Category: Movies

The Never Ending Story: Facing your life through art?

I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time about this film and the book which are very dear to me. I am from the generation that grew up with Harry Potter and yet it is not his novels that I am going to talk to you about but Michael Ende’s The Never Ending Story. This was my mom’s favorite book and now mine. I have read and reread it dozens of times, in several languages. A story that I love and which personally helped me get through the darkest moments of my life. Because we only understand all the outcomes of this story once we really understand what mourning is while giving us hope.

If you have only known the film I highly recommend the book, as the film only covers part of the story.

It took me a long time to write this article because it resonated with a lot of personal things for me but I hope you like it.

Have a good read.

Never Ending Story: Facing your life through art?

The loss of a loved one, a hope or even a dream often acts like a cataclysm, a trauma destroying everything in its path. Nothing matters anymore, time freezes and we are trapped in a kind of thick fog where the future, desire and joy have completely disappeared. A world invaded by dark forces, devastating feeling by feeling everything in their path but, what if I told you that in the midst of this debris of life, there is still hope? Because the works can help us get through all this, to come out of it, that this is exactly the heart of this fantasy account that is Never Ending Story. A work tackling extremely deep and powerful subjects, plunging us not into the imagination of a dreaming young boy but into the abysses of death, mourning and depression.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to destroy your memory of this beautiful film (and book), because The Never Ending Story shows us, and this is the most important thing, how art, in all its forms can help us through the darkest trials of our existence to transcend them and emerge stronger.

Synopsis of the film

The film tells the story of Bastien, a sensitive and slightly lost child who comes across a mysterious book called The Never Ending Story. By diving into this work, he discovers Fantasia, a universe of limitless beauty and imagination. Unfortunately, this world and its princess are threatened by an evil that spreads everywhere and destroys everything, The Void.

Atriou, the solitary warrior is sent on his steed Artax in search of a solution to save the world and its princess. He will therefore have to go through many trials and fight this evil. Fortunately a dragon named Falkor will support him in this difficult task.

Little by little Bastien discovers that his destiny is linked to that of Atriou and that he can help him in his quest.

Fight against your own Void.

The loss of a loved one, a hope, or a completely different dream acts like a real cataclysm in our life, trapping us in an unlivable reality, a present without flavor, without hope, without desire. We then let ourselves be invaded by our darkest, most desperate thoughts.

“This void will never be filled, why is it transforming into a black hole that sucks everything in? “

These are often the first thoughts and sensations that we can feel in these terrible moments of our lives when nothing will taste like it did before, where the void created can never be filled and even seems to suck everything onto its surface. passage. At this moment, it is impossible to imagine that mourning is only a passing moment. One more scar to heal, but one that we survive. A hope that is still inaudible since the latter begins at the beginning, the first phase of it, that of denial.

Indeed, we know that mourning is punctuated by a series of stages to go through, allowing us little by little to rebuild ourselves in order to see the sun shine again. This number of stages can vary depending on the individual from 5 to 9 but the ones we find mainly are:

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • The Depression
  • Acceptance
  • Reconstruction

Of course, here these are very distinct stages, in reality, no one follows such a theoretical pattern and some of us will perhaps be more impacted by anger than denial, etc.

Finally all these feelings also mix all at the same time in unequal proportions over time until they completely disappear for some but as we are still here to talk about The Never Ending Story, let’s focus on Bastien who will illustrate everything this to perfection.

“I had another dream, dad, with mom”

We discover from the beginning of the film that Bastien lost his mother very recently. A trauma that weighs on him every day. He seems to have great difficulty reconnecting with reality and shows all the signs of depression:
Loss of appetite
School dropout
Refusal of activities that would reconnect him with the present

A present that he does not want to accept and we can understand that. So he no longer acts because unconsciously acting would mean continuing to move forward and therefore accepting this reality. A reality faced with which he does not imagine having the necessary resources to get through it. He therefore instead tries to find refuge in the imagination and books as a denial of reality.

In response to his son, the father replied this:

“Mom’s death must not be used as an excuse for not doing our job. You agree ? »

This reaction is clumsy, allows me to remind myself, even if it is obvious that we cannot ask people to react as we do to the same situation. Quite simply because each person has their own reaction pattern linked to a whole bunch of things that have built them up since childhood.

Bastien seems to us to be a vulnerable child, having no self-confidence, so faced with such a harsh world where he has just lost his mother and has just been extorted, it seems entirely logical that the latter has a tendency, a once again to delve into his books. In his refuge, because it seems to have always worked like this.

But what he doesn’t yet know is that this new book will break this pattern and allow him to discover himself. Finally facing this famous reality that petrifies him so much. We thus discover in the story that Bastien reads that a terrible plague is falling on the world of Fantasia and that the princess risks dying if no one does anything.

In reality, since this magical book tells a different story depending on who is reading it, we directly realize that the princess represents her mother. A mother he would have loved to save from illness.

There seems to be a mysterious connection between his illness and The Void.

The Void is both the illness that took away his mother but also the depression he suffers, which gradually eats away every space of happiness and imagination in his mind. Plunging him into deep darkness.
Bastien is not yet aware of it but through this story he is unconsciously replaying this reality that is too hard to accept, putting it at a distance through a story and characters different from him at first glance but resembling him. enormously when we observe them from an outside eye.
It is also a young boy named Atriou who is appointed to save the princess and destroy this famous The Void. A child strongly resembling Bastien’s desires and passions.

Unable to be in the action, Bastien therefore uses Atriou as an avatar to project himself into the story and thus realize through the latter the strength he actually possesses.

This is called unconscious transference.

That is to say, we transfer to a third person (fictitious or not) a desire or a feeling that we had for someone else. Here the desire to save his mother through Atriou’s quest to save the princess.

Moreover, it is the princess herself who asks to bring this boy to save her. We can therefore assume that Bastien is replaying here something that he would have liked to do for himself and causing him a lot of guilt.
This transfer will also allow him to realize his immense inner strength. Atriou therefore allows him this distancing from himself necessary to become aware of the resources he currently possesses to get through this ordeal. Understanding how extremely resilient it is and that nothing is ever finished. He even makes it clear that he must act now and take action because the depression he is experiencing is locking him in and making him more and more gangrene.

In reality here we understand that it is a real battle that begins between resilience, acceptance and overcoming embodied by Atriou and depression and mourning embodied by this beast:

An emissary sent by The Void to intercept Atriou. In short, two antagonistic forces continually fighting within us in different forms. Bastien therefore unconsciously placed all the elements of his own life in this story, allowing him to replay this reality differently and therefore to accept it and overcome it more easily.
For example when Atriou arrives in the swamps of melancholy, here we understand that this is exactly what Bastien is currently experiencing.

That is to say, being immersed in sadness and no longer able to move forward in your own life. This life impulse is therefore heard or if he does nothing this darkness will completely suck him away.

But it is also a way to relive mourning and death through Artax without directly associating him with his mother. A necessary distance in his work of acceptance. Bastien thus begins, unconsciously, to understand that his story and that of Atriou are linked and that there is not really a barrier but rather a continuum between them, in particular, when frightened by the arrival of Morla.

His cry is heard even in the book.

Morla represents this kind of nihilism linked to depression where nothing seems important to us anymore, where we feel completely empty.

” Die ? that would at least be something”

This renunciation in the face of the fact that getting out of it seems so far away that we prefer to give up and not even try.

We see to what extent this impacts Bastien in his reality, because he, who was ready to stop reading, frightened by what he saw, decides to act as Atriou would do. He therefore begins to let himself know that he too has the capabilities.

“Atriou will not give up now”

And that’s the whole point of transfer. This is because although it is done in one direction at the start, it can then be done in the other direction, allowing one to understand that something that one was not ready to receive at the beginning departure or that one would not have agreed to hear via another person like with one’s father for example. This creates a sort of buffer zone between ourselves.

Atriou continues to move forward at all costs and shows us and Bastien that even when everything may seem definitively lost and without hope, we can always manage to hold on to something. Nothing is ever finished. Behind the worst storms there is always a ray of sunshine ready to pierce the clouds but in the meantime, we must hold on.

Bastien continues this unconscious work, making himself heard by several people. Messages via Falkor or through old people he meets.

“You have to suffer if you want to heal”

Moreover, here is an essential sentence in his work of mourning, because as we saw earlier, denial is an important phase, often the first where we seek to avoid reality because it is too vivid, too brutal. However, to heal any injury, you must first become aware of the pain it causes in order to then be able to treat it effectively. Putting a thought on an open fracture will never heal anything, the same goes for psychological wounds. If we don’t treat them commensurate with the pain they cause us, we are left with just a gaping wound that will never heal and will ooze all our lives. To feel pain is to accept that it is part of our reality. We can then start working on it to be able to heal it in the best conditions. This brings us to the next test for Atriou, where only a man without doubt can pass it.

We then observe that a knight in armor, who appears invincible, nevertheless perishes in the face of it. Here is a new opportunity for Bastien to make himself heard that to have self-confidence, to feel strong, it is not enough to have a lot of protection, quite the contrary. Not being in denial and opening your heart to yourself provides the best protection from the outside world. Arming yourself with a shell simply cuts you off from others but especially ultimately from yourself.

It is now obvious that the stage where the transfer between Bastien and Atriou is no longer in doubt and takes place in both directions. When he has to confront himself, a test that is clearly particularly feared.

Here, even if Bastien has difficulty accepting it and believing it, he discovers that he is not only the sensitive and introverted little boy who endures life but also a little bit of Atriou, a child full of strength, hope and confidence in him. Someone with the ability to go through life’s challenges with courage and determination.

Atriou arrives before the oracle and discovers that to save the princess, a human child must give her a new name. A more than obvious way for Bastien to make himself heard that he must now take part in his own story and no longer be a simple spectator, yet this pattern of inaction is so deeply anchored in him that he still has hard to get past it.

“What a shame he didn’t ask me, mom had the most wonderful name in the world. »

We see that Bastien consciously lets the memory of his mother come back for the first time since the beginning of this adventure and that it is time for him to move forward, but to act, he must now overcome the guilt he feels towards -towards his mother because The Void and depression continue their work tirelessly.

“The Void will be here any moment, I’ll stay here and let it take me”

Through this last sentence, two ways of approaching the trials of life and in particular that in which Bastien has trapped himself. That is to say, constantly thinking that tragedies are going to happen, that they are unsurpassable, that we endure everything and therefore we might as well do nothing. You might as well wait in inaction, paralyzed, or accept that they do indeed exist, that they are there, but not let yourself be paralyzed by them and live to the fullest while waiting. In short, refuse to let yourself be devoured by fear.

