USA
written and directed by: Ari Aster
starring: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro
seen on 22nd December, 2019
I appreciate the many LAYERS of this film, it gives me a lot to think about. The most fascinating thing is how frickin much does Ari Aster control every aspect of what and how is being told and shown and experienced.
I have written before that I don't like when artists spread their own diseases (illnesses would perhaps be the better word?) through their art among their audience. (An example of that: von Trier and "The House That Jack Built": his own inner artistic struggle between megalomania and a feeling of total personal insignificance and inferiority grows in the film like some sort of a detestable black tumour and the final artwork does not offer any kind of resolution/absolution, it just metastasizes to everyone who watches it.)
Aster takes his own personal and very painful misery, views it, palpates it, feels it from all the angles and then makes a reconstruction of it in a film where nothing has a simple meaning. When the son stands in a dark hallway outside his parents' room illuminated by lighthing from outside, with his face in a shadows, a menacing dark silhouette, it is an element of a million other horror about terrifying kids doing terrifying stuff to make them look terrifying, but in this particular film it is also a perfectly justified shot of him hearing his mother's pain which he himself caused while also being a victim above whom the clouds are gathering.
And it still is an honest tangible drama about a family whose every member deserves/needs a big hug, a little bit more of understanding and a whole lot of therapy. But none of that is coming because their lives are being controlled by puppeteers writing necromantic invocations on their walls and monitoring and directing their every step.
And how does everything which I have just described differ from "the tumour paragraph" from the beginning? Because despite visiting the deepest, most deadly swamp, the films takes time to end most therapeuticly (while still being loyal to its horror genre). It takes you through hell, but all the way through and out and keeps on going, it leads you to catharsis, it does not let you get stuck or drown. It is a film where the villain wins and everything ends badly, but it is so beautiful, so natural and so freeing. I want all modern films to function like this, not necessarily to "mean something more", because all films should do that (no?), but to be thorough and subversive. (James Wan can go fly a kite.)
Oh, just imagine being an actor and being offered a script like this. What an absolute pleasure that must be. I do believe that both Toni Collette and Alex Wolff deserved at least an Oscar nomination. ♥
