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Film Review: The Blackcoat’s Daughter

January 25, 2020 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Osgood Perkins
Principal Cast	Emma Roberts as Joan Kiernan Shipka as Katherine Lucy Boynton as Rose
Release Date	2015
Language(s)	English
Running Time	93 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

An evocative, yet disturbing song plays: “Deedle, deedle, Blackcoat’s Daughter, what was in the Holy Water? Went to bed on an unclean head, the Angels they forgot her.”

While these ominous lyrics fill the aural setting, a quick title card using the same iconic blue font of The Shining informs us that this story will be a haunting one; when approached within the context of the devious ditty, this allusive shorthand portends something wicked waiting to come.

We cut to a young girl, Katherine (Kiernan Shipka), who sleeps with her hands clasped as if in prayer — the “Blackcoat’s daughter” praying while the “Angels” forget her. What thoughts lie in her head?

The film intercuts between her still sleeping and a tracking shot moving towards a snowy landscape shot — a white abyss, another callback to the snowy mountains which serve as The Shining’s primary location.

Why does this vision, her apparent prayer, percolate in her “unclean” head?

We cut to an alternative take of her still sleeping, her hands now laying by her side — has her call been answered?

A black shape, a counterpoint to the white environment, obscures the foreground and walks past her, disguising a cut which pushes in closer to her face: is this the dream come to life?

She wakes and looks up at the figure which obscures half the frame, isolating her to the opposite side and rendering her alienated: she’s held completely within this entity’s purview.

Then, she innocently addresses this being: “Daddy. You came early.”

There’s a palpable tension as the unknown is rendered familiar, begging the question as to whether our assumptions were wrong or if Katherine has become ensnared in something deeper.

Katherine (Kiernan Shipka) walks forward.

Suddenly, Katherine walks in the same snowy landscape from her vision, a chimera standing on the interstices of dream and prayer. Another cut to the same tracking shot still pushing forward on the wintery backdrop, confirms that she’s in this unidentifiable location. An eerie foghorn type noise cuts through and ratchets the feeling of unease permeating the moment.

But we cut back to her, still asleep in her bed, her hands now split apart with one of them outstretched — a half-prayer or a call for companionship?

She’s back in the snow walking by this black figure, her “Daddy”.

Then we’re back in her bedroom; the camera is focused on her other hand grabbing a teddy bear, an act of childlike innocence which evokes dread in the grander schema of the intercutting.

She asks the figure: “Daddy, where’s the car?”

We cut back to the snowy wasteland, over her shoulder, and see a crumpled vehicle, shot out-of-focus such as to render it a black blurb in the background; the foghorn comes back. She looks at this wreck in shock while the black figure, her supposed “Daddy”, stands right by her side with its visage still cut out of the frame; what is this creature’s nature and what does it desire?

The outstretched hand starts to tremble as the droning noises get stronger and more invasive. Terror begins to seep in and Katherine calls for her “Mommy” presumably trapped in this wreckage. But then how did “Daddy” make it out and come to her, calling her from her bedroom to the scene of this crash? The loud sound of static is the only response she receives: a non-answer that somehow conveys everything.

The car is finally in focus and we can peer into the wreckage. There are splatters of blood on the front of the car. There are no apparent survivors. There is no explanation to be found.

A resolute cut to black. Are we somehow trapped in the figure from Katherine’s oneiric experience or in another void altogether?

Before we can ascertain the answer, we see Katherine, now cast fully in a black silhouette, sitting up and gazing; the direction she faces is hidden by the shadows; is she looking towards us, the audience, or looking out from the window at the now retroactively signified wintery hellscape, the place of her parent’s demise?

Her harrowing visions, a perverse answer to her prayers, unheard by any but this shadowy figure, a being which given the opening song we can figure is anything but an angel, seemingly overwhelm her.

She slowly turns her head to the side, revealing that she was in fact staring directly at the audience without us being aware, and looks up a calendar; the days of the month are crossed out in red “X” ‘s with a heart symbol tacked onto a day not yet gotten to.

A closeup of her harrowed face as she goes towards it.

A close-up of the heart symbol and the words inside: “Mom & Dad Here.”

We’re not sure of her vision but we, like Katherine, feel despair knowing that her prayer for the family’s happily ever after will not happen: her parents will die before making it to this encounter; that much is certain.

We cut to a new view of Katherine that starts from the back of her head which is placed in the lower part of the frame, an intentional geographic choice which ties us into the idea of descent, the subconscious, the id, hellish recesses far from the gaze of angels. This shot, a formal choice that film will repeatedly utilize, reinforces the film’s preoccupation with the psychological, unknowable zones of its characters, the oneiric chasms where images can convey meaning only through their interstices, forcing us to put the pieces together in a desperate attempt to understand why the characters do what they do, why they think what they think.

The moment passes as Katherine is called into the Dean’s office. We learn from the Crucifix on the wall that this is a religious educational facility. The ominous opening referencing the silence of the divine sinks even deeper.

Meanwhile, the film’s shot-reverse-shot rendition of the conversation between Katherine and her dean, Mr. Gordon (Peter James Haworth) reinforces the abundant alienation she experiences. She’s framed next to an empty seat while the Dean is framed next to the Crucifix. She’s utterly alone and her small talk reveals the extent of that loneliness as she desperately attempts to make a connection, one that is rebuffed as the Dean explains that he will be absent for her musical performance due to the upcoming school break.

A cut to a wide of the room emphasizes the distance she feels and her desperation to bridge it; she changes her focal point of attention from the person in the room to the spot occupied on the other side of the religious symbol, a gaze qua prayer that she knows falls on deaf ears. There are no Angels or humans waiting to give her company. But she smiles in this moment. What has she seen? Was it “Daddy”?

Gordon attempts to gather an explanation for the oddity but Katherine deflects the inquisition. There will be no answers. Fittingly, the film cuts to black once again, the color thus far imbued with perverse ambiguity.

We cut to an empty doorway which the camera slowly repositions to better capture and watch another young woman, Rose (Lucy Boynton), who walks through the frames of this entryway in slow-motion. The eerie ambience transforms into a musical interlude that evokes a sense of jazzy melancholy.

Meanwhile, the camera tracks on Rose who continues to walk slowly down a hallway to a blue, cloudy backdrop — an evocation of heaven. She sits down and gets ready for a school picture. This paradisal backdrop fills the frame and we see Rose, center frame, lower quadrant, break out into a smile for the picture: this is the ideal image.

But the shutter clicks and the screen fades to black once again, formally imbuing this color and the editing refrain itself with the powers of the camera ascertaining and fixing a subject into position.

We see Rose again in a bathroom, this time in the iconic shot used earlier on Katherine; her face is partially turned away from the camera and she’s positioned in the lower half of the frame. There’s something running through her mind as she stares into a mirror. While she ponders, one of the film’s three character titles, the first of which is aptly titled “Rose”, appears in the same blue font used in the title card.

