Cinematographic and literary genres

I’ve been talking about films for a while now, but I’ve never written an article about genres as such, because I wasn’t really paying attention until then. I was told that such and such a film was part of such and such a genre and I said “Okey”!
I don’t like to put artistic works in cases, but we must recognize that certain films or books respect codes which are specific to their genre, and we will see why.

Why classify films by genre?

There are two ways to approach the question of gender:

  • Either we have the film and then we have the genre:

The director thinks he wants to make a film and then it’s up to the theaters, the producers, see the spectators to give it a genre.

George Mélies, in directing “Voyage dans la Lune”, didn’t think he was going to make a sci-fi movie, for good reason the genre didn’t exist yet.

  • Either we have the genre first and then we have the movie:

The director will say to himself, I am going to make an action film (for example) and create his film based on the genre

But which came first the chicken or the egg? What is the relationship between the egg, the chicken and science fiction?

I am deeply convinced that in the first place there were films and the more they were, the more we could see similarities appear, first borrowed from other art forms, until the appearance of similarities which were specific to them.

In 1903, “The great train robbery” was released, a film where cowboys steal a train in the American West.
In 1914, “Squaw Man” was released, a film about an English officer who was to marry an Indian in the American West.
In 1916, “Hell’s Hinges” tells the story of a cowboy who falls in love with an outlaw in the American West

From there, the audience thought, “It would still be handy if we had a name for all of our films with cowboys and Indians in the American West!” “
As for the producers, they say to themselves: “I would like to make a film with cowboys and Indians in the American West, but I would like to bring something else to it”
And you get the need to name: The Western.
The label is for the public to say, “I’ll be fine watching a Western.” “, So that the cinema can say:” We offer you a Western. “, But above all so that the directors can say to themselves” I want to do a Western. “
Genre cinema was born.

The genre film is a film in which the genre is creative. It is a film that will take into account the codes of a genre, to exploit them, to divert them, to satisfy or deceive the expectations of the viewer. Because when we talk about gender in the cinema, we are talking about the spectator’s expectations.

But how are genres defined? Well, it’s something very vague and often the same movie can have several genres. To make this article I used several criteria.

How to define a genre?

For me there are 4 elements that define the genre of a film:

  1. The tone of the film
  2. The themes of the film
  3. The scenario (by its structure or concerning certain elements only)
  4. The target of the film

Some people use the format of the film, but for me, it’s a mistake.

When you see the animated film category on certain sites, it makes as much sense to me as black and white films or silent films or even cinema scope films. It doesn’t ring a bell about the movie you’re going to watch.
A genre that brings together under the same label:

“The Emoji Movie”, “Akira”, “Persepolis” and “The Lord of the Ring” (1978)
It’s a label that is useless.

Among its four elements, some will have practically binding conditions, established rules that cannot be broken, but these are often very broad rules.
In the family genre, the only essential element is related to the tone, it must be accessible and viewable to children without bothering parents. Yes, it is fuzzy and arbitrary!

Why are “Maleficent” from 2014 and “Night at the Museum” Home movies and not “Pirates of the Caribbean” or “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” from 2014 are not?


In the Crime genre we have an imperative that falls within the scenario. There has to be one or more crimes, or criminality, and this crime, these crimes, this criminality has to be a big issue in the scenario.

The viewer, when going to see a family or crime genre film, has other expectations, but these are optional. It reveals codes of the genre.

Watching a crime film, I think police, charismatic villain, dark film that happens mostly at night, where the characters are lonely and a little disillusioned.


When people talk to me about family films, I think colorful film, light tone and happy ending, creepy antagonist but just right, brave protagonists.

But when you watch “Home Alone” or “The Mask” you realize that his films fall under the Crime genre and do not have at all that atmosphere that I imagine.

Much like “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One” or “Coraline” doesn’t tick all the boxes I imagine when I am told a family movie, especially when it comes to the creepy antagonists but not too many!

Brrrr

But the four of them have in common that they respect The indispensable condition which allows them to belong to the family gender.

Finally last detail, the genres are obviously not waterproof. Nothing prevents a film from having a crime theme while including children in its audience:

Indeed a film can belong to several genres:
(Image coco de pixar) (genres: Fantasy, family, adventure, musical)

Ten of my favorite genres (not necessarily in order):

Small methodology point:

I use IMDB to provide me with a list of keywords to add them to a table to sort which appear the most and those that appear the least according to each genre.

Finally, I use Letterbox which organizes the films by genre while prioritizing the genres. Thus “Back to the Future” is classified first as a family film, then as an adventure film, then a comedy and finally as a science fiction film. So Back to the future will fit perfectly into the family genre but a little less than “Interstelllar” for science fiction or “The Big Lebowski” for comedy but still partly corresponds to it.
Finally not only will I tell you about 10 genres but in addition I will tell you about 5 subgenres for each of them.

I/ Historical Movies:

Expectations :

Tone: Serious
Theme: A historic event
Scenario: Depends on the event
Target: Rather adults

Most common keywords:

  1. Based on true story
  2. What happened in Epilogue
  3. Politics
  4. Based on real person
  5. Epic
  6. Husband Wife relationship
  7. Based on book
  8. Battle
  9. Father Son relationship
  10. World War II

Less common keywords:

  1. Psychotronic film
  2. Surprise ending
  3. Cult film
  4. Chase
  5. Cell Phone
  6. Supernatural Power
  7. Kidnapping
  8. Good versus Evil
  9. Sequel
  10. Falling from height

Description:

This is one of the easiest genres to catalog. The facts told must be based on real historical facts. The key word that comes up most often is “based on true history”, but the prerequisite is that it must be based on real historical facts.


In Robbert Eggers’s “The Witch,” is a historical film about colonists who were excommunicated in New England in the 1630s, to whom a whole lot of funny adventures happen. (A whole family dies in misery, resentment, fear and guilt.) But this story is totally fictional, these people never existed.


“Troy” is a historical film when we are not even sure that the Trojan War actually took place.

But his films take place in a context which is based on real historical facts. Conversely, being based on real events is not enough to make a film historic.


“The Social Network” is based on a true story, but is not a historical film. A historical film depicts a state of the world that is no longer today.


“A Beautiful Man”, is a biography of John Forbes Nash, is not tagged as a historical film as it is set between 1947 and 1994.


Whereas “Zero Dark Thirty” which tells the story of the hunt for Bin Laden is a historical film set between 2001 and 2011.
The difference is in the subject. “A Beautiful Man” might as well be set in another era. It is not the indirect portrait of a society, but only the story of a man.

Subgenres:

Biopic:

The Biopic may or may not belong to the historical genre. As the name suggests a biopic is a biography. The principle is simple, we tell the story of one or more people while more or less romanticizing their lives.

Peplum:

The Biopic may or may not belong to the historical genre. As the name suggests a biopic is a biography. The principle is simple, we tell the story of one or more people while more or less romanticizing their lives.

Docudrama:

A sub-genre that is close to documentary, while remaining a work of fiction.

War Movies:

War movies may not have the historical aspects of the conflicts in question, like Disney’s “Mulan” is a war movie without being a historical movie. Often war films are categorized as a genre in their own right.

Swashbuclers:

Genre responding to strict rules, his films must take place in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, in which a courageous character, almost always male (pity) rebels, sword in hand often against authority. There is often a damsel in distress to save, seduce and / or protect.

II/ Adventure Movies:

Expectations:

Tone: light
Theme: Travel, danger, friendship …
Scenario: good guys, bad guys, happy ending
Target: all public

Most common keywords:

  1. Blockbuster
  2. Rescue
  3. Explosion
  4. Good Versus Evil
  5. Battle
  6. Warrior
  7. Falling From Height
  8. Martial Arts
  9. Action Hero
  10. Male protagonist

Less common keywords:

  1. Cigarette smoking
  2. Female Nudity
  3. Blood
  4. Telephone Call
  5. Husband Wife Relationship
  6. Based On True Story
  7. F word
  8. Blood Splatter
  9. Hospital
  10. Gore

Description:


When we talk about adventure films we immediately think of Indiana Jones or Indiana Jones or … But what is an adventure film that is not Indiana Jones?
The adventure film shares a great deal of reference with action cinema. If we look at the keywords that come up most often in both cases, we find:

  • Rescue
  • Explosions
  • Warrior
  • Good versus evil

But if we look at the key words that separate them, we have on the action side elements of violence while on the adventure side, we have elements related to interpersonal relationships and especially “exotic” elements, disorienting. Either things that do not exist like magic or monsters, or places like, a forest, a castle, cave … I deduce that the essential element in the adventure film, is a certain level of disorientation of the viewer but to a lesser extent, the viewer will expect a lighter film, more all public than for any other genre. Some key words that are relatively less present to qualify this kind of film bear witness to this:

  • F word
  • Gore
  • Blood splash
  • Female nudity
  • Smoking cigarettes

Adventure films are generally more consensual, and many recent superhero films are labeled adventure before sci-fi and action.
It’s very hard to find a movie that just has the adventure label, but here are a few subgenres that almost always have it.

Subgenres:

Swashbuclers:

A protagonist who wields a sword and has a big mouth! You cannot conceive of a Swashbuckler with a pistol or who would face it.
We find “Pirates of the Caribbean” or even films of an Asian genre: the Chambara.

These are samurai films, one of his most famous examples of which is “Seven Samurai” by the great Kurosawa.

Road Movies:

These are films in which, or more often, the protagonists are on the road. Very American kind, the highways are a metaphor for freedom.

Treasure hunting movies:


Film characterized by fairly obvious elements of the scenario, finding or rediscovering one or more things …

Disaster films:


What could be more exotic than imagining the world falling apart?

Pirates Movies:


As long as it’s about pirates, it’s a pirate movie.

III/ Action Movies:

Expectations:

Tone: from very light to very serious
Theme: revenge, conflict, violence, gun …
Scenario: Good guys, bad guys, bad guys.
Target: mostly men.

