger Hauer, and Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) amongst other films. While many of these films are not available in the UK, it is not surprising that prog rock fans can buy a compilation of Emerson's scores, the one for Inferno a great addition to Argento's musical canon by itself. Far more hysterical and on the cusp of absurdity with its choral chanting than the Goblin score for Suspiria, it helps push the irrationality of the film further with its alarmed, drastic tone, whilst allowing this to have its own personality in contrast to its predecessor.

Head to head with Suspiria, Inferno is Argento's most unconventional film, Inferno especially rejecting the plot heavy narratives that his giallos tend to have completely, and even Suspiria had for its phantasmagoric content. It follows a logic of its own that drifts between various characters and never gives priority over any specific one, Mark Elliot merely a grounded figure for the events happening to circle around. It is a filmic world where one can go to a library in Rome and, going downstairs, find oneself in an alchemist's laboratory fully of boiling paste for book binding. It is a film where events such as a total eclipse suddenly happens only to disappear, or the fact that there is a hot dog vendor out near a sewage pipe in the middle of the night, making only any sense in that they are as inclined to kill potential patrons as they are likely not getting many customers in their chosen spot; I do not complain about this sudden inclusion and abrupt end to such sights because the canvas of the film allows the moment to soak in regardless. So much more terrifying in films for me, like in Suspiria, is irrationality, where deaths can happen abruptly or events happen without being signposted, and as this desired template stands, Inferno is one of the strongest examples.

Inferno is one of my favourite films. I accept that it is one where the plot can be seen full of holes, but you have a scene where someone is terrorised as the lights keep going on and off in their apartment, a classic piece on the vinyl player stopping and starting to the power cuts, and the sense of absolute dread it can produce, and you see the skill that came into Argento's work. The mythos built here helps give the film a greater atmosphere, building up a background that fills in what is not dealt with, and also never becomes the main crux of the production, something which has plagued storytelling in various genres when needing to elaborate on it more and more per sequel. There is the contentious issue of Mother of Tears, which is a film I wish to return to as its own creation, part of the completely contentious issue in its own right of Argento's films post 2000s in general. It cannot ruin the two films which came before regardless of what I come view it as, but just emphasises how they both were exceptional productions, Inferno an experience where, unlike a rollercoaster, everything presented onscreen is felt.

Every death is painful, every jolt is startling, but the moments of quietness are just as effective. The scene with the ants crawling in an apartment is a clue but feel like a nod of iconography from surrealist art even if by accident, and absurd scenes like death by rats have a phantasmagoric ickiness to them that is still effecting. Rather than coming away from Inferno as another horror film padded out with attempts to rationalise everything, the completely lack of this adds to its mystique, leaving it at the end with the same level of intensity felt as with Suspiria. Together the duo is an incredible example of Italian horror cinema. Debating for myself which is the better film is a painful thing to consider, especially as Inferno really became a film I adored even beyond Dario Argento as a filmmaker.

Abstract Spectrum: Fantastique/Psychotronic

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

I Was a Zombie for the F.B.I. (1982)

 

Director: Marius Penczner

Screenplay: Marius Penczner and John Gillick

Cast: Larry Raspberry as Ace Evans; John Gillick as Bart Brazzo; James Raspberry as Rex Armstrong

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Note: The following is based on the 2005 re-edit version of this film. This does not reflect a review of the original version, which is referrenced in the below entry.

 

One slip up, and we air condition her skull.

A fifties sci-fi parody, I Was a Zombie for the F.B.I. is somehow a film I had never heard of but has a compelling enough back story, alongside its onscreen content, that left me surprised it never crossed my path. Director and co-writer Marius Penczner made this film with a budget of $27,000, with money won from an Emmy winning short film of his, and the help of Memphis-area film students¹, as a Tennessee regional production, which (in the cut I am talking of) is a huge addition to what they succeeded with. Likely the reason this film never came up in my readings is how scarce its original screenings were, only shown in 1985 on the "Night Flight" cable program, a cable program originally on cable TV network USA Network which showed full length and short films alongside music videos. Varying between cult films, short films by the likes of the Quay Brothers, music videos, experimental cinema, and collaborations and specials with the likes of KISS to a video profile of Aretha Franklin’s career, Night Flight was with hindsight admirable in its goals, continuing into the nineties and being revived into the 2010s.

The fact this film was only screened back in 1985 means it was not easy to see unless you were watching Night Flight as a regular viewer, with the only close thing to an actual release coming in 2005 with a DVD release¹, one notably (and with this review based on this version) some revisions that were made to the material by the director. Shot in monochrome, this begins with two prisoners, brothers, being taken to their punishment on an airplane only for a UFO to knock the plane they are in out of the air. In mind to multiple cuts – this 2005 version with a new score and cut down from its original running time - it is cool as a no-nonsense take on the b-movie, with a tongue in its cheek about the tribute but taking itself seriously with a zip from the get-go. There is a sense of humour to this as this is around a conspiracy involving rival cola drink plants, when a health cola plant nearby the crash site is where the survivors of the plane crash, the prisoners, and the aliens behind their escape are hatching a shady plan involving taking over another plant for Uni-Cola. This heist with hostages by the brothers is used as a cover to begin a brainwashing plan on humanity. It is not an accurate attempt at a fifties b-movie - no back screen projection, no Criswell monologues or wobbly tombstones - nor an attempt at campiness, only that it has what costumes, vehicles and sets the production are carefully chosen in an ambitious way to get the right tone for this tribute.

Many of the sets themselves, like the jail the brothers end up in, are real locations which have to be commended in being able to secure them for the production, and unlike some films of the past this nods to, least for 2005 cut, there is a lack of pointless padding. Mesa of Lost Women (1953) this is not, with endless dialogue with no engagement to it, and that was shorter next to I Was... is considerably. Following its tale of secret cola formulas and aliens hiding among us, armed with deadly white sci-fi billiard balls of pain and memory erasure, with only a pair of G-Men and one female journalist to stop them, this has no fat on its form which feels pointless in having. There is a Body Snatchers vibe and brain stealing cola, zombification the result with this strangely not the only film from the eighties obsessed with cola stealing one's mind. Surf II (1984), with Eddie Deezen creating Buzz Cola to turn surfers into zombies, inexplicably shares a bonding moment as two films parodying older decades of cinema, that one inspired by early sixties beach films, and the dangers of sugary soda.

