NEVERENDING FILM FESTIVAL
#366
March 30, 2025
Hysterical Blindness (2002)
Uma Thurman throws herself into the role of a nervous, desperate 30-something woman who throws herself at a man she describes as having “Patrick Swayze eyes.” That’s all she knows about him, though, and he’s not particularly interested in her, beyond her self-stated ability to “give an incredible blowjob.”
The drama is solid, the cast of characters are fragile and fucked-up like people really are, and the ending feels realistic, too. Serious moviemaking, and seriously good.
My only complaint is the title. Psychosomatic blindness is a real phenomenon, and it would be seriously terrifying. Thurman’s character has been through it just before the movie starts, but after mentioning it in conversation, it never comes up again. That’s not believable, and it’s the only unreal element here.
Juliette Lewis, Gena Rowlands, and Ben Gazara are featured, and all great. Written by Laura Cahill, based on her play, and directed by Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay!, Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala).
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
That’s the end of the H’s, but before the I’s have it, let’s catch up with some out-of-alphabetical-order movies seen recently …
♦ ♦ ♦
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008)
Against a backdrop of bellbottoms and Volkswagen Beetles, this is the true story of the Baader Meinhof Complex, a/k/a the Red Army Faction (RAF), a movement of German radicals in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s.
It becomes sort of a reverse-heist movie — instead of watching a band of bad guys enact their plan bit-by-bit toward success, we watch as things keep going wronger and wronger, whoops after whoops. From plotting what to blow up next, to being captured and imprisoned, to a hunger strike for better prison conditions, to being strapped down and having a feeding tube forcibly shoved down your throat, the trajectory is always downward, much like the historical reality.
Possibly, the audience isn’t meant to sympathize with the RAF, but times are tough and I did. Even when they’re wrong and even when they’re stupid, they’re not as wrong and stupid as what they’re rebelling against.
“These guys who start wars around the world and exterminate people, when faced with violence in their own homes, are dumbfounded.”
The movie follows four principal characters, all written and portrayed unforgettably. There’s the hot-headed but charismatic leader, his cool-headed girlfriend who’s actually the leader, a grumpy police commander trying to understand the terrorists, and a reporter who starts by covering all this, then decides fuck it, she has to be a part of it, and joins in. I’ll admit, that last character is the one who climbed most successfully under my skull.
It’s a two-and-a-half hour action movie, but smart, and subversive simply by fairly showing both sides. Or at least, it seems fair, though my knowledge of these events comes entirely from perusing Wikipedia after watching the movie.
To my recollection of the several thousand movies I’ve seen, there are no American movies like this. It wouldn’t be allowed. American movies don’t allow anything akin to real radicalism on screen except to condemn it.
Real life doesn’t allow it either, in America. The closest I can remember to this kind of leftism is the Weather Underground, in the late 1960s and ’70s, but they were seen as a fringe group. They never had widespread support like the RAF did, if this movie can be believed.
Seeing the radicalism in this flick drives home how masterfully we the people have been corralled here in the States, by our corporate and media overlords. It’s what Noam Chomsky meant, when he said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”
Right-wing ideas are taken seriously in America, and lefty ideas have been tolerated, long as they’re not too lefty, long as they don’t come close to actually being enacted. Universal health care is considered nuts, and simply speaking out against genocide is the new anti-Semitism. The range of American politics is: if you’re not a Republican, you’re a radical.
As for the movie, see it, absolutely.
Verdict: BIG YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Babysitter (1984)
This is a 9-minute short written and directed by Todd Solondz, about a young boy with a crush on his babysitter. Solondz went on to made some edgy flicks about adolescence — Happiness, Palindromes, Welcome to the Dollhouse — so you can rest assured this won’t be Disney. It’s closer to early Woody Allen than later Todd Solondz, though.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Battle Royale (2000)
42 boys and girls, all from the same junior high school, are taken to a deserted island for a fight to the death. There are no rules, except that the killings won’t end until only one kid remains alive. The first two are killed during the orientation session.
Some of the kids are wholesome and terrified, some are just terrified, a few are cowards, a few are heroic, a few are refuseniks who kill themselves rather than kill their classmates, and a few are seriously savage and skilled at the killing.
The moviemakers have fun killing these kids, and you’ll have fun watching them die. It never lets up, and helpfully there’s a running tally of the dead, flashed on screen. But it’s a Japanese movie, never gory by American standards, and Battle Royale is interested in the drama more than the violence.
Thematically, it’s so similar to American mega-franchise The Hunger Games that the latter suddenly seems like a ripoff. Stylistically, though, this is very different — flashier, faster, with more depth. Unlike The Hunger Games, it’s not exactly what you expect, so it delivers more.
Verdict: BIG YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Grandmother (1970)
Continuing my retrospective rediscovery of David Lynch, this is a half-hour featurette about a boy wearing a tuxedo, who plants a potato in his bed, waters it too much, and gets his nose rubbed in his urine by his father, who’s trying to cure bedwetting the way you housebreak a dog. Of course, if you plant a potato what grows is your grandmother.
Being Lynch, it sounds kooky and it is, but there’s more to it than kookiness — it offers alienation, absurdity, mysticism, and other elements of humanity’s inhumanity to humanity.
Lynch wrote it, and created the animation that opens and squats in the middle of the film. The only dialogue is grunts. The sounds are disorienting but never a nuisance. The film stock is color, but Lynch must’ve tweaked a dial to mute everything so it’s nearly black-and-white, which means even a hint of yellow leaps out at you.
Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear, but you won’t even think about turning away. The Grandmother is unsettling and satisfying, unique and visionary, with a few moments that hint at what’s to come in Eraserhead.
Verdict: YES.
3/30/2025
Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.
No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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