Why fear something when you don’t know when it will arrive, or even in what form? This would in fact amount to choosing The void when everyday life shows us that there are so many other positive and especially neutral things that mostly happen. Knowing how to appreciate them is choosing life, hope and Bastien once again makes it heard.

Unfortunately he still contemplates this spectacle going to the end of his depressive phase in the face of mourning, looking straight in the eyes at the state in which he believes he is. So accepting it, but still not being able to imagine that he is the main character of his own story. That he has the right to act as he wants, as he wishes, that it is his life, forgetting or discovering that it is always in the middle of the void that something can be reborn, that the past cannot does not escape but on the other hand the present is built for him and above all forgetting the main thing that he went through this particularly difficult personal history but that he survived. That he has already succeeded where he thinks he has failed.

Bastien finally chooses to act and accepts this reality. He accepts his mother’s death and moves past it. His way of making it heard and especially of making himself heard is to shout out all the love he has for her, symbolically saving her from the void by keeping her forever in his heart.

Face your life through art?

After this first period of analysis, we can already say that The Never Ending Story is beyond being a film about mourning, depression and resilience, a creation highlighting the power of works even on those who receive them . That the latter allow us to project ourselves consciously or unconsciously into a story where characters are both far enough from our lives to avoid protecting ourselves too much but also close enough to obtain a new angle, to take a side step, to gain distance on how to get through certain life challenges or even to have access to a part of our personality that we refuse to see or admit. Of course the point here is not to say that each work has such an effect on all spectators but simply to observe that sometimes one in particular can shake us, speak to us deep within ourselves, in short grab us by the Gut.

I think that I am certainly not the only one to have discovered a work that gave me this strange impression that it was intended for me, addressing a specific moment in my life. A feeling in particular with such accuracy, a magical sensation that art gives us but which is not very surprising either.
Indeed, many artists will tell you that through their creations, consciously or unconsciously, they carry out their therapy in a way. That they need this to allow them to move forward, expiating a weight, a suffering or a beauty that they need to express, share or in any case externalize, as if to entrust to the world:

“This is how I feel, am I the only one? »

As it is in singularity that we can touch the universal, it seems logical that the more sincere a work is, therefore not seeking to please the greatest number of people, the more it will touch its target deep in its guts, acting as a sounding board for our own history. So we too by receiving this, we feel less alone.
Less alone in discovering that our suffering, although terrible to experience, is not our belief to bear, that it is not intended for us. That it is something much more universal, felt by everyone at different times in our lives.

I had a lot of emotions writing all this, that’s partly why I haven’t posted for so long, well if you read these last words you must be tired of reading me. I hope it was interesting and not too boring.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon!

Blair witch: The truth about the witch?

A few days ago I watched the two Blair Witch films with Alice, my cousin and some friends. One of them reflected that he couldn’t stand films that asked more questions than they gave solutions. And it must be said that I generally agree with his opinion even if for me the mysteries surrounding the plot of the first film I always found it sympathetic, on the other hand the faults of the second annoy me a lot so I said to myself that it was so much after 24 years that I tried to unlock the secret that lies behind this story.

Blair witch: The truth about the witch?

Blair Witch is a work that particularly plays on psychological tension and the viewer’s imagination, but it is above all with its unconventional approach that this independent horror film written and directed by Daniel Meric and Edwardo Sanchez begins.
While many know the feature film, few know that it was preceded by a website and then a mockumentary broadcast on SyFy on July 11, 1999, 15 days before the film’s release. The same operation was repeated before the release of the second opus with two other mockumentaries.

Despite its global success and several decades later, the case of the disappearance of the three students remains a mystery and numerous theories have been raised to elucidate it.

Daniel Meric and Eduardo Sanchez not having participated in the 2016 version of Blair Witch, I would not take it into account and would concentrate on the first two parts and what surrounds them. Who knows, the clues left in feature films, documentaries and websites will perhaps allow us to discover together the truth behind the legend of the Blaire witch and the mysterious disappearance in the Black Hills forest?

Summary

Warning: This article will contain rather massive spoilers so I recommend that you have seen both films on the Blair Witch Project to follow this analysis.

The first film tells the story of the last days of a group of three film students Heather, Mike and Josh who go to make a documentary about the legendary Blair Witch. As they go deeper each day into the Black Hills forest, mysterious events will occur.

A year after the release of the first film, Blair Witch 2 relates the events affecting a second group accused of several murders.

The legend :

On the late Blairwitch.com site and in the mythology tab you can see a chronology of strange facts dating back to 1785 and of which a certain Elly Kedward is said to be the origin. This woman of Irish origin who joined the small town of Blair was accused by several children of having lured them to her home to steal their blood. Elly Kedward was found guilty of witchcraft and banished from the village. The people of Blair tied her to a tree in the Black Hills forest and abandoned her in the middle of winter so that she would not survive.

A few days later, children from the town go looking for him. As she was still alive, they pierced her with sharp branches, pressed their hands against her bloodied body before finally hanging her from a tree.

In November 1786 all of Elly Kedward’s accusers and half of the town’s children disappeared without any explanation.

In 1824, following the construction of the railroad linking Washington to Baltimore, a certain Henry Burkitt purchased the entire area from the government and undertook the renovation of the buildings and the town of Blair was renamed Bukittsville in his honor.

In August 1825 during an organized picnic, an 11-year-old girl Eileen Treacle drowned in the river in the Black Hills Forest, her body was never found.

In March 1886, another 8-year-old Robin Weaver was reported missing after a walk in the Black Hills and an expedition was organized to find the girl. After three days she reappeared in town on her own. She explained that she had gotten lost and encountered a woman floating in the air. The men who went looking for Robin Weaver had still not returned. A second expedition then immediately set off in search of them. It was in the Coffin Rock cove that the naked bodies of the members of the first team were discovered. Their bodies were connected at the wrists. On their chests, hands, feet and foreheads, strange symbols had been engraved into the skin.

Between November 1940 and May 1941 eight children disappeared without a trace. It would be a year before a hermit named Rustin Parr confessed to having murdered them all and that their remains were buried in the cellar of his abandoned house deep in the woods. During his interrogation he claimed to have heard the voice of a gem telling him what to do.

He took the children down to the cellar, two by two, he put one in the corner while he had the other. Then he killed whoever was on the corner.

The bodies of the children found had been disemboweled and also bore the same strange signs as the bodies found in Coffin Rock cove.
However, one of the eight children who had disappeared was found alive, a certain Kyle Brody. He was standing in a corner of the basement completely traumatized.
The house was covered in strange symbols carved into the walls.
Rustin was sentenced to death by hanging.

It was not until 1994 that three film students traveled to Burkittsville to question residents about the legend before heading into the woods and disappearing.

The search for the three filmmakers has been suspended. The efforts made over the past ten days have yielded nothing. The mystery of these disappearances remains unsolved.

Without success the case was closed.
It will take a year for a group of anthropology students to discover video cassettes, film, two cameras and also a diary belonging to the three missing students hidden underground.

In 1999, precise editing from the rushes filmed by the two cameras made it possible to make the film public/

In 2000 a young man, Jeffrey Patterson, decided to exploit the vein of the first film by organizing excursions to the locations of the Blar Witch Project filming. Loss of collective consciousness, hallucinations and murders punctuate the group’s wanderings.

The real culprits:

Let’s start at the end of the film with this scene where we see Mile standing in a corner of the basement of the house.

This situation looks like that of the story of the child murders in the 1940s. Remember Rustin Parr who placed them one by one facing the wall while he killed another child. According to legend, Rustin Parr acted under the orders of the witch, but if we dig into the third documentary, The Bukittsville 7, we discover a strange confession made to his priest just before his execution where he denies the murders he allegedly committed. commi. Confession that you can find in a book of the same name.

Rustin Parr was tired of living the way he was living. As I tell you, I’m telling you what he told me in confession, but he told me he didn’t kill anyone. Not just me, he told his God that he hadn’t killed anyone.

It is in this same documentary that the identity of the killer is revealed:

Recently, a guy from Ohio investigated the disappearance of these 7 children. He drew a hypothesis that no one had yet drawn. Namely that Mr. Paee did not kill these children, that Kyle Brody was the murderer.

Kyle Brody, the last survivor. He would therefore be the murderer of the 7 missing children.

Two other disturbing elements would confirm this hypothesis:

Of the 7 children who died, none knew each other. The only person in the entire group who knew each of the 8 abducted children was Kyle Brody.
He gave details of the kidnapping of Emily Holland when she was kidnapped two weeks before the disappearance of Kyle Brody. However, he had things to say about the kidnapping. Where Parr had found her in the forest, how he had kidnapped her and brought her home.

Kyle Brody was committed to a psychiatric hospital while a documentary called White Enamel was being filmed there. It is in this same documentary that we can see Kyle Brody writing strange symbols on a page of paper, but his symbols we find them in the house of the first film where the children and our three students were murdered. Only Kyle Brody could have written them. If it’s hard to imagine that such a young child could commit such atrocities, Kyle Brody’s childhood can help us.

Kyle was a weird kid. For example, one of the things he liked to do was lock cats in mailboxes.
Tearing off flies’ wings is a classic. But he also fished for frogs, he cut off their legs without killing them first?

We can note a parallel with the childhood of Kyle Brody and that of Jeffrey Paterson, alleged murderer from whom the story of the second film is taken. Indeed, this enthusiast of the Blair Witch affair also had a rather troubled childhood.

When he was nine, his father, an artist from Burkittsville, took him camping. During this walk his father was injured in the head and spine. He remained paralyzed for the rest of his life. We even suspected Jeff but the case remained unsolved.
As a young teenager he kidnapped a neighbor’s baby.

He was interned before being released as a teenager. Both Kyle Brody and Jeffrey Paterson traveled to the Black Hills Forest during their childhood and came back changed.

The second film undeniably shows us that Jeffrey and his group are responsible for the murder of the tourists as well as that of Erika and Tristen. But if the video images found by the police leave no doubt, the murderers do not remember anything and even suffered from hallucinations.

These strange hallucinations in Blair Witch two provide us with an additional piece of the puzzle about how these strange phenomena work. A very important rule then seems to be remembered concerning the two films.

The video never lies, the film confirms it at the end, only the images recorded by the cameras show the reality of the events. On the other hand, the demonic force present in Black Hills can control what an individual sees and does.

It will be noted once again that the murders of Jeffrey and his accomplices echo previous cases.

  • Tourists are killed like the Coffin Rock victims in 1886
  • Erika was found dead facing a corner like the children in 1940 and Mike in 1994
  • Tristen is hanged as was Rustin Parr and the witch Elly Kedward.