It’s a curious choice indeed to open the film on a character and spend time with them, then cut to another character and quickly use a title card to introduce them more formally to the audience; we’re left wondering why Rose’s story can only be understood once we’ve seen Katherine’s circumstances.

But before the question can linger for too long, the film cuts and shows Rose at the nurse’s office acquiring medicine and treatment for an apparent headache. The nurses are obviously suspicious of the circumstances but let nothing slip.

We cut again to Rose smoking a cigarette, clearly a contraband action given the school’s religious depiction, while she talks to her friend (Emma Holzer) in coded terms that imply that she’s scared of an impending pregnancy. Suddenly, her trepidation in the bathroom earlier makes sense.

This vantage point of Rose directly runs in contrast to the pure, saintly image of her shot for the yearbook; we learn that she enjoyed sex with her boyfriend, takes responsibility for her possible pregnancy, still hopes for her period to come, and is unwilling to talk to her parents about this newfound issue.

We cut to her in an assembly and learn this is an all-girl’s school, one that prides itself on the stock of its students, women who are meant to represent with honor the women that have come before them and the women who will come after them at the hallowed halls of the Bramford school. Here, Rose’s actions become registered in a different, symbolic light: her shameful pregnancy, the proof of her sexual actions, an act marked as deviancy by the rules of conduct, becomes elevated to a sin which will bleed into the student populace at general. She half-asses an affirmation to the school’s call to maintain such a code reinforcing this normative schism outwardly while she deals with traversing it internally.

With the current session of school now at an end, we see parents’ cars pulling in to pick up their kids and are forcefully reminded of the terrible visions from the film’s start.

Right on cue, we cut from a wide shot which shows the majority of the students walking one way, presumably to their parents, while we see Kathrine hauling herself the other way, desperate to ascertain whether or not her nightmare was true or not. Intense strings accentuate this movement away from the crowd, a desperate attempt to find connection where we know it doesn’t lie.

As foretold, Katherine stares out into the snowy wasteland, a tear streaming down her eyes, and is framed completely alone against this environment.

Rose (Lucy Boynton) looks at Katherine’s performance.

Finally, we see our two primary characters enter one another’s circles when Rose enters the auditorium and sees Katherine play her aforementioned musical number. There’s a wonderful shot of Katherine partitioned in the frame again, the piano in the foreground and out-of-focus acting as a delimiter between her and the rest of the space. She looks out the audience and sees two empty seats, places where we know her parents should have been. The scene cuts when she sings about “hope”; her desire that her premonitions of the future are false finally fade away and she’s forced to accept the cold reality of what she’s seen.

These two girls, one whose parents we are certain are dead and one who wishes to actively avoid her parents for other reasons, are seated next to one another as the administration attempts to figure out what to do with them.

Katherine is questioned about whether or not she’s received a call on her cell-phone from her folks, but she reveals that she doesn’t have such a device, a means by which to communicate with her loved ones, and the group focuses their attention on Rose who lies through her teeth and explains that she told her parents the wrong day to come.

The dean attempts to assuage the girls’ concerns, real and fictional respectively, and jokingly mentions that their parents have to come get them because the girls can’t “live” at the school, a statement which utterly gets under Katherine’s skin because of her forbidden knowledge: where will she end up if she has no home to go to and can’t stay at this educational abode?

There’s an attempt made to get Rose to look after Katherine in the interim period before the duo’s parents are expected to arrive, and the girl’s exchange glances at one another while they’re framed in their singles; it’s a moment of hope on Katherine’s part, a potential connection amongst the darkness, and a moment of irritation for Rose, a potential impediment to the plans she has to resolve her own issues. The latter deflects responsibility, calling back to her illness as an excuse and the principal attempts to wash his hands of the situation and tasks the nurses with getting things back in order before forcing responsibility onto Katherine to do the bare minimum and call to her parents once more.

Katherine (Kiernan Shipka) tries to call her parents again.

Per this request, Katherine makes phone-calls, communicative gambits she is certain will fail, to her parents and pleads with them, though we know she’s really begging the forces that be, to provide an answer back to her. Her eyes dart around the frame as she waits with baited breath for any possible response.

As she puts the phone down, we cut to a wide shot that highlights the abject distance she feels between herself and others; the nurse in the room feels miles away even as she sits right besides Katherine.

The effects of this isolation become more explicit when the girls and nurses go down to eat dinner. There’s clearly something wrong in the air and there’s an intense, unpleasant droning noise that continues to intrude as Katherine fixes her plating arrangements. Initially, she places her spoon at a slightly diagonal angle, a seemingly small mistake in the grand scheme of things but one that she obsessively pores over, staring at the deviant ordering with enough intensity to bore a hole through the whole arrangement; it’s a moment of psychological estrangement that feels right out of Travis Bickle’s playbook in Taxi Driver, warranting a comparison to the infamous and off-putting Alka-seltzer scene. It’s only at the apex of the aural discrepancy that she slightly re-adjusts the spoon back into place, a seemingly minute action which takes on a life far larger than it would desire, but the sounds only continue to reverberate, overpowering the “grace” that is said by the parties present at the table.

Katherine (Kiernan Shipka) talks to Rose (Lucy Boynton) who is out-of-focus in the foreground.

Afterwards, in the dorm rooms, Rose curtly informs the underclassman foisted upon her by the authorities that she will not be “babysitting.” Katherine protests and repeatedly brings up Mr. Gordon’s edict, an attempt at channeling authority, which is quickly brushed aside by Rose, someone who we know couldn’t be bothered to follow the school’s regulations let alone a command given during supposed vacation time.

Katherine attempts to at least figure out what Rose is going to do but is given nothing as the latter informs her that she is going “nowhere.” In lieu of any meaningful information, Katherine instead spreads sordid hearsay in regards to the nurses, sisters who she claims are devil worshippers.

From her view, this diatribe is meant as a prank, a way to keep Katherine on her toes and away from her business, but we know that the latter, one who Rose herself described as a “freaking recording” when she repeated Gordon’s request, will play this haunting tale in her isolated mental landscape over and over again; given the fractured state of mind we know Katherine to be in, we know this malefic narrative’s pervasive influence won’t end well.

Rose, however, is blissfully ignorant of the consequences of her actions, an ironic position to be in given that she’s gone to meet with her boyfriend to deal with the unintended results of their lovemaking, and leaves Katherine with no comfort, refusing to answer the freshman’s questions about the source of this rumor, and leaves her with a warning to stay away from her room and possessions.

The elder girl leaves, goes through the snowy surroundings, and enters her boyfriend’s car where the two lovers embrace one another with a jovial warmth, a communicative interplay that Katherine desperately longs for and stares at unnervingly from above as she’s framed alone, isolated in a large window, physically restrained from this moment of connection.