Most common keywords:

  1. Shootout
  2. Pistol
  3. Explosion
  4. Machin Gun
  5. Martial Arts
  6. Fistlight
  7. Shot in the chest
  8. Tough guy
  9. Gun fight
  10. Hand to hand combat

Less common keyword:

  1. Crying
  2. Mother son relationship
  3. Dancing
  4. Family relationship
  5. Marriage
  6. Singing
  7. Telephone call
  8. Friend
  9. Based on true story
  10. Mother daughter relationship

Description:

It is less about action than violence, but violence is not enough to define action cinema. Many horror films are violent without necessarily being action films. The main characteristic of an action film is a fast pace. The spectator must be kept in suspense by the chain of events embodied by a confrontation between two entities.

Subgenres:

Super hero movies:


Superhero films that are not action films are extremely rare. Indeed, who says super hero says super villains and super clashes.
In these films, the main protagonist possesses extraordinary abilities and uses them to do good.

Martial Art Movies:


The genre includes all karate and kung fu films …

Wuxia:


Very Asian genre if there is one, these are fantastic films where a character will suffer a tragic loss and begin an initiatory journey during which he will become a powerful warrior following the path of Xia (the path of the warrior / hero / vigilante) ), with a sword.

Adaptation of video games into film:


You have to believe that the studios believe that gamers can only enjoy action movies.
Detective Pikachu: Puzzle Games = Action Movie
Final fantasy IIV: Japanese role-playing games = action movie
Resident Evil: Survival horror = action movie
I’m exaggerating a bit but not by much.

Spy Movie:


Indispensable condition, it has to be about spies, but the public will more or less expect a James Bond clone with his gadgets, big, very nasty corporations and a nice spy who plays it, over equipped and over trained. that infiltrates their headquarters.

IV/ Thrillers

Expectations:

  • Tone: Serious, heavy
  • Theme: Murder, mystery, threat, investigation …
  • Scenario: The outcome is very important
  • Target: Adult

Most common keywords:

  1. Murder
  2. Pistol
  3. Shot to death
  4. Shot in the chest
  5. Blood splatter
  6. Death
  7. Blood
  8. Neo Noir
  9. Shoutout
  10. Corps

Less common keywords:

  1. Battle
  2. Sword
  3. Friendship
  4. Sword fight
  5. Horse
  6. Singing
  7. Male protagpnist
  8. Epic
  9. Combat
  10. Monster

Description:

Where action movies hold viewers’ attention with adrenaline, thrillers do so with suspense.
Overall you need a heavy atmosphere, the thriller goes with almost all genres but not with comedy, and suspense.
But what makes thrillers different from horror movies?
In the horror film, the protagonists are overwhelmed by the events there or in the thrillers, the protagonists are more active in overcoming their adventures.

Subgenres:

The Psychological Thriller:


In the psychological thriller, the danger is not so much to lose your life as to lose your sanity.

Polars:

Genre taken from literature, includes all films whose plot is detective.
You can group together gangster films and black films.

Complotist Thrillers:

The movies where the hero finds out that the truth is not as he thinks it is and that anyone could know about it and try to silence him.

The Technothrillers:


Close to science fiction, the plot of these thrillers is based on scientific advances in military or spy circles.

Giallo:


A genre that could also be classified as horror cinema, since it is the precursor of the slasher. Gialli (plural of Giallo) are films where usually several women are murdered by a killer whose identity is unknown to the viewer. It was a very popular genre in the 1970s, and the undisputed master of which was Dario Argento.

V/ Horror Movies:

Expectations:

Tone: dark
Theme: Death, anguish, torture, paranormal …
Scenario: unhappy end, only one stake: survival
Target: Adolescent, adult.

Most common keywords:

  1. Gore
  2. Blood
  3. Psychologitronic film
  4. Grindhouse film
  5. Blood splatter
  6. Corpse
  7. Supernatural power
  8. Murder
  9. Fear
  10. Surprise ending

Less common keywords:

  1. Battle
  2. Blockbuster
  3. Hand to hand combat
  4. Martial arts
  5. Hero
  6. Shoutout
  7. Based on true story
  8. Combat
  9. Action hero
  10. Fistfight

Description:


I often hear people say: “I don’t like horror movies, they don’t scare me. “
Well that’s okay, horror movies aren’t primarily intended to be scary! Otherwise, you wouldn’t classify horror comedies like “Shawn of the dead.”
A horror film centers on something that arouses repulsion or anguish.

Subgenres:

Slasher:


One person kills there one by one, a group of individuals, until the final confrontation.

Splatter Movies:


These are films that show physical mutilations and often theatrics to make them more impressive.

Found Footages:


Sub-genre which relates to the format, these are films that are not presented as productions, but as the event montage actually shot by the protagonists.

The New French Extremism:


These films have sexual assault and extreme violence in common, but they also deal with mental disorders that can go as far as delirium.

Kaiju Eiga:


Movies about gigantic creatures that attack the city. They are rarely horror movies because humans are often insignificant in them.

VI/ Science-Fiction:

Expectations:

Tone: Variable
Theme: Science, future, space, technology
Scenario: Variable
Target: Variable

Most common keywords:

  1. Scientist
  2. Explosion
  3. Psychotronic film
  4. Alien
  5. Outer space
  6. Hologram
  7. Future
  8. Surprise ending
  9. Laboratory
  10. Spaceship

Less common keywords:

  1. Based on true story
  2. Singing
  3. Husband wife relationship
  4. Marriage
  5. Horse
  6. Dancing
  7. Singer
  8. Telephone call
  9. Song
  10. Cigarette smoking

Description:


A sci-fi movie takes place in another reality and where things are not happening in ours. Science fiction differs from fantasy by providing more or less scientific explanations.
In Star Wars, ships, lightsabers and robots are science fiction, but strength is totally related to fantasy.

Space-Opera:


Epic tales highlighting the relationships between the characters in relatively detailed political universes against a backdrop of space travel.

Punk Movies:


Nothing to do with the music that smells of beer! They are futuristic or retro-futuristic films (which has to do with a way of imagining the future in the past).
Cyber punk a genre where computers and robotics are highlighted, as in “Matrix” or “Ghost in the Shell”,
steam punk is a genre where machines and industry are showcased: “Metropolis”, “The city of Lost Children” …
Biopunk, the living becomes an omnipresent technology: “eXistenz”, “Gattaca” …

Hard SF:


It is a genre of science fiction that only allows itself to extrapolate a future on the basis of solid science. The only fanciful elements are the elements that are new or that we do not know in our reality.

Soft SF:

When the explanations given contradict the laws of physics.
A lazer saber is impossible because the light is neither solid nor finite (so the sabers could not collide and the blade would have no end.)

Psychotronic Movies:


In 1980 Michael Weldon published a magazine “Psychotronic Video” in which he spoke about cinema, then in 1983 he released “The Psychotronic Encyvlopedia of Film”.
He gives a definition and a list of 3000 films, much of which does not correspond to the definition, but an IMDB user had the delicacy of writing a definition that was both sufficiently vague and precise enough to consider it valid. .

Psychotronic movies can be sci-fi, horror, or fantasy. These are films that think outside the box, that try to break free from conventions. Films that dare to be different: “Videodrome”, “Delicatessen”, “Solaris”.

VII/ Fantasy:

Expectations:

Tone: Epic, rather light
Theme: Magic, courage, nobility, good guys against bad guys …
Screenplay: Screenplay in three classic acts
Target: everyone

Most common keywords:

  1. Magic
  2. Surrealism
  3. Sword
  4. Supernatural power
  5. Good versus Evil
  6. Monster
  7. Sword fight
  8. Castle
  9. Transformation
  10. Lifting someone into the air

Less common keywords:

  1. Pistol
  2. Murder
  3. Shot to death
  4. Based on true story
  5. Machin gun
  6. Shot in the head
  7. Hellicopter
  8. Blood
  9. Shootout
  10. Hold at gunpoint

Description:


A film that takes place in another reality and where things are happening that are impossible in ours, without justification.
Not to be confused with the fantastic, a genre or the supernatural, the strange comes into the real world
Also not to be confused with the wonderful, kind or impossible things in the real world is quite normal there, like talking animals, without anyone asking questions.
Fantastic or Marvelous are part of Fantasy.

Urban Fantasy:


These are books or films that take place in a modern, contemporary world, in an urban setting, in which there are things that shouldn’t be: “Monsters & Cie”, “Detective Pikachu”…

Animal Fantasy:


A genre where animals behave like humans.

Swords & Sorcery Movies:


A genre where the hero will face evil sword in hand in violent adventures generally involving magic: “Never ending story”, “Sleeping beauty”, “krull” …

Historic Fantasy:


A genre that tells about past events by adding events from the past by adding a supernatural twist: “300”, “Pirates of the Carribean”, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” …

Space Fantasy:


Stories that take place in space and have elements approaching fantasy.

VIII/ Drama

Expectations:

Tone: Heavy
Theme: Realism, difficult interpersonal relationships …
Scenario: Variable
Target: Adult

Most common keywords:

  1. Cigarette smoking
  2. Telephone call
  3. Husband wife relationship
  4. Crying
  5. Money
  6. Mother son relationship
  7. Based on true story
  8. Restaurant
  9. Hospital
  10. Neo noir

Less common keywords:

  1. Psychotronic film
  2. Explosion
  3. Falling from heigt
  4. Good versus evil
  5. Martial arts
  6. Rescue
  7. Chase
  8. Hand to hand combat
  9. Battle
  10. Showdown

Description:


A catch-all genre if there is one, the drama genre includes all films that do not fall into any other box, but there is still a definition:
“These are films where interpersonal relationships are treated with gravity. “

Subgenres:

Melodramas:


Alternation of moments of immense happiness and immense moments of distress. “Titanic”, “Million Dollar Baby”, “Gone with the Wind” …

Survivals:


A big problematic event happens to the protagonist and he must survive: “The martian”, “The Revenant”, “127 hours”.

Epic Movies:


A genre that has disappeared a bit today. We talk about Epic when the film is grandiose, the symphonic soundtrack, the wide shots, the immense and magnificent sets… Yes today that describes all the American blockbusters.

Sports Movies:

A specific sport must be at the center of history. Young characters are lost until they take up sport. Draws at first, they end up facing stronger than them and bringing the cup home.

