On Exploitation...

In my earlier post about Jodrowsky's 'El Topo', I should've pointed out that my specific beef with it was Jodrowsky's use of gratuitous sex and violence in his movie. The sex and violence in it is meant to be a thrill, a 'turn-on', not an element of the story that's integral to its development. Put it this way, as a rule of thumb, when the titties, car-chases, and exploding heads aren't on screen, and the movie goes dead, you're watching an exploitation thriller.

Sort of like in traditional porn movies, where the story exists merely as a premise for all the fuckin'. As David Mamet tells us in 'Bambi vs. Godzilla', we really don't care why the pizza man happens to catch the bored girl in the shower, or the pool boy happens to be cleaning the pool out just as the rich housewife's bikini top falls off, it's all just a pretext for the fornication. So too with most action thrillers.Not that I'm getting all moral on you, mind. I enjoy my share of 'titties, car chases, and head explody' as much as the next vicarious thrill-seeker. I just don't want it sold to me as a pop-mystic experience...

...Or as a history lesson, like in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. (C-) We know we're in for a ride when the first scene is of a tapir getting graphically impaled by a Mayan punji trap. There's torture, decapitations, brutal disemboweling, and we even get a shot of the most painless natural childbirth ever. (The actress gives birth standing up in a flooding well, and her entire reaction is along the lines of getting a splinter removed.) Oh, I forgot, there's a dick joke near the beginning, to get us on the side of the 'good' Mayans who live in the forest.

Anyhoo, the bad 'city' Mayans decimate their village, enslave the survivors, haul 'em all back to the main city, (during which we're subjected to a travelogue of Ancient Mayan Culture, though I'll be damned if I can figure out the reason-we see city dwellers collecting chalk, gathering fruits and refuse, buying slaves, and none of it has any point to it, except to perhaps demonstrate the wasteful decadence of the city Mayans...)

So, the hero is chosen to be sacrificed, an eclipse appears just as he's at the altar, so he's spared. And you guessed it, the previous victims' demise is filmed in gruesome detail. The leader, presumably Montezuma, is presented so you think he's going to affect the story, but no. He's just window dressing, like the elaborate extras who might be priests, or dancers, or whatever. It's Central American Cecil B. DeMille. The hero escapes, and leads the City Mayans who captured him back to his forest, where he dispatches them, John Rambo style. At the end, some conquistadors make an appearance, I assume so Mel can make the point about decadent cultures getting their comeuppance.

Overall, it's clumsy, a trait it shares with Zack Snyder's '300'. You get a sense that Gibson's trying to give us a thrill wrapped in a moral history lesson. In that regard, it's not much different than those 'Mondo Extreme' exploitation films of the early 70's. Sure, there's no condescending narrator, but it's got the same sanctimonious tone...

Hard Candy (B-) Speaking of which, there's a lot of self-righteousness in Hard Candy, and its success is based on playing with our sympathies. Is the under aged Hayley (Ellen Page) truly righteous in her transformation from victim to predator? Is the smoothly ingratiating photographer Jeff (Patrick Wilson) really deserving of her cruelty? Ultimately, the initial tension in the movie just dissipates two-thirds into the film. But what tension! The cat-and-mouse game the two undertake (up until neighbour Sandra Oh shows up and breaks the tension) make for such a genuine thriller.

This is referring back to what I said earlier about exploitation films. I believe that since Hard Candy kind of got lost (as independent films often do) in the summer film glut, It probably got dismissed by most people as another 'Saw/Hostel/Hills have Eyes' gore-fest. Er, the castration scene notwithstanding... My point is, in this movie, the thrill comes from the characters, (esp. Ellen Page in a knockout performance!) and how they interact with each other, and how what they leave unsaid is just as important as what they say. It's unfortunate how the script writes itself into a corner near the end, so the filmmakers have to tie it up with a standard movie device (I ain't gonna reveal...) but overall, it's really worth a look.