A sense of personality here - such as an argument whether people keep whiskey in their car glove compartment or not - really helps, even throwing in a stop motion monster for good measure as a cherry on top, with the funny knowledge this same creature returned, as Marius Penczner directed the music video for ZZ Top’s TV Dinners, where the beast made a cameo¹. Controversially, with no context for the original version, the re-edit does not jar badly at all with this film, which could have botched this badly and felt like trying to bolt on an entire aesthetic, of 2000s technological for film making, onto a production a time long after the materials were filmed with its own technological aesthetics. The music suits perfectly, there is not a moment within the film without feeling threadbare, and the inter-titles placing chapters on this tale, clearly to help explain context, are to be appreciated or can just be ignored without being too much a distraction.

As micro budget films go, this one can raise its head high in the knowledge that it is an accomplished one in the circumstances of this area of cinema. It also has the least expected recommendation that Bob Dylan of all people saw the film and wished he had starred in it¹. This quote is said to come from an article interviewing in Spin Magazine Volume One, number 8 from December 1985¹. Called Don't Ask Me Nothin' About Nothin' I Might Just Tell You The Truth: Bob Dylan Revisited, the article, which is split in two in the magazine², does not talk about this fabled list of films he wished he was in. It does however come from Interview magazine, a magazine first published in 1969, and comes from a February 1986 interview with writer Scott Cohen, where this film is mentioned alongside The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), the original 1959 Ben-Hur, and Raintree County (1957), a romantic western set during the American Civil War starring Montgomery Clift and among others Elizabeth Taylor. For weird details like this, especially when confirmed, I am surprise I Was a Zombie for the F.B.I. never crossed my path. It is a niche production, one which might not be as action packed or outright cheesy for some people's tastes. In huge admiration of its achievements, this does deserve a reappraisal.

====

1) The film's streamable version on NightFlight Plus.com, which includes info on the production.

2) Spin Magazine Volume One, number 8 from December 1985, which has the Don't Ask Me Nothin' About Nothin' I Might Just Tell You The Truth article, preserved on Archive.org.

3) New Again: Bob Dylan, Interview Magazine's re-visit on this original February 1986 review, using Scott Cohen's original writing.

Innocence (2004)

 

Director: Lucile Hadžihalilović

Screenplay: Lucile Hadžihalilović

Based on a novella by Frank Wedekind

Cast: Zoé Auclair as Iris; Lea Bridarolli as Alice; Bérangère Haubruge as Bianca; Marion Cotillard as Mademoiselle Eva; Hélène de Fougerolles as Mademoiselle Edith; Olga Peytavi-Müller as Laura; Alisson Lalieux a Selma; Ana Palomo-Diaz as Nadja

An Abstract Candidate

 

Innocence begins with a casket...in which a young girl named Iris (Zoé Auclair) is brought to a school cut off from the world and entirely for the education of young girls. Iris is our introduction to this world of changing coloured hair ribbons, violet for the eldest girls and red for the youngest, and where they are designated into houses with five each maximum, with curfews that are enforced at night. Thus begins the debut theatrical film for Lucile Hadžihalilović, a figure whose actual filmography so far has been tiny but has made an impact. Her work with her husband, as a regular collaborator to the controversial filmmaker Gasper Noe, should be taken in mind too, as she has worked as producer and editor for his productions from the nineties as well, but her own filmography is just as distinct if with only four works so far from the nineties into the 2020s. La Bouche de Jean-Pierre (1996), probably the most difficult one to access. At fifty plus minutes a micro-feature, it is the most grounded and the most difficult as it tackles the subject of sexual abuse of a young girl, but her work in full theatrical length from the 2000s onwards, more readily available, are insanely idiosyncratic productions.

And all of them involve children as central figures in them as well. Earwig (2021), adapted from a Brian Catling novel, is the ritual of one man to tend to a girl who has teeth made of ice, a ritual we barely get a great deal of, and whilst it is arguably the most conventional of the trio, it is still an idiosyncratic work to absorb. Evolution (2015), an original tale, covers one boy in a matriarchal community which is linked to the sea and aquatic entities, and then there is Innocence itself, which is as elusive as it is blatant in its own truly unique mood, a metaphor for reaching adolescence as a young girl if full of additional aspects to unpick. It is exceptionally obvious, even in layers, what its metaphors are about, and the film is explicit about this at times, but the tone is still eerie from the get-go as we go through an entire year or so of this mysterious school. This boarding school for girls, where their parents cannot communicate with them and they graduate once they reach the violet ribbon age, is ritualistic including rumours of the cruel punishments that can be dished out if you do not follow the rules. This includes having to serve the girls over years until you are an old woman, something which likely links to Mademoiselle Edith (Hélène de Fougerolles), the teacher we see, and Mademoiselle Eva (an early Marion Cotillard role) their ballet teacher, friends beyond their roles and in Eva's case, especially, with emotional burden from having been part of this contrasted world that educates these girls into puberty. The macabre nature of this school is through this, and other rituals such as how each New Year, the school's head comes and takes one of the blue ribbon girls away as a "chosen" one, or that when one girl dies attempting to leave, she is deliberately forgotten as if she had committed the worst taboo possible.

Contrasting this is the magical air of the film's world, prominently using nature itself for the metaphors and visual splendour onscreen - snails, cocoons (a metaphor here treated), the entire seasonal changes from snow to flowers in full bloom, even frogs half dead or sleeping in icy lakes among visuals seen. The production likely took time and patience as this goes over seasons in the narrative, from winter to spring purposely. There is, due to the subject at hand, aspects which will make some viewers uncomfortable as this is a frank film about this idea of adolescence without ever becoming lurid, close to an actual fairy tale in tone. From a female filmmaker, there is no sense of this being voyeuristic, and the discomfort some viewers may feel may be entirely the few moments we see these young girls bathing in a lake which could be considered taboo for many simply for depicting nudity even if entirely without sexual gaze whatsoever. Considering what the film is about, that the film is about young children being taught until they are teen girls, when they leave the school in the finale, the discomfort some viewers may feel does come into how the film, with "innocence" as its title, does challenge that term in its own may, both whimsically and in nodding to the sinister machinations of the school itself.