All its elements seem to reveal to us a curse, that of an evil force which would make others reproduce the same atrocities over several centuries. A force capable of taking control of our minds.

If we keep this in mind, a reading of the events of 1994 seems necessary.
Josh is the first to break down and succumb to the manipulations that the entity attempts on them. An unpublished extract from the film reveals that it was Josh who was the first to throw away the card essential to their survival. With his malevolent influence strengthening and probably suffering from hallucinations, Josh disappears and the following night commits self-harm. Finally he kills his two friends in the same way as Kyle Brody in 1940.

With all these facts in mind, who do you think was responsible for the Coffin Rock murders of 1886? Remember this expedition that went in search of a missing little girl. Expedition found mutilated and disemboweled. When we see that children like Kyle Brody could have been possessed to commit the worst, the answer naturally comes to us, Robin Weaver the missing child.

The girl’s explanation and the length of time she supposedly waited seems strange.

This woman did not walk but floated. She took her to an old house deep in the woods, led her to the basement where she put her there. She told him she would come back and then left. The little girl stayed there for hours and ended up getting scared. She slipped through a window and ran back inside.

Several hollow hours, like the murderers in Blair Wich 2, we can imagine that their spirit has been possessed by evil.

In the case of Eileen Treacle in 1825, wouldn’t it be 12 people who drowned the young girl in 20 to 60cm of water, also victims of hallucinations? The possibility that the little girl threatened her 12 people under the influence of evil cannot also be excluded.
There is also a cut scene in Blair Wich 2 where Jeff mentions this hypothesis.

If we now look back to the year 1785 and reflect on the crazy cruelty with which the children tortured and beat Elly Kedward we can wonder if this curse was not already present before the death of this woman accused of witchcraft. This is also a possibility by one of the creators Eduardo Sanchez.

“In my opinion, Elly understood that there was a force in the woods, and don’t think Elly was demonic, but I’m sure she was aware of it. »

Assuming that this evil entity aims to trample and make its victims disappear to keep their souls forever, why would Elly Kedward, Blair’s witch wife, warn us of the dangers of venturing into the woods? Not only could the origins of the evil reigning in Black Hills not be linked to the Blair witch, but she also seems to warn the unwary who would like to venture there. Intimidation or protection, the question remains open. But let’s now try to decode his message.

The hidden message:

It is clear that territory is established in Black Hills, territory that he does not cross under penalty of reprimands. To establish this territory, and the limit not to be crossed, two types of warning are present in the first film.

First of all, cairns, mounds of stones presenting themselves both as graves but also as a threat.

“remember what mary brown said?
She talked about a story in the bible…”

On the Reddit site, a person also proposed an extract from the genesis which could correspond to this famous forgotten passage:

“This pile of stones is a witness, as well as the standing stone, that I will not pass on your side beyond the pile of stones, and that you will not pass on my side, beyond this pile of stones and this standing stone, with bad intention. »

Genesis 31:52

The message seems clear enough

Finally there are the wooden figurines called Tuana. These symbols, emblems of the Blair Witch mythology, act as a portal; once this border is crossed, the curse will not spare the adventurers.

If in the first film, these figurines appear in one of the scenes, in the second you have to take the time to watch the film frame by frame to discover them.
Please note, I insist on the fact that these warnings can only be visible in an American version of the film, at the very beginning in the cemetery.

Look closely at the shadows projected from the graves, they all go to the left, yet one of them goes against the flow. By reversing the image we can guess a Tuana. Symbol which will disappear some symbol later.

We find it here in the grocery store

here in the river according to some people

Finally we find it here in Jeffrey Paterson’s house

In the first documentary, The Curse of the Blair Witch, childhood photos of the three deceased filmmakers disturb me.

Either I have visions (cookie abuse) or I have just discovered the possibility that the threat weighs on the victims from a very young age as if they had been chosen. That might explain why the team that searched the forest in 1994 wasn’t struck by the curse.

In addition to these symbols of Tuana, let’s now see the hidden message that we can find throughout the second film.

In the cemetery you can see a tombstone with the name “Treacle”, the name of the little girl who drowned in 1825 but if you wait a bit the name changes to “Further”.

On the ground next to Erika you can see the word “ME” and dead leaves.

At the campfire you can see the word “SEEK” while freezing the frame.

In this window the word “NO”

And finally here on the ground the word “OR”

if we summarize we have:

Further, Me, Seek, No, Or

“Seek me no further or…”

To get the rest of the sentence we need to understand what Tristen’s character says when she starts talking backwards.

“Eerf klaw niaga lliw nerdlihc eht”

By putting everything in the right direction we obtain:

The children will again walk free..

Seek me no further or the children will walk free again.

Children we see here:

And these are the same children heard by the three students in the first film.

Even today it remains difficult to definitively establish how evil functions in Black Hills, whether it is Elly Kedward or the children, everything seems to be part of an evil force which coexists with the violence of our human history, unless it is not the mirror of it.
In this macabre dance, one feeds on the other, thus perpetuating an endless cycle between the executioners and the victims, all having left their mark throughout the centuries.

Cinema: Godzilla Minus One

I just saw Godzilla Minus One with friends. I thought it was great and I invite you to go see it if you still have the chance, but there was something that bothered me a little.
Kaiju (giant monster) films, I love them. I’ve seen all the King Kongs, the Godzillas, Gamera… In short, I’m a fan, so when I saw that there was a new film coming out in theaters I was very happy.
When I left the screening, Very nice blockbuster, I was very circumspect about the ambiguity of the “pacifist” message of the film (as usual with Yamazaki, the director), and above all, a radical choice: that of making Godzilla Minus One is the start of a uchrony where Japan fantasizes about post-World War II reconstruction without the USA.

Godzilla Minus One is a reboot of the saga, this one takes place just after the war, between 1945 and 1947, before the first Godzilla which took place in 1954.

By simply removing the American presence from all plans (as a reminder, in 1946, the time when the events of the film take place, there were 460k American soldiers in Tokyo and Yokohama, notably in Ginza!!), Yamazaki eludes in a manner quite surprising the capital importance of the United States in Japanese resilience.
But above all it allows itself to avoid complex and thorny subjects that Shin Godzilla (the previous film that I recommend) chose to deal with head on.
It’s a proposition, why not, but it’s a bit of a shame when we choose to place the action in 1945.
The result is, in a way, a very conventional and very polished film. Pretty much everything Shin Godzilla isn’t.
Thematically and formally of course since the film borrows a lot from the US blockbuster (notably from Spielberg, almost all the shots in the first hour).

This agreed result ultimately reminds me more of Masaaki Tezuka’s diptych (Godzilla x Mecha and Tokyo SOS) than of Kaneko’s Godzilla Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters (GMK), one of the most popular Japanese Godzilla films, from which it is based. claims.
But above all it underlines the extent to which Shin Godzilla is an Unidentified Film Object for Toho and the series in general.

I need to watch it again to explore this question, but the film did not strike me as “anti-war” at all, unlike what the franchise has been since its beginnings.
Anti-imperialist, certainly, but this critical aspect of fanaticism is a battle long settled with the past for Japan, however Godzilla Minus One gave me the impression of showing a certain frustration at not having been able to wage war as it should have been (“if we had had the means…”) and of needing to “end this war”. No questioning of the commitment, but rather of the way of doing things. Curious. But not surprising. Yamazaki is used to delivering war films that are particularly ambiguous on the issue due to wanting to spare everyone and find a consensus so as not to upset anyone (and especially not the production).

I still took great pleasure in all the appearances of the monster, more animal than icon, and particularly during this maritime chase so brilliant that I wonder how we hadn’t thought of it sooner.

I obviously can’t wait to see the inevitable sequel and see how this uchrony where Japan was able to rebuild itself alone without the United States (“which doesn’t have time”) will evolve.
During the 1960s, a pivotal moment in Japanese economic success and the expansion of civil nuclear power?

Evil Dead 1&2

I wrote this article together with Sam (not Sam Raimi), a friend and a member of my film club. We were supposed to talk about horror films. being both big fans of Evil Dead, she from the first and me from the second the choice was quickly made and then I had already talked about “IT” last year it seems to me or the year before. I hope you like our work!

For 40 years, the Evil Dead saga imagined by director Sam Raimi has haunted the world of cinema. Like the book of the dead (the necronomicon) at the center of its narrative, it unleashed forces that instantly possessed the big screen and the imagination of spectators. With this atypical saga, Sam Raimi has literally reinvented the language of images in his own way, like a brat let loose in a candy store.
You only need to take a casual look at it to detect a unique style. A hysterical and constantly inventive camera, shots with odd angles and an ability to still take us by the hand to guide us through this joyous chaos.

The Evil Dead saga

In the first opus in 1981, a UFO that came out of nowhere and a true horror film at first glance, young Raimi gave birth to a shock which, according to James Cameron, would change the audiovisual world, nothing more and nothing less.
An isolated cabin in the woods, a group of young adults, a curse that awakens… An archetypal story of total simplicity which gives Raimi the perfect terrain to dynamite everything.

The second opus is at the same time a sequel, a remake and a rereading of the first in a dark comedy style which has since earned the franchise the label of Tex Avery as horrific. Indeed, we are facing a burlesque horror cinema. Raimi draws his inspiration from the famous comedy trio The Three Stooges with their zany humor that stains and hurts.
The astonishing scene where Bobby Joe Swallows the Eye of the Demon Henrietta is inspired by a Three Stooges sketch or those who throw fruit into the mouth of an operetta singer to silence him.

With the third opus where the hero Ash finds himself propelled into the Middle Ages to continue his fight against the deadites, his ghouls emaciated by the incantations of the necronomicon, Raimi pushes the envelope even further transforming Evil Dead into a comedy of cap and doom. horrifying sword, where burlesque reaches new heights, supported by cartoonish sound effects.

In a trilogy, the director has therefore imposed a saga which is unlike any other, stubbornly refusing to confine itself to a single genre but which nevertheless retains an identity recognizable among a thousand. Fans are not necessarily looking for the same thing: fear, laughter, adventure or all three at the same time, but all are linked by this furious and uninhibited love of cinema.

This transformed the saga, almost in spite of itself, into a creative engine across generations, often discovered on VHS on cable channels or by leafing through old movie magazines. A fever, nay, a virus that makes you want to make films yourself.
Yes There was a place for anomalies, but Raimi wasn’t just there to blast the past for free. His films were also furious echoes of the cinema of yesteryear.
So in the face of the first Evil Dead we already observe a love for the stop motion animation of Ray Harryhausen or even in the third part how, not mentioned the mischievous nod to the film The Day The Earth Stood Still by Robert Wise from 1952 with the famous incantation “Klaatu Barada Nicto” recited rather with difficulty by Ash.

