Divided We Fall

I was recommended Xavier Gens’ 2011 film The Divide some months back by a friend. As a fellow purveyor of films of the post-apocalyptic flavour, he said I should watch it and advised that, while the film is not fantastic, my perseverance would be rewarded with a true portrayal of human nature. It sounded like some deep shit (those last two words are actually appropriately literal in one of the film’s more revolting scenes).

So, where does The Divide stand in the pantheon of post-apocalyptic films? Is it a masterpiece like 2009’s bleak and brilliant The Road (my second favourite film)? A stinker like the cataclysmic failure that was 1995’s Waterworld (kill it with fire)? I have read some reviews that proclaim the former and more numerous others that prefer the latter conclusion. Certainly, the film’s Rotten Tomatoes rating of 22% (incidentally the same as my final mark in GCSE Rocket Science) would seem to indicate that the majority of critics think of it more as a troubling poo stain than a satisfying piece of deep shit.

Now, everyone knows that disagreeing with film critics is more fun than agreeing with them and the best ones acknowledge that. What do I think about the film? Well, I’ll get onto that a bit later. First, I will give a short summary of the plot and subsequently propose a big question, the answer to which is neither ’42’ nor ‘money’.

Make Your Mind Up! My thoughts on Only God Forgives

Nicholas Winding Refn is one of my favourite directors, despite the fact I’ve only seen a handful of his films (I should really get round to the others). Those that I have seen, Bronson, Valhalla Rising and Drive, are all simply magnificent. His very stylised and unconventional film-making will certainly not appease everyone, but his films are wonderfully shot and, unlike the brainless Transformers and Fast and Furiouses of the modern era, they actually leave a lot for you to think about yourself.

Whereas Drive could be considered as a move towards the mainstream (not in a bad way) with the casting of Baby Goose and something which resembles more of a traditional plot than Bronson and Valhalla Rising, Refn’s latest film Only God Forgives is perhaps the least conventional of the lot. Gosling is reunited with Winding Refn as an American, Julian, working at a Boxing club in Bangkok which, shock horror, is actually a front for a drug dealing business. When his brother is killed, his nutter of a mother, Crystal, shows up and suggests he should take revenge on the killer, as well as mysterious sword-wielding Thai cop Chang who is somehow involved…

Only God Forgives could be seen as the extreme end of Winding Refn’s style that he has been playing with on his previous 3 films and is ultimately going to divide audiences because of it. Its pace is slow; characters walk slowly, talk slowly (or not at all, Gosling’s character especially has very few lines) and, as with Drive, there is a lot of staring. There are also many shots that appear to not actually be happening, which can be confusing as you are wondering whether what you are seeing is really going on (the scenes of Chang singing on stage to an unmoving audience of uniformed cops are the most notable examples and are initially WTFworthy). Additionally, the film jumps around with no clear structure or indication of where it is going. This all serves to create a surreal experience but one I found to be highly engrossing as it is left to the viewer to attempt to make some kind of sense of it all.

Many will be put off by this and, in their ‘I wish I could give it 0 stars’ reviews will say that the film is slow, boring, pointless, plotless and nonsensical. Indeed, this has happened with other films including the (in my opinion) excellent The Master. It is understandable that these do not appeal to everyone. But the big question here is, yes they may be slow (a supposed ‘insult’ which should translate as ‘doesn’t have an explosion every 20 seconds’) but are they boring, pointless, plotless and nonsensical?

In the case of OGF at least, my answer is a defiant ‘NO’. We need to look at what Winding Refn was trying to make and what it is that we are seeing. Shots come and go as if in a dream. We know next to nothing about the characters who, like the Driver in Drive and One-Eye in Valhalla Rising, are pretty much devoid of any back story or apparent motivation. Swordcop Chang appears to pull his blade out from nowhere, seemingly to pass judgement on his victims. Is any of this happening?

I believe that Winding Refn has created a fantasy film (in the director’s own words it is ‘set in a heightened reality… a fairy tale’). The ‘unrealistic’ aspects confirm this. In some ways the characters felt less like people than fantastical entities waging war. While watching, I was drawn into Bangkok as much as I was Middle Earth in Peter Jackson’s films and I couldn’t look away.