What the girls are taught, including the biology lessons about evolution, are contrasted by the stereotypical subjects they are learning, ballet especially, which are considered "feminine" subjects to study from a child's age. Menstruation is explicitly talked of, as one girl learns what to do from one of the teachers about this, and the discomfort in certain scenes for a viewer likely comes from how we have made this uncomfortable, both because of unfortunately how we have brought a corrupting gaze on childhood and yet also how we do not like to talk about how children do not vanish and merely return as adults, but at a time from around ten to twenty slowly changed through adolescence from children we view as innocents to adults. The film also has threads which suggest things which are gross in the school's structure too; ballet performances the older girls have to perform, which pay for the upkeep of the school, involve having older adult viewers fawn over them in the seat and even throwing flowers to those who are the most beautiful to them, explicitly nodding to how adults can corrupt innocence as much as we feel uncomfortable imagine children not as metaphors of innocence in real life.

The production, in contrast to the later films which are steeped in their settings' mood, feels tranquil even when it will nod to this disturbing aspects, from these performances to the use of coffins to bring the students into the school, and the lack of a traditional narrative as this splits its emphasis on different characters prevents the material from merely being a demonstration of metaphors being spoon fed to the viewer. It takes patience as a result, as this work despite being structured around a very accessible narrative drive, over all the seasons through an entire school year, leaves many aspects of its logic unexplained. This school, lost in unknown woodland cut off from the world, is still fantastical even if the environment is vividly real woodland, and whilst we learnt gossip and truths about how the school works, it is still so vague that the metaphorical interpretation, that this is all a metaphor for growing from childhood to puberty, is completely justifiable. The film, unlike the other films, does without a lot of genre tropes particularly in horror (Evolution) or actual gore (Earwig), fairy tale apt if itself a term which can be questionable in whether it really explains the tone for Innocence.

Certainly it is a film which could have failed completely, the confidence alone to make a film where baring two adult actress it is entirely on the shoulders of its cast of young girls, and cinematographer Benoît Debie to help bring the world alive alongside the production team, brave for Lucile Hadžihalilović. Alongside short film work, arguably, La Bouche de Jean-Pierre was her debut, and that was tonally just as brave for its bleakness without a realistic tone and setting, but as a film which caught notice, Innocence fully succeeds in its tone, its ideas and even in not presenting all the answers explicitly. All that I the reviewer have suggested as the meanings may not be enough or right, and this is factoring in its source material Mine-Haha, or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls by Frank Wedekind, which could change the entire tone as much as what was interpreted for this filmic reinterpretation. (And considering Wedekind wrote the "Lulu" cycle, including Pandora's Box which was made into the legendary Louise Brook film of the same name from 1929, his source book adds an entire viewpoint of this film if viewers are knowledgeable of both). Personally, as well, finally reaching a major part of Lucile Hadžihalilović's filmography, its reputation was also deserved, and among the films which came after, that term "idiosyncratic" is truly apt for this. Not even in terms of it being avant-garde or extreme in how its presentation is, as this has a glacial and quietly atmospheric mood, but in how it finds a simplistic in telling a tale which is both clear to understand themes from, but also elusive altogether, it would happily grow and gain more weight per the many times it was seen, and especially by who the viewer is and what they bring to it emotionally. That it in itself a rare virtue this managed to achieve among its many others.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Eerie

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

Identification of a Woman (1982)

 

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Screenplay: Michelangelo Antonioni, Gérard Brach and Tonino Guerra

Cast: Tomás Milián as Niccolò; Daniela Silverio as Mavi; Christine Boisson as Ida; Veronica Lazar as Carla; Enrica Antonioni as Nadia; Marcel Bozzuffi as Mario

Canon Fodder

 

Michelangelo Antonioni’s last theatrical film to be full directed by the man, and this is to be addressed later on, is very much inclined to his older films from the sixties into the seventies. A filmmaker Niccolò, played by Italian genre film stalwart Tomás Milián, is caught in a bind unable to figure out what film to make, struggling with the desire to film a tale of a woman to even find the face to represent this. Solace comes from a woman from a highly privilege family named Mavi (Daniela Silverio), a younger woman where the chemistry is immediately between her and Niccolò, but with people warning him to stay away from her and obsessed with her themselves.

Antonioni’s films are arguably an acquired taste, blasphemous to say, but his films from L'avventura (1960) on eschewed directly following its plot and instead finding human drama within their template. It is a premise here for a thriller, with a Brian De Palma film hidden in the bushes which never came to be, but the plot is a template instead for a mood piece, of the characters trying to grasp at straws, existential or otherwise, as the narrative template continues. There is a curious nature to his films though in how, for their legacy of opaque existentialism they all present curious touches of accessibility or an interest in the world around them in culture, this in itself observing the world within these films as they grow older and the times followed. Blowup (1966) was, notably, the film catching the era of Swinging Sixties London onscreen with considerable success as a release, and afterwards his career marked fascinating crosspollination, be it working with Jack Nicholson on The Passenger (1975), and Zabriskie Point (1970) having a score composed by Pink Floyd. Here we get a really curious turn in the auteur's career, having reached the nineteen eighties with its idiosyncratic aesthetic and kitsch aspects upon reflection especially when seen in the time after. One did not expect an Antonioni film to be scored with the likes of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Tangerine Dream, the later prolific in composing actual film scores at the time, but the synth music befits the tone. Indeed, after the glamorous sixties Italy of the middle to upper class the director once tackled, now the passing of time presents a new layer of meaning to the proceedings now they are in this new time two decades later and all has changed. Considering Antonioni was in his seventies making this film, time has changed considerably. For him Tangerine Dream, and a sci-fi film which Niccolò eventually considers making when reading of the sun expanding and ecological fears of the worlds, mark the time capsule changes he considered of this era, his obsessions over the years changing with the world itself as depicted in the films.

