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In the old days, before VHS and Betamax, there was something called memory. Films were he-said-she-saids subject to the warping effects of recollection. If and when the films resurfaced after leaving theaters, they were no more representative of their true selves than the memory of the viewer: panned, scanned, faded, fuzzy, edited for content, edited for time, and doused in commercials and the whims of an aerial antenna, i.e. they looked like they'd been maimed in a war. Sometimes they even had to have new footage shot since so much was cut, or because it needed a longer running time to grab a longer time slot. Fans of the film could then argue over what was missing, what was added, what left the cinematic equivalent of phantom limb syndrome.
But there were some films, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1972) or Clockwork Orange (1971) for example that could never, no matter how much they edited them, ever be shown on TV... which meant no one saw them unless at some midnight drive-in revival, for they came to us not as the mutilated but the mutilator --they left us feeling maimed, psychically, or at least ripped open, 'cured' in a Luvidico chopper.
Now of course things are better. nearly all films from Edison onwards are available all the time, unedited and in original aspect ratios on big widescreen HD TVs. It's such a great era for movies that there has to be negative side effects. This post then, via two recent films on Netflix streaming, the indie horror movie Honeymoon and the Nordic import Force Majeure are--in their skewed way--examples of that side effect. Each relies on a certain cinematic familiarity, a common shared iconography that can then collapse as characters within each film are continually forced to confront their own helplessness in the face of real events. As long as they know what movie they're in, they're OK - but they don't know, and neither do we, and that's how history -family, marriage, self, individuality, civilization --slips its bonds, like Jack Torrance sliding into New Years 1928 Gold Room frieze, freezing to death in 1980 at the same time, and forever...
"What's with the ducks?"
"They're fake and hollow; empty inside"
Honeymoon (2014) uses a nice 'suggestion' of a POV home movie, via a Steadicam that whips around the woods and fuses with the opening wedding video to collapse the social sphere in that uber-paranoid honeymoon Antichrist meets Zulawski's Possession way, and gives "birth" like a virus to The Shining crossed with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and that film you sometimes see skulking in the shadows of cable, a Kevin Costner-starring horror film called The New Daughter (2009). So be careful. Exercise caution. You don't need a government to make you paranoid. Sometimes all it takes is a Force Majure, i.e. an avalanche.
The more you know, but you don't really know, that's the thing. Neither Majeure nor Honeymoon should be seen on a first date, or even a last (you might never date again). But they make a great double feature, a before and after of the pros and cons of marrying into the reptilian bloodline. The mother and children in Majeure cope with a father who ran away and left them during an avalanche while they were having brunch at the foot of the Alps on a skiing trip. He's ostracized by the family in the way most American fathers are perhaps used to, resented for the slightest of perceived offenses, but this upscale Nordic foursome seem far cooler --this sprawling resort, located squarely in the middle of the Alps, has a sterile immediacy we can't quite grasp. It's not until the mom later needs help or overreacts to a moment of terror herself, that the balance can be redressed. Is the problem, the thing that drives them apart, that he won't cop to his moment of cowardice, refusing to remember his flight, maybe blocking it out via subconscious mechanisms he can't control, or that she's so unforgiving she can't just let the matter drop? Within minutes of the white out, brunch is back to normal, with only a thin layer of powdered snow on the plates and coffee surfaces to indicate it was ever there... but she can't forget, and he can't remember.
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| Seaside resort town of Innsmouth |
In Honeymoon the de-masculinization comes from the complete ignorance of some kind of strange Lovecraftian de-evolution of which a new young wife is involved. It begins when he finds his new (red-haired) wife out in the woods, naked and with underwear covered in frog egg-style slime. The answer to the mystery of why she needs to be constantly reminded of the most basic things--like her name--asks the question: did he find the right being when he found her naked in the woods in the dead of night, or some Shadow over Innsmouth meets the pod people-style amphibious clone, one able to hold the pose for only so long. Or is it all the break of madness? With the semi found-footage approach we never learn anything, except maybe hottie young director Leigh Janiak would like some Paranormal Activity-style profit margins and may just get delayed Bug acclaim. She deserves both, taking the same male-female approach (her boyfriend Phil Graziadel co-wrote, so the newlywed interactions ring true) that worked so well in both those films. As with all great horror, it becomes harder and harder to distinguish reality from the vividly imagined the longer we're away from consensual reality. We might even realize the truth - there never was a consensus, just a shared delusion. Couples delude themselves that swinging will work when all else fails, or kids, or marriage, or all of it, and then blame themselves, then each other.
Taken together these two film chronicle the age old battle of the sexes and the successive de-evolution of the masculine father in the post-industrial age until you have to wonder if the amount of bad role models for men in films is the result of the films or the men - which came first. It's hard to know for sure, but after watching both those films as I have, you may never look at your wife the same way again after she comes back from the store. Is she really the same wife at all? Maybe not. She may have been impregnated-possessed by a tree branch. Not saying that's the way it is, just realizing we could have done either thing -- run from an avalanche, proposed marriage just to fill the void. Sometimes kissing a girl is enough to tingle me down to the toes. Sometimes we keep kissing, going deeper and deeper, if sex still doesn't get the tingle then maybe without a condom, if that doesn't work, then tell her we love her, if she does too, then?? No, still no tingle. So marriage. Still no tingle - so kids. A smart man would run... but no one is smart until it's far too late. A brief tingle gives way to revulsion and suspicion as one's old tingle-deprived misery surfaces like toadish reminders of all the tingle's that never came.