It’s at this moment that the terrifying ambiance seeps back in and we see her slowly open Rose’s door as the camera pushes in on her, enter the room she was forbidden from going into, and then pick up and touch Rose’s belongings; she gazes down at Rose’s hairbrush and then stares at Rose’s school photos, the artificial Edenic images, with the same intensity that she directed at the spoon earlier at during dinner.

A tear rolls down her face as she cries out for this lost moment to connect with an upperclassman who could assuage her worries but a new moment for communion presents itself as we cut to a silhouetted telephone ringing in an empty hallway. If Rose qua “the Angel” refuses to respond, then whomever is calling on the line will have to do. Right as the terror of the situation settles, we cut again to black — a confirmation of the morbid realization.

Joan (Emma Roberts) stares into a bathroom mirror.

Finally, at near the 19-minute mark, our final character, a third young woman (Emma Roberts), appears and walks into a facility, cautiously looking around as if worried that she’s being followed.

She goes to a bathroom and stares at a mirror while discordant noises begin to play and we see a quick peak into her mind, a distorted flashback comprised of short bursts that hint at a medical facility of sorts. She rips off a wristband and confirms that she’s an escaped patient yet the circumstances surrounding her are kept private.

With quarters in her hand, she quietly attempts to use a payphone; the camera obscures her visage as she holds the phone to her face, desperate to hear her desired contact on the other side; but she receives an error message instead and dejectedly puts the phone down. This disturbing moment serves as a counter-point to the communicative misfires that we saw Katherine experience and the cut from the call happening with her to this call failing to go through connect these seemingly disparate settings and characters into a larger tapestry exploring attempts at connection.

These moments are then more explicitly connected when this escapee wanders the facility, finds a map, and stares at Bramford’s location. The cartographic image, a representation of how to traverse (literal) distance, dissolves to the film’s iconic shot of the young woman, who’s positioned in the lower quadrant of the frame with her head facing away from the audience; whomever she’s looking for is at the school we’ve been made privy to and her thoughts are singularly focused on this point in space even as we wonder what she seeks.

Katherine (Kiernan Shipka) looks up at this black figure which obscures half the frame.

While she waits outside, an elderly gentleman, Bill (James Remar), questions her on whether she’s waiting for someone and offers her a ride East. He partitions the frame as his black-coat, shot out-of-focus, takes up more than half of the space and ominously calls back to the opening moment where Katherine’s anointed “Daddy” fulfills an analogous aesthetic function. The two images look like reflections of one another when presented side-by-side and projects these persons in an alike light or, to be more precise, in a similar shadow. We’re left to wonder then if Bill is the same as the shadowy specter which guides Katherine through her visions or if his position on the opposite side of the frame codifies him as a corporeal comrade meant to help the young woman navigate reality.

It’s at this point that the young woman gives up her name: Joan — a contextually charged moniker that alludes to the great saint herself, Joan of Arc, a woman who was immolated for her faith, a spiritual gesture which we’ve been informed by the opening is doomed to fall on silent ears: the failed phone call is transformed into a moment of divine contemplation. Is this car ride a holy answer to her call to get to Bramford? Has her “prayer” been answered in a way she didn’t expect? Or is she walking down a path that will lead to her ultimate demise?

She accepts the help offered and gets in the car. We see the back of the vehicle drive away and we fade to black once again before fading back to another vehicle belonging to Rose’s partner, which is driving back to Bramford Academy; the edit ties Joan’s journey to Rose’s as well, using the ominous black which the film has cut to as a transition multiple times as a ligature between two different journeys, two different spaces which both lead to the same location.

Thus, the stage is set for the convergence of these three women’s respective desires coming into contact with one another as they try and resolve their respective problems, some of which we’re privy to and others which we’re left more ambiguous about; but all of their issues stem from and are intimately related to: communication and the manner in which it both bridges and causes alienation.

The song which acts as prologue to the film proper and the supernatural opening frame these questions in a religious context, one that evokes the meditations of Ingmar Bergman’s spiritual works ruminating on the silence of God and the meaning of faith in such a world, while using the trappings of the horror genre, both supernatural visuals and psychological interplays, to dramatically raise the stakes of and render the results of these ruminations viscerally explicit.

The constant refrains to a black frame, a plane of unknowability which takes on a plethora of associated functions as the film continues, alongside the film’s shifting spatial chronologies, split amongst the three aforementioned women, give director Oz Perkins the chance to contemplate the same action or lack thereof from multiple perspectives, effectively keeping the narrative engaging even as it circles on itself like an ouroboros, devouring seemingly everything it proffers in search of an inner meaning which is only made explicitly clear as the final narrative domino drops.

The aesthetic decisions, both the choice to focus on the character’s visages — lower quadrant shots and close-ups of their faces — and their unknowability — deep shadows and constant silhouettes obscuring possible information — along with the Antonioni-like framing of the character’s against persons and backdrops that render them isolated in the frame, exposing their inner-most thoughts visually through the mise-en-scène, have a psychological effect that compliments the narrative as it shifts through space and time, accentuating moments of uncertainty and unease which make the unnerving progressions chilling to experience and render the set-pieces, few and far-between, an absolute terror to witness.

In spite of its aesthetic and narrative withholdings, Perkins never “cheats” the viewer, carefully presenting all the details along the way in such a manner that one finishes the film and realizes that the twists were truthfully presaged and the disasters were dutifully portended. Caught under the film’s spell, the viewer is left entranced and befuddled until the moment of divine revelation is rendered, leaving them as chilled as the wintery backdrop that serves as the film’s milieu.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	The Blackcoat’s Daughter is one of the truly great debut films, utilizing the horror genre to explore deep-seated questions about faith and meaning without sacrificing the bite and terror one would associate with it. The film deftly intercuts between different perspectives, delivering a cartography of the psyche that will leave attentive viewers truly haunted.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

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2010s, 2016, cannibal, Drama, Grade, Horror, Review, review-movie, S+, Year

Film Review: Raw – 2016

January 24, 2020 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Julia Ducournau
Principal Cast	Garance Marillier as Justine Ella Rumpf as Alexia Rabah Nait Oufella as Adrien Laurent Lucas as Father Joana Preiss as Mother
Release Date	2016
Language(s)	French
Running Time	99 minutes
Report Card	Click to go Review TLDR/Summary

A young woman walks down a long road, seemingly fading into the trees around her. A cut reveals a car coming from the other side of the road. However, when the camera cuts back, the girl is now missing. As the sound of the car approaches the frame, the girl runs out from the trees, jolting both the driver and the audience. The car swerves to try and avoid her but ends up crashing against a tree – the previously alive members of the car now rendered pieces of flesh. The girl lies for a few moments before getting up and walking towards the car and opening up a front door; her movement is accompanied by harsh strings which burst to a crescendo before dissipating into silence as the blood red title card bursts onto screen.

Justine (Garance Marillier) asks for food and declines any meat. Her visage is covered by the reflection of the flesh she’s refused.