Sam actually doesn’t care about promoting bad taste, that would amount to agreeing on what is commonly considered good or bad. No, what he wants is to create his cinema without worrying about this type of consideration. What will be good or bad will be the result on the screen, not the basic ingredients.

Many years later, we will also be entitled to a series but also to a remake which focuses more on torture porn. But here we will mainly focus on the first two opuses.

Evil Dead

A cabin, a howling wind, darkness and in the middle a story of friendship. The first Evil Dead is above all a project of friends who are crazy about cinema, who want to prove themselves. Almost all of them have known each other since their studies.

Bruce Campbell who plays Ash is also the co-producer of the film accompanied by Robert Tapert, high school friend of Sam Raimi,
the artist Tom Sullivan met at the university will supervise the special effects and prosthetic makeup.

Filming began in 1979 and the days proved to be long and difficult, with the filmmakers learning on the job. The budget is very meager. Quickly everyone is overwhelmed by the enormous amount of work. The D system is essential and it is not uncommon to find technicians and actors asleep standing at the feet of cameras or projectors.

It’s a very small film but its ambition, both through its staging and its special effects, is disproportionate. One element in particular highlights the lack of resources; makeup.

The great special effects makeup artist Greg Nicotero will say it himself. With the right budget and skills, Evil Dead could have been as terrifying as William Friedkin’s masterpiece The Exorcist.
Tom Sullivan is the artist who oversaw all of the masks, makeup and props you see on screen. He accomplished a titanic job but given the conditions, the fairly expensive makeup and casting products, Tom mainly had to make do with what he had, for the worse, to the great misfortune of the actors.

The latex point

All makeup and special effects creation begins with a cast of their face. All you have to do is apply alginate, a pink or white paste which is used to mold the details of the face, then once this material has set, a plaster screed is applied to the alginate to reinforce and is used to unmold everything. But for the first Evil Dead, the experience is completely different.

Tom, after having smeared the actors with vaseline, uses the plaster directly on their faces and the plaster dries… it gets hot. This is called an exothermic reaction. This helps the material set more quickly and serves as an indicator for unmolding, i.e. when the plaster becomes cold. So imagine the torture for the actors, trapped in several kilos of burning plaster, some struggle to be freed, others permanently lose their eyelashes in the mold.
Once on set, the actors are smeared with cotton pads and latex, cheap makeup prostheses but also acrylic paint where it is stipulated on the packaging:

“do not apply to skin”

Oopsie

To remove their makeup, the actors use abrasive sponges and pads and when there is no water available to rinse their faces, they use the coffee available in the control room, as Bruce Campbell later confided.
And the torture doesn’t stop there. Covered in fake blood and food syrups of multiple colors, these sticky demons are decked out in opaque lenses, which plunge them into total darkness for their entire scene. These performances are so unbearable that an expression is born on the film set:

“The latex point”

So does bringing such a film to fruition justify such irresponsible working methods? It contributes to the legend, you might say. Yes, but we could retort that justifying pain that could have been avoided by creative accomplishment quickly becomes questionable.

Stop Motion

Where Tom Sullivan excels, however, is in the execution of stop motion shots, the art of frame by frame. He manages to make horrible veins appear on the ankle of an actress or even imagines the decomposition of the demonic horde using modeling clay for the final scene. This took no less than 3 months to be completed for a final result of just a few minutes.

The whole team, hidden under the floor, puts their hands together to bring a dismembered body to life or to stab a latex leg that is a little too hard. But it is the famous book of the dead, the Necronomicon which will remain the most cult creation of the film.

Small grimoire entirely illustrated by Tom Sullivan, its cover is made of cotton and latex. Legend has it that the face of actor Hal Delrich, who played Scotty in the film, is on the front of the book.

The sound

All its monsters and effects could have sunk into oblivion but saved and highlighted by the direction of Sam Raimi, but also by the sound work they have strangely crossed time, finding in their brick and jumble appearance a real uneasy flavor.

Concerning the sound work, this is something that will be pushed even further in the second part, transforming the sound language of these films into a real trademark, in particular with this omnipresent gloomy and cold wind noise which sneaks through everywhere, contaminates the atmosphere and becomes totally obsessive. When we think of Evil Dead we spontaneously think visual but is it the sound that makes us sink into the nightmare experienced by Ash? These films are a good example of what realism is in cinema. It’s about being faithful to your own rules. The sound languages of these films are anything but naturalistic. It’s sort of a steroid version of a ghost ride. He creates the universe coherent with himself and when Ash finds himself listening to this possessed cabin, we are there, on the lookout, without questioning for a single second the reality of the threat.

Damn that wind!

To everyone’s surprise when it was released internationally in 1983, Evil Dead became the most ferociously original horror film of the year according to Stephen King and it’s quite a reference on a CV. The film filled midnight screenings around the world and when it was released on VHS, it exploded rental scores and became the most stolen VHS in America.
For its violence and its gory scenes it cost Raimi a trial for obscenity but that did not prevent a few years later and after a few twists and turns the development of Evil Dead 2 from seeing the light of day. And suddenly we enter a whole new dimension.

Evil Dead 2

In my opinion Evil Dead 2, its nickname Dead by Dawn, is the most accomplished episode of the saga, where gore waltzes with laughter, where the monsters are the real stars of the film.

Sam Raimi has the horrific symphony he dreamed of. For this sequel produced by Dino De Lorentis, money is no longer a problem. Sam Raimi therefore decides to surround himself with great professionals and calls on head makeup artist Mark Sholstrom. The latter surrounds himself with a crack team made up of Robert Kurzman, Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger, the trio of terrible children who will give birth to the legendary KNB workshop that you surely know for their work on The Walking Dead, Crypt Show, or even Narnia. The team will also consist of Shannon Shea, Aaron Sims and Mike Trcic.

For 6 months, the young adults will give birth to incredible creatures and makeup but above all, something extremely rare at that time, Greg Nicotéro will film behind the scenes and these 6 hours of tape are today considered a jewel of history special effects which follow these eight completely crazy young people, living for 6 months the most beautiful creative adventure in a good-natured atmosphere, quick to goof off. The sharing of horror was born. These three months will be spent in Mark’s workshop in Pasadena, then in the ephemeral workshop adjacent to the Evil Dead 2 film set in North Carolina.

Henrietta’s return

There are several incredible creatures in Evil Dead 2, including the famous Henrietta, the cellar demon, one of the greatest successes in horror cinema. It’s Ted Raimi, Sam Rémi’s little brother who hides behind the mask of this decomposing old lady. At the age of 20 at the time, he was affectionately martyred by his elder inside a rubber and latex foam suit padded with several kilos of lentils, he died of heat. Every time he takes off his costume, literally liters of sweat pour out on the technical team and the actors.
Be aware that in the final montage you can see vile streams of sweat dripping from his ear.

To maintain the link between the demons of the first opus and its sequel, the monsters always wear opaque contact lenses which therefore make them blind. For this reason Ted Raimi falls and tears his costume between the legs. Which means that in one shot where the witch finds herself hanging from the ceiling you can see not only the tear in the costume but also the actor’s underwear.

Ash

Still an actor and producer, Bruce Campbell never fails to impress the gallery with his crazy acting like Buster Keaton. Look at the scene of the possessed hand, the guy’s investment knows no bounds.
For the record, this sequence is a tribute to an already existing short film directed by Evil Dead 2 screenwriter Scott Spigel “Attack of the Helping Hand”, the story of an evil glove who attacks a poor housewife with Sam Raimi as the laughing milkman.

This time Campbell doesn’t escape the makeup chair. In this second episode Bruce transforms twice under the guidance of Howard Berger. The first makeup is that of Evil Ash when our hero finds himself infested by the demon and the second, more discreet is that of Doctor Jeckyll and Mr Hyde when Ash looks in the mirror.

Ash’s demonic hand running through the salon is that of makeup artist Greg Nicotéro himself. To give the illusion that it crosses the room, a trench is dug in the floor. The part closest to the floor camera is set high to hide the trench and thus give the illusion that the floor is intact.

Many scenes will be cut during editing, such as the one where liters of vomit are propelled from Linda’s severed head or that of Ash devouring a squirrel, but other scenes have simply disappeared, lost, like the horrible scalp of the creature from Evil Ed revealing a brain the size of a peanut.

Despite its greater resources, Evil Dead 2 remains a theater of joyous tinkering. When you’re punk you don’t change yourself.

Zombie crossing the sets, helped by a technician attached to a skateboard, Stop motion, liters and liters of fake blood and colored syrup devastating the sets and defiling the humans who occupy them… The essence of the first opus does not is not lost and from a technical point of view, Evil Dead is for me, the Holy Grail of monster films. It has always been my favorite thanks to the dantesque scene of general laughter where the house and its objects come to life facing Ash who falls into madness and that’s what made me understand that it was possible to laugh facing monsters.

Horrible comedy, this genre is so delicate and well dosed

Evil Dead 2 better than the first?

Comparing Evil Dead 1 and 2 is therefore interesting in many respects, almost the same films, made by the same filmmaker a few years apart but with very different tones and scales like two sides of the same coin . Of course it is tempting to say that the makeup and effects of the second opus ridicule those of the first and that is quite true. More time, more resources, more talent involved but the impact of a makeup or an effect and that’s good, is not limited to that.

Knowing exactly why a film’s mayonnaise sets or doesn’t is still very much a mystery. How a team will know how to seize the moment, how it will know how to evolve creatively with it.

The most striking scene in the entire Evil Dead saga, for me, is the card sequence in the first part, when the characters realize that their friend is guessing things that she doesn’t see and then ends up turning around violently, possessed.

In this moment, something truly terrifying was captured, yet the makeup is elementary, so simple that a child could recreate it but in the camera angle and the lighting, the suddenness of the editing, the sound effect chilling, something has been transcended. It’s not about making up for the damage, this scene didn’t need better makeup. It was built for what it is by making the most of its minimalism.
The roughness of certain effects creates a truly unique feeling that goes beyond just being well done. A bit like in the first Terminator in this shot of the T800 rushing towards the door.

James Cameron probably considers that the effect is very dated but in this dilapidated stop motion, for me there is a really uneasy strangeness which accentuates the tension of the moment. With the first 2vil Dead well I have the same feeling. There is no point in imagining a version with more accomplished effects, not because this version is called Evil Dead 2 but above all because the film is exactly what it was supposed to be.

