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Originally Posted by Make Them Die Slowly  I have a theory that once in a while certain film makers for reasons unknown, reach across all known boundaries in their films and offer the viewer a glimpse of something "other". As odd and unfashionable as it sounds these glimpses for me are like Shamans returning from the spirit world with tales of wonder and medication for the soul. "Lemora", "Messiah of Evil", "The Child" and parts of Jean Rollin and Franco's films do this for me. |
"Messiah Of..." and "The Child" are definitely operating in that territory. And Rollin and Franco... but they know what they're doing. What also interests me is the feeling that sometimes arises when a film goes so badly wrong, and a strange or alienated atmosphere isn't intended, but happens anyway.
It's funny, only today I was wondering why I stick with movies - because so many times I come away feeling that everything of value could've been concentrated in the form of a few images and addressed in a more succinct form - plastic art, photography or poetry. But watching 'Lemora' today I thought, cliched as it sounds, 'film is the closest thing we have to a manifest dream'... a dream that's stepped outside of itself. In that, there's something to do with film being somewhere between fantasy and reality - I think that's why people get so worked up about potent images, be they violent or sexual. There's that weird power, of fantasy, or something that would normally be associated with an internal state, stepping over, but in a more direct and more pure way than would be the case with any other art form.
I think that possibly has something to do with your shamanic model. My own approach is maybe more nihilist, but definitely shares something with a kind of psychedelia ie. what happens to perceptual systems when thay crack or dismantle? They reorganise - in a psychotic way. Horror films, or just weird films, show that, and embody that too. As much as the most generic horror movies reinforce narrative and perceptual stereotypes, they also point in the opposite direction, to where the strangeness is.