The film cuts to another young woman, Justine (Garance Marillier) purchasing food and the burst of violence which came earlier seemingly bears no relation. Justine is framed against a glass counter; her image has an assortment of meats projected against it – an image of flesh rendered from an animal juxtaposed against an image of flesh moving in the form of a human. The food worker asks Justine if she wants protein to which Justine responds she doesn’t want meat. However, as she sits down with her mother (Joana Preiss) and father (Laurent Lucas) to eat, she notices something off with her food: the presence of animal flesh. Quickly, she informs her mother of the issue who promptly gets up to ream the kitchen staff over their mistake: her family is vegetarian and the meat should have never been there. Justine and her father exchange smiles with one another; this situation is one that is familiar to them and they’re both used to Justine’s mother’s militant reactions.

After the debacle, the family unit makes their way to drop Justine off at veterinary school for the start of her first semester. As the drive unfolds, Justine notices the warmth her parents have for one another and feels the rays of sunshine brush over her. She places her hands between her legs and starts rubbing them, but her idyllic moment is interrupted by her dog who starts to lick her face – this time a live animal present in the family unit. Her parents inform her of the location of the grocery store, the morgue, and the medicinal area: a factory of flesh where bodies are rendered as food, as cadavers, and as patients to be treated.

The duo drops Justine off under the assumption that her sister, Alexia (Ella Rumpf), who also attends the school as a sophomore, will pick her up despite commenting that Alexia’s tendencies make her hard to control. Consequently, after her parents leave, Justine is made to walk to school herself, her sister nowhere in sight, the first of many hurdles to come.

Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella) introduces himself to Justine (Garance Maraillier) as her roomate. He explains he’s queer while holding a green ski-pole.

Unfortunately, this is the smallest of Justine’s problems. As night falls, she’s woken up by a man, Adrien(Rabah Nait Oufella) who intrudes her room holding a ski pole. She asks him what he’s doing and he informs her that they’re roommates. Given that she requested another woman for a roommate, she’s understandably upset by the presence of a man, but Adrien immediately attempts to assuage her concerns by admitting that he’s queer, offering his sexuality as an explanation for why the college would place them together. According to the system, woman and queer man are interchangeable, or so he suggests.

However, before Justine can process this new revelation, her dorm room is broken into by a wild horde of masked bandits who force all the first-year students out into the hallway after throwing their possessions out of the window. Like the car crash that inaugurates the film, this burst of violence is random and seemingly lacks purpose. The fresh batch of students are forced to strip down and crawl in humiliating fashion by the masked group, who then reveal that the absurd theatrics are just part of a hazing ritual; the violence is thus rendered coherent by social practice. Upon finishing the first part of the ritual, the group is invited to a rave, which cinematographer Ruben Impens gloriously captures in a one take that follows the innocent Justine as she’s thrust into a realm of excessive enjoyment.

Vibrant blues and reds color the walls, disorienting a Justine who desperately seeks footing in the sweaty, chaotic, throng of bodies. Every extra on the screen moves and dances with such passion that the rave scene gains a vitality of its own, moving and proceeding in such a way as to swallow Justine. First, she sees Adrien and moves towards him but backs off after seeing him in passionate throws with another man. Eventually as she traverses the labyrinth of pleasure, she runs into her Alexia and embraces her. Finally, the sisters are united and Alexia excitedly takes her little sister to another location to show her something.

The students tranquilize a horse to get it ready for a procedure.

Classes begin and the students witness a surgery procedure done on a horse. Ordinarily so energetic and powerful, the creature is reduced to a passive state via tranquilizers. However, the vitality driving the horse is still very much present in its eyes, which gaze directly at the screen. Justine’s shocked expression at the situation strikes a parallel – both gazes reveal an animalistic drive waiting to be released. Consequently, the green background takes on a feeling of domesticated vitality. Green is both “alive” and “in control”.

Justine (Garance Marillier) notices a splotch of red liquid drip onto her white coat as she takes her class picture.

In comparison, the color red, while also being “alive”, is far from control and expands excessively. As Justine stands with the other first years for their photo, she notices a drop of red fall on her bright white coat before suddenly being engulfed in gallons of blood along with her classmates. Now her years picture has been finished; so far, she is not a traitor. She too is marked and the red blood her parents and sister were marked by in the past.

She and Adrian make their way to a line serving “something” all conscripts have to consume. When Justine gets to the front of the line, she figures out that the “something” is nothing other than a raw rabbit kidney. In protest, Juliet argues she’s a vegetarian and should not have to engage in the deed, going so far as to call Alexia to confirm their family’s dietary restrictions. Her outburst makes sense given her orientation towards the non-human: she believes non-human animals have rights and dispositions that would render harm done to them as ethically problematic as harm done to humans. If she eats rabbit flesh, what’s to stop her from eating human flesh?

However, Alexia is not Justine’s mother; instead of helping Justine out, she instead eats a piece of the rabbit kidney and then feeds an emotionally devastated Justine another piece – baptism by meat. With her strict vegetarian lifestyle and ethical orientation now cracked, Justine’s sense of self and appetite are unbound – the barrier to a whole realm of actions are now open as her ethical consistency allows her to logically engage in more obscene interactions with flesh.

Raw is thus, in both a metaphorical and literal sense, an exploration of the limits of the body and the way violence to it is rendered coherent or excessive. Flesh is what holds the metaphorical trappings of the film together: animals and humans become the same through their capacity to be eaten and be sexualized. Practices towards flesh are rendered acceptable or unacceptable, not based on harm, but based on coherence with social norms.

At a visual level this is established in the colors themselves – both red and green represent an orientation towards vitality. The difference lies in obscenity – green is domesticated and red is excessive. It’s no coincidence that greens coincide with vegetables and red coincides with meat. As a vegetarian, Justine is virginal, innocent, and child-like. The first time the viewer sees her is dressed in a white unicorn t-shirt while being protected by her parents.

Then, as soon as Justine gets to college, she’s forced to grow up and deal with a world that tells her to enjoy at the cost of everything else. There are no parents left to demarcate and keep her insulated. In an environment filled with alcohol, sexual relations, ritualistic proceedings, and meat, it’s easy to see how someone could lose their grasp and succumb to the injunction to enjoy. Her cannibalistic desires are not merely excuse for gory violence but rather represent her longing to find herself. They come up at the same time her sexual desires awaken. Both desires related to the flesh arise in an environment where flesh is ubiquitous: college students looking to fornicate, animals waiting to be treated, cadavers lying in a morgue. Thus, Justine is forced to navigate the corporeal matrix of bodies in as many manners as she can, to get a better grasp on herself.

In this way, Raw rides the fine line between coming-of-age story about a young woman trying to find her place in world at large and David Cronenberg-esque body-horror that seeks to locate the line where animal instinct ends and human behavior begins. As a result, the story is able to both shock the audience with playful gore, but also play off those macabre moments in comedic fashion. A “seven minutes in heaven” session, which would be normally be an anxiety fueled place of hilarious sexual blunder, becomes darkly comedic when amped up with the possibility of cannibalism. An already awful situation just gets amped up to the next level which reveals something about the nature of the activity itself.