The Evil Dead saga is rich in many other things but looking back on these first two parts has a flavor that still remains very special today, regardless of the generations, Evil Dead fans will always find inspiration in his works between the roar of chainsaws and diabolical incantations. Looking back on these two films is to capture a bit of lightning, a youthful intoxication of the first times. This is where we come back to recharge our batteries, this memory of the promises of the universe of possibilities, to remember why we do what we do, why we look again and again behind the mask.

Take of yourself and your love one and see you soon!

Memories from Katsuhiro Otomo

A few days ago I met Mira, a girl my age whose dad is deaf. We spent some time together and I she invited me to watch a movie at her house and frankly she has pretty good taste in movies. The film in question is “Memories” by Katsuhiro Otomo, the director of a little-known animated film, “Akira”. I wanted to take advantage of this discovery to give you a little presentation.

CINEMA, AND GREAT ONE

Memories is an assembly of three medium-length films and a collaboration of several key names and talents in Japanese animation: Katsuhiro Otomo (the creator of Akira), the late Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Paprika), Tensai Okamura (the host of My Neighbor Totoro and Ghost in the Shell) as well as Kôji Morimoto (the host of Kiki’s Delivery Service and Roujin Z). Inevitably, given the sum of geniuses who composed it, this 1995 film supervised by Katsuhiro Otomo is a masterpiece to rank among the other Japanese references.

Magnetic Rose

Like the adaptation of Akira which marked the beginning of a new era for Japanese animation at the end of the 80s, Memories had the ambition to erase the border between the cartoon, still little revealed, and the cinema taken of real traditional views by appropriating its genres and techniques.

The first story, Magnetic Rose, is a dizzying space opera that draws its power in particular from its lyricism (accentuated by its opera arias) and its deep melancholy. The second, Stink Bomb, is an absurd comedy about a man who unwillingly turns himself into a bio-weapon, though the story shines more for its underlying silliness and cynicism than its humorous underpinnings. The third, Cannon Fodder, is a false, but no less impressive, sequence shot on the daily life of a father and his son in a city where cannon fire punctuates the life of its inhabitants.

Stink Bomb

In all three cases, these are nuggets of animation (and the presence of 4°C studios and Madhouse has a lot to do with it), staging, production and artistic direction. The medium-length films offer the public great cinematic spectacle and all the excess one can expect from a blockbuster (spacewalks, giant machinery and grandiose settings). With their chain explosions, all also revive Otomo’s insatiable appetite for sequences of riots and destruction that we already found in his manga Fireball, his adaptation of Akira or Roujin Z, a film too little city for which he wrote the screenplay and provided a large part of the artistic direction.

However, Katsuhiro Otomo did not deny the possibilities specific to animation or its narrative potential. In Cannon Fodder, the only part he made, the thick, hatched lines of the more stylized designs refer to European comic strips. Finally, to return to the essence of animation and use it in the most literal sense of the term, the last minutes of the footage, which probe the mind and imagination of the young protagonist, take the form of a drawing which comes to life for a last hybridization of its kind.

Cannon Fodder

THE IRONY

Memories, which can be seen as another experimental laboratory, therefore contributed a little more to giving the medium its letters of nobility and bringing it to a new audience. Going even further than Hayao Miyazaki and other studio Ghibli productions, the challenge of the film was both to consolidate the SF and dystopian imagination of the artist, but also to push the animation towards more dark, complex and overtly political.

Reference to Akira?

Divided into a falsely romantic tragedy, a gritty farce and a dying slice of life, the three parts keep as common thread the author’s extremely pessimistic vision concerning the future. He associates it with the decline of civilization and the perversion of technology, in particular weapons and artificial intelligence which replaces man; themes that have irrigated the work of Katsuhiro Otomo since his beginnings and that we will find again later, for example in his scenario of Metropolis.

As usual, the artist also used the codes of science fiction to dissect the societal failings of Japan with a thinly veiled anti-militarist and anti-elitist discourse. His stories are about anti-heroic characters and societies that are doomed by ignoring the obvious. In Magnetic Rose, Miguel lets himself be blinded by his fantasies and is no longer aware of being manipulated. In Stink Bomb, Nobuo Tanaka is too stupid to understand that he is endangering the whole city and the army is too incompetent to understand that it is they who are making the situation worse.

Corrupted Memories

Finally, Canon Fodder clarifies the subject through his city which no longer knows how to live peacefully and maintains the illusion of an armed conflict out of convenience, to keep the population under control. The enemies are invisible and the cannons are firing towards a hazy horizon, without certainty that the cannonballs will reach any destination, while the few protests and demands of the working class are at best ignored, at worst suppressed.

More revealing still, the indoctrinated little boy asks at one point who are these famous “enemies” around which his whole existence will revolve. His father’s evasive answer is loaded with meaning and sophistry: “you will understand when you grow up”. He then ends up proclaiming that he wants to be a gunner later on, thus letting the decoy and the submission continue, which are transmitted obediently from generation to generation.

Resign oneself to the incomprehensible

While it may not have had the same impact on popular culture as Akira, Memories is another technical and narrative tour de force that has established itself as one of the most visionary and important films of its time. generation.
In short, it’s a fucking masterpiece that anyone who likes science fiction at all must see once in their life like Akira!

Take care of yourself and your loved one and see you soon!

How Star Trek Uniforms Became Iconic

Bright reds, blues and golds. This is how the saga defines the uniforms of the Starfleet crew in the “Star Trek” series in 1966. We owe them to costume designer William Ware Theiss, responsible for interpreting the vision of the United Federation of Planets by Gene Roddenberry , the creator of the series. “Roddenberry wanted the clothes to be simple, with no pockets,” explain Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann, authors of “Star Trek Costumes: Five Decades of Fashion from the Final Frontier” (Insight Editions).

“Roddenberry wanted to limit parallels with the military, since the operation of the ship in the series was only partially military”

“As a result, Theiss designed Starfleet uniforms as non-military looking garments, consisting of a simple tunic, a pair of boots and tight black trousers. A small gold stripe on the sleeves denotes the rank and color of the uniform indicates the service assigned to each member of the crew.”

“The colors for these uniforms were chosen for purely technical reasons. Theiss and the producers wanted to find three colors that would be different enough from each other to be distinguished on black-and-white screens (which were still used in many homes ), but also colors bright enough for newer color TVs.”

“Theiss chooses blue (for science personnel), red (engineering and general services) and green (command). Lime, to be exact – not gold, as many people think, adds Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann. The command color appeared golden due to the lighting chosen during filming and the type of film stock used.” Note that wearing a red sweater does not bode well. The redshirts become an archetype, that of the character parachuted into a series and who dies quickly.

The women have a uniform that differs, as the two experts point out: “Initially, they also wore pants, but after the two pilots of the series, they were imposed mini-skirts, which becomes the signature of Lieutenant Uhura .”

In the background on the left, Nichelle Nichols in the role of Lieutenant Uhura in “Star Trek” (REX FEATURES/SIPA).

1970s sinking

When “Star Trek” arrived in theaters in 1979, the costumes imagined a decade earlier did not follow. As Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann explain, “The film’s producers wanted the new uniforms to appear ‘logical’ to viewers, to be clothes people could live and work in effectively. According to them, the new ‘Star Trek’ had to sound more ‘scientific’ than ‘science fiction'”.

Robert Wise, the director, also has his say:

“He found the old colors to be garish and disturbing. Wise wanted the audience to focus on the characters’ faces and their emotions rather than their outfits.”
LThe team of “Star Trek, the film”, in 1979

Costume designer Robert Fletcher therefore reviewed the entire range of costumes, with a palette of popular colors at the time: light gray, pale blue, beige and brown. “The only detail that reveals a crew member’s service is the background color of the patch with the insignia. The patches are round, with the famous arrow symbol superimposed. The color of the circle represents each member’s service crew: white for command, red for engineering, green for medical, orange for science, gray for security and pale gold for operations”, specify the two authors.

Leonard Nimoy and his famous orange patch in “Star Trek, the movie” (REX FEATURES / SIPA).

Everyone on the “Enterprise” is forced to wear unflattering tight-fitting jumpsuits, with, moreover, pants that integrate the shoes in one piece.

“Fletcher will quickly realize that these costumes are both difficult to make and to make the actors wear, explain Block and Erdmann. In addition, the public makes fun of them, comparing them to onesies for children.”

1980, repentance

Robert Fletcher, who has not said his last word, will therefore review his copy for the following three films (“Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan”, 1982, “Star Trek 3: In Search of Spock”, 1984 , and “Star Trek 4: Return to Earth”, 1986).

“The burgundy uniforms he designed for ‘Wrath of Khan’ suggest an influence from Hollywood’s Golden Age marine-themed films, such as ‘Prisoner of Zenda’ or ‘Captain Fearless’ – which were among Gene Roddenberry’s favorite movies, decipher Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann. The burgundy uniforms were a hit. Everyone – producers, actors and fans – loved them and still love them.”

“Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (RONALD GRANT/MARY EVANS/SIPA).

Back to basics

“For ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ (1987-1994), William Ware Theiss returns as costume designer and takes up his idea of having the upper part of the uniform reflect the service of each crew member, continue Block and Erdmann. The lower part and the sides are black – which makes the uniforms elegant, with the added benefit of making the actors appear slim. Theiss chooses original shades of colors that he finds flattering: wine red , duck blue and, for contrast, mustard yellow.”

“Star Trek: The Next Generation” (CBS Paramount International).

Small inconvenience all the same: as the costume designer Robert Blackman tells it, when he arrives at the third season, he finds costumes… which stink. In question, the elastane, so eighties, that Roddenberry had decreed “material of the future”. Very uncomfortable, it underlines all the faults and creases, which will give rise to a tic well known to fans: the “Picard Maneuver”, where we see Patrick Stewart, who plays captain Jean-Luc Picard, continually shoot at his pullover. Blackman therefore replaces elastane with wool gabardine and adds a mandarin collar.

“When Robert Blackman designs new costumes for ‘Deep Space Nine’ and ‘Voyager’, he retains Theiss’ color scheme, although his uniforms are less form-fitting, making them more functional and more comfortable for the actors,” trace Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann.

As for the navy blue suits used in “Enterprise”, which takes place in an era before the other series, they “had to give the impression that they had evolved directly from the suits dedicated to the space missions of NASA personnel”.
Star Trek : Enterprise

The return of the miniskirt

“For more recent films, starting with J.J. Abrams’ ‘Star Trek’ in 2009, costume designer Michael Kaplan wanted to keep the uniforms in the tradition of the original 1966 series. But he also wanted to reinterpret them, make them more It kept the colors red, blue and gold. Then it incorporated small Starfleet insignia. The design is tiny, almost subliminal, so the public may not notice it.”