Class divide is here too, with Mavi from the rich and Niccolòa film maker wandering their midst literally at a party, where now unlike before they are the ones leaving Italy, now the ones growing grey and old. Especially with Red Desert (1964), the last film he made in Italy before travelling the world until this one, his interest in the place of people within the world, especially as it technologically advances as with Red Desert, continues here with the aesthetic and the pop music. The tale is timeless, ultimately a thriller which ultimately reveals no secrets, no conspiracies, merely fickle human relationships, one which bring in Ida (Christine Boisson), a dancer Niccolò becomes entwined with as, halfway through the film, Mavi disappears and becomes the allusive figure as if in a film noir plot. Struggling with his own existential concerns, the need to make a film contrasted with having gone through divorce, Niccolò finds himself between Mavi, whose film noir plot-like aura is a mystery, and Ida, who is brutally honest and emotionally sincere in violent contrast. Identification of a woman as a title is literalized here with one man forced through two sides, and the consequences of love and passion. It is a film that, if this was any other director on hand, could have become an Alain Robbe-Grillet plot in how, in the end, the mystery of a disappearing woman is itself merely a game. Where it is a Michelangelo Antonioni film is how, by the end of this journey, there is no profound message to be had but the layers and contradictions of Niccolò himself, oblivious to a lot of what he experiences, are the concern.

It is also an existential work in terms of desire as with potentially the most contentious aspect of the film, how sexually frank it is but from a male gaze. You get into a world where even if Antonioni's gazes on them, as figures of desire and also their bared bodies, the women even with minor characters Niccolò encounters are a lot more complicated than the ideal he is trying to cast for his film. The responsibility of a relationship is forced onto him to consider, and they are no longer figures of a male desire. Be they bisexual or women who have their own personal fantasies, as he finds conversing with one young woman at an indoor swimming pool, women are not the figures for him to project his ideals on, as with the case of that particular young woman who is proudly and brazenly frank about her sexual desires which do not even need men involved. His sister being a gynecologist, and the matter-of-factness of this, suggests there is now a world beyond Niccolò's, and honestly, this points a contrast in spite of the fact Antonioni did start having a greatly obsession with the erotic and the feminine body as he got older. It was there as far back as Blowup and increased as he was allowed to be more explicit in depiction. His last work for example, a segment for Eros (2004), a curious trilogy with Wong Kar-Wai and Steven Soderberg where Kar-Wai’s segment The Hand was the one acclaimed. Michelangelo Antonioni's segment, The Dangerous Thread of Things, in which he returns to the idea of desire, a romantic triangle in which the man of a heterosexual couple is attracted to another woman, could have easily been an accusation of being a dirty old man as it involves two young women in complete nakedness in dance moves by their ending. Even in context though, it was a curious production for his final ever piece of created art, as elusive as anything else he made beforehand. Art which is made by men fixated by women, the idea of them trying to understand the opposite sex they are separated from in centuries of ritualistic decisions and cultural norms, is one which is rightly challenged more steadily in the time passing, because of the male gaze, because women have rightly taken their voices and projected them, and also because it is becoming more complicated as a subject now sexuality is more talked about in its diversity alongside transgender politics, which scrutinizes what the concepts of "male" and "female" gender in human society really are, including the possibility they were merely placeholders and sacred cows, not truth. That short film is one I refused to dismiss, a work needing a proper dissection in a review to deal with whether it was a good work, and likewise Identification of a Woman complicates itself as, whilst intentionally meant to be erotic at times, the nudity and the sex scenes here are contrasted by its subject. They centre on what is clearly a narrative a man who is becoming increasingly disconnected and visibly ignorant of the women he is dating. The obvious, his goal to create a film with a female lead only to struggle with doing so, is blatant in meaning.

It is telling, even if you think the explicitness of Identification of a Woman is biased in the eroticization of women, that it however presents the scenes here in a matter-of-factness – there is less of the coy and arguably more problematic aspects of erotica here, when the characters can do something as benign as even use a toilet naked and not to be seen as a taboo whilst doing so. Niccolò is ultimately a figure challenged in two ways too, Mavi the figure whose world, of threats in ice cream stores and her decision to move on, force him through games, whilst Ida in vast contrast is someone who wishes to have someone who treats her as a complex person rather than just a figure of desire, challenging his perceptions of how to treat a woman as a figure, more prominent considering his desire to make a profound film with a female lead could seen hypocritical when he is divorced, with no explanation what caused it, and that he ultimately is one cannot really take the weight of responsibility one should have in a true romance for the other person. This work is at least the older statesman in the director admitting Niccolò is a man out of time and a putz whose ideas of women are of no knowledge. It befits the fact, in a world of Time magazine articles lust over women here, or his own inability to cast a film with the right actress, with his wall full of photos and replicas of paintings cut out trying to cast it, that the man we are with the centre of is not some chauvinist hero to cheer. He is instead a man drowning in the deep end of complex emotions, and women being more than ideals, whether he likes it or not.