Through constantly juxtaposing both accepted and non-accepted forms of relationality to flesh, director and script-writer Julia Ducournau is able to demonstrate how the condemnation against something as seemingly excessive as cannibalism, is nothing more than an arbitrary construct. How is it bloodier than eating meat from an animal? Why is ethically more invasive than recording people’s downfalls and posting them online? What trait makes the practice more egregious than the hazing committed by the school’s seniors? These questions gain traction because Ducournau sequences the movie by first exposing a “prohibited” relationship to the flesh, demonstrating a counterpoint to that relationship that’s socially accepted, and then using then having the first relationship bleed into the guise of the second. Because she focuses on the body in such careful and clinical fashion, even the obscene relationships it brings about are rendered cognizable and comparable to more commonplace relationships. These connections are made all the more apparent because non-human animal bodies are present in abundance, providing a variety of counterpoints to the relations being shown.

Furthermore, the distinctive manner in which Ducournau directs the bodies of her actors highlights a corporeal malleability. In scenes with extras, everyone moves organically with explosions of difference happening in the tapestry of the frame. This ability to create points of difference extends to even the facial movements of the actors. In particular, Garance Marillier enlivens Justine in the subtle ways she intensifies her gazes, shifts her eyebrows, and re-centers her body weight transforming from dainty waif to predator. The corporeal possibilities inherent in the body become “actualized” which in turn gives the films themes a heftier flavor.

By quite literally showing the ways people mark one another in their actions via cannibalism itself, Raw serves as a powerful reminder of the way our bodies are constantly open to and in proximity of other bodies, rendering both avenues for enjoyment and suffering based on the orientation we approach them. Ducournau’s debut feature majestically weaves through the contours of the body to reveal the contingencies of our relationships, both to ourselves and our notion of humanity proper. And it somehow manages to do all this while remaining a charming and cognizable story that anyone, sans the extremely squeamish, can watch and enjoy.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Raw is an underappreciated horror gem of the 2010’s that deserves more recognition not only for its fresh and innovative take on women’s ability to relate in and to the world, but also for its perfect use of cannibalism as both horror and tool for metaphor. It’s a film that shocks, but then asks the viewer what exactly was shocking , forcing the viewer to confront the way they’ve normalized structured of discipline and violence.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

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cosmic, Grade, mystery, Past, psychological, Review, review-movie, S+, supernatural, Year

Film Review: Ring – 1998

October 31, 2019 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Hideo Nakata
Principal Cast	Nanako Matsushima as Reiko Asakawa Hiroyuki Sanada as Ryūji Takayama Rikiya Ōtaka as Yōichi Asakawa
Release Date	1998
Language(s)	Japanese
Running Time	95 minutes
Report Card	Click to go Review TLDR/Summary

Note: This review contains spoilers regarding the first 30 minutes of the film as opposed to the site’s usual benchmark of 10-20 minutes. The same effort towards sustaining the intrigue and momentum of the film, especially in its second and third acts, is maintained in this review, and all plot details revealed are just meant to be a springboard to discuss the scope of the work in better detail. Nothing discussed should undermine the “best” portions of the film or the many mysteries that keep the story engaging.

Ambient rumbles and the sounds of the churning waves mix as the camera pans over a tumultuous sea. The uncanny waters become grainy before dissolving into the static dots of a television set; thus, nature and technology merge in unholy unison. A pathway is formed. Static transforms the sea into a baseball game.

It’s revealed that two young girls, Tomoko (Yuko Takeuchi) and Masami (Hitomi Sato), have the game on in the background, as a source of background noise to a conversation they’re having. The latter mentions an urban rumor regarding a cursed VHS tape which supposedly kills its viewer after exactly 7 days. Apparently, after watching the tape, the viewer receives a phone call confirming their doom and then they succumb a week later as consequence. Tomoko displays an unease and asks where Masami heard about the rumor before revealing that she’s seen the aforementioned tape. Suddenly, the clock on the wall becomes a menacing presence, a death knell counting down towards Tomoko’s inevitable end. Terror takes its hold and the jovial mood in the room dissipates as demise makes itself known. It’s at this point Tomoko breaks the tension by claiming she’s joking and the girls laugh once again.

However, this moment of relief is ripped out from under them. The ominous ringing of a phone pierces the soundscape and casts a spell of doom, silencing the girls’ laughter. Both girls go downstairs towards the phone which beckons them forward. Masami picks it up and expresses relief upon hearing Tomoko’s parents on the other side. She hands the phone to her friend and goes upstairs, assured that the crisis is averted.

Unfortunately, this reprieve is also revealed to be temporary; despite being clearly off before, the television set near the phone turns on. The baseball game from earlier which marked a peaceful change from the sea now casts an ominous electric blue light. The relationship between sea and television has now been reversed: the television itself imposes presence of the blue, tumultuous waves come alive in the form of a similar colored light.

Tomoko attempts to turn the television off, but the technological apparatus initially refuses her commands. Finally, she succeeds in her endeavor and turns around assured that the issue over. But as she gets a drink ready, she hears a presence making scratching noises behind her. She turns her head to confront the presence and her face breaks into absolute terror. The frame freezes and the colors invert; a negative image takes the place of a positive image as if the unseen presence has taken a picture of Tomoko’s reaction to its abject aura – a snapshot taken from and by the void.

Thus, the film allows for a film to be born from within its structure – the start of a series of negative images that serve as an undercurrent to the positive appearance which will dominate the majority of the film. Far from being just a diegetic element, the spectral nature of the rumored VHS tape permeates into the non-diegetic layer and suggests that Ring itself shares the same uncanny characteristics as the cursed video that serves as the heart of its narrative proper.

A young girl is intervied by Reiko, captured in a positive image by the camera.

This dichotomy between film and the reality it frames and captures is doubled down in the next scene which follows our protagonist Reiko (Nanako Matsushima), a news reporter, as she interviews young schoolgirls about the rumors swirling around the cursed tape. In contrast to Tomoko’s spectral encounter whereby reality gave way to negative photographic capture, Reiko’s news report transforms reality into positive photographic capture. In her case, she films to get footage for a news report which calls to question what the negative image and the cursed VHS tape are being/have been produced for. A matrix is made present through the juxtapositions of images caught between the planes of the living and the otherworld.

Yōichi(Rikiya Ōtaka) sits facing the television, waiting for Reiko to come back home.

Reiko returns to her abode post interview and is greeted by her son, Yōichi (Rikiya Ōtaka), who helps her get ready for a funeral. While zipping up her dress, Yōichi asks Reiko why his cousin, Tomo-chan, died and if kids die in general – serious issues to deal with, especially when asked by a child. His mother answers both questions matter-of-factly, that is to say in an unsatisfying matter, and brushes off the gravity of his existential distress, telling him instead to keep such thoughts quieter around her sister, Tomo-chan’s mother, as to not distress her. Angst about death is pushed underground in favor of keeping an appearance of peace.