Star Trek (2009)

With J.J. Abrams, the mini-dress is back, a controversial subject if ever there was one. In the first series, Uhura wears a mini-skirt, unlike her male colleagues, which has been widely accused of sexism, even though the saga aims to be feminist and egalitarian. Fans then imagine a theory: all “Star Trek” uniforms are unisex! This is corroborated by scenes from “New Generation”, where men wear the mini-dress, or “skant” (skirt + pant). There are, of course, only extras who wear them, never a leading male character.

For “Star Trek: Without Limits” (released on August 17), Justin Lin recruits a new costume designer: Sanja Hays. “She chose to eliminate the arrow motif and used a heavier material for the uniforms, note Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann. The women’s uniform, always a dress, has long sleeves with a band around the wrist to mark rank, which the old short-sleeved dress did not have.”

“Through all these changes, there is something intangible in these clothes that are unmistakably identified as Starfleet uniforms, conclude Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann. Perhaps this familiarity comes from the fact that each costume designer has drawn on the work of his or her predecessor. The line of a hem may change, but it reflects the lines that came before it. They say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This goes for the ‘Star Trek’ uniform.”

The proof, at the end of “Star Trek: No Limits” (warning spoilers), Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) is offered to join Starfleet. She has only one question: “Should I wear the uniform?”

METROPOLIS: FRITZ LANG’S MISUNDERSTOOD MASTERPIECE

Today I wanted to talk to you about an old film and to be old it is old since this year it will celebrate its 101 years. Well, as you read the title you already know that I am talking about Metropolis.

If you haven’t seen it yet or want to see it again, I’ll post it to you at the very end of this article.

It is a film which has left its mark on the cinema until today and yet even if today it is considered an absolute masterpiece, it was in its time a critical and commercial failure. In this article I will explain why.

From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer :

“Maria’s proposition that the heart should mediate between the hand and the brain could have been formulated by Goebbels as well. He too appealed to the heart for the purposes of his totalitarian propaganda.”

German cinema has had two great golden ages in its history. There was the New German cinema which goes from the 60s until the beginning of the 80s, but it was also entitled to a very prolific cinema during the 20s, that is to say under the Weimar Republic. Germany suffered a terrible defeat in the First World War, but its cinema was not greatly affected by the sanctions. On the contrary, it becomes one of the hubs of the seventh art.

And it was during this period that a new film was released, a founding work in the history of cinema. If today it is unanimous among critics and historians, Metropolis was a disaster both in terms of criticism and its profitability. The work has led to intense debates starting with its ideological message. Marxist film for some, fascist for others, what is it really?

FRITZ LANG

Fritz Lang is considered one of the most important directors of German and even world cinema. Born in 1890 in Vienna in Austria-Hungary, he went to Germany in 1910 to study art. It was after a stay in Paris that he decided to embark on the cinematographic adventure after having attended the screening of a film by Louis Feuillade.

His directing career really took off after the First World War. In 1919 his first film La Métisse was released. Will follow after a number of diverse and varied films from fantasy (The Three Lights) to espionage (Les Espions) through science fiction (La Femme sur la Lune). During this period, despite the defeat, Germany is one of the main artistic capitals of the European continent. Paradoxically, if Germany is severely sanctioned by the victors of the First World War, German cinema is very prolific under the Weimar Republic. It sees the birth of most of the most talented filmmakers and actors that the seventh art has known: Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Marlène Dietrich, Friedrich Murnau, Emil Jannings or even Georg Wilhelm Pabst. In 1926, Fritz Lang embarked on the production of what is considered one of the most important films of his career, Metropolis. To compete with Hollywood productions, the UFA had a gigantic 2,200 m2 set built in the Babelsberg studios in Potsdam for the filming of this science fiction film.

INSPIRED

It is difficult to know where it should be classified in the artistic movements of the time. Very often, we tend to link it to expressionism.

German expressionism, I had already spoken about it in two of my articles (here and there), is a movement which is characterized in particular by its very aesthetic use of shadow and light, exploration of themes such as madness, paranoia, anguish, double. Some of these characteristics are found in Metropolis. The theme of the double and the duality between good and evil is represented by the character of Maria and Rotwang’s Android, having taken on the features of a woman. There is also a very pronounced use of lighting and shadows, particularly in the chase scene between Maria and Rotwang in the city’s catacombs. But to label Lang’s work as expressionist would be going a bit too fast because he never accepted that such a label was imposed on him. Francis Courtade said of him:

“Lang has always denied having been an expressionist. We can understand it: a true creator does not like labels and on the other hand, Lang only made a film that can be fully qualified as expressionist. But expressionism, consciously or not, marked him”

In fact, Metropolis draws a little from three of the main artistic movements of the time: Expressionism, New Objectivity and Futurism.

The New Objectivity is characterized by a certain realism. The goal being essentially to socially denounce the living conditions of the working class, to criticize the bureaucracy and the political elite… It is difficult not to see the “Neue Sachlichkeit” character of Metropolis.

As for futurism, it is an artistic movement that appeared in Italy in 1909. The leader was called Filippo Marinetti. Futurists exalt technological progress and its triumph, industrialized cities, violence… There too, the influence is very clear. Metropolis is a film set in a futuristic city where technology is everywhere.

SYNOPSIS

Joh Fredersen, the master of Metropolis and Freder’s father, plots alongside Rotwang, a mad scientist, to stop the workers’ whims. He hopes to rely on Rotwang’s new creation, a robot. Joh asks the mad scientist to kidnap Maria so that his machine can take on his form and thus maintain his hold on the workers. Rotwang has other ideas in mind. Admittedly, he kidnaps the girl but will use his robot to cause a new revolution and overthrow Fredersen.

ANALYSIS

As we said, Fritz Lang drew a lot of inspiration from Futurism in the staging of Metropolis. It is true that we find the themes of machines and technological progress. But unlike the latter, the German director has a very different vision on this subject.

Let’s start at the beginning, we have a futuristic city. To make it work, you have to make the machines work. In this case, it requires a workforce, a proletariat, those whose only thing is their labor power. They are alienated by their work. What is the first scene where we see the proletarians in the film? They appear for the first time at the time of the relief, that is to say the change of team for the maintenance of the machines of the city.

Workers are an integral part of this vast machinery. They are one with her. When you see them for the first time, their gait is completely mechanical. These individuals are no longer living beings, they are cogs, objects. They are replaceable, when one of them falls ill, asphyxiated by the steam from the machines.

Technological progress would not have made it possible to improve the lot and the human condition. All life has disappeared in these human bodies. They now serve as food for their own instruments of work. The machines become deities serving body and soul their new masters. Workers are sacrificed in the manner of pagan rituals. These human beings are now machines, one with the rest of the architecture and these different mechanical components.

Conversely, the world of the wealthy is a real paradise. Technology has led to the improvement of the living comfort of part of the population, the ruling class of the city. As for the children, they have fun in the vast gardens alongside the young girls, play sports…

From the first scenes of the film, Fritz Lang builds an opposition, a duality between two worlds, something very usual in an expressionist cinema. When the world of the bourgeois lives in light and greenery, that of the proletarians is a world of darkness, catacombs and underground passages.

Lang raises the question of our relationship to modernity and technological progress. The word “Metropolis” can literally be translated as mother city. Its function would be to protect, to ensure the safety and comfort of its inhabitants. Is this really the case? We have seen that no. The workers are unhappy, alienated by the machines of the city. Worse still, the haves and the proletarians are unable to communicate with each other. The dictator Fredersen turns a blind eye to what the working populations are going through. Metropolis is a dead city. She is in agony. This so-called “technological progress” actually leads to the separation and isolation of social classes. How to fix it in this case? We see very clearly in the film an opposition between paganism and Christianity.

When Freder goes for the first time to the underworld of the city, the machines transform before his eyes into a terrible pagan deity, Moloch. Quoted in the Bible, Moloch was best known for his rites which consisted of sacrificing children in the fire. Rotwang too, although scholarly, is much more like some kind of wizard. Behind his robot, we can see a pentacle. He would therefore appeal to supernatural and occult forces. Of course, the most important being the legend of the Tower of Babel evoked by Maria in the middle of the film. Let’s take a closer look at this legend. The Tower of Babel was within the will of men to touch the sky. This technical prowess greatly displeased God who decided to scramble their language so that they could no longer understand each other. The parallel between Metropolis and the Tower of Babel finally becomes clear. Progress corrupts the hearts of men. It divides and leads to an impossibility to communicate. In the case of the legend of Babel, the incommunication is literal. Workers can no longer speak to each other because they speak several different languages. But in the case of Metropolis, the social classes of the city find it difficult to discuss and listen to each other. They speak the same language but find it difficult to understand each other. To build his futuristic city, Fritz Lang says he was inspired a lot by the city of New York where he said he felt a certain attraction but also a great fear.

What can such modernity bring? Is it an improvement, a progress or on the contrary to sow the seeds of a cataclysm? The city of Metropolis seems oddly dominated by pagan and occult powers which is quite paradoxical. Where technology and machines are usually attached to the idea of a society moving towards a better future, the society of the city has rather reverted to archaic beliefs and rites from the past. And this is opposed by Christianity. What Fritz Lang essentially criticizes is a society based on cold, calculating relationships without any emotional attachment. What the director is asking for is a return to more human relationships embodied in the film by Christian values. That the main female character is called Maria is not trivial since it refers to the Virgin Mary. Where she embodies innocence and purity, her robotic double, Rotwang’s man-machine, is much closer to a prostitute, a demoness, using her charisma and power of attraction to sow discord in the world. within the social classes of the city. She uses her feminine attributes to push the bourgeois to murder. Ditto for Freder Fredersen, although he comes from the ranks of the wealthy, his role in the film is very close to that of Christ, the one who will bring love, reconciliation and peace to Metropolis.

But what does all this mean? The city of Metropolis would allude to the industrial revolution. Although it is inspired by New York, it can equally symbolize the city of Berlin, one of the main industrial capitals of Europe. One would have thought that it would lead to an improvement in the comfort of life. But societies are not built on such foundations. While many consider human problems solved through progress. Rotwang did not understand this. He was convinced that it would solve all the problems but the end will prove him wrong on this point. The whole film is built on an opposition between the organic and the robotic, Christianity and the occult. We tend to forget what is essential in building social cohesion that technology can never provide. It forgets to take into account love, the sharing of common values, a spirit of cohesion and solidarity, a certain understanding despite the differences in social class. By wanting to rely too much on technology, we forget the most essential thing, what makes us human beings.