The power of the film comes from its visual eye, which is undeniable with the grace of cinematographer Carlo Di Palma at Antonioni's side, the work not being driven by plot and instead assisted by the striking images and worlds these characters are within, beautiful throughout let alone also capable of isolating their protagonists. The sequence of a fog covered road in a car, the cutoff point in the film of its two major acts, is incredible, a reminder that Michelangelo Antonioni's work is entirely dependent on their worlds and how the characters are placed within them for a great deal of the internal psychology. In that scene, literalized in the fog, the final breakdown in communication between Niccolò and Mavi transpires, obscured in what feels like a supernatural sequence by the director's standard, still achingly beautiful visually as a scene if the intent clear in meaning. The power of the film, though its contents can be with great discussion of their depth, come knowing what was brought up earlier in this review, this being the last theatrical film Antonioni was able to complete by his own skill. After this film, Antonioni would tragically have a stroke, which would leave him unable to speak¹, but he would still able to make more films. Eros' segment, his last ever production before his 2007 death, came after Beyond the Clouds (1995), a feature length anthology film which was collaborated upon with Wim Wenders, the German filmmaker an admirer of the director who, in the ultimate act of kindness, assisted the ailing idol of his on the set, making this a co-directorial production even if made with the idea of Michelangelo Antonioni being the figure in the centre of its creation. As the final production, done entirely with his own voice, Identification of a Woman befittingly raises many questions but holds its cards on what any of the answers are. It does present other questions - that of the sexual content, not even in terms of whether he is justifiable as an older male director in having it, but how it strikes out against films from his past which found ways around not having them, or how the eighties, contrasting its chic with grey Italian urban locations, is its own curious beast for him to scrutinize. It is also undeniably the old guard managing to stand out, even if tragically not making another film in that decade, by that point not a popular director and forced to step aside by young and trendy filmmakers, but showing a thing or two just from single scenes in this of how an image, a mood and atmosphere with his collaborators can just create enough emotional power by themselves, even something as seemingly banal (and perversely humored) like the threat Niccolò gets from a thug in an ice cream shop of all places. The final image, that suggests the strange concept post-Star Wars of a Michelangelo Antonioni sci-fi film, with a spaceship in burning red space set to synthscape, is a tantalizing image of what could have been. It is less a pastiche but suddenly the man in his seventies making this film showing a capacity to still learn new ways to tell his obsessions. This was deprived of us, but as with the magic of the film grounded on earth beforehand, this one shot is enough to linger and lodge in the brain.

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1) Sense of Cinema's Great Directors biography on Michelangelo Antonioni, written by James Brown and publishes May 2002.

Invasion from Inner Earth (1974)

 

Director: Bill Rebane

Screenplay: Barbara J. Rebane

Cast: Paul Bentzen as Stan; Debbi Pick as Sarah; Nick Holt as Jake; Karl Wallace as Eric; Robert Arkens as Andy; Arnold Didrickson as Sam

Ephemeral Waves

 

People running in the streets, red smoke in the Wisconsin woodland, and pie plate UFOs belie what Invasion from Inner Earth actually is. About an alien illness decimating the Earth's population, and likely alien involvement too, the UFOs themselves are never explained or become directly involved. Instead, quite soon into the film, we enter the snowy woodlands into a conversation about growing up and getting married between an adult brother and sister living in isolation.

In-between a main theme re-appropriated for Lady Street Fighter (1981) and weird seventies trippy effects being seen occasionally, what the film actually is involves referencing film and genre film critic Kim Newman's observation, from Arrow Video's blu ray set Weird Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection. In his appreciation of Bill Rebane, even Newman expressed reluctance with Invasion from Inner Earth as a "difficult" film to watch, where he suggests in comparison what happens when community theatre interconnected with these types of independent genre films made for drive-ins in this period. Invasion from the Inner Earth is a drama first, a lot of talking about the end of the world, where travelling inland, the brother and his male friends by a small plane are blissfully unaware of what has transpired with the world and an alien plague, beginning their own journey and the death of those close even when they travel back to isolation at home.

Beyond this, with the exception of an ominous glowing red light, their story including his sister is a lot of conversation which is not connected to a progression of events or fleshing the characters out. Barring a stint with a small personal airplane, most of the production is told in rooms with dialogue talking about the apocalyptic tale. As a result, and unlike a BBC Quatermass production from the fifties, which worked around budgetary limitations and had Nigel Kneale as a screenwriter of considerable talent, this is a sluggish film to watch, the comparison apt if against this theatrical film's disfavour. It is about its subject in how it is talked of, not of showing it, and yet the dialogue is closer to a film here you would get gratuitous UFO sightings even if the pie tins on string, rather than occasionally. It feels a chamber piece that is felt severely of its length, and it is damning to say that even next to the feature film Bill Rebane made before, the infamous Monster A-Go Go (1965) that Herschell Gordon Lewis put the unfinished footage together of, that film hailed as one of the worst ever made was far more easier to watch.

This has its quirks, mood boosters that show reward for truly patient. A strange gag about Channel 9's Post Terminus, because even in the post-apocalypse, where UFOs and alien diseases exist, local TV shows with a host in a Butlin's red jacket still exist, where testimonies on being picked up by aliens are recounted before the show gets frazzled off the air. There is a freak-out psychedelic moment where a plane explodes, and we see a radio DJ losing his mind in his recording booth, believing he is the last living person and speaking out into the perceived void on air. Also, the ending is weird, about the last two actual people, a man and a woman, being reborn as kids, which is not a spoiler as it really does not make sense at all in context.

Most of the film however will be unbearable for people. I see what the point is, a group in the isolated snow covered woods of Wisconsin experiencing the loneliness and paranoia when the world ends, but it feels like the aforementioned Quatermass concept without the shine and character building of those work. It is a concept instead made into the most lethargic possible of tones and with clear improvisation, one character entirely the MVP because Bill Rebane let him, as the likable joker and potential love interest to the sister character, ab-lib silly voices. My younger self would have not gotten through this film; now, I watched this as a pleasingly lacksidasical curiosity, but one I cannot recommend with significant caution over.

It Doesn't Hurt Me (2006)

 

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Valeri Mnatsakanov (with Aleksey Balabanov)

Cast: Renata Litvinova as Tata; Aleksandr Yatsenko as Misha; Dmitriy Dyuzhev as Oleg; Nikita Mikhalkov as Sergei Sergeyevich; Inga Strelkova-Oboldina as Alya; Valentin Kuznetsov as Vasya

Canon Fodder

 

A romantic film with comedy from Aleksey Balabanov...which is unexpected from the director of Brother (1997), the result of which being his least violent, his least nihilistic and ultimately most optimistic work from him, even if touched in melancholia in its narrative. Following two men, Misha (Aleksandr Yatsenko) and Sergei (Nikita Mikhalkov from Dead Man's Bluff (2005)), and their more carefree, more food fixated friend Alya (Inga Strelkova-Oboldina), they have gotten together to work on home renovations for well-off clients. That is if Misha is not seduced by Tata (Renata Litvinova), the female resident for the house they are currently working on.