Coming of age Movies:


It’s about becoming an adult and leaving your childhood behind either: “Spider-man Far From Home”, “Four Hundred Blows”, “Carrie” …

IX/ Comedies:

Expectations:

Tone: Light
Theme: Inter relations
-personal, variable …
Scenario: Twist, happy ending …
Target: Everyone

Most common keywords:

  1. Slapsticks comedy
  2. Satire
  3. Friendship
  4. Party
  5. Scène during end credits
  6. Dancing
  7. Singing
  8. Black comedy
  9. Friend
  10. Restaurant

Less common keywords:

  1. Death
  2. Murder
  3. Blood
  4. Violence
  5. Corpse
  6. Surprise ending
  7. Shot to death
  8. Explosion
  9. Psychotronic film
  10. Blood splatter

Description:


The only genre that to my knowledge does not call for the tone, the theme, the scenario or its target to define itself, but calls for its intention to define itself: to make people laugh.

Parody:


It exaggerates certain features of an already established work in order to make people laugh.

Mockumentaries:


Fictions that take on the appearance of documentaries to tell anything. “Spinal Tap”, “I’m still here” …

Mockbusters:


A special category because the intention to make people laugh is not there, but we only look at them for fun.
These are films produced alongside the blockbusters but with a derisory budget: “Atlantic Rim”, “Triassic World”, “Transmorphers” …

Buddy Movies:


Two very different characters must come to terms with each other and discover that they can learn a lot from each other and even become friends.

X/ Romantic Movies:

Expectations:

Tone: Variable, often light
Theme: Love, marriage, family, couple …
Scenario: Misunderstandings and happy ending
Target: More women

Most common keywords:

  1. Kiss
  2. Wedding
  3. Dancing
  4. Marriage
  5. Male female relationship
  6. Love triangle
  7. Sex scene
  8. Indedelity
  9. Restaurant
  10. Family

Less common keywords:

  1. Murder
  2. Explosion
  3. Blood
  4. Surprise ending
  5. Shot to death
  6. Death
  7. Shot in the chest
  8. Pistol
  9. Psychotronic film
  10. Monster

Description:


Romantic movies are movies where love or romantic relationship is central to the storyline.

Subgenres:

Romcom:

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Film about love while trying to make people laugh.

Chik Flick Movies:


Romantic film aimed at teenage girls.

Supernatural Romances:


Romance with a supernatural creature. “Dracula”, “Ghost”, “Warm Bodies” …

Gothic Romances:


Film which speaks of romance while dealing with death, life after death, ghost with a very heavy atmosphere.

Epic Romances:


A romance in an epic setting: “Moulin rouge”, “Australia”, “Titanic” …

Conclusion:

Well, the real reason why I wrote this article was mainly to talk about as many films as possible that generally made me feel good, sometimes bad, but which I think are in most cases , interesting to see at least once in his life for his film culture. Don’t hesitate to draw from the list, if you don’t know what to watch. 😉

We are all fragments


after an experience gone awry, Seth Brandle turns into a fly. And, as his body loses its integrity, which becomes something else, Seth Brandle constitutes the Seth Brandle Museum. A museum of spare parts, pieces of bodies that have bowed out. A museum entirely dedicated to what he was until then. Seth Brandle deconstructs himself to evolve while celebrating a past that is no longer just a fantasy.

The vestiges of him are still there so “He” is still there in a way, terrified that he is no longer himself. But what exactly is “Him”? Where is the Seth Brandle entity? In this ear? In this eye, his brain, his DNA? At what point in his transformation can we consider that this is it, we are facing something else? Total otherness, without a return ticket?

Is that when his human features disappear? Is it when he gives up his human morals in order to survive or does Brandle just boil down to remembering being himself? Seth Brandle is the experience that continually transforms us. An event, an accident, a meeting, the discovery of a work … Brandle is the illusion of what we think of as identity. We are fragments.


This Hook scene always broke my heart and for a long time I couldn’t quite say exactly why.

The children of Peter and Moïra come back from Never Land and throughout the film there was a strange relationship with memory. By becoming Peter Pan again, remembering what he was. The hero forgets for a moment that he has children, yet he is there to save. And as his son Jack lets himself be consumed by his resentment towards him, he even begins to forget that he has a father. And then this end. Returning to their room, the children, for a moment barely recognize their own mother. Yet it’s an ethereal, happy moment but it makes me sad. There is something oddly scary about this. Why do you think Jack’s voice is shaking despite his smile? This little detail touches me every time.

The film does not only capture this fear of losing loved ones, it captures this floating and cottony moment between sleep and waking up when for a moment, we are no longer ourselves. Where the memories that make us “Us” fade away. This moment when identity is more fragile than you thought.

Sincerely with the little girl who talks about her mother as an angel, this almost divine light, where even this sequence just after, euphoric to the point of absurdity where this woman enjoys seeing an old man flying instead of s ‘surprise or even be afraid.
Spielberg is well aware of this ambiguity.

Yes we are surely in a tale but also possibly elsewhere. An elsewhere much less easy to accept. For such a colorful film, there is still some sacred darkness lurking on the edge.

It’s so easy to forget

Memory loss

In a story, memory loss is perhaps one of the most worn-out story arcs but, strangely, also one of what affects us the most because it causes so much discomfort. particular. We can come out of it grown up, but we know it’s going to be a long time to pass.

Memory loss can symbolize a whole lot of things. The passage of time, just like becoming the ideal hiding place for a secret, but above all we touch on what seems to us a little too often to “who”, identity.


When you touch memory, you touch a fear that is very strange. This fear of thinking that if a memory is no longer shared with someone, what makes it real?
What made all “that” real?

Look at his movie posters, all of which represent “the spirit”. There is one idea that brings them all together. A very simple visual idea. The idea of Multiplicity.

Multiplicity

Multiplicity of memories, multiplicity of facets of the personality, blurred border of the psyche, unfathomable potential that overflows well beyond ourselves.
Visually, one way or another, this is what comes obvious to so many artists who represent the spirit.

There are many of us. The thing, however, is that the vast majority of works tend to show us this multiplicity as an evil, a disorder that leads the characters to either their demise or destruction. Pure tradition of Lovecraft with its protagonists who discover a cursed ancestry that lies dormant in them. Fiction illustrates again and again this fear that we have of losing our “me”, fear of seeing our identity dissolve and therefore all these sometimes simplistic concrete barriers to protect it.


Among the exceptions we can cite the fourth volume of the “Cycle of Dune” where the character of the emperor Letho II Atreide who gradually turns into a sand worm while possessing in his heart the memory and the personalities of all his ancestors.

This is a logic that we had already seen in the Cycle of Dune, in particular with the reverend mothers of the order of Bene Gesserite, but which there, is pushed to its climax with this relationship so particular to long time and to a kind of intimate immensity to be conquered. There the inner multiplicity is shown as an opening to something greater. Towards an extended consciousness of the world and of oneself.

Here, unlike memory loss, it is therefore a kind of “hyper memory” that questions the boundaries of identity, which is no longer a simple, closed whole, but rather a tree structure. The fear has been neutralized.
Over time has so oversold us characters built as cohesive units, oversold us assertiveness like a simplistic sign, that we ended up forgetting.
We are fragments.

Start the video at minute 2.

Brienne has mellowed over the seasons, of course, but she would never have cried. Not here, not like this, not for this. There you betray the sap, you betray the essence of something. But once again this essence, where exactly is it? What do we know?
We expect characters to be human and complex without being chaotic. And here we are, a walking paradox, clinging to what makes us “us”, while wanting “more”.

“Life is a cut up. Every time we walk down the street, or we look through the window, your consciousness is cut by random factors. And there you start to realize there aren’t that random, that it makes sense to you.” 

William S.Burroughs: 

Cut Up, this technique popularized in particular by the writer William Burroghs in the 1960s, which consists of cutting up a work and randomly rearranging the ends so that a new meaning emerges.

A technique that has inspired a lot of artists but also the whole internet culture, this culture of mashup and collage that you know so well.
Life is a Cut Up. Our experience of the outside world.

With Seth Brandle, who does a kind of Cut Up with his body, which becomes a new form of life, in accelerated mode, we are dealing with one of the deliberately extreme cases where the multiplicity which is in us is shown as negative.

That said, for a moment through his natural and scientific curiosity, Brandle is tempted to greet this transformation with serenity, without judgment. Very quickly, human fear takes over. As if there was, no matter what, an insurmountable frontier for the mind. We have to close the loop. However, there was the start of something, there was a tangent. As in the end of Hook, in the background we explore this “what if”.
Unfortunately, the two films do not really follow through on this idea. One because Spielberg, despite his doubts, has to make a feel good and accessible film. The other, by its horrific specifications. But what if becoming “other” wasn’t really the end of “self”?

Memories, that glue that gives shape to our fragments, that make our lives tell something.
We always tell of a change and inevitably we get hooked. We cling to our tastes, we cling to the stories that have built us, we cling to them as over a precipice, at the risk that sometimes it boils down to a simple road map of taste and opinions.

Life is a Cut Up. This article is a form of Cut Up. Fragments of emotion, fragment of memories, of thoughts. The fragments of films which, once taken out of context, begin to tell something quite different.
Editing means shuffling the cards, finding an unexpected meaning in the random.

Conclusion

In “The Fly” David Cronenberg and his director of photography lit up certain scenes like an old film noir. All the visual codes are there. The dim light of the blinds, the soft and ethereal lighting on the face of the femme fatale, a woman who stands out in the doorframe, who is therefore the center of attention but who is also lost in the frame, the only source of grace in a dirty and chaotic world. And of course a disillusioned main character, the unwilling detective Brandle investigating human identity. Fragment of one cinematographic genre lost in another.

Or how the film illustrates its point by becoming it self a Seth Brandle, and by showing that all films, at various levels, are Seth Brandles. Fragmented over and over and over again …
Maybe in the middle of it all, in the midst of this inevitably flawed, never-ending puzzle, something will resonate. We are multiple, we are fragments.

Personally I am never more stimulated, when I create something, when I have the impression that it is beyond my control, that strangely, it is not my conscious part which has acted but something more mysterious, something something freer, which is not necessarily the “me” that I know. For a few moments, we become a little more than the sum of our tastes or our memories.

We are more than an abstract line, like an arrow crossing the void.

We have become like everyone else, but in the way that no one can become like everyone else.

We painted the world on ourselves, and not ourselves on the world.