The mother-son pair arrive at Reiko’s sister’s place where Reiko’s father (Katsumi Muramatsu) takes Yōichi aside to give Reiko time to help with the funeral arrangements. It’s at this point Reiko’s journey and the film’s opening intertwine as it’s revealed that Tomo-chan is none other than Tomoko, the first on-screen victim of the cursed VHS tape. Yōichi stares at her picture on the wall longingly. It’s clear that her absence is troubling him.

While he stands at the foot of darkly lit stairs, he suddenly sees a young girl’s feet running up them, the darkness momentarily replaced by light. If Tomoko’s absence brings darkness to his life, then this change in lighting suggests he feels her presence. Is this a psychic vision, manifestation of his loss, or a mixture of both? No answer is given.

Yōichi follows this potential “Tomoko” up the stairs before coming face to face with the television in her bedroom, her apparition now missing. Paranoia builds as the horrors of the opening rear their head more viciously here – a TV, the presence of something supernatural, and someone left all alone. Thankfully, Reiko, who had been looking for Yōichi , finds him alone in the room and whisks him out promptly; the confrontation with the abyss is averted momentarily.

Outside of the house, hosts of schoolgirls stand looking both solemn and uncomfortable. Reiko notices them as she’s getting ready to leave and goes to question them. She naturally gets the girls to open up and explain their concerns without fear of judgement. Like the schoolgirls she interviewed earlier, these girls mention a cursed video tape and confirm that Tomoko and friends of her not only saw the tape while on a trip to Izu but died on the same day in similarly incomprehensible circumstances. Once again, the tape comes up as the source of everything. Now caught at the intersection between her investigative pursuits and family tragedy, Reiko’s dance with the abyss has come. The tape and her are on a collision course with one another.

Footage of two of the victims, who were both discovered dead in a car with no sign of foul play.

Drawn by the enigma presented by the situation, Reiko goes to work and begins investigating the deaths of Tomoko’s friends, analyzing the footage documenting the discovery of two of their deaths. One of their faces, that of a young girl, is frozen in abject terror as if scared beyond comprehensible limits. The moment is demarcated and framed, captured in a moment to be investigated, replayed, and reinterpreted. Photography captures the present and transforms into a discretized unit of time, capable of being reactivated with new perspectives.

An gust with no apparent source helps Reiko notice a note.

While the mechanics of how the students died remains a mystery to Reiko, the confirmation that the entire group died around the same time as Tomoko drives her towards investigating her family connection more stringently. She goes to her sister’s house and investigates Tomoko’s room. Initially unable to notice anything, she discovers a folded piece of paper as it’s brought to her attention by an unseen presence, a small wind with seemingly no in-room source which moves the note. Written inside is a date along with the name of a photo processing store. It seems that Tomoko’s’ vacation pictures from Izu have yet to be picked up – a new clue for Reiko to follow.

Just as Reiko turns to leave the room, her sister shows up from behind, expressing a demonstrable trauma in the shattered look on her face. The latter looks at Tomoko’s closet and finds herself unable to describe the manner in which she found her daughter’s corpse. Instead, the film shows us this horrific discovery flashback. The closet door opens and Tomoko’s body is shown crumpled in a corner, her face frozen in the same terrifying manner as her similarly deceased friend. Both girls look scared to death, their faces trapped in absolute horror.

The photos of Tomoko and her friends appear normal.

Later at the photography store, Reiko discovers that the photographs of Tomoko and her friends have a marked difference before and after a date in time. While their early photos in Izu are marked with smiling faces and cheery dispositions, the latter photos are marked by distortion and disturbances. Once again, technology has been rendered uncanny from a previously domestic state; an unseen force returns and inhabits the technology which formerly worked as tool for the living and turns it into a tool for the spectral. Happy faces become distorted, but we know they’ll end up breaking into a blood-chilling terror that will remain forevermore etched onto the faces of the victims. But the cause of this metaphysical transformation is still to be discovered and Reiko is determined to get to the bottom of it.

Reiko (Nanako Matsushima) sends Yōichi to school, choosing, once again, to not answer his questions. Instead, she chooses to go to Izu to investigate the cursed tape. A visual marker with the time and date along with a strange aural cue come up on the screen as she makes this choice, marking the occasion.

The next day comes and Reiko prepares to trek to Izu in order to find more pertinent information. While she cooks food for Yōichi to warm up and eat later at night during her absence, he comes up to her and informs her that Tomoko watched the curse tape. Obviously upset that her son has knowledge of such matters, she asks him where he learned about such a fact before then beseeching him to not mention the issue at school. Once again, Reiko skirts the uncomfortable topic broached by her son in favor of idyllic appearances that taper over the abyss.

It’s at this point that the date and day of the week- Monday, September 13th – comes onto the screen accompanied by a disconcerting, yet melancholic set of sounds. Like the spectral snapshot taken of Tomoko, this non-diegetic feature becomes open to diegetic possibilities. If a specter took a “photo” of Tomoko, who’s to say it’s not documenting Reiko until she meets a similar fate? Viewed in this way, the text marks the starting date of Reiko’s confrontation with constitutive void hiding at the heart of the tape. This audio-visual interruption dissipates and Reiko departs towards the inn Tomoko and the other students stayed in.

Inside the inn, her attempts at investigation come up nil. There appears to be no hints or clues towards foul play of any sorts. Opposed to any clues, Reiko only manages to find a notebook filled with quotes and drawings from previous guests. A sketch by a child catches her attention. It depicts a obese mother, father, and child figure. Written near the drawing is the child’s declaration that they are fat because their mother and father are fat. Thus, the qualities of the child inhere from the qualities of the parent; if something is found in the former, it is due to something from the latter. Seemingly benign, this observation will come to play a pivotal role in deciphering the assemblage of terrors lying in wait.

At a surface level, films are the children of creator-parents that give birth to them and disseminate them into the world. Choices like framing, editing, sound design, camera movements, and the like are decisions that play a decisive role in determining the genetic make-up of a film and what it “grows” up to be. Given this, Reiko’s upcoming confrontation with the VHS tape will bring to question the nature of its “parent” and the tape qua child’s place in the world.

While questioning the front desk about Tomoko and her friends, Reiko notices an unmarked VHS tape in the rental stack of tapes available for those staying in the inns. The tape calls out to Reiko, directly transforming the film. Its presence forces a close-up and the camera’s filter becomes grainy and textured as if unable to fully contain the presence manifesting in the moment. The pull is enough and Reiko rents it. She takes it back to her cabin. The time has come. Reiko puts the tape in and lets it play.