In truth, It Doesn't Hurt Me is one of Balabanov's weakest films in terms of how conventional it is, but it finds redemption in how, yet, the humanity this unexpectedly offered is something that grows in greater weight when you see his filmography. For the most part happiness is not to be found in any other film for his world at all, so this stands out considerably among them, alongside the fact the film also improves greatly when it gets the second half and contrasts its tone with melancholia against people finding love and bonds the slither of hope. This touch of hope in his filmography is worthwhile, only with the issue from the get-go being how much of a conventional melodrama this is, becoming less a problem thankfully when the drama develops and expands.

The conventions at the beginning go as far as suggesting Misha, the seduced, has accidentally fallen in love with Tita's other, a mob boss named Sergei she is the younger mistress of, with the added surrealism that he is played by Nikita Mikhalkov, a filmmaker known in the West for the likes of Burnt by the Sun (1994). Even when the tone and style of the film is conventional throughout, the film for the better twists on this expectation fully, as the greater concern for the film is about Tita having blood cancer (leukemia), the director known for confrontational work trying to be emotionally sincere in a curious tangent in his career. The second half, when Sergei is brushed aside and he is no longer in the film, is when It Doesn't Hurt Me improves as the drama changes. It becomes a hopeful drama with an inevitable conclusion but a tenderness, a huge change for Aleksey Balabanov, more so as in 2007, Cargo 200, which is an adaptation of a William Faulkner novel, became one of his most controversial films, an extreme film in how nasty and nihilistic it was.

Even beforehand, one considers War (2002) and Dead Man's Bluff, and you see this as a vast contrast in terms of almost being a needed tonic in his filmography. There is a sense, when one is able to see Balabanov's filmography as designed rather than a couple of films, that if Cargo 200 is a uncomfortable last gasp of transgression, still feeling alien to the earlier crime films, than the bleaker films even beyond then like his Mikhail Bulgakov adaptation Morphine (2008) or The Stoker (2010) feel more retrospective in their tones. It Doesn't Hurt Me is tinged in sadness, with characters hiding alcoholism and a romance tinged in tragedy, but it is also a film about friendship, love and people sharing drinks and enjoying life, really making a wonderful change even if its conventional tone is definitely not "cool" like the crime films. Certainly, it is a film which improves, less for quality but for building its creator's personality in his art, when you can see it with the other films Aleksey Balabanov made.

Immortal (Ad Vitam) (2004)

 

Director: Enki Bilal

Screenplay: Enki Bilal and Serge Lehman

Based on the comics La Foire aux immortels and La Femme piège by Enki Bilal

Cast: Linda Hardy as Jill; Thomas Kretschmann as Nikopol; Charlotte Rampling as Elma Turner; Yann Collette as Froebe; Frédéric Pierrot as John; Thomas M. Pollard as Horus; Joe Sheridan as Allgood; Corinne Jaber as Lily Liang

Ephemeral Waves

 

What the hell, it's a naked guy with a bird's head!

Immortal is a difficult movie to deal with. For the most part, this is actually catnip even with its weird creative decisions for me, the creation of Enki Bilal, a Yugoslav emigrant to France and comic book artist who, alongside his prolificness, was making films before Immortal already. In terms of a set-up, Immortal is clearly indebted to a world of science fiction, let alone The Fifth Element (1997), alongside Bilal's own work, which if you see stands out exceptionally. The film, a complex mess to unravel, had enough in terms of a bizarre scenario to stand out but also has too many things to factor in why this is a difficult film to recommend.

Staying with the good, this is 3095 in New York City. A giant floating Egyptian pyramid is inecplicably floating above in the skyline. The trope of a dystopia of corrupt corporations, here literally a medical group called Eugenic, exists, this one partaking in illegal medical experiments. There are non-humans, deemed dangerous, stuck in Level 3, where humans are warned to avoid, whilst Central Park has become an "Intrusion Zone", a frozen winter environment where people attempting to enter usually die, spat out as bones when they attempt to enter, and penguins are wandering about for no reason. In terms of world building, Bilal's eye is deliciously weird. Science fiction, I will be honest, is more interest if vivid in world building and/or bizarre. Here a side character, the most beloved for me called Willie, sets up how idiosyncratic this can be as they are a sentient phantom dispenser in a hotel bathroom, one who can provide a handgun as he can, in his cute way, toothpaste from a wall he is stuck to.

In seriousness as well, even the clichéd bleak dystopia of flying cars and artificially generated lungs made in China is not an issue, as it feels immersive, allowing for the stranger details to contrast, the bleak grey and CGi created world a prop to allow the more idiosyncratic content to stand out. That the Egyptian God Horus has to sire a child in seven days, entering the human world, to keep his immortality, which becomes the main crux of the narrative; that a mysterious blue haired woman named Jill exists who is completely alien in form, who weeps blue tears that can even fill a bathtub; that flying monstrous hammerhead sharks, blood red, exist as a species that once were a threat, here appearing as a humanoid one and the regular flying variety.

Here we get to the first immediate issue with Immortal however, even if for me this is not an issue, as it is an aesthetic concept other viewers would not be tolerant on. This probably should have been animated - it almost already is. Most of the side cast, including major characters like the corrupt senator Allgood, are digitally animated models. The main cast however are real actors. Jill as played by Linda Hardy. Horus' final host, after causing seven to explode when their bodies are too sick or full of implants to host him, is Nikopol, a man whose influence is responsible for the anti-Eugenic holographic signs appearing everywhere in the city, abruptly woken from his cryogenic imprisonment when the tub falls from the sky, played by German actor Thomas Kretschmann. The legendary British actress Charlotte Rampling plays Elma Turner, a doctor who becomes fascinated with Jill and takes her in from the police; made to wear an unfortunate headpiece, she can nonetheless act her way around it.  