To create, to feel deep down, is to welcome the other.

Clive Barker, his genius demonstrate in Hellraiser!

One type of reading and film that I love more than anything, in fantasy or Science Fiction, is horror. And when we talk about horror, a name immediately comes to mind: Clive Barker.
I have a lot of time to write this article, three or four months. I wanted to write an article that pays tribute to this writer who I particularly like but, with the lessons and my extra-scholastic activities, I had not really had the time until then.
So I could have learned something positive from this confinement, I hope you enjoy it!
To show you his genius, I’m going to tell you about Hellraiser and his universe.
It all started with a book.

The Book:

I have always been fascinated by this fabulous story of puzzles from ancient times that, once resolved, open doors to hell. And then one day, a man contacted me to donate me a box from the merchant, an artifact that I had coveted for years.
Last night, fighting fear and envy, I performed the ritual deciphering the pattern of lamentation.


After so much research, I thought I knew the secrets of the Hellraiser well.
But the mechanism came to life, the box opened …
only then did I understand …

For this article, I thought it necessary to make a little warning.
If you are under 16, impressionable, or a stranger to artistic darkness, I kindly suggest that you avoid this article.
If on the other hand you cherish modern mythologies, the creation of universes and its hazards; if you are fascinated by horror and its symbols then be ready … For you are entering the most infernal cathedral in the fantastic galaxy: Hellraiser.

Before starting our descent into Hell, I would like to invite you to take the place of a creator of horror stories for a moment. As you are a demanding creative person, your secret ambition is to invent an original and detailed universe.
We will find memorable abominations, striking images, rich concepts and depth that will allow you the most incredible freedoms. An idea then comes to you and you open your notebook, contemplating the infinite possibilities:
We need protagonists with whom all will identify, but above all charismatic antagonists, with inhuman powers, with a legendary and terrorizing appearance.
Thus the work will mark minds, inhabit the nightmares of generations, and allow the world to dream and fantasize through your cathartic visions.

The twentieth century has seen a rich and complex horrific culture explode, with many iconic figures, many of whom have become classics.
So it’s hard to come up with totally new things … Especially since you’re in 1986, and the heyday of horror is at its peak. What else do you have left to create? How not to reproduce? How to shine brighter than the others in an already dazzling galaxy?
Now imagine that you are … Clive Barker.

CLIVE BARKER, IN A PORTRAIT PHOTO FOR HIS BOOK “EVERVILLE”, 1994

You are a fantastic young writer, full of ambition and talent. Your first collection, “Book of blood” has a good press and the great Stephen King himself, repeats to anyone who wants to hear it, that he saw the future of horror … and that his name is Clive Barker.
You feel it. You are at the threshold of your creative career and you are seething with crazy concepts and the desire to shape the refined nightmares that inhabit you. Besides, for some time now, a story has obsessed you. You feel that it is different, that it conceals a dizzying richness and glows with a black of darkness.


After a feverish and passionate writing, your novel finally comes out and is entitled: “The hellbound Heart”.
Even if the literary success is satisfactory, the world has not yet become aware of your history and its potential. Cinema would be ideal, but the studios have already approached you twice and what they have done with your story has disappointed you.
So if it takes a film for the world to know, it’s you or nobody.

The Film


This is how Hellraiser came out in 1987. Direct adaptation of “The Hellbound heart”, produced by Clive Barker himself. The 35-year-old has just arrived in Hollywood and intends to seize this opportunity to make an impression.
Passionate about the horrifying thing, Barker achieves a real tour de force. With a limited budget and no cinematic experiences, Barker easily invites himself into the pantheon of universal horror. All thanks to powerful concepts and creatures that are second to none in pure terror.
Thus the world discovers Hellraiser and its mythology, of which here is the almost perfect narrative invitation:

“There is a magic box in our world, carved out of wood and covered with gold … It is said to allow us to discover pleasures that the mind cannot imagine.
Unfortunately, for those who own it, the box is actually a key that opens direct access to hell. From this portal emerges the most sadistic creatures that hell has carried: the Cenobites. “

The film is a success because in addition to a striking and poisonous story, a recognized soundtrack and involved actors, it gives birth to a new icon of genre cinema, which the public will baptize Pinhead.


This man with a bluish complexion, wearing nails and adorned with dark leather joined without waiting the Freddy, Jason and other Leatherface at the table of our nightmares.
The film will even have the right to a direct sequel, Hellbound, of which Barker will co-write the screenplay. This quality sequel takes us to hell and shows us a little more of the cenobites.
On opus 3 and 4 Barker is only a consultant… and from the 5th to the 10th, B’arker is overshadowed by a franchise that will sink into the obscurity of dispensable films.

At the origin of this disintegration, the transfer by Barker of its copyrights to producers, and this from the first film. And very quickly the saga escapes him … to the point of making Hellraiser the biggest missed event in the history of horrific cinema. We are watching new releases, but more out of nostalgia for the first films than out of real hope.
Above all, we are watching, a little guilty, for the arrival of new cenobites, which even in a bad film, remain fascinating and unhealthy monsters.
Unfortunately, the films do not deliver many mythological elements and achievements without souls will end up killing the franchise.
But the good news is that beyond the film and the first novel, other books and comics give life to an extended universe.

The Extended Universe

So this is where our journey into the hell of Leviathan begins.
Any story of the saga begins with a mysterious box that one day ends up in the hands of a person.


But the box chooses such victims at random?
Before talking about this evil artifact, I must reassure you, the box does not arise randomly in your life … It only appears to have a certain number of profiles.
After having gone through all the stories of the saga, it is possible to identify large families of candidates for damnation, in order to understand what profiles are looking for recruiters from hell:

1 The explorers :
Who hasn’t dreamed of knowing more about the secrets of the world? Like Frank in the original story, explorers are looking for secret knowledge and forbidden pleasure.
It is therefore not surprising to find among our victims 2 journalists, a photographer, an explorer, a librarian or even a disillusioned detective.
Whatever the purpose of their research, it leads them into obscure corners of reality and reason. These profiles have in common the quest for a hidden truth and this thirst for knowledge implacably leads them to the box, when it is not she who comes to them.
It is often symbolic of the price to pay for those who seek what a human should not know.

2 Scientists :
Another family even more dedicated to empirical research into the unknown.
We thus find a doctor, a researcher in virtual reality, a virologist or even a researcher in physics. Either his jobs are close to death, or they raise moral and ethical questions which the box monsters are fond of.

3 The lost souls :
Even darker profiles. The box often arises in the hands of desperate people, either to shorten their suffering, or to quench their thirst for revenge … towards those they consider responsible.
We find there, a depressed woman who committed suicide in her bathtub, a regiment of ex-soldiers traumatized by the horrors of war. But surprisingly, the box appears twice in the hands of abused children, who without knowing it will invoke cenobites to suppress their toxic entourage.

4 criminals :
Despite the apparent glimmer of justice suggested by the latter two cases, the box often arrives in the life of the ill-intentioned who make up this family.
These candidates evolve in badly famed circles with often absent morals: bettor, delinquents, members of gangs or sexual predators and even serial Killers.
They are somewhere the most anticipated candidates in our traditional understanding of Judeo-Christian hell.

5 the leaders :
The family with the most members, bringing together all those who exercise and abuse power over others. It is fascinating to see that its elected representatives occupy different levels of society.
From the shady promoter, to the manager of a nightclub, to a tortured horse trainer and an unhealthy producer, one who abuses his position is one of the club’s favorite candidates.
The same goes for the authoritarian power exercised by a state or an administration: one thus finds soldiers, police officers and even a prison guard. This family also includes leaders, dictators, business leaders and a bloody tale from the Crusades.
Finally something that could seem incongruous, there are also several fundamentalist religious who think to invoke God only harvest Cenobites.

There is finally a last family, that of the creators but it is too early to evoke this strange specificity…

You would think that I have not yet revealed the Mythology of the saga, but we have just mentioned its heart: it is in the realm of human darkness that the Cenobites hunt. Their appearance is the crowning of a human life doomed to the dark side. Then resonate this quote from the author:

“Each of us is a book of blood. When we open it, everything is red ”

It is therefore not surprising to see in the tales of the saga direct references to dark periods in our history. From violent colonizations to fratricidal wars, from slavery to apartheid to Nazi horror, Hellraiser keeps reminding us that the darkness of his Cenobites has nothing to envy to that of humans.
With its fantastic charge, the saga could have gone headlong into the most uninhibited dark fantasy, but more often than not, stories are born on the contrary in very realistic contexts that reflect our world. This often puts us in front of what we would prefer to avoid …

Lemarchand’s box

Art by Nick-Percival on deviantart.

It’s time to tell you about the box.
Based on the movies, we know very little about this strange artifact: It’s a cubic shape with mysterious patterns. Regarding its origins, the film “Bloodline” reveals that in the 18th century, an architect versed in the occult arts would have manufactured it. His name was Philippe Lemarchand.
But, as we said, the films do not reveal anything about the magnificent and sophisticated complexity that gets impatient on other supports

Let’s retrace the journey of this mysterious engineer together to understand his role and his motivations … And since I was lucky enough to be able to go through it, I will give you the contents of his diary.

We are in 1740.
Philippe Lemarchand, architect and artist, worships the sacred and mysterious geometry of the Cenobites… Increasingly involved, Lemarchand embarks on a frantic quest for knowledge on this subject. He says he goes through the enigma of Albertus Magnus, devours the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Agrippa or Pic de la Mirandole, all of which refer to the Cenobites. (The technique of credibility of mythology requires the convocation of historical figures and troubles.) At the end of his research, Lemarchand became obsessed with these legendary cenobites. Although he thinks that some of these writings are fabulous, the architect leaves the domain of reason.

He gradually slides towards the unhealthy by examining works of frightening anatomy and especially by devouring biographies of Gilles de Rais. This lieutenant of Joan of Arc committed such atrocious misdeeds that he became the inspiration for The Bluebeard, very present in our collective imagination.
He was accused during his trial of the murder of 140 children and Gilles de Rais is often mentioned as one of the first documented serial killers in history.