The tape and the film become one as the viewer and Reiko view the cursed footage from the same proximity, that of minimal distance. A view from a well cuts to a mirror’s reflection of a woman brushing hair. Another mirrored reflection, this time from framed on the right of the screen instead of the left, comes in momentarily, depicting a young woman with hair covering her face. The initial woman’s reflection stares at the other woman before text ruptures the screen. The word “eruption” appears all over. Blurred people crawl along a hillock while the ambient whispers present in the soundscape erupt into what sounds like guttural chanting emanating from an abyss. A man with a towel on his head points towards the left of the frame as sharp noises jolts the auditory precession before an eerie silence takes hold. A blinking eye gazes at the viewer. Letters seemingly appear in the pupil. Finally, a well appears on the screen and the camera lingers as if waiting for a presence. But nothing comes.

Reiko(Nanako Matsushima) notices a specter’s(Rie Inō) reflection on the television.

Suddenly, the film cuts back from the tape to Reiko watching it, granting the viewer a distance, a mercy it does not extend to Reiko who spots in her reflection against the television screen a specter staring back her. A haunted tape featuring reflections played on a television which becomes a mirror depicting the tapes viewer and creator. The TV set becomes the site where the immemorial clashes with the contemporary – technology serves as a conduit for both the human and non-human and allows the planes to interact with one another.

Right on cue, the phone rings and the doom sets in. Reiko gets no answer on the call, but she as well as the viewer know that her date has been set. Seven days exactly till she meets the same end as her deceased niece. Now the battle has come to head and the textual interlude marking the date – Monday the 13th – and the clock marking the time – a little past 7:05 P.M.- becomes a time of death cast exactly 7 days in the future. Understandably frightened by the encounter, Reiko runs out of the room, but the camera lingers and stays focused on the television, reminding the viewer of who’s currently winning the battle. With the clock ticking against her in the most literal of senses, Reiko is forced to trek back home and call upon the help of her estranged ex-husband, Ryūji (Hiroyuki Sanada), to get to the bottom of the mystery before her untimely demise.

Given its set-up, it’s no wonder that director Hideo Nakata’s Ring legacy has endured since its inception; the film injects the terror of horror as genre into the structure of the film itself, creating a loop wherein the diegetic and non-diegetic elements intertwine with one another, informing each other. At one level the viewer is watching a film about characters watching a film (of sorts) which the viewer also gets to watch. The viewer is then made to analyze the structural choices of this film within the film, as Reiko and Ryūji do minute analyses behind the creator’s choices to figure out how to unravel. Simultaneously, the structure of Ring proper- it’s editing choices, freeze frames, textual interludes describing the day, and the like – gives the film a feeling of returning on itself. It’s as if a film is being made from within the film about a film – a circuit whereby the spectral and the technological intertwine with one another in a constantly shifting dance of meaning. The same questions and methods of analyses used on the cursed footage leaks over to the film proper, begging the question of where the VHS tape ends and where the film begins.

Ring constantly seeks to probe this sense of discomfort via its demonstration of how same channels humans use to communicate with one another can give to an unhuman force. Phones which help connect family members across geographical boundaries now connect the spectral and corporeal, rendering the boundaries between the human and nonhuman bare. Televisions which provide entertainment and a respite from the drudgery of the day became channels by which the other world can reach out and curse the living. Technology becomes a marker of the trace between humanity and its attempt at demarcating itself against. No one is safe…not even the viewer who is subject to the same “cursed” footage that victims and Reiko have seen. It becomes clear that if such a phenomenon were to occur in our world, we’d be just as doomed, just as trapped as Reiko. We watched the tape too. Thus, spectral intrusion is demonstrated to be as insidious as it is terrifying. It can’t be taken seriously until it’s too late.

Not since Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, a film about a serial killer who kills women and photographs their contorted dying expressions, has a film so brilliantly captured the perversity inherent in photography and the way it captures the subject within its frame. Despite utilizing a different sub-genre as vantage point, supernatural and cosmic over slasher, Ring manages to traverse into the same uncanny territories Peeping Tom does in revealing the terrors inherent within humanity. The films’ shared focus on capturing dying expressions is a result of their investigative focuses: the liminal point at which humanity renders unto itself unhumanity.

This is why Ring is and will always continue to remain eerie, if not outright terrifying, long after the age of VHS tapes. It preys on the terrors lying at the heart of the horror genre – the peripheries and vestiges of that uncanny which we feel in our mythos and the world around us but can’t even pinpoint. It takes the act of viewing horror media itself as the basis of its investigation, forcing the viewer into an intimate encounter with the subject matter. Nakata’s film is demonstration that fear is a result not of loid noises or shocking violence but of making the viewer investigate the difference between reality and the abyss that seems to follow it.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	While Ring‘s legacy is more so remembered today for its impact in making J-Horror a global phenomenon both in terms of exports and westernized remakes, it goes without saying that the film itself a bona fide horror classic of the highest caliber. Hideo Nakata’s disturbing investigation into the ways technology renders the world from beyond to investigate with the world we inhabit is not only eerie in the way it renders some of our most used tools (televisions, phones) conduits for the supernatural but also reaffirms the power of the horror film and its ability to force encounters with the uncanny. By focusing the film on the power of horror film itself and taking those ideas to the extreme, Nakata is able to deeply unsettle and render even the medium the movie is playing on disturbing. It’s no wonder then that so many people find it hard to watch their television after watching this film. It’s hard to take the screen as trustworthy ever again.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
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1960's, 1968, Grade, Review, review-movie, S+, Year

Film Review: Hour of the Wolf – 1968

October 1, 2019 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Ingmar Bergman
Principal Cast	Max von Sydow as Johan Borg Liv Ullmann as Alma Borg
Release Date	1968
Language(s)	Swedish
Running Time	88 minutes
Report Card	Click to go Review TLDR/Summary

Text appears on the screen, presumably written by the movie’s in-universe director, indicating to us that the movie to follow, the story of the disappearance of a painter named Johan (Max von Sydow) , is informed by both a journal formerly owned by him and a personal verbal account of the events leading up to the same by his wife, Alma (Liv Ullmann). As this information is presented, stage direction can be heard in the background. Is this the director giving instructions for the movie that’s about to start? A voice yell, “Quiet.”

The expository text gives way to the introduction title sequence, during which stage directions can be heard from the background. In this way, the “real” world and the movie world bleed into each other, revealing the duplicity of the barrier between our conscious and unconscious worlds. As if to confirm the point, upon saying “Action”, the screen fades from “Svensk Filmindustri” to

As “Action!” is called the screen dissolves to a small cottage where Alma resides. She comes out of the abode to answer some of the “director’s” questions. She talks directly at the camera presumably to the director, but her direct approach feels more like she’s addressing the audience. Her eyes, however, can rarely meet our gaze for more than a few seconds. As she talks about her missing husband, it’s clear to us that not only does Alma not know what has happened but that whatever she has witnessed is something that escapes her explanatory capabilities. Unable to continue conversing she stares down and the camera dissolves to black once more, bringing us to the world of the “real” narrative.