From everything I have written previously, one can ask the question of the political message behind Metropolis. Is it a Marxist work defending the class struggle? If I wrote this article, it is partly because of the video of Durendal on this same film. Raging about the success of the films Parasite (Bong Joon-Ho, 2019) and Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019) which in his eyes insinuates a hateful vision of the rich, he decides to show what he thinks is a better reflection on the fight classes. What is it really ? Is Metropolis a Marxist film? Let’s take a closer look. The working masses revolt following the manipulations of the mad scientist Rotwang and his robot, the two antagonists of the work. This revolution leads to significant damage and deaths. The class struggle leads to flooding in the underground city where their children are safe. Freder and Maria, the two protagonists of the film, do not advocate the struggle and the uprising of crowds.

Instead, they propose to reconcile the two parties, the proletarian and bourgeois classes. The class struggle is therefore presented in a pejorative way in Metropolis. The message of the film is after all that the mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart. This is about class collaboration, a political concept most often associated with fascist movements. The idea is quite simple. Fascists are nationalists in essence. They believe that nothing is above the interests of the nation. The class struggle, on the contrary, considers that the concept of nation is a chimera which denies the conflictuality and the balance of power within society. The Marxists finally turn out to be enemies of the fascists who can only lead to the weakening of the country or even its destruction. Faced with the division that can result from struggles between social classes, fascism offers an alternative. Instead of going through revolts, we propose a collaboration between the ruling classes and the ruled classes. This principle of organization of the company therefore implies the establishment of a cordial agreement, something to which Maria and Freder fully adhere.

Fritz Lang was not a very politicized person at that time, although he was probably a nationalist. The writing of the film was however entrusted to his wife, Thea von Harbou, very close to Nazi circles. She will join the NSDAP in 1934. Lang never accepted the morality of Metropolis:

“Personally, I don’t like the movie very much. We can no longer say today that the heart is the mediator between the hand and the brain. It’s wrong, the conclusion is wrong, I already didn’t accept it when I was making the film.

What is now considered his masterpiece will be a commercial oven. He will nevertheless attract the attention of the main National Socialist dignitaries, starting with Goebbels… and Hitler. He wanted to make Fritz Lang the official filmmaker of the Third Reich, something he refused. What we can in any case say on this subject is that the German filmmaker probably had a very limited political awareness, not knowing at that time what Nazism could constitute as a danger. So to come back to Durendal’s vlog, Metropolis is not an anti-fascist work. He will never read this article but I wanted to come back to it so that I could correct it.

One would think that the film does not fit into Fritz Lang’s themes because of its history. However, even if the filmmaker did not adhere to the ideology conveyed in Metropolis, the fact remains that he continues in the development of the themes that run through his filmography. We already find an expressionist influence in the field of lighting. We can also note a notable interest in architecture, Fritz Lang studied architecture, and knew how to have control over the models and sets of the film, which is far from negligible because of the importance of the city of Metropolis in the plot of the work. Significant work on the sets and models has been carried out on this point.

And finally, there are all the themes that run through his work. Lang’s stories are real tragedies. Tragedy is a genre of theater featuring characters struggling against their human passions and their destiny. Lang is convinced that an animality is present within man, of impulses that can lead to his destruction and of all civilization. The drive that most interests Fritz Lang is the death drive (but not only). Film writers are almost all influenced in one way or another by their own personal experience. If this impulse which tends towards death can bring to mind the horrors of the Great War and of the 20th century, Fritz Lang was very affected by the death of his first wife. At the time of the investigation, the police concluded that she had not committed suicide but that she had killed herself by accident. The circumstances are not very clear but it seems that she died following an argument with her husband when she discovered the affair he was having with his mistress at the time, Théa von Harbou.

Death, guilt, suicide and murder are at the heart of his works. Death is a major driving force in Lang’s stories. The characters in his films are very often driven by criminal and murderous impulses. M le Maudit begins with the murders of little girls by a horrible assassin. This tragic news item leads to the installation of an irrational fear, a paranoia of the inhabitants of the city where everyone suspects everyone and where we are ready to take justice into our own hands. In The Executioners Die Too, the film begins with the death of high-ranking Nazi Reinhard Heydrich. This political assassination provoked the anger of the German leaders taking the decision to execute a certain number of prisoners. Death leads to an outpouring of all human passions and madness, uncontrollable and irrational forces, which reminds us that we were at a time when psychoanalysis was very successful in intellectual circles. In the case of Metropolis, we discover that a female character is at the heart of an animosity between Joh and Rotwang. Both loved the same woman, Hel, who died giving birth to Freder, the city master’s son. The name of the mother is not insignificant. Hel was the goddess of Death and the Underworld in Norse mythology. But his premature death will plunge Rotwang into madness. Obsessed with the woman he loved, he will build a robot in her image. He will use his new creation to take revenge on Joh, to destroy Metropolis. His blindness can only lead to death and desolation.

But we find all other themes dear to the director, the manipulation of crowds by a superman but also the corruption and cynicism of political powers. Although he was not very politicized, Fritz Lang always had a certain view of the society of his time and therefore of the Weimar Republic. Very often, he evokes through his works the fragility of societies. One would have thought that civilization would have succeeded in domesticating human beings and thus preventing their animal part from taking over. For Lang, our society does not guarantee that our impulses can one day take over. In the worst, they can be used, instrumentalized by a superman. The best-known example in his filmography is the character of Doctor Mabuse. A mastermind of crime, his intention is to take control of Berlin by taking advantage of the inaction of the political elites to stop him. This diagram can also correspond to the figure of Rotwang. He uses his new creation, the man-machine to stir up human passions, his lowest impulses. Joh Fredersen does nothing against him because he is officially his ally, but the mad scientist is playing a double game and will destroy him in his dark designs.

The director and French film critic François Truffaut said of Fritz Lang’s cinema that his stories always plunged his characters into a moral solitude where the man led a struggle in a half-hostile, half-indifferent universe. Young Freder is also faced with this situation in Metropolis. He must face the indifference of his father as much as the destructive madness of the proletarian masses manipulated by Rotwang.

LEGACY

Despite its critical and commercial failure and its ideological content, Metropolis is today considered one of the greatest films of German and world cinema as well as a reference in the genre of science fiction.

Several works refer to, are inspired by or pay homage to Metropolis. We can cite Modern Times by Chaplin, The King and the Bird by Grimault, Blade Runner by Ridley Scott, the Star Wars saga with the droid C-3PO and or the city-planet of Coruscant. Its prestige does not only extend to the world of cinema, the city of Gotham in Tim Burton’s Batman or Dark City by David Proyas.

For the sequel, Fritz Lang will receive a proposal from Goebbels to direct the cinema of the new Nazi regime. Hitler would have loved Metropolis and the Nibelungs. Although some historians doubt the veracity of this discussion, Lang will leave Germany after the rise to power of National Socialism to go to France and then to the United States where he will continue his career.

He would only return to Germany at the end of the 1950s to produce the diptych The Bengal Tiger/The Hindu Tomb as well as the third and final episode of the adventures of Doctor Mabuse.

Guys! take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon!

Cinema: The Witch, this mythical figure

Art by : https://www.artstation.com/kilart

Mona Chollet, Witches the Undefeated Power of Women.

“If you are a woman and you dare to look inside yourself, then you are a witch.”

The hooked nose, warts, incantations and potions… the witch has always fascinated and the cinema has portrayed her many times. From the cantankerous old queen of Snow White to the brave and valiant Hermione, her representation has evolved a lot in cinema as in history. She has long made children cry and unleashed the fury of men. Put aside, denigrated, burned, feared, it is the object of all fears but also the source of many fantasies.
But doesn’t the fear of the witch come simply from the fear of the feminine, in its power and its marginality?
Because indeed she appears to be strong, independent, single, sometimes old and childless, coming out of traditional beauty and the dictates imposed by patriarchal societies.

In its early days, cinema mainly filmed the witch as the main figure of fear and anguish. A true cliché of a storybook witch, she is then ugly and shown as monstrous: aged, wrinkled, crooked nose, malevolent and above all shown in opposition to the young, pretty and naive first. The classic The Wizard of Oz is the prime example, but Disney’s version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Sleeping Beauty really didn’t help boost its image.

In the 1960s, the witch was domesticated. She has a husband, a family, is a housewife, seeks love and validation. Her physique changes completely, she becomes cute, well-groomed and dressed, always at the forefront of fashion. Her happiness can only be linked to the well-being of her family and her husband. In short, the patriarchy has done its work! To give examples, Sam in the Bewitched series, Gil in Bell, Book and Candle or Morticia from The Adams Family come to mind.

Today the cinema appears very rich in terms of representations and has ceased to convey a single image. Gone are the old black hats and the broom, today they are sexy, go to school and fight with wizards, are scary, make people laugh, are sometimes evil. They are the fantasy of a whole generation, some dreaming of marrying Emma Watson or better of becoming Emma Watson.

For this article on this blog, I wanted to recommend two films that deal with the figure of the witch. Two styles, two directors and two different visions complementing each other rather well.

Suspiria – Dario Argento (1977)

I won’t go into the questionable and recent version of Luca Guadagnino here, simply because I have a lot of grievances about him despite an interesting treatment of the occult. Indeed he develops an approach centered on the power of magic and women, which differs from the version of Argento rather centered on the monstrous.
The Suspiria of 77 tends towards the fantastic and the giallo, a genre which appeared in Italy between the 60s and 70s and which mixes murder, sexuality, fantasy, thriller, detective film and fantasy. It is mainly recognized for its particular colors, with a strong use of red, blue and yellow. The scenes are often outrageous and baroque, even extremely kitsch. If you want to know more, I refer you to the filmography of Dario Argento but also of Fulci and Mario Bava.

Suspiria is therefore an extremely cult film that any cinephile fan of the genre must have seen. It is the first part of the Three Mothers Trilogy, preceding Inferno and The Third Mother. This trilogy is entirely devoted to the myth of the witch.
Suspiria tells the story of a young dancer making her debut in a German ballet school full of secrets. Given the theme of the chronicle it is not a spoiler to reveal that the founders and teachers engage in black magic. The witch is approached here from the angle of the macabre and the monstrous. They are real fairy tale villains, powerful but diabolical. The young dancers are filmed like children wanting to unravel the mysteries of this school and understand the issues. The school building, with its astonishing architecture reminiscent of art nouveau, is in itself a character in its own right. A veritable castle of stories from our childhood, it is a source of terror but above all of wonder, for the spectator as well as for the young dancers.