The contrast to almost everyone else being animated, and with a limited budget despite the ambition, is strange but I can still appreciate its curious mishmash of content. Where the issues come around, which I and other viewers will agree is problematic, is the plot. Specifically in regards to Horus' goal first. Alongside the ultimate reveal that this is a plot never properly told, Jill for obvious reasons is a unique entity who cries blue tears and exists from another dimension, becoming more and more human but of an unnatural form which makes her ideal for Horus's plans. Obviously, Horus' goal is problematic, to want to conceive a child quickly, in that we are dealing with rape as a subject. You would presume the idea is that, near death originally missing a leg from his awakening, Nikopol is stuck in an unfortunate situation of playing host to an entity, like Gods in mythology, who has no concept of modern morality. This is still morally dicey, but it is a premise you can tell in how, if you dealt with it right, this is about of gods involving themselves in the human world but committing acts thinking they are above us or in part of a goal which however the humans will argue against, such as the tale of Leda and the swan¹.  

Nikopol himself is one of them objecting to this, especially as he falls in love with Jill and does not want to be a willing participant, and that would be part of the narrative if fleshed out that would make this a compelling film even if one some would understandably feel uncomfortable to want to watch.  Adding to the issue is that, improvising him a leg from a subway train rail, Nikopol has an additional factor alongside the fact Horus can control him on will that he cannot move said leg without the God within him, so he is a trapped host having to argue against an entity doing things he does not want. Immortal would still be dealing with uncomfortable subject matter, which jars against its stranger content and jokes, such as the Egyptian Gods up in the floating pyramid playing Monopoly in one scene, but tackling the conflict between God and human would be fascinating, with Jill the unfortunate stuck between this on her road in fate.

However is it indeed uncomfortable, despite Nikolai not being a willing subject, how much rape plays a part in this as it does, even if mostly dealt with off-screen. It happens but the repercussions are never dealt with. It was more the fact Nikolai and Jill begin a romance soon into this, with a surprising amount of time "rape" and "the rapist" in himself being in the dialogue, that we are in really uncomfortable and undefendable content. In general, Jill is used in a way that, come least a decade later, would not be defendable at all, in that she is just a cipher. An idealised figure, played by a former model, who eventually to become human loses all her memories, and has erased at opportunistic times when involved with a botched kidnapping. Despite being a character to sell the film, in her distinct pale white face and blue hued features, is honestly a prop, even before you have to deal with the problematic content of sexual violence that is explicitly here.

What makes this worse, and a much more problematic film then when a film merely includes rape, is that Immortal's biggest problem is that none of its plot points ultimately have a point, making those decisions in how to handle gender politics and Jill worse. This very hastily wraps up with a bland romance, deeply problematic in context, and not really using its enticing points at all. There is no point to Central Park being frozen over barring as a final location. Charlotte Rampling's character has no real point at all, wasting a legendary actress, nor the CGI character of a detective, a figure who, alongside a previous history with the floating red sharks when one bit part of his face off, is seemingly to follow the trajectory of being involved in the main plot, including finding about Allgood's corruption, and contribute. He does not have a point, the red shark is dispatched hastily, and Allgood and the entire Eugenic Corporation is never really of importance. Even in mind this is based on stories in a world of Bilal's, this feels hurried and slight. It of course feels a bad position for Bilal to have left himself, when for the most part this film is an elaborate sci-fi film, that the main plot involved the rather unsavoury content it does and rushes all the interesting ideas after so much set-up.

It is fascinating, undoubtedly so. Immortal however becomes less than the sum of its parts by its finale, becoming far less interesting then the film it was beginning. One really tasteless plot aspect does derail the film horrifically, and it is weird to find a film which has so many strange ideas, and an aesthetic most would call ill advised but I found compelling, only become padding and ultimately resolve itself in the blandest way possible. Two of the worst things you can be are predictable, and be tone deaf in objectionable content, and Immortal's interesting features are sadly lost within both.

 

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1) Leda, an Aetolian princess, who the Greek god Zeus turned into a swan to seduce or rape depending on the telling of the myth; the blurring in that last part may come off as some as problematic, which is entirely understandable, and is only upon reflection that, becoming a subject depicted in countless paints of classical art alone, making it still a contentious myth, least in reminding you how adult and dark Greek mythology was in talking about complex concepts even with its Gods, that has been interpreted in a variety of ways

Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road (2002)

 

Director: Bob Gale

Screenplay: Bob Gale

Cast: James Marsden as Neal Oliver; Gary Oldman as O.W. Grant; Amy Smart as Lynn Linden; Christopher Lloyd as Ray; Chris Cooper as Bob Cody; Kurt Russell as Captain Ives; Michael J. Fox as Mr. Baker; Ann-Margret as Mrs. James; Amy Jo Johnson as Laura

An Abstract Film Candidate

Are you saying Phil will be cleaning toilets...and have no sex drive...?

Digging into the corners and crevices of cinema, you find yourself discovering the likes of this. A film from the co-writer of Back to the Future (1985) in his directorial debut, Bob Gale, a whimsical magical realist road movie which on the surface is a family friendly romp, in which a young man named Neal (James Marsden) after his twenty second birthday wishes to find answers, only for Gary Oldman as a magical wish fulfiller, the son of a leprechaun emigrating to the Americas from Ireland and a Cheyenne Indian, to push him onwards to a road journey across an interstate not on the map. It is, on paper, as much an Alice in Wonderland scenario as well as a surreal journey, between a museum of art forgeries to the town of lawyers, which is full of litigation as you can imagine, among the sights witnessed. It proves, despite its sheen and whimsy, to be odder than that.

It is also written for adults only, which is one detail among many which cause Interstate 60 to become a cultural oddity in cinema, in between cursing in the script to the fact that Oldman's immortal prankster O.W. Grant laments at one point having had his penis was cut off in a weird accident at nine. Oddly un-commercial Hollywood films are rare, especially rarer from the 2000s onward, so there is something compelling about this one even if it is an acquired taste you groan at as much as find merit in. Marsden's Neal is at the centre, the son of a lawyer of a well off family, wishing to become an artist, at a crossroads in his life and being railroaded by his father into law school and his life, even buying him for his birthday the red car he himself would want. To the viewer, a character like Neal, a stereotypical white middle class young guy, is going to be off-putting because such figures are gauche as protagonists, especially as his journey, when kicked off by Christopher Lloyd assigning him to deliver a package across Interstate 60, is a cliché. One with the added cliché of the chance of meeting the woman of his dreams, played by Amy Smart, a figure mostly seen on billboards only Neal can see, guiding him in their messages.