Since it is not taking place in our reality, OGF must have something to say. This is where the viewer comes in and is why those who are more than happy to stick with mindless explosiony blockbusters will say that it bored them because nothing happened. It asks you to decide what it’s all about and challenges you to come up with your own ideas (perhaps some of which the director didn’t even consider, and I think that’s great!). While the film was playing I had a number of thoughts going around my head, about what – or who – Chang, Julian and Crystal represent and of course the relevance of the title. I came away having a pretty good interpretation which, in my mind at least, does give the film meaning. Is it the same interpretation Winding Refn had? Maybe. Probably not. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it makes sense to me, and I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment, as will everyone else who attempts to decipher the film. The message behind Only God Forgives will make people discuss, argue and perhaps even slice off a few limbs with a katana, but any film that provokes that is a winner in my books. Whatever you think of it, it will stay in your mind for a good while, which straight away gives it one up on the vast majority of today’s generic action fare.

If you’re open to films that are weird, different and actually require that you use your noggin, I recommend that you watch Only God Forgives even if only out of curiosity and the fact that it has an absolutely banging soundtrack by Cliff Martinez (though maybe watch Drive first as a test run, it’s on Netflix). I will definitely be interested to hear how other people’s interpretations compare with mine. For now however, I leave you with a couple of quick questions for you to think about while you’re watching the film, ones that helped me come to my conclusions. They are very simple.

Does only God forgive?

What about the Devil?

And thus endeth the word of Tom.

The Purge: Worth the Splurge?

I saw The Purge on 31st May 2013, the very day it was released in the UK. It was a Friday night and I was in the mood for some good clean horror.

I had only known about The Purge since about a month or two ago when I was browsing trailers for upcoming films on YouTube. The concept immediately interested me: a near-future almost utopian America in which unemployment is pretty much non-existant and crime is at an all time low – all because of The Annual Purge. This event unsurprisingly happens once a year and lasts for 12 hours – a single night – during which all crime is fine and dandy.

Remember that kid who put blu tack in your hair when you were a kid? That fucking nobhead who pulled your pants down during P.E. so everyone could see your balls? Ok, well only the first one happened to me (please believe me) and I cannot remember at all who did it as I was like 6 but that is besides the point. Basically, The Purge lets you find such people who have caused you grief and kill them however you like without being punished for it. The rules: all emergency services are shut down for the entire period and apart from certain important government individuals who are conveniently exempt from The Purge, anything goes. What’s rather disturbing is that it works. The American economy is in a better position than ever (mostly because poor people and the homeless are continuously wiped out) and it has become a necessary and respected part of life.

Essentially, this is the plot in a nutshell. Ethan Hawke’s character (I can honestly not remember his name, so I will refer to him as Hawkeye for a laugh) runs a company that kits out wealthy families’ homes with high-tech security systems, allowing them to ‘lock down’ during The Purge, sealing windows and doors with metal shields and using cameras to monitor everything going on inside and outside the house.

The film starts with Hawkeye returning home from work. Everything is all hunky-dory, he chats with a few local customers of his and wishes them a safe night. He gets home and sees his wife, Queen Cersei Lannister, and they have a nice little talk. First impressions are that she seems like a decent nice person, a big change from the last two things I’ve seen actress Lena Headey in (Game of Thrones and Dredd).

Upstairs their daughter is with her typical American generic-looking annoying-ass boyfriend, the sort of person you wonder how anyone can possibly like or put up with, making fucking weird growling noises at each other as if it’s supposed to be cute. It isn’t. They are the sort of characters that, when you are first introduced to them, you already want them to die. Sounds harsh, but a potato is more interesting. I mean, you can turn them into batteries and shit.

Elsewhere in the house, the younger child Charlie (I remember that name because for some reason the song ‘Cheer Up Charlie’ from Willy Wonka kept coming into my head throughout the film) is operating a radio-controlled robot that he has made that is essentially a creepy baby doll with a half-burned face and red eyes mounted on a small tank. It made me think of Sid’s messed up toys from Toy Story. The robot carries a camera which feeds the live footage through to a special pair of glasses worn by Charlie. You know, a normal thing for a kid to be playing with.