Gilles de Rais

In the diary of this sinister character, The merchant discovers that a cenobite would have guided the murderer in his low works, but especially that there is a box containing a magic formula which would make it possible to invoke the monster. Activating his occult networks, he manages to get it.
It was therefore not Lemarchand who invented the first box. On the other hand, he analyzes it until he understands its mechanism. His frustration runs away as he approaches supreme knowledge, with forceful sketches and calculations.
To complete his apprenticeship, he activated the mechanism one evening and finally invoked Baron, the famous cenobite who had dictated his actions to Gilles de Rais. The cenobite observes Lemarchand’s sketches and feels his obsession with order and symmetry.
Baron accepts that Lemarchand manufactures his own mechanisms to invoke cenobites. He thus becomes the first human to have the right to make boxes.


Let’s now enter the depths of myth.
First of all, it is no accident that brings up the box in your life. These are the cenobites who spotted you from hell and send you the puzzle, but we will come back to this point a little later …
For the boxes to be mythical and credible, it is therefore necessary to create a story for them, but also a striking appearance and operating concepts.
In terms of appearance, there are a multitude of different designs. The shape is overwhelmingly cubic but this look is not exclusive. To convince yourself, just browse the cursed pages of the Sigillum Diaboli, a work that lists the appearances and effects of all the boxes.
On the walls of this one, mystical symbols and shapes on which, certain precise finger movements must be applied, in order to activate the mechanism. All the inscriptions on the box draw references to Indian myths, to the Jewish cabbala, to the treatises on demonology or even to the Bible, as if the box were an overlap of several cursed knowledge, a key to darkness.

Once the puzzle begins, a music box melody is heard, which grows as the resolution progresses. The final click sounds, the box sets in motion, pivots on itself and metamorphoses, subject to a sinister logic. At the end a bell rings, like an infernal knell. You can hear the stone on the walls groan and fall apart as you approach the cenobites. Then the walls of the room move away and a bluish light shoots out of the darkness.
Ill shadows emerge, they are there. And unless there is a market or a miracle, they will leave with you to let you know hell.

Just before seeing what happens to the unfortunate elected officials, one last point on the magic boxes. While they are practical, they are not the only way to appeal to the Underworld.
By solving the boxes, we actually perform a geometric ritual called Configuration. In the movies, the magic formulas are hidden in these puzzle boxes, but far more amazing configurations have existed. Some may take the form of a pocket watch, others the appearance of an innocent music box. We also find a configuration in -400 BC which appears under the appearance of a stone table in front of which incantations must be pronounced … Even more surprising, Lemarchand has for example constructed buildings in which the dark ritual is hidden . This is the case for a leprosy treatment center, for an artist’s pension in Paris but also for a disturbing building. For the latter, it is the journey made with the elevator that gives life to the configuration.
But it also works with a guitar if the chords played follow a certain pattern. But the configurations can also be hidden in the cardboard pieces of a puzzle to be assembled, in a crucifix, a crossword puzzle, a novel or even in the way of harvesting a wheat field.
They seem like there are more highways to hell than stairs to heaven.

What happens after the cenobites are present?

Several scenarios can occur:
As long as you have a bad contact, the view can go wrong and the cenobites will make dozens of chains end with a hook that will spread you in a sheaf of blood.


If on the other hand, you manage to arouse their interest, the cenobites can be tempted by a market. For example, to bring them more candidates for hell and therefore to work for them in the real world.
Useless to want to double them or to play with them if not return to the first scenario.
Let’s assume that the cenobites save your life, that does not mean that they can leave empty handed. So you have to sacrifice someone for you.

Skinned

If on the other hand they consider that you are ready to leave with them in the lower kingdom, then the cenobites will carry out the weighing of your soul. Depending on the desires and impulses they discover there, they will reserve a spell for you which can vary, but in any case, rest assured that eternal suffering will be there.
If the infernal priests believe that your vices are sadly common then you will be just having fun and your destination is called the Well. There are other wandering souls like you, who have the common appearance of the skinned, who drag like a suffering herd on the desolate moors of the place.


This explains the presence of skinned in films. They are damned who managed to escape from hell with the help of a human, this is the case of Frank in the first opus or for Julia in the second. The sentence “Help me I’m in hell ”written in a letter of blood on the wall by the cutaway therefore takes on its full meaning.
To hope to become human again, they must kill people to recover their skin.
The population of skinned wells is subject to the yoke of cenobites who treat them like cattle and we will even see them rebelling against their masters.

The cenobites?

How does one become a cenobite? After a human life turned to darkness, you are called through the box and your future companions come to pick you up. This is followed by a very unpleasant phase, which takes place in a reconstruction room.

This room can take several forms: it is sometimes an iron virgin, a medieval sarcophagus filled with deadly peaks, other times a niche with walls similar to that of the box, but more often than not, it is a bare room to the medical atmosphere. There is a new kind of surgical instrument, but also repulsive tentacles that search your brain.
The machine recomposes your body into an abject and fascinating form, which generally adapts to your psyche, but still, your appearance breathes torture, suffering and unhealthy eroticism.
Once the operation is complete, you are officially a cenobite. Your goal now is to harvest souls for your God Leviathan, or recruit new cenobites from humans.
The demons of the order of the hack, also have a role of police of the hell because their goal and to catch the rare damned who manage to escape from the limbo. The cenobites evolve in a very hierarchical caste with well defined roles, as in a classic religious order.

Before talking about their laws and their motivation, let’s dwell on their appearance, which is beyond measure in the horrifying genre.

Cenobites have the distinction of being as repulsive as they are fascinating. It was in the original film that the cenobites first appeared. The make-up and the game of the cenobites have laid the foundations of their school, even if the comics will reserve the most decadent expressions for us.
The choice of black leather is not trivial.
When we look at the occurrences of cooking in the Cinema before the release of the first film in 1987, we are already in a fairly marked imagination: in addition to the black jacket of bad boys on motorcycles, leather is associated with domination, sex and to the interlope places. He’s the offender’s uniform, the murderer’s glove. Leather is the ideal choice to combine attraction and repulsion, eros and thanatos.
The design of the costumes, between religious clothing and keeping of sm dungeon creates a particular contrast. To this dark sexual aura is added the gashes.
Often the costume is mixed with the flesh. It is even often designed to provide permanent suffering to the wearer. What is disturbing about the cenobites is that despite the constant suffering they endure, they are cold, amused, calm and fanatical, worshiping the pain they present as ultimate refinement.
Pain is however what we have been fleeing from the dawn of time; so seeing creatures who have embraced it as a religion takes us into metaphysical malaise and makes them totally inhuman.

CENOBITES BY Legrande62 on Deviantart

Cenobites can have very different aspects and dress. Most of them are humanoid but some are more of an abomination, an indescribable chimera. The bake and piercing look is dominant in cenobite but the environment has its originals.
We can especially meet demons dressed in white and red canvas. One of the chiefs of the order is even dressed in a Prussian general’s costume, when another cenobite with facial scarification presents all the paraphernalia of the American soldier.
Others have a more monstrous physiognomy, the deformed facies, the skin of another color … There are also animals which accompany them and serve them like dogs or bees.
The cenobite therefore offers the creators who shape them a great creative attitude with regard to the form they can hear.

The same goes for their characters: the disparity of personality in cenobites very often reflects the humans they were. Some are rebellious and do nothing but lead, others are cynical, some even try to keep a part of humanity in their decision.
The cenobites are extremely innovative for me because they have in their way enlarged the spectrum of what the cinema monster can evoke. Their moral ambiguity, the luminous aura that accompanies them, their chilling calm and their infernal cynicism go beyond the terror of classic cinema to transform it into a venomous fascination.

One of the phrases used by Pinhead to introduce itself is as follows:

« Demons to some, angels to others. »

This contradiction is therefore assumed, to place these entities on more intellectual and psychological ground, to blur their motivations and make them unfathomable. And therefore the classic Manichaeism of our society which opposes good and bad is ineffective here, and this is one of the many genius traits of Barker on the saga. This is due to the underlying philosophy of the Notch order.
Indeed, cenobites do not read the actions of men under the specter of good or bad actions, but assess your actions according to whether they have generated chaos or order. And that makes their value system more complex. For example, a cenobite will not try a serial killer because he has killed people. but rather he will assess his motivations and the consequences of his actions. In a way, chaos is associated with man and his freedom, the unexpected and the impulses of life. In contrast, order and structure are associated with control, law, oppression and the system.
Besides in Hell, this balance is somehow personified by two strange deities called Chidna and Basilisk.


These two antediluvian entities recall the double helix of DNA and symbolize the necessary balance between darkness and light. A quote from the master clearly expresses this balance between two forces:
“Darkness has its role to play. Without them, how would we know we are walking in the light? When the ambitions of evil become too grand, they must be thwarted, disciplined, and even sometimes extinguished. Then they will reappear again as it should. ”

The order of the world is therefore a clever combination of chaos and order. If this balance is disturbed, then Chidna and Basilisk will fight, thus alerting the cenobites that they must repair this anomaly by changing destinies in reality.
Because the job of a cenobite is to select people who have power over the world, to tip them over, but a cenobite must also answer to its hierarchy.
If he has failed to manipulate the right way, then he will be tried in a trial. Each judged cenobite will have to tear out the heart so that it passed without a balance in front of the members of the order. Because let’s not forget that at the end of the chain of command is their supreme God, Leviathan.
Cenobites are therefore a form of police force in the service of a religion, with the whole oppressive and rigorous universe that such terms bring together. Pulling the threads of the spirit, they manipulate destinies to twist them in their interest …
Some cenobites have been assigned particular functions which make the myth even more profound.


This is the case of Sister Flagellum, who is called the police. Flagellum is plunged into a deep meditative sleep from which it is drawn if its God Leviathan feels a disturbance in the balance of forces. She will refer them to the cenobite teams so that they go to resolve the situation on the ground, much like a damnation task force.

There is another major role played by a cenobite, very symptomatic of the depth of the Barkerian narrative. But to evoke it it brings us back to the very beginning.
How do the boxes end up in the hands of their victims?
A box is always given, protected and recovered by a guard. In films, it’s always a strange individual who puts the box back is always the same: Initially a merchant, then an art seller, the guard appears most often in the guise of a homeless man with a beard unkempt and with crazy eyes, which seems to have a particular connection with the locusts.
Again, these are the comics that give us keys to understanding these famous guards. First of all they are shape-changers, they have the capacity to take the appearance that they wish to approach and seduce the target without it being suspicious. But how are these mysterious smugglers created?
Thanks to our famous cenobite with such a special role.


