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Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)
There is a lot about this movie that I really, really liked and a lot about it that I just didn't care for.
The first half is absolutely great. Setting up television is treated as the bringer of the new day and the goodnight kiss was perfect. The world of the media pirate was treated just as it should have been. The scene of life in the first half of this movie is like the modern day scene of the Stile Project. Violence and eroticism are treated with little discourse, as if they're so common place that they don't even need discussing. However the casual handling of such socialy decadent material isn't a reflection of the laxing of modern man's standards, but a fetishistic portrayl of their needs. It's like smoking a cigarette. Those who are smokers don't need it pointed out with a heavy hand, but they need it in their life and the method they go about satisfying that addiction is so specific and so detailed that it could be considered a fetish.
That's how Cronenberg treats the role of media in man's life. And I loved it. But then the film starts getting weird. I like weird, to a degree. And though it wasn't actually nonsensical, it started to come off that way. The message of the film starts to become buried right as it should actually start shining outwards. It isn't that it is too weird to understand, it all makes sense, it's just that the movie takes a turn into the realm of oddity, as opposed to the first half of the film which is viewing the oddity by proxy. I liked that the film started off with the social commentary that we all have a fetish for the weird, for the violent, for the pornographic. I liked how it began to mirror its own commentary, we'd gaze at the cathode ray tube with a fixation equivalent to that of the on screen characters. However, once the character's fixation on the analog pleasure provider was removed, so was mine.
I found myself loosing interest in any resolution to the film. The film broke me away from the point it was trying to make. Which doesn't really make sense because I actually liked everything that was going on in it. I absolutely loved the visuals. I loved the makeup and 'creature' effects that were used. It subscribes to the same school of alter-reality, almost Lovecraftian, multipersonality makeup. Basically, the effects of the film are not hyper-realistic, but they're realistic enough that we accept them as being real only in this alter-reality that exists simultaneously with our reality. I love that stuff. John Carpenter used it very heavily in In The Mouth of Madness and Cronenberg does the same here.
So why did I loose interest? I'm not sure. I think it's because the movie shifts away from the self-indulgent nature that requires the viewer's participation to complete itself and starts to remove the viewer from the equation, perpetuating itself entirely within the realm of the film. The first half bleeds into the reality of this world, but the second half destroy's the reality of this world. While it works in context of the story I felt it didn't really work in actual execution, cinematically.
Either way it's a great movie about the trend of man kind to become completely addicted to the cathartic nature of media. It's good commentary on the subconscious addiction we have to our television. How they begin to boss us around when we think we're really in control (which is quite literally the first thing shown in the movie as the television commands the awakening of James Wood) But I definitely liked the first half much more than the second half.
4 out of 5
The One Sentence Review: Videodrome is a great exploration of the psyche of man consumed by media and while it doesn't fall apart in it's second half, it becomes somewhat dissatisfying.
That said, "Long live the new flesh." is a line I have engrained into my library of film quotes.
There is a lot about this movie that I really, really liked and a lot about it that I just didn't care for.
The first half is absolutely great. Setting up television is treated as the bringer of the new day and the goodnight kiss was perfect. The world of the media pirate was treated just as it should have been. The scene of life in the first half of this movie is like the modern day scene of the Stile Project. Violence and eroticism are treated with little discourse, as if they're so common place that they don't even need discussing. However the casual handling of such socialy decadent material isn't a reflection of the laxing of modern man's standards, but a fetishistic portrayl of their needs. It's like smoking a cigarette. Those who are smokers don't need it pointed out with a heavy hand, but they need it in their life and the method they go about satisfying that addiction is so specific and so detailed that it could be considered a fetish.
That's how Cronenberg treats the role of media in man's life. And I loved it. But then the film starts getting weird. I like weird, to a degree. And though it wasn't actually nonsensical, it started to come off that way. The message of the film starts to become buried right as it should actually start shining outwards. It isn't that it is too weird to understand, it all makes sense, it's just that the movie takes a turn into the realm of oddity, as opposed to the first half of the film which is viewing the oddity by proxy. I liked that the film started off with the social commentary that we all have a fetish for the weird, for the violent, for the pornographic. I liked how it began to mirror its own commentary, we'd gaze at the cathode ray tube with a fixation equivalent to that of the on screen characters. However, once the character's fixation on the analog pleasure provider was removed, so was mine.
I found myself loosing interest in any resolution to the film. The film broke me away from the point it was trying to make. Which doesn't really make sense because I actually liked everything that was going on in it. I absolutely loved the visuals. I loved the makeup and 'creature' effects that were used. It subscribes to the same school of alter-reality, almost Lovecraftian, multipersonality makeup. Basically, the effects of the film are not hyper-realistic, but they're realistic enough that we accept them as being real only in this alter-reality that exists simultaneously with our reality. I love that stuff. John Carpenter used it very heavily in In The Mouth of Madness and Cronenberg does the same here.
So why did I loose interest? I'm not sure. I think it's because the movie shifts away from the self-indulgent nature that requires the viewer's participation to complete itself and starts to remove the viewer from the equation, perpetuating itself entirely within the realm of the film. The first half bleeds into the reality of this world, but the second half destroy's the reality of this world. While it works in context of the story I felt it didn't really work in actual execution, cinematically.
Either way it's a great movie about the trend of man kind to become completely addicted to the cathartic nature of media. It's good commentary on the subconscious addiction we have to our television. How they begin to boss us around when we think we're really in control (which is quite literally the first thing shown in the movie as the television commands the awakening of James Wood) But I definitely liked the first half much more than the second half.
4 out of 5
The One Sentence Review: Videodrome is a great exploration of the psyche of man consumed by media and while it doesn't fall apart in it's second half, it becomes somewhat dissatisfying.
That said, "Long live the new flesh." is a line I have engrained into my library of film quotes.