There are five films that seemed to have both shocked and awed the Mexican Film festival crowd.
Click HERE to watch the 5 trailers.
The four of the five clips (Martyr, Vinyan, Idiots and Angels, and Let the Right One In) could be generally grouped under horror, which emphasizes the idea of using rating as a genre tool, as Altman writes. So then, how do you appropriately categorize films that are meant to scare, mean to be subversive, and are expected to be so?
It seems to me as if, these films are in a separate genre than just Horror in that they perhaps horrify and thrill even beyond audience expectations of such a genre. From just watching the trailer for Martyr, it doesn’t seem like your typical horror film. And it isn’t! Checking on IMDB, there are about 40 genres (most of them subversive and confusing) it is cross-listed under, including “Underground Complex”, “Lesbian Kiss”, “Quest for Knowledge”, “Gratuitous Violence”, and “Secret Entrance.”
Idiots and Angels is a film clearly geared towards adults, yet, it is animated. The animation itself is strange—it has a very transformative and metaphorical quality about it, and its grayness sets a very bleak mood. They portray transformations that we are definitely not used to seeing—in a single sequence, we see the rain morphing into shaving cream, then faucet water, then milk in cereal, then to tears.
Lastly, The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, is a Korean Western movie. Yes, you read correctly, a Korean Western. The uber-dramatization, the humor, the costumes, and of course the pop/hip-hop music playing throughout serves an example of Altman’s fertile juxtaposition, where these elements work together to create a kind of multidimensionality to the film. Can you say….postmodern?
The title of this Korean Western sums it up—this genre that the LA Times has coined as the “11:59” genre, consists of the Good, the Bad, and the just plain Weird.
1 comment:
Haha I'd love to see Angels and Idiots, and the Korean Western. Is this postmodernist trend present only in the film industry, or is it that filmmakers are experiencing what painters did in the late 1800's, authors in the first half of the 20th century and even classical musicians in the 1970's and 80's experienced: a breakthrough in format and technique brought about by the rejection of societal values within the art?
With these films-and the labels at Cinefile- I see a debunking of labels on genres that have existed within the public mind for decades now. Although Altman states that the same labeled genre (like "Western" or "Horror") invokes different perceptions between various groups of people, the makers of these films like the Korean Western are very consciously trying to take it a step further.
It's almost as if they sit down and think about the main characteristics of established genres and try to not only add a qualifying twist of originality, but to completely break all the "rules" and flip the genre on its head. I think it's absolutely fantastic.
I also like the name of the this new genre by the LA Times- the "11:59 Genre"- but I'm not sure it's prudent on its part to try to come up with something all-inclusive of the films that don't fit neatly into our established expectations. If indeed this is part of a burgeoning wave of cinematic postmodernism (something more comprehensive perhaps then the French New Wave of the 1960's), I can't help but think any such attempt now will only be viewed as primitive and laughable later.
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