His name is Orno, and he has his own cabinet in the bowels of hell. To create a puzzle keeper, Orno chooses a damned that he calls “Raw Material”. He alters his soul by placing a bit of his own demonic spirit in it. He then returns his guinea pig to earth so that he can have sex with a woman. From this relationship will be born a child who Orno will take care to make orphan. Once he reaches 16 years of a life of sadness, Orno will reveal his true nature to him by offering him the box of which he will be the official guardian.

As a result, with the Hellraiser universe, we are witnessing a phenomenon which is after all quite frequent, which one could call “transmedia mythological development”. It’s the idea of ​​expanding a fictional universe to other media than the one by which he was born.
For Hellraiser, it’s a classic journey to Hollywood for a successful franchise: we adapt a book to the cinema, and if it is successful, we then develop comics or video games to tell new stories and spread the universe. And if the adaptations are sometimes soulless commercial moves, there are cases where this passage is extremely beneficial for a work. This is the case for Hellraiser.
Making a fantastic film is expensive and we are subject to regulations that limit what we can show. With a comic, no problem. The only limit is the talent of the artist and the imagination of the authors.

Hell

In the work, the hell that Barker describes is very different from the classic hell representations. Where we knew a hell of red and burning limbo led by Satan, we find here a blue and icy labyrinth dominated by Leviathan.
The first visual representation of the labyrinth of the underworld is delivered in the second film of the saga named Hellbound, during a sequence which literally convinced me that the saga hid an incredible mythological potential.
We see there for the first time a reconstruction chamber and the making of a cenobite, but, above all, we discover a landscape worthy of the most dizzying nightmares. Perspectives that are lost from afar, abundances of senseless architecture, bottomless precipices …

The main inspiration for this representation comes from the work of Piranesi, a brilliant Italian engraver who lived in the 18th century. The latter unwound one day to create 16 engravings that would present nightmarish imaginary prisons.
In this suffocating world, one enters a monumental architecture, with multiple dungeons, suffocating and dirty, with walkways that lead nowhere to spiral staircases. They are also intertwined with pulleys, chains and other instruments of torture.
If the labyrinth also reminds of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, it also summons the architectures of Escher. We can safely quote the artist since a plan of the film shows one of his works.


For Piranesi, The link is especially strong when we contemplate the bowels of the labyrinth with its multidirectional corridors, its abyssal staircases and its general function of prison of souls. The fact that Barker wanted to quote Piranesi to make hell a prison place and cold is of a strong originality, which moreover suits perfectly the cenobites.
On the top of the walls of this labyrinth, the cenobites can walk, meet and above all pray to Leviathan, who overlooks this gigantic area.
When one descends from the crests of the labyrinth to enter its entrails, one enters a dark and dense area, with stairs which intersect to serve the various places of torture and other hellish abominations. The depth of this place seems endless, like the torments that stand there.

Since the cenobites are ancient humans, it makes sense, after all, to keep activities from their previous lives. So do not be surprised to know that in the labyrinth there are archives of operating theaters, an armory, but also a bar, a theater, or even places for political meetings.
Finally above this Leviathan plane labyrinth.

Leviathan

This name originates from the Bible where Leviathan is described in several books as a multi-headed sea monster who revolts against God.
We can also make the link with the eponymous book by Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes uses Leviathan as a metaphor for the perfect state, ruled by an absolute sovereign who exercises total control over society. Written by Hobbes during the First English Revolution, Leviathan insists on the need for a strong and total social order to avoid society from sinking into a state of nature which, for Hobbes, is a chaotic war of all against all. This choice of name is therefore not trivial and its symbolism has its place in Hell.


In Hellraiser, this volume of depths is also designated as the God of Flesh, Hunger, Desire, or Lord of the Labyrinth.


It is complicated to create a God in a fictional work, especially if one decides to show it. What form should be given to an abstract idea? Barker opted, not for yet another hackneyed classic demonic abomination, but for a surprising and mathematical form, perfectly symbolic of the concepts of Order and Structure. Indeed, the god of cenobites is an octahedron whose walls recall the esoteric ornament of Lemarchand’s boxes. Leviathan gravitates, lonely, dominating hell. It has the power to launch rays of black light which infiltrates your soul to reveal your sins to you.

The origins of this entity are unknown, but several clues point to the fact that it has been present since time immemorial. It is even said that he could be the fallen angel of the scriptures, but above all, this strange god is the one who makes the cenobites. It has the capacity to transform any human being into a suffering monster and thanks to its reconstruction chambers and its tentacles, it has total freedom in the grotesque and terrifying form that it will want to give you.

Leviathan does not speak directly, and to be able to exchange with him, it is necessary to go in his entrails. You can enter it thanks to a wall that unfolds and reveals endless markets. Once inside, the cenobites must play hard an organic organ made of supliciaries of hell to hope to communicate with this God.
In the film, his only form of external language is a tetanizing foghorn which spells the word “GOD” in Morse code.
So here we are at the top of hell.

After this painful journey, we can already note that the only thing that equals the darkness of Hellraiser is its black aesthetics and its mythological sophistication.

A connection with the Bible?
In most works wanting to install a contemporary mythology, these almost systematically refer to Catholic mythology, whether it be the films Freddy and the relationship of his famous killer with hell, the game Bloodborn and his pantheon of Gods who seek to procreate or the manga Berserk and its multiple references to the Inquisition…

For Hellraiser, the least that can be said is that Clive Barker has a unique approach to the issue. Like the character, she is amazing and complex.
In an interview book with Peter Arkins, one of the great screenwriters of the saga, Barker writes on the question.
He immediately confesses to trying in his writings to find the rhythm of the Bible, which he says is his favorite. He also has a sort of fascination with the figure of Christ.
Conversely, his vision of the church and of dogma exudes the most dissenting rejection there is. The work translates very well this oscillation of the author between fascination for the verb and the biblical symbols and detestation of what the men of church made of God. And the saga is dotted with games with religious symbolism, often to return the values. The word cenobite itself refers to an existing order. In contrast to the hermit, who lives in solitude and contempolation, the Cenobite monk lives in community.
By thus making reference to an existing order, Barker can thus criticize religion while retrieving the lexical and symbolic fields.
Pinhead is a nickname but its real dominion is “Hellpriest”, and the monster even marries its gestures.
In addition, the cenobites despise the God of men. This phrase from cult Pinhead is a perfect example:

« Do I look like some one who cares what God thinks ? »

Barker’s vision of hell is therefore not made of horned demons who plunge us into the pot of lava, but of a religious, calculator based on suffering.

And if we wanted to go a little further, we might wonder if the cenobites in their concepts are not very close to the Catholic religion. Indeed, among Christians, the supreme act that launched religion is the crucifixion of a messiah, who became a martyr to save men.
One can almost say that this act of torture is the basis of the Catholic religion. To the point that the symbol worn by its followers is an instrument of torture.
Even if this is presented as an act of supreme love, the fact remains that this myth bases its genesis on the suffering and sin of men. Just like the cenobites.

It is also fascinating to see that the Christ figure has the same right to its rereading with the female figure of Morte Mamme.

In the Barkerian myth, she is the sister of Leviathan, who captured her in a stone tomb thousands of years ago. She is named priestess of chaos and the image she represents is no big mystery.
Yet another camouflaged anti-dogma by the author who tells us that Jesus is a woman, that she is the impulse of life and chaos and that her goal is the destruction of the cenobites. Impossible not to see a political dimension when we know the place of women in religions. Thus Clive Barker seems to be in the grip of a fascination for the original biblical stories and the symbolic power of these myths, while castigating the purely evil deviation of our modern religions. For Clive Barker, God is imagination and imagination is God.

He is He may be some of you who are not used to horrifying creations for whom this universe is undoubtedly dirty, shocking, depressing or repulsive. This prompts us to ask ourselves the question: how can we imagine such things?
Isn’t creation supposed to generate beauty, transcendence, a pleasure for the senses and the eyes?
And I, who am swooning in front of this universe, do I have problems? Am I a creepy person, feasting on the kind of metaphorical darkness?
It’s strange because I see the opposite.
Barker himself says that what is pornography for some is theology for others. Everything is therefore a question of point of view. As far as I’m concerned, I see in this work an incredible ode to creation. A declaration of love for the surreal adventure it implies.
Finally, I see in Hellraiser a reflection on the Artist’s sacrifices. After three months of living in this universe, I ended up thinking about it in my sleep. And one night, I dreamed of this cover of Comic:

We see a painter’s palette there. Brushes are blades and paint hemoglobin. And there I had the feeling to understand. Clive Barker explains that he writes as we paint, and that we only paint with his blood. No wonder, then, that we find our last family of damnation candidates here. The artists…

Inhabited by an intangible and devouring need, they are often visited by the cenobites in the saga. They come to find a young poet, a blind composer, two writers, a crazy painter … The work of a creator consists in deciding between structure and chaos, putting his soul into the configuration that is a work.
In Hellraiser but especially in life, Art is a sacrifice, an activity of a reclusive monk who would only have his imagination for God. It’s a life where places are scarce, where the waiting and learning are endless, where you have to undergo the opinion of people who rarely understand you …
The artist’s freedom is strewn with a thousand obstacles: how to earn something to eat? How to reach people? How to make a work that excites us ourselves? How to surprise yourself, surprise others and mark their hearts and minds? And how to survive a world that does everything to suppress the dream?
Barker is a free spirit, a man who fights daily against the idea of ​​death, a man for whom the imagination is the greatest mystery of humanity. For whom the imagination is God. A man, finally, who is not afraid to rub himself in the dark in order to draw resplendent jewels from it.

I don’t know if you’ve ever encountered a creator virtually. I am quick to marvel at multiple subjects, but feeling an intimate artistic shock in front of an artist’s mind is rare. And that’s what happened to me with this character that I’ve been contemplating from afar for years, without knowing anything about him.
On a sleepless night, I tried what I often balk at doing: knowing everything about the creator whose work I explore. For me the work is what interests me in the first place and I was sometimes disappointed when I discovered the person who was hiding behind. But with Clive Barker, the sensation was quite different, around 4am and after 20 interviews, I felt like I had found a mentor, an incredible model, someone I would like to count among my friends.