These first six minutes are a light serving of what’s to come. First, this introduction, both the text and Alma’s testimony, reveal the ending of the story. We know Johan is missing and is not coming back and we know that Alma will make it to the end, ready for a new life with her soon to be born child. By giving us this information, we can focus on the why and how of the upcoming surreal imagery as opposed to the what which primes us to be more involved in deciphering the hallucinatory events culminating in his disappearance. This also has the double effect of pushing us towards Alma’s corner because we start the movie with her and know we’ll end with her, a move that becomes quite important as it gives us an anchor to hold onto as wade through the torrents of meaning.

Second, the inclusion of stage directions during the title sequence demonstrates the constantly fluctuating border between art and reality. The initial text message is written by the “real” director of the movie. We know the real director is Ingmar, but the second level of an in-world director taking charge of the movie adds another level of intrigue. This is exacerbated by the nature of the movie’s sources- testimony. Testimony which we know is in fact fiction. It’s no wonder then why the nature of the surreal sequences provokes so much confusion as the nature of what’s happening is up to interpretation- what reality does it belong to?

Third, the shift from an “objective” textual account of the overall story to the “documentary” like interview with Alma to the story “proper” demonstrates the way perspectives bleed into one another on top of imbuing the movie with a misty dreamlike quality. At a structural level Hour of the Wolf is a movie within a movie, the former of which contains both interview footage and what we’d normally consider a movie. It’s told from an “objective” perspective which seeks to synthesize two experiences of a person – one from a diary and another from word of mouth, both equally subjective. What does subjectivity mean if we can encapsulate the experience of another in such a way as to inhabit it? Likewise, what does objectivity mean if our experience of ourselves is one that slips outside of our understanding? Thus, the stage is set for the story to take place.

The couple makes their way to the deserted island.

We start with the couple making their maritime trek to a supposedly isolated island. The trip is long and the camera emphasizes its length by focusing on the bow of the boat. This is a long way from civilization. As the couple makes their way to shore, it becomes evident that they’ve come here for the long haul. Johan’s general dislike of people has led the couple to seek out a place to be alone.

However, it isn’t long before the two of them realize they’re not the only inhabitants on the island. As the couple’s path crosses with other people, their idyllic island life begins to come under siege. One hand, the other islanders exacerbate Johan’s anxieties, constantly probing into his status as an artist and relationship with art, leading him to become more aloof and distant. Despite being apparent fans/patrons of his work, these “others” spend most of their time mocking Johan and the supposed value of art in the world. On the other hand, Alma’s concerns and attempts to understand something about Johan’s mental state led her to places of utter desperation as she struggles to maintain stability between her husband and herself. She constantly strives to make a genuine connection with Johan in spite of his apparent apathy. Meanwhile, Johan finds himself besieged on all sides and is unable to find any respite, most of all during the hours between midnight and dawn, for it is during this “hour of the wolf” where nightmares are born, people die, and babies are born – a liminal place where anything and everything can happen.

In this way, the narrative can be read as a demented ménage à trois depicting an artist trying to run away from any investigation or prodding (outside of what he desires) being chased by his partner who wants nothing more than to understand him at his most intimate who are both being harangued by a mob that seeks to explicate the couple’s motivations and decisions. Both parties, Alma and the others, want to gain an understanding of Johan. The former wants to do it through intimacy, carving out a path for mutual understanding through love. The latter wants to do it through domination, carving out an interpretation of Johan according to their own ideas of what he ought to be. Johan stands in the middle, caught in a whirlpool of torment. Every gambit on Alma’s part designed to save him is met by an equally brutalizing action by the part of the other islanders designed to condemn him – a tug of war for the direction of his soul. Every question any party asks is met by a surreal answer that feels more like a question than the original inquisition. Issues of identity bleed into questions of art bubbling into the movie’s primary question: is it possible for a person to truly ever know another person – art or otherwise?

Johan (Max von Sydow) holds Alma (Liv Ullmann) next to the tree near their house. The scene is serene and calm.

This indeterminacy in exemplified in the visual style of the movie. When Alma initially starts her narration, the lighting is calming and feels natural. Her initial encounters with Johan are serene and warm – an Earthy grounded feeling. However, as the couple are made to interact with the others, the Earthy comfort gives way to Gothic terror. The lighting in these moments is exaggerated and more impressionistic, suggesting a break with reality. The cheerful face of Alma gives way to the sunken and sneering faces of the others. The stable camera associated with Alma gives way to a swerving, arcing camera completely unbounded and out of control. This change from calming to chaotic is also reflected in the soundscape which goes from sedated to disjointed and erratic. Multiple moments of the macabre are accompanied with an unnerving droning noise or characters voices completely disappearing as the background noise takes full control.

By modulating the appearance and presentation of each spectacle, Bergman is able to keep the carnival of terror going in an authentic, yet opaque way. Early on, Johan describes a series of grotesque drawings – a women with a removable scalp, a menacing bird-man, and so on – to Alma. These descriptions prime our minds to look for certain visual clues and serve as the starting “motifs” for the horrors to come. Later on, we get to explore excerpts from Johan’s journal. These mental excavations add to the texture of the motifs we have access to. When these projections bleed into the “real” world of the story, we’re never fully shown whether or not Alma and Johan are viewing the same thing or something different. Has Johan lost his mind and is Alma just humoring him? Has Alma been able to interpret Johan so much as if to share his delusion?

In the grander context of Bergman’s filmography, Hour of the Wolf is Bergman’s first movie after Persona, which makes sense given how many of themes and image archetypes the former continues from the latter. Both movies deal with a character named Alma who deals with a character they can’t seem to fully pin down. Both movies tackle the ways memory, cinema, and reality effect and bleed into one another. Both movies employ vampiric imagery in association with identity to probe the limits of what it means to know oneself and to know another. However, Hour of the Wolf feels far more autobiographical. Johan feels like a doppelgänger for Bergman himself. Among other things they’re both artists who bemoans themselves and the place of artists while continuing to create pieces that move people. Some of the monologues given by Johan are close to quotations given by Bergman verbatim, both in person and in previous films like The Magician. Watched in this way, Hour of the Wolf takes a paradoxical quality as Bergman’s psyche becomes both the movie’s subject and its object of fascination. It’s no wonder then that my appreciation of the movie has only grown over time as I’ve become more devoted to Bergman and the worlds he creates/created.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Hour of the Wolf asks the question, “Can we every really know anyone else?” and answers in a cascading series of surreal nightmare sequences that never fail to captivate. This narrative ménage à trois features an artist, his wife, and his patrons and fans. He seeks solace in ignorance. She seeks union in transparency with him. They seek, what seems to be, nothing more than the utter humiliation of the artist despite consuming his goods vociferously. Issues of identity bleed into issues of the nature of art which bleed into issues of intersubjectivity culminating in a melting pot of utter delirium. Those seeking a haunting time with no easy answers need look no further.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

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Film Review: Hour of the Wolf – 1968

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