Dario Argento uses the baroque and the fantastic to underline the strangeness of the place and the events. He is helped by Goblin and his music which is certainly magnificent but very disturbing. Argento also declares “having tried with Suspiria to mix the world of the tales of Walt Disney and Grimm with the violence of The Exorcist”. For the photography, Luciano Tovoli accentuates the recognizable primary colors of the Giallo and delivers a work worthy of paintings, which accentuates the fantastic and hypnotic aspect of the film. He also draws inspiration from German Expressionist cinema in his use of symbolism.

The Witch – Robert Eggers (2015)

The Witch differs radically from the previous one in its approach as well as in its aesthetics. It comes across as more grounded in reality, colder, and really dwells on the folkloric portrayal of the witch.
The Witch is the directorial debut of horror film prodigy Robert Eggers (The Northman, The Lighthouse) who has been proving his talent ever since. It shows us a Puritan family of the 15th century (and still the word is weak, next to the Le Quesnois family are atheists) driven out of their community and having no other choice but to isolate themselves at the edge of a forest. They will gradually find themselves confronted with strange phenomena and lose their footing.

The strength of The Witch is that it is not a work that is necessarily scary, but a work about fear itself. The fear that will plague an entire family and push them to destroy each other. The real threat is not the prowling witch but the fanaticism of the characters. Fanaticism that will push the characters to return the violence towards the eldest personified by Anya Taylor Joy, a young girl with a strong character, and accuse her of all the evils. Since she is beautiful and desirable, she can only mate with the devil. It is not innocent that The Witch is carried by a strong female character and at the dawn of her entry into adolescence, a pivotal period where the body changes and can appear as monstrous or sexualized. The monstrous feminine is also an important theme in horror cinema, highlighted by what is called the “Coming Of Age”, a subgenre that deals with the passage from childhood to adulthood and the loss of a certain innocence as well as the enhancement of one’s own personality. Like Carrie, Thomasin questions imposed dictates, sees herself sexualized by the appearance of her period and must face the gaze of her bigoted entourage.

The film therefore highlights the witch “marginal woman” wishing to emancipate herself from religion and patriarchy, here very well represented by the character of the father. Rather than strictly condemning acts of witchcraft, Eggers first exposes the disturbing aspects before rejoicing and exalting its power in the conclusion. Black magic appears as the creation of oppression, whether through folklore or extreme religious depictions of family. In order to document himself and provide a faithful historical representation, Robert Eggers has carried out meticulous research using period texts such as Malleus Maleficarum, a reference in the fight against witchcraft.
Image the witch

Mona Chollet.

“The witch embodies the woman freed from all domination, from all limitations, she is an ideal towards which to strive, she shows the way”

Bis Repertita: Bis cinema

I really like cinema in general with a preference for science fiction and fantasy, but I haven’t talked too much about a type of cinema that I particularly like, Bis cinema.

Alright, but what is Bis cinema?

Let’s go back to four names that may come up often in the future if I want to be able to talk about these films:

Genre cinema

The B-series

The Z-series

The exploitation cinema

Genre cinema:

I’ve already talked about it here but to make it short, it’s all action movies, horror, erotic, kung fu… Anything out of the ordinary.

The B-series:

Basically, the B-series refers to the second film that was screened in double sessions in neighborhood cinemas, generally a short-lived genre film, the first film being generally more “normal” or more “classic”. Today, as neighborhood cinemas and double screenings have disappeared, the term B-series is used to designate a genre film shot on a low budget. The main characteristic of these works is to compensate for the lack of means, when they are good, to deploy treasures of ingenuity and an inventiveness which is lacking in a lot of series A. John Carpenter is one of the most famous directors of series B films.

The Z-series:

The Z-series is roughly the same as the B-series, often too ambitious for its means. Often bad, sometimes to the point of becoming funny, some of them can be touched by grace to the point of gradually reaching the status of cult work.

The exploitation cinema:

In exploitation cinema, there is also a question of very low-budget genre films, such as B series, but without any artistic pretension. Their only goal is to be profitable quickly by using what attracts the public the most, violence, sex or both at the same time. This type of film experienced its golden age in the 70s and some exploitation films were so crazy that they themselves created a new cinematographic subgenre which will then be taken up by other exploitation films. more WTF who will in turn create new sub genres etc…
Believe me, there are many, many!

Bis cinema:

Now that we see a little more clearly, let’s move on to my definition. Cinema Bis is therefore:

  • A genre film, series B, series Z or exploitation film with a low budget, popular or not (because there are also non Bis auteur films) which at the time of its release is found despised or ignored by critics, because of the film’s slightly crazy or apart aspect.

What characterizes Bis cinema above all is its inventiveness and its great diversity. What you have to understand is that the Bis is not just one genre, it’s a set of genres.

There is therefore a phenomenal amount of completely lit films from all over the planet, which only look like themselves and some of which still continue to inspire world cinema.

When did the Bis cinema appear?

Historically, it dates from the mid-1950s, at a time when the Hollywood system no longer worked properly and when viewers preferred to stay at home in front of their brand new televisions rather than go and lock themselves in dark rooms.

Faced with the cinemas which were gradually emptying, Hollywood legitimately began to panic and therefore left aside the B series to choose to bet mainly on the great films in color like “Lawrence of Arabia”, “The Bridge on the River Kwaï or “Benhur”. The problem with these spectacular films in natural settings being that they are very expensive to produce and for the sake of economy, it was therefore necessary to relocate filming to Europe, mainly to Italy, Great Britain and Spain.

Technicians from the old continent were therefore able to learn from their American counterparts and realize that there was a place in the field of series B and from there, everyone got into it, English, Italian, Germans, Spaniards and even French.

In the rest of the world:

  • However, cinema bis also sees the light of day in the USA with a man from independent cinema named Roger Corman. He alone will build an empire.
  • In Hong Kong, Shaw Brosers films are getting more and more talked about and are starting to cross borders.
  • In Japan, we exorcise via the cinemas the traumas due to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  • In Mexico, genre cinema is developing more and more, particularly with the figure of El Santo

Conclusion:

In short, it’s a real universe that awaits you and that’s precisely what made me want to create a new series of articles called “Bis repetita” to make you discover or rediscover some of these completely crazy films, which hardly appear on television anymore and which, in my opinion, are much more interesting and inventive than the ¾ of the cinema releases.
It’s a daring cinema, badly brought up and sometimes extreme but which tries things and that’s the main thing.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon!

PS:

Ukraine is a country with its own history, culture and language. As much as any country, it deserves to keep its own identity and sovereignty.

I have not always (very rarely) agreed with the Ukrainian government but I give my full support to the Ukrainian people!

The near future, a distorting mirror

Paint from Liz Hume : https://www.artstation.com/lizhume

From Andy Cline’s Ready Player One to Judge Dread to Black Mirror and Pacific Rim, near future works are endless.
Close anticipation is not a genre, it is an approach.
Common point of the corpus: the stories must take place in the near future. Something to get excited about and also often fuel the nightmare machine.

What is sience-fiction?

Science fiction is inextricably linked with anticipation. It is about imagining possible developments in science and technology in order to explore possible future possibilities. In their time, the forerunners of Mary Shelley (Frenkenstein), HG WELLS (The Time Machine) and Jules Vernes (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) marveled at the advances of their time to build wonderful philosophical stories. or terrifying. These, among others, invented speculative fiction. Imagining the future, even on the basis of facts and cutting-edge documentation, is still science fiction. SF is written in the conditional, not in the future, and always feeds on the context in which it is born. And too bad if its projections fall short of reality or become obsolete, sometimes in just a few years. Because even when they claim to talk about something else, the works are full of the mindset, values ​​and knowledge of their time, and of their author. It always speaks of the present, and has effects in the present.

The case of near future.

The genres of the imagination, including fantasy and SF, are therefore always situated in relation to the real, and the works of near future undoubtedly hide this even less than the others: their plots are close to their context and time. of creation – and close to us who receive them. For the British writer J.G. Ballard, the near future would be a means of talking about the “true future”, the one that we “see approaching”, as opposed to hypothetical elsewhere, in eras and galaxies far, very distant. On the contrary, from space opera or mythical fantasy, the near future does not open the door to escape, it immediately announces “in not very long” and implies “right here”. Ballard himself was adapted (Crash by David Cronenberg).

In the continuity of Ballard, many works – novels, films, comic series, games – have placed their plots in a futuristic universe, without necessarily exploring a supposed immediate future. Problem: all fiction implies a distancing from reality. Near future works consciously break this convention with the help of a distorting mirror. Everything is familiar and so different.

But why are these works often so terrifying?

Seeing the future negatively, is it for ease? Where has the reassuring cocoon of our daily comfort gone? Do we no longer have the right to dream, to imagine? This is a crucial question. Most of the near-anticipation works outbid the existing, adding a small dose of dark futurism, freewheeling technology, eerie androids, triumphant capitalism, and permanent cops. Just what it takes to smash the glass in our comfort zone. The reassuring daily life becomes deadly, your intelligent vacuum cleaner seeks to kill you, a spaceship is planning its worrying shadow over the city, even it is absolutely necessary to chip or get vaccinated so as not to fall on the cost of law and order. . (get vaccinated guys, this is important)
In the preface to his full short stories, Ballard cautioned against this trend:

“The future […] is a dangerous, heavily mined area that tends to turn around to bite your ankles when you take a step forward. “

Too late the damage is done.
Many works anchored in the near future stage an imperceptible and perpetual shift where each technology, each authoritarian drift, each change in lifestyle or degree of global warming, testifies to the fact that nothing will ever be the same again. Rather than the completely reconfigured worlds of the post-apocalypse, where everything was destroyed and then recast, this is about the cycles of life and death of civilizations. The collapse is not imminent, it is immanent. History is on the move. It happens continuously.
In the fluctuations of a pandemic, the British series Years and Years, or through the words of Chuck in Fight Club:

«This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time”

Paradoxically, it is also this perpetual end of the known world that allows all hopes and allows utopias to flourish, however diffuse they may be. Dark futures fuel the emergence of new horizons, new battles to be waged and new hopes to be nourished. Suddenly utopias exist mainly to legitimize the fights waged against them. In reality, the great battle of imaginations, ideas and values ​​is fought deep inside each of us. The fight is brutal, merciless, it spares none of our received ideas, our intuitions and our usual thinking patterns. And test what we think we know as the disgust, fear or revolt that arises over fiction becomes able to inspire us and spur us to action. For example, the treatment of aliens in District 9 strikes us as despicable, because it inevitably reminds us of the plight of refugees around the world. What is terrifying about this distorting mirror is less the distortion it conjures up than the fact that we recognize ourselves in it.