Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Starring: Ivan Massagué, Antonia San Juan
Co-written with Tony and Michelle.
This guy Goreng, the main character, apparently agreed to be part of this, as apparently it’s one way to get a degree. How does that work? Is there a university that’s like ‘well, you can take classes and educate yourself and prove you’re worthy, OR you can go be in jail in a filthy hole for a while!’ How does that make any fucking sense?
The main dude wakes up with some crazy old man. There are some scenes of them doing naked yoga together (???) and reading and bickering and whatnot – it’s all a big waste of time to eat up screentime.
The main meat of the film for the first act, the idea that this platform brings food down every day and they’re supposed to ration it out – but of course, human greed gets in the way and nobody does it that way. Every man for himself, etc. I’m not sure who’s benefiting from this. Is it a science experiment? If so, it’s gone on long enough, I am almost positive. Is it just the cruelty of an uncaring barbaric system? Nice social commentary I guess. But we got over an hour of movie left and I already get the idea! Uh oh!
The old dude ties Goreng up and tries to eat him. Wow – they went straight from honeymoon marriage right into the homicidal phase. They don’t waste time. The old dude reassures Goreng he won’t eat his genitals – well, that’s nice of him.
Where is security during this? And was it worth the degree yet??? I HAVE TO KNOW! But then a crazy lady, I suppose the physical manifestation of Deus ex Machina, comes and murders the old dude just in time. What a convenience.
Then Goreng gets stuck with this other lady who has a dog, who I guess was the administrator for this place who let him in in the first place? Why is she there? I have no idea and the movie doesn’t seem to care. Character development is never really a concern here. They don’t really explain anybody’s motives. This lady is mostly there for exposition we couldn’t get elsewhere, basically spoonfeeding the audience the whole plot about how the prisoners are supposed to ration out food and there should be enough for everyone if they do. We get it! The blinking garish neon sign of your “smart social commentary” is starting to hurt my eyes!
In between all of this, the ghost of the old man returns to haunt Goreng and, mostly, waste more screen time. 98% of the reason for this is wasting time!
I guess some type of a plot finally starts up as the lady and Goreng hatch a plot to try and regulate everything to help everyone eat. The lady just tries to ask nicely, but unfortunately, the kinds of people who exist in a prison like this don’t respond to asking nicely. Goreng then threatens to shit in their food if they don’t listen. Finally, character development! He doesn’t ever shit in the food that we see, though. That’s a shame as it would have made this movie better to me at least a little.
They spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to make this happen and it doesn’t work, so the lady ends up hanging herself, with the intention of letting Goreng eat her. This leads to more hallucinations of the old dude telling him to eat her. The old dude’s ghost also says he was more polite because he didn’t just stab anyone to death – instead he was nice about his homicide attempts. Man, I don’t know, I guess this word vomit is supposed to be a ‘moral gray area’ type of character thing for Goreng. It doesn’t work at all and is stupid as shit! Good job!
I guess then he ends up with this other guy who is sort of manic and crazy, trying to climb up each level to get to the hole. Goreng and this guy team up to make a ‘statement’ to the administration of this prison by stopping anyone from eating the food. This is actually a little bit of an interesting plot, which I assume is why they made us wait an hour before getting to it – because the writer/director/etc are sadistic fucks and want us to experience the movie the same way the characters do, starved for anything of substance.
So then we get a few somewhat OK moments as Goreng and the guy try and stop anyone from eating in order to save food for the lowest levels and ‘make a statement’ - I’m not sure if both of those are the same goal, or if one contradicts the other; it’s not that clear. There are a few bloody ass fight scenes that are kinda entertaining, if exploitative and goofy. And at least Goreng finally has a fucking goal here. Imagine that – a character who wants something! It’s like finding an oasis after dying of thirst in a desert in this fucking movie.
They find a small child on one of the levels and end up saving her rather than finishing their mission. I guess children weren’t allowed in here which is why this is shocking. But as we’ve seen, this prison doesn’t care if inmates cannibalize each other or hang themselves! So it’s just whatever. They decide they’re fucked anyway and just stay down there, instead letting the little girl ride up on the platform, deciding SHE is now the ‘statement’ to the administration! Ooohhh!
...Nah, they’ll probably just give her to an orphanage and keep doing things the way they always did. Or was that cynicism and pointlessness the ‘message’ all along? If so, fuck this shit anyway.
No world-building to help us contextualize anything, and I hated all these characters actively throughout the movie. I sure hope ole Goreng felt good about his choices to do this to get a degree. Don’t watch this shit, man. This movie sucks and I'd prefer getting the coronavirus to watching this, which I'll regret writing if I do end up getting the virus.
Image copyright of its original owners.
No comments:
Post a Comment