The sequence that touched me the most was an English interview where Barker faced a crowd of young people whose age was not so far from his at the time.

And all the questions from the public are curiously enough reactionary and suspicious. Hellraiser first of the name had just come out and everyone was suspicious of the singularity and the violence of the work. And Barker to enter into a soft, understanding and sensitive plea on the power and the necessity of the horror stories, on the strange beauty that they contain.
Seeing him justify himself in front of people who did not understand his sensitivity touched me in the messages they delivered, and his kindness confused me. So I often think back to his mantra:

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you can be violent and original in your work”.

One of the beauties of this saga is to see the ambition of its concepts, the creative and symbolic freedom that it contains. What an emotion to contemplate the birth of a world with its geography and macrocosm, to follow its emblematic heroes and demons struggling in an abyssal mythology, with so many readings.
If I was talking about the opening cathedral, it is because every detail of this universe is coherent, finely chiseled and that it allows 1000 things, not forbidding anything.
We recognize here the work of a goldsmith of horror, of a watchmaker of the imagination … who would take the bias of art to reveal things that life does not show. The work then becomes like a revelation that speaks to everyone, like a metaphorical vision of our world.

I would like to end, with a little heavy heart, this trip in the meanders of this total artist with one of the sentences of which he has the secret:

“All that is imagined will never be lost”.

Dog movies, with a doggie!

Hello !
If I had to describe what interests me in two words it would be quite simple:
Movies and dogs… and cats… and cooking… and video games… and…

Okay, it wouldn’t be as simple as that but brief. Today, I wanted to talk to you about animated films about doggies!

And yes to write this article, I am accompanied by my big baby Nyx!

Underdog by Oh Sung-yoon, Lee Choon-Baek:


Moong-chi is a good doggie, a nice and attractive border collie that his masters decide to abandon in the forest. He will therefore meet other dogs left to their own devices, surviving as best they can, founding a pack where canine solidarity is required.
Their goal ? Go as far as possible from its humans who abandoned them and find this little corner of paradise for the canine race.

So I prefer to warn immediately, this is a film for a rather young audience, with a moral cross between a Ghibli and a Disney, which reminds us that we have to trust each other.
It is a story that denounces the unfortunate abandonment of dogs that are massively made in South Korea but whose message has an international resonance.
Although the narration is quite naive, there are a few moments that will make you draw a little tear. (Yes I cried >.<)

The big advantage of the film is its aesthetics. Mix of fine and soft line paint with a delicate and felted 3d. There are beautiful caricature aspects on the characters, the film remains very beautiful and remains a real pleasure to see with the family.

Isle Of Dogs by Wes Anderson:


In dystopian Japan, a strange virus is spreading in the canine population. The mayor of Nagasaki then decides to send all the dogs in the city to a trash island, starting with Spot, the faithful companion of his nephew Atari. He will then try to find him, but following an airplane crash, he will be rescued by five abandoned dogs, who will help him find the spot. But his alpha-style doggies have a little bit of faith in this little man, so similar in nature to his humans who hunted them.

Isle Of Dogs is a film made entirely in stop motion, as Wes Anderson had already done with
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” in 2010. It took him two years to make the film for a total of 130,000 photographs, an average of 185 shots per day.
The film is obviously a great tribute to Japanese cinema and particularly to the director Akira Kurosawa. (“Yojimbo”, “Seven Samurai” …)
Again we are in a story of dogs abandoned by humans, who must learn to survive by supporting each other.

I’m not used to doing this, but I would like to take this opportunity to encourage you, if you have the means, of course, to make a small donation for one of the various animal protection organizations in your country.

Oliver & Company by George Scribner


This is the story of Oliver, a little red cat abandoned on the streets of New York. He meets Dodger a dog proud of his freedom and his band, rather eclectic, who will bring him into their pack.
Oliver is finally adopted by the nice Genie, but his pack fearing his misfortune, decides to recover him and lead him and his new mistress in terrible adventures.
Well it’s a Disney with good moral as there are so many, but what a swing, what looks… We are making a big fuss about Disney music, and my memories are probably blurred (it’s been a little over 8 years since I did not see it with the sound), but as a child, I found them great.

This is obviously a story inspired by the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, this young orphan who finds himself playing pickpockets in the streets of London.
Oliver & Company is also a tribute film, we see lots of characters from previous Disney like Pongo the Dalmatian or Jock, Peg and Cesar from Lady and the Tramp.
In this film, New York City is magnified, with its manhole covers, bridges and even its billboards.

Bonus: Pip

A Spanish short film about Pip wanting to become a guide dog, despite his small size.

Good viewing !

Midnight Session n°3 : Lady in The Water.

M. Night Shyamalan is a funny director. First, there were the hit hits “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable”. Then more mixed films with in 2002 “Signs”, then “The Village” two years later. Critics were quick to label it as the new Steven Spielberg (one of his references), even his natural successor (which seems a little disproportionate to me). How is this “Lady in The Water” positioned?


I’ve always been a big fan of fantasy. When you spend a certain amount of time in hospitals, it’s a literary and filmic genre perfect for changing your mind.
One thing I love all the more about fantasy is when it steps into the “normal” world and what is more normal than a stuttering janitor by the name of Cleveland in an apartment complex ?

The normal man :


Paul Giamatti ideally sticks to this ordinary guy, rather withdrawn, without particular intelligence. His daily life is just a string of uninteresting odd jobs: repairing a washing machine, exterminating a pest in a kitchen, changing defective bulbs … these mini-scenes camp, often with a lot of humor, the profile of the hero who still ignores himself and reveals a gallery of rather colorful tenants.

What I like most about this film are the themes it addresses:

  • Who are we beyond appearances?
  • Who are we, once the mask of social conventions has been removed?
  • What unexpected forces are sleeping in us?
  • What do we know about ourselves?

And his characters of a great banality at first glance but who will know their importance:

  • A little boy who reads the cereal boxes,
  • a group of friends who remade the world around a beer,
  • an old lady who attracts butterflies …

the sketched portraits seem to go away, before delivering an almost cosmic meaning to the film.

The disturbing strangeness :

Picture from Fur Affinity

That a red-haired nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard <3) is frolicking in the complex’s swimming pool, looking for a human with whom she must communicate before she can return to her blue world, does not seem to surprise our discreet concierge . Or how a Chinese legend for children is anchored in the reality of a world of adults who buried his childhood.
The nymph must be saved from the clutches of a dark creature, half warthog half wolf with long spiky hairs and ferocious rumbles. Yes, it is disturbing. Yes, it is scary. As were the aliens in “Signs”, the ghosts in “The Sixth Sense”. Make no mistake, evil lurks everywhere, every moment. Let us remain vigilant, let us wake up, let us unite.

Obviously, the cocktail works only if one implicitly accepts the postulate of the legend which takes life and body, which one lets oneself carry by the irrational. The tilting is done very smoothly, almost imperceptibly. We feel irresistibly drawn. In turn poetic, fantastic, nightmarish, “The Lady in The Water” proves, if need be, that Mr. Night Shyamalan is a truly original filmmaker, endowed with a certain talent for narration and an intriguing vision of world. Qualities all the more appreciable as they are hardly legion in the Hollywood microcosm.

Conclusion :

It may be because I saw this film as a child but I like it a lot. It is a lovely tale that makes our imagination work, in search of the smallest element that can make us think that our reality may contain a hint of magic.

In doing my research, I realized that the reviews were really bad. However, seeing the film recently I do not have the impression that it is justified. If you have a different opinion I will be happy that you share it in the comments. As for the people who would have passed by, I can only advise you to see it, especially if you have kept a child’s soul.

The Midnight Session n°2 : Doctor Sleep

Dr Sleep by Stephen King, the novel following his shining, has been brought to our screens by Mike Flanagan who takes the gamble, not only to adapt the book, but also to make it a sequel to the cult film by Stanley Kubrick!
So is it successful? I tell you everything
this in this new Midnight Session.


This Dr. Sleep brings us back thirty years after the terrible events that took place at the Overlook hotel. Young Danny has grown up and is trying to drown his torments in drugs and alcohol, but he will meet a girl who also owns The Shining, who is chased by a group of hippies. Kind of vampire who feed on those who have this power.
By going to her rescue, he will have to relive certain events that he would have liked to leave behind.

From the start, the film sets us in the mood for Kubrick’s work. The unforgettable music, the plan of Dany on her tricycle in the corridors, door 237 … It is a big visual slap that we take with full force. Then we see these characters who are like two peas in a pod with the original ones:

• Young Danny is immediately identifiable;
• Then comes the turn of her mother Wendy who is the spitting image of the original actress ...

We understand after a few minutes that we are not dealing with a simple adaptation but a real work done with a sincere love of the Kubrick film.
The one behind it is Mike Flanagan, director of the nice Oculus and the most forgettable Ouija the origins. He had already tried his hand at the King universe by adapting the novel Jesse in 2017, but it was especially with the haunting of Hill House that the director imposed himself in my eyes. Superb psychological horror stories in which the director really seems to have found his way.

With this Dr. Sleep, he still succeeds in a rather daring bet, adapting the story of Stephen King who follows his own novel but also making it the continuation of the film which was not the most faithful, Kubrick having taken a great artistic freedom and had moved away from what King had written, attracting the wrath of the latter who had treated it with very bad adaptations but still recognizing that it was a very good film.
So there was a lot of work to come to merge the two works making concessions on one, the dead end on details of the other to get to create this masterful film that is Dr Sleep.
Mike Flanagan gives us an incredible film in which he also succeeds in imposing his own artistic touch without coming to denote with the film which he wants to follow.

The adult Danny Torrance is embodied by an Ewan Mcgregor, who during 2h30 of film will never make you doubt his role perfectly embodying the little boy become man, tired of these nightmarish visions and who tries to find a place in this world despite its difference.
For the rest of the actors it will be of the same ilk:
The young Abra is beautifully interpreted, the members of the band are all very charismatic, especially Rose the Hat embodied by a Rebecca Ferguson who literally bursts the screen by the aura she gives off.