The result is, blatantly, a metaphor for Neal's personal grown, with his father's preferred red convertible (not his own choice) transporting him on this odyssey, Gale uses it to have characters Neal meets spin conservative, homespun advice on life, not attempting remotely to hide his design to spin meanings in his whimsical journey. The journey, as someone obsessed with surreal Wonderland/journey narratives in art, was always going to be compelling for me as, even here, they are idiosyncratic. It is for the most quite creative and even funny - particularly as the lawyer town, where everyone who is not a local gets slapped with a lawsuit for running over the mayor's dog which does not exist, and that lawyers sulk the streets on mass asking for clients - and whilst heavy handed, many of the eccentrics Neal encounters and the places he find are interesting.

Right from a stop sign, on his way to "Danver", Neal is already encountering a man who wished to be able to eat all the time, eventually stuck in a monkey's paw scenario of having a gut like a black hole, to a town called Banton (with Kurt Russell as the police chief) where drugs are legalised, creating one named Euphoria legal only in its region for anyone over thirteen, warned of in its addictive properties constantly but left for anyone who wishes to get high to take, the addicts cheap labour to pay for their now permanently addiction. Even if the film is heavy handed, even heavy handed surreal and metaphorical worlds are interesting for me, particularly as this film decides to go for a scenario of directions Neal could take in his life and see how ill advised they are for him. The only one of the encounters which is not well thought out, or just one of the times the more adult humour is in poor taste can be, is the personification of lust, a female hitchhiker played by Power Rangers alumni Amy Jo Johnson, looking surprisingly like Natalie Portman, playing a young woman searching for the Perfect 10 in bed, a scene which could be read as sexist depending on your mood and does not work as well as it could have.

Gale as a director is not as idiosyncratic as his script, at least in the sense that his visual and directorial ambitions are solid but they are propped up by the imagination onscreen. The film is given the advantage that it is a well made film with large production value, adding to the weirdness of this film's entire existence. Plotted as a road movie, but also an absurd journey, it is helped every scenario is heightened. It is a world of Americana - diners, giant bill boards - and runs with them to good effect, such as the idea, based on bizarre roadside attractions, of the museum of Art Forgeries, which is revealed to actually have real works of art with copies sent to real art galleries. The film is peculiar, as all of this film is felt with a whimsy apt for the co-writer of Back to the Future, but all these odd and subject to being tonally off too at moments, such as the tangent (never brought back again) of the main wish giving character having no penis, or the ouroboros weirdness surrounding a killer on the loose which leads to doppelgangers, almost something David Lynch if the tone has fully committed to a darker work. The film belies being a vehicle for James Marsden, who would stand out in this period playing Cyclops in the X-Men (2000), the first major superhero film of the Millennium, as the happy-go-lucky lead with a magic 8-ball guiding him going on this journey for self discovery.

It is also odd seeing Gary Oldman, a serious actor, having a lark with dyed red hair, but around this time was also Tiptoes (2003), a film in the career of screenwriter/director Matthew Bright where Oldman played Matthew McConaughey's brother born with dwarfism, which in a film which cast actors with dwarfism you had Oldman on his knees off-camera with co-stars, something to remind myself that Oldman also has a penchant for weirdness. Christopher Lloyd is not necessarily stretching himself, among this strangeness, but he has always been a charismatic actor, and in a film from the screenwriter of Back to the Future, it is not a surprise he is here, as is a brief cameo by Michael J. Fox as a businessman only to be run over by a trunk in a monkey's paw scenario. Also worthy of mention is Chris Cooper, playing a former advertising creator with terminal lung cancer who, alongside demanding truth in everything, has also strapped a belt of explosives around his waist set to a timer. Whether that joke can still be funny nowadays, it is nonetheless Cooper as an interesting character actor shining in his scenes, a straight man in this peculiar production. The only person in the cast who feels left out of place is tragically Amy Smart, as the sole woman of great plot important in what is frankly a white male Americana tale, not an insult to Interstate 60 but blatantly obvious in its DNA. Even if they make a comment of her not being the romanticised ideal of a woman, through a curiously used fart gag, Smart is still stuck with a bland figure, mostly seen as billboards that can change and guide Neal around, but never standing out.

Interstate 60 is definitely a curiosity, and in truth these forgotten obscurities for myself are far more compelling to experience over masterpieces at times, especially as this feels like a more honest snapshot just to peek in Bob Gale's brain. Parts of Interstate 60 are cringe worthy. Some of the jokes have not aged well, such as Smart suddenly talking in a way that would make, as Neal states, Mike Tyson seem eloquent just for a joke (and even referencing that in this sentence feels uncomfortable to have done readers). Some of it is clichéd yearnings of what life should mean, all of which feel like Bob Gale is lecturing his viewers. Yet it is all aptly personal, also aptly part of the Americana the film is touching at, the absurdities and men with cartoon dynamite strapped around their waists as part of their culture as the diners and the red convertibles are, even the magic 8-ball and a man eating beyond his weight in food in a bet and the strange museums part of this mass of culture.

It is a film that was never going to be a success because it is unmistakably weird. I have to admire its idiosyncratic take on the type of American comedy however, even in mind to what does not work, where this goes on a road journey to find humility even if absurd. It even still finds some apt and surprisingly salient aspects along the way, in spite of being antiquated, such as Cooper's character evoking historian Frederick Turner, expressing the idea that the frontier was a place for the malcontent to escape to and that, far from a gateway, the internet would not help replace it when there was no more physical frontier. Definitely in terms of unconventional American films of any budget, I would find virtue in the likes of this, even in mind to its failures, always more fascinating than many of the more successful productions due to their idiosyncrasies to genres and tropes. Even if the film, for all its early 2000s sheen and soundtrack, feels like a film from an older man out of touch to the world, it fascinates as much as causes one to roll your eyes at.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Weird

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