The Fall of the House of Usher

(James Sibley & Melville Webber/USA/1928)

This 10 minute adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe story is an impressionistic and surreal interpretation that utilises experimental techniques and artistic designs that would have been way ahead of the time in 1928. It disposes of traditional narrative by inter-frame titles and relies wholly on the audience piecing the story together from the scenes presented. Some background knowledge of the Poe story helps in a full understanding of what’s going on but it also works as a standalone sensory cinematic experience. 

Full of multiple exposures and chiaroscuro lighting it resembles a dream at times, or an opium reverie (the drug is referenced in the original story). Some of the set design looks decidedly Cubist in style and is reflected too in a lot of the shot framing. The clashing montage of stairs and the random words appearing as things escalate perfectly portray the psychosis on screen. It builds tension to its climactic scenes of the “fall” of the house in visuals and music and is an amazing piece of cinema for its time.

(4.5/5)

The Midnight Parasites

(Yoji Kuri/1972/Japan)

Imagine The Fantastic Planet had fallen through the arse end of an event horizon into Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and you’ll be near enough to the 9 minutes of depraved surrealism that is Yoji Kuri’s The Midnight Parasites. With an overriding theme of consumption and excretion as a metaphor for the cycle of life and at times an obvious critique of the capitalist system of consumption and production (witness the Centipede like image of figures crouching in a circle, shitting money to be eaten by the person behind), it is a bizarre but pointed assault on the sensibilities of the viewer. 

The animation is close to kids’ programmes of the time, with softness, lots of curved edges and genuinely very like The Fantastic Planet in places. This deliberate style only adds to the feeling of dislocation it induces. It is sound tracked by a playful and goofily sinister score of undulating drones and picked guitar notes. A real treat: The Midnight Parasites

(4/5)

Neon Demon

(Nicolas Winding Refn/2016/France, Denmark & USA)

Refn delves into the world of fashion modelling in this satirical and scathing tale of an adolescent girl, naive and overawed, trying to make her way in Hollywood’s cut throat arena of scantily clad women. It’s nothing new in terms of a story but stylistically he takes the pomp and sheen of that world and reflects it back from the cinema screen as a crass and shallow image of itself. It is visually luxurious and seeping in allegory. The established models have modified themselves and their habits so much to adapt to what is expected of them to work within the industry that they react with spite and aggression to the purity and apparent innocence of Elle Fanning’s Jesse. However, the jaded, cynical and downright malicious photographers and model selectors salivate over Jessie and soon she is a star. This provokes further reaction from the other models and from Jesse herself as she inescapably changes with the growing limelight and attention.

Neon Demon is an exquisitely crafted film but careens dangerously close to the very exploitation it is critiquing. There are extended sequences that meld together and have a dream like quality and the symbolism is at times cringingly obvious. And therein lies the problem with it, it looks beautiful, is put together well and is open to interpretation and thus provokes debate but it seems at times as shallow as the world its depicting, is obvious in narrative and doesn’t really say anything new. Refn has an outspoken love of old slasher flicks and it is difficult not to consider this as a big budget, glossy homage of sorts. But it does induce conversation around its subject and what exactly it is as a film itself and for that it’s worth a watch.

(3/5)