Visually the film is superb, the photography is magnificent and certain visual effects such as Rose’s astral journey which will fly over the Earth is breathtakingly beautiful. At that time I even thought that It Chapter 2 could have provided us with something equivalent to present to us the passage where Bill leaves his body to bring his mind back to Pennywise in the Macroverse.
in short, this passage from Doctor Sleep is absolutely sublime.
The final, on the other hand, will only give you chills all over your body with this return to the Overlook hotel, with these plans which perfectly copy this from the introduction of Kubrick’s film.

I would not go into details but know that Mike Flanagan will even succeed in giving us the final that King had written for the end of Shining and which had not been kept by Kubrick coming therefore finished the history of the hotel and of dany at the same time.

In fact, the more I talk about it, the more I have only one desire, it’s off to see this film again, and you know what I think that’s what I’m going to do, so I’m not telling you more but really go see this movie, you will not regret it because it is really an experience to live! Right now good movies are still quite rare so let’s not sulk our pleasure.

See you soon for a next Midnight Session!

Debate Blade Runner: “Harrison Ford, is he a replicant or not?”

This weekend, I was with my cousins of 14 and 15 years old who began to be interested in science fiction and as a film buff I could not help showing them what is best. So I unsheathed the heavy artillery with Blade Runner’s Blue Ray. And then, at the end of the film, came the fateful question.

“So Harrison Ford, is he a replicant or not?”
“No it’s an actor!”

The answer was complicated, the debate lasting for 37 years. But I will try to answer it now.
So for those who think that I am speaking an obscure Pakistani dialect, I will make a quick rewind.

37 years ago, in 1982, to be exact, what was going to become one of the cornerstones of sci-fi cinema was “BLADE RUNNER” from Ridley Scott (at the time he was still making good films).
Blade Runner is the adaptation of a short story by the cult and over-adapted author Philippe K.Dick. “Do androids dream of electric sheep?”
The film strangely draws its title not from the short story in question but from an Alan E.Nourse novel. The story takes place in Los Angeles in 2019. Advances in science have allowed the Tyrell corporation to create replicants, androids endowed with consciousness and who are apparently identical in human beings. The colonization of space is underway and the main task of the replicants is to serve as slaves on extraterrestrial settlements. This is where one of the main themes of science fiction comes in: The revolt of the machine.
And yes tired of serve humanity, the replicants cause a bloody revolt and are consequently outlawed on earth. The title Blade runners are special police units that track illegal replicants.

The film’s plot focuses on the character Rick Deckard, a taciturn and disillusioned blade runner played by Harrison Ford. He is responsible for investigating the presence of a handful of fugitive replicants on earth, finding them, and then shooting them down.
Very loaded symbolically “Blade Runner” depicts in a dark film atmosphere a dystopian future drowned under the advertising and monopolies of multinational sprawling.

And … despite having reached its expiry date (No, we have not yet started the colonization of other planets), its aesthetic remains timeless and quickly made it one of the greatest representatives of a sub-genre of science fiction that responds to the sweet name of Cyberpunk.
By the way, the film is visually very inspired by a comic strip created in 1976 by the late Moebius and Dan Obannon: “The long Tomorrow”. Dan Obannon who will also become the scriptwriter of “Alien: the eighth passenger”, by the same Ridley Scott. And yes, it is a smallworld.

The aesthetic will be many years later repacked with a little more clumsiness by Luc Besson for “The Fifth Element” but here we move away from the subject.

“Blade Runner” is also a huge musical band of Vangelis (for my dad), but especially the famous and sublime end monologue of Rutger Hauer, the actor who plays Roy Batty, the leader of the replicants. A monologue that I post here for those who would like to see him again crying tears of blood.
but if you have not seen the movie yet, do it first before spoiling your face shamefully.

Little digression, but there is something that has always fascinated me, it is the relationship that seems to exist in the 80s between science fiction and underpants. I do not know what the correlation is but there is one, it’s clear.
Whether Rutger Hauer in this film that declaims philosophy in slip on a roof, Sigourney Weaver in Alien, or Sting who …:

Here of course I only take a few examples among the most famous but from there to detect a general diagram there is only one step. At the same time, you are an actor. Rutger Hauer, he is there in the rain in kangaroo underpants of space and he gets to ask you an iconic monologue of the history of cinema. Respect!
It’s a bit like Marlon Brando’s monologue in “Julius Caesar” with a propeller cap.

It should be noted that over the years according to the various international markets, seven versions of “Blade Runner” have emerged. A beautiful mess so that necessarily accentuated the aura of mystery that reigns around the film. Among these seven versions, three remain the best known:

  • The version of the producers of 1982, which can be found for rent on youtube.
  • Director’s Cut of 1992
  • And the final version of 2007 which is the closest version of the original vision of the director.

And that’s where we come to the theme of this article, the main debate of “Blade Runner”: What is the nature of Rick Deckard, our main character hunter of replicants? Is he himself a replicant without knowing it or a human being?

“Fascinating question, isn’t it!”

This is a very common theme in science fiction, that of identity:

  • what is a human being ?
  • Where does self-awareness begin and end?
  • Can a machine have a soul?

In the 1982 version that the producers had imposed after quite disastrous test projections, the deckard character is clearly presented as a human and he even pays the lux of a happy ending.
At the time Harrison Ford had just linked the first two “Star Wars” and the first “Indiana Jones” and that the general public was not really ready to see him embody a more ambiguous character that could be cowardly or unpleasant.

On the other hand in the director’s cut version of 1992, but especially in the Final Cut of 2007, which is widely recognized today as the final version of the film, the subject is much more troubled. The end makes the intelligent choice to give no clear answer and to leave a huge doubt about the nature of Deckard.

This question of Descard’s identity is precisely what spawned these bloody version battles that drove Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford and the producers to continually fight each other during filming, but also during years that followed. To the chagrin of the film crew.

It’s a difficult question: Who owns a film in the end, its director, scriptwriter or audience? And probably a little at everyone.
Once the film is made available to the public, it becomes a kind of Frankenstein’s creature, which takes a different form for each viewer and even more when he deliberately try to scramble the tracks as does “Blade Runner.”

But in the end, after years of patience and effort, Ridley Scott won an end to Blade Runner, an end that gives depth to the film, precisely because the debate can not be resolved and that each spectator is led to make his own interpretation. This debate is one of the iconic and controversial figures in the history of cinema.
This exciting question gives all its aura of mystery to the film and that’s why …

“Ridley Scott, FUCK YOU!!!!”

After having held for a small decade in the wake of the director’s cut, leaving the suspense hanging, Ridley Scott has finally ended up revealing in an interview that Descard is a replicant.
SO WHAT? What’s new? You’ll tell me, and rightly so. Ridley Scott has never hidden that for him Decard is likely to be a replicant, but why? WHY?

When you create a voluntarily ambiguous ending it’s not, then, to fuck it with a premature interpretation. It’s a bit like Paul Verhoeven was making a statement today saying that in “Total Recall” it was all just a dream. Or if Kubrick had decided that the end of 2001 was simply a trip under hallucinogenic mushrooms of Dave Bowman.
The interest of a debate like that of “replicant / not replicant” is precisely that one is supposed to be unable to answer definitively. the interest is the questions, the philosophical vertigo, the fascination of the mystery of the possibilities, not the stopped answers which will inevitably be disappointing and limited, a little like the scenario of Robin Wood (from Ridley Scott).

So yes, you are going to tell me,

“Hey that can be easy open ended no? It’s especially that the director could not make up his mind that he made a foolish thing to do! “

This is all the more common since the 2000s and the beginning of the internet era have shown that once people have set foot in unrestricted access to information, they tend more and more to want to over-explain everything at all costs. And we get the reboots and prequelles fever, that is systematically give a justification and a past to characters who do not necessarily need. Especially when it is Descard in Blade Runner when it comes to characters whose interest lies precisely in the mystery that surrounds them.

  • It is necessary to explain the birth of “Aliens”, one makes “Prometheus”.
  • We must explain the genesis of Sadako and Annibal, we do “Ring 0” and “Hannibal Rising”
  • Ditto for The Thing and its version of 2011, prequel that does not even bother to change its title to dispel the confusion, while everyone thought it was a remake.
  • Or the semi-Arlesian “Exorcist: The Beginning” (by the way, a little advice, prefer him version of Paul Schrader: “Dominion: prequel to the exorcist” which is better, well a little better.)

An exception to this is the masterful Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight”. This guy has no identifiable past, no identity, it’s a free electron. That’s what makes him scary!!!

Of course we are not immune to a prequel or they will explain that it is scarred by eating a mister freeze.

But for now we can leave the benefit of the doubt.

The human being needs a bit of mystery, it is essential, for better or for worse, that’s what allows him to show imagination, analysis …

Forgive me Mr. Scott but you have no legitimacy to say that Deckard is a replicator, or so if but your opinion is not worth more than that of another spectant. No, the debate is and will still open!

Blade Runner has had a sequel in 2017: “Blade Runner 2048” that I have not seen. I do not know what direction the script took, but seeing the empty shell of “Prometheus”, directed by the same Ridley Scott, I dread the worst.
It’s a very difficult balance, as much in the cinema as in any form of creation, knowing where and when to stop.

There is a fundamental rule to the cinema, it is the value of the off-camera. The off-camera is what the viewer can not see, but that makes work his imagination. This is a fairly simple but essential mechanism that creates a good deal of the intensity of the cinema experience. We could push that to a rule that is called the off-film rule, ie what the viewer does not know. The off-film is not described in the film, but the viewer can guess through some clues, which opens up an infinite number of possibilities to the imagination.

This off-film is precisely what gave birth to some myths absolutely fascinating as for example the space jockey fossilized in Alien which we know nothing! (finally until “Prometheus”), or again, there is the debate on the nature of Descard in “Blade Runner”, which is necessarily much more interesting than any attempt at definitive answers.
I’m not against trying to enrich a universe but, you have to be careful what you touch and how you touch it. There is something that deserves to be touched. In the case of “Raging Bull” by Martin Scorsese. It’s a genius oneshot, it’s typically the kind of movie you have to leave alone …

The “Raging Bull” sequel.