After locking down for The Purge, Charlie looks at the surveillance feeds and notices a man on the street running and shouting for help. He has clearly escaped from some bad people. What happens next annoyed me in the trailer and still annoyed me a bit in the film – the kid deactivates the security and lets the man in. This initially seemed a bit unrealistic to me, but makes a bit more sense as we learn from a bit of dialogue that Charlie is not The Purge’s biggest supporter. Things go from bad to worse: the stranger legs it and hides in the family’s obscenely large house, a bunch of upper-class uniformed students wearing creepy masks turn up outside and demand that, if the family does not turn the escaped man (who is revealed to be a simple homeless person, one of many targeted by this group of posh twats), they will break into the house and kill everyone. Not great news, especially when only moments before the family were probably looking forward to a nice night watching the Shrek films or something. That’s the set-up. Shit proceeds to go down.

So, what is The Purge (the film)? From the original trailer I assumed it was a horror, and was surprised to see Wikipedia labelling it as a sci-fi thriller. I’m not sure where the sci-fi tag came from, it is possibly because the film is set in 2022 and features this ‘what if’ kind of future society, but I woudn’t call it a sci-fi film at all. I would say it is a thriller with some horror elements. There are a few jump scares and the purgers wear unsettling masks, but this film focusses on creating a consistently tense atmosphere rather than going for scares.

Upon returning from the cinema, I posted this to my Facebook:

‘The Purge review in 4 words: fucking tense as fuck.’

Because it really is. It’s that sort of film that, once it gets going, keeps you on edge, never giving you chance to calm down. You constantly feel unnerved, unable to sit comfortably in your seat, your heart going all ‘ba dum ba dum ba dum’. Yes there are the obligatory quiet sections followed by loud jump scares, but rather than being gimmicky I believe they add to the effect. It’s oppressive, especially with the added nature of claustrophobia you get from a film set in a single location. In the dark. The atmosphere a film creates is very important and in my opinion The Purge nails it. I actually love films that make you feel uncomfortable, it’s why Hostel 1 and 2 are two of my favourite horror films. It gives you that experience.

It is because The Purge does this so successfully that I can forgive its uninteresting characters. Cersei is the best of the four both character- and acting-wise; Hawkeye is incredibly generic, the daughter is pretty much a piece of wood and Charlie will probably annoy you with the decisions he makes that some may consider unrealistic. To tell the truth, I was incredibly irritated for about 5 minutes after one of the things he did, but the film moved on and so did I.

What annoyed me most however was not the film itself, but the response of a number of audience members. I did not know what size audience I was expecting (I mean, I’ve been to see a horror film before where there were only 4 or 5 people watching, including me) so was rather surprised when the room was almost full. As would be expected there was a fair amount of muttering throughout but what bothered me was the laughter that came at certain points in the film. I was slightly frustrated as I did not find the film in the slightest bit funny and was even more confused when someone behind me commented at the end that the film was ‘funny as fuck’. The two friends I saw the film with were amongst those who laughed; I asked them about it and they said they were laughing at the questionable actions of the characters and the odd behaviour of the masked purgers as they waited outside the house. Personally I found their behaviour intimidating rather than amusing, but I believe that films such as this will always divide people like this. The same happened when I went to see Paranormal Activity a few years ago (which, incidentally, was a film I didn’t like). You either get involved with it, caught up in the atmosphere, or you don’t. If you are distanced from the material, horror can often be comedic. It’s why comedy horror films like Drag Me To Hell can work so well and why it’s easy to laugh at badly-made horrors.

As for the story, yes it’s in some ways predictable, but it is still a tight, cleverly-written story that makes you think and is, in its concept at least, original. A big deal is made about the moral aspects of the Purge system and you are encouraged to wonder what such a society would be like. Would it work? Would you or people you know take part? Hopefully the answers to those questions are ‘no’ but it’s very interesting nonetheless.

The Purge is not a perfect film. The characters on the most part can be likened to dry shredded wheat and you may guess what’s going to happen in the next few minutes. It is however a tightly-crafted thriller that sustains its pace throughout the 88 minutes and succeeds in keeping you on the edge of your seat. It is all about the experience you have while watching it and, like all good films, it draws you into its world. If you really appreciate this type of filmmaking, you will find much to like. If not, perhaps expect an enjoyable ride with a few laughs along the way. Just don’t laugh where I can hear you or I’ll come after you next Purge.

Especially if I find you’re the one that put fucking blu tack in my hair all those years ago.

And thus endeth the word of Tom.