Hyena Road: A Call to Arms

So it just so happened that there was a screening on Campus of Paul Gross's latest film Hyena Road. Being interested in war films as I am I quickly registered to see it, but it gets better. Not only did I get to see it, but Paul Gross himself showed up to answer questions about it afterward. I even got to talk to him up close and gave him a link to this blog. Now I can say I've met three major directors, and might even have one reading my work. Anyway, Hyena Road made for am interesting experience. A variety of different emotions went through my head as I watched. It was a very intense movie, as well as a bit disorienting and hard to follow at times (though never to the point of where I was lost). It was also a long film, though it was remarkably well-paced. It might be one of those films you have to watch multiple times to really get.

In Afghanistan, the Canadian military is working on building a road going straight into enemy territory. The Taliban do not take kindly to this and a lot of people have been killed as a result. Meanwhile, a Canadian sniper team led by Warrant Officer Ryan Sanders (Rossif Sutherland) is endangered when they are spotted by insurgents and make a run for it. By total luck, they find a village where they are saved by an Elder. Later, Captain Pete Mitchell (Paul Gross) becomes interested in learning who saved his team, and begins to think it was a legendary soldier known as "The Ghost" who was able to take down the Red Army. Now believing the Ghost could be a valuable asset to the Canadian Armed Forces he makes efforts to track him down. Meanwhile, tensions begin to mount between Pete and Ryan as they both struggle to deal with ethics, military beaurocracy, and their own emotions.

Upon my initial viewing, I had mixed feelings, though that might be from not knowing what to expect. There are many aspects of this film that are hard not to appreciate. Aside from being quite possibly only the second film ever made to show the Canadian military (after Gross's earlier film Passchendaele), there was an intense amount of research that went into making it. Not only did Gross manage to talk to real soldiers and get support from the army, but he even went as far as to actually travel to Afghanistan to witness the war first-hand. Gross even claimed to have seen more action than most soldiers do (apparently not a lot of people actually leave what he called "The Wire"). The story itself is fictional, but a lot of it comes from stories he had heard (the "Ghost" was a real person) and many of the people depicted were based on soldiers he had met.

The action is also very good. One can see the influences of a variety of earlier war films such as Jarhead, Black Hawk Down (which Gross described as, "a beautifully shot movie"), and The Hurt Locker. While the shaky cam can be  a bit excessive at times, it never reaches the point of making it hard to see. There are some intense battle sequences, reminiscent of moments from Black Hawk Down and The Hurt Locker, but in an interesting move there is also an emphasis on the soldiers' everyday life. In a manner that one might argue more closely resembles Jarhead, there is a lot of focus on what goes on when the soldiers are not fighting. As Gross noted, some of them never leave their base, and even those who do often have to deal with extended and tedious waiting. This is especially true of the sniper team, who are shown on multiple occasions waiting long stretches of time just for something to happen. Of course, that also can add to the tension when it does, most notably when they get into moral conflicts with their superiors back at HQ.

Now, one thing I was somewhat worried about when I watched this film was the fact that, even though this is a film dealing with a modern war and focusing on a country whose military has been integrated for years, there are next to no female characters. I mean, surely it would not have hurt to maybe have one or two women in the sniper team, right? What made things different this time was that I was actually able to ask Paul Gross why he made this decision, and his answer was somewhat surprising. As he noted, he actually did make an effort to put female soldiers into his movie, and it was something he struggled with.

According to Gross, even though the restrictions against women have been lifted, there are still some areas where women have yet to enlist. Most female soldiers are infantry, which is a different area from what is shown in the film. In order to become a sniper, one first has to serve in a recon platoon. Even though it is entirely legal, there have not yet been any women serving in recon, and thus not yet any female snipers (though as Gross also noted, there probably will be in the near future). Ultimately, he eventually decided that showing female snipers would have, at least for now, made the film less authentic. Now one could argue whether this reasoning justifies his actions, but there is a bright side. Not only did Paul Gross make an effort to include female soldiers, but he also appears to have no issues with women serving in the military. It is nice to for once find someone who isn't trying to use outdated pseudoscience to argue that women are inferior to men and thus should be excluded by default.

That said, I do feel like the film could have handled its one female lead, Captain Jennifer Bowman (Christine Horne) slightly better. To be fair, Christine does manage a solid performance and her character actually does have her moments to be strong. My main issue is that I felt like she could have had a more active role in the story. This might be just me, but I don't think I would have put quite as much focus on her romance with Ryan. Actually, I probably would have cut the romance altogether. The scenes where they get intimate are handled alright, but this romantic interest did sometimes appear to overshadow the stronger aspects of her personality.

I think part of me also hoped to see her get more directly involved with the action, though one could argue that it would have been difficult to incorporate that into the plot short of her actually joining the sniper team. Of course, the moments where Bowman did get to show her strength of character were still great. I guess I would have just liked to see more of them. Still, even though the result might not be perfect, Gross admitted that he struggled to find a way to make it work, which is more than can be said for a lot of modern war films. If nothing else, there is the possibility that being able to make Jennifer as strong as she was may open the door to future depictions of women in the military. In that sense, she handles the film okay.

Hyena Road is definitely an interesting film, and one I would recommend taking a look at. While it may be long and not always easy to follow, it is an intense look at the ethics and morality of war. I would be okay with watching it again now that I have a better idea of what to expect. It is also a rare attempt to show a war from the Canadian perspective, something that almost never seems to happen. If nothing else, it is worth seeing just for the authenticity. Even Kathryn Bigelow was unable to shoot The Hurt Locker in Iraq, while Paul Gross was able to film on location (at least partially, some of it was also shot in Manitoba). It is a very dark war film and definitely a worthwhile experience.

eXistenZ: The ORIGINAL Inception

Back in 2010 Christopher Nolan came out with his critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated film Inception, which explored the idea of a sophisticated technology that made it possible for a group of people to enter one person's dream. Naturally it messes with the heads of everyone involved, especially given the job was to plant an idea in a person's head. Really, when you get down to it, the whole movie was essentially a backwards heist film (a group of characters devising an elaborate plan to infiltrate a seemingly impenetrable location and get past all the security systems to put something into a safe).

There's no doubting that its ideas were used well. The whole backwards heist plot was wrapped up in a mind-boggling structure wherein the characters had to enter multiple levels of dreams. Over time it becomes a bit harder to tell dream from reality, and in the end we are left to question if what we are seeing is real or if the characters are still in the dream. There are some serious questions of reality, and it is very effective in its delivery, but the idea of exploring different levels of a virtual world and being left unsure of whether you ever left it is hardly anything new.

Imagine, for example, that Inception was made in 1999 on a lower budget. Replace the dreams with video games. Instead of a heist film, perhaps make it more of an action thriller. Put David Cronenberg in charge and you've got the basic setup for eXistenZ, a surreal film in which we experience a video game within a video game in another video game. In all of the strange experiences the characters go through, a few serious and perhaps ultimately unanswerable questions are raised. Do we truly have free will? What is reality? What is illusion? Is there a true reality or only illusion?

The whole movie begins in what seems to be reality, but early on there's plenty of clues that what we are seeing is not what it appears to be. One of the first clues is the appearance of the "gristle gun", smuggled into a demonstration of a new video game by a would-be assassin. This particular device becomes something of a strange motif throughout the movie, but as we find out later on, it was built by Jude Law's character of Ted Piker within the world of a video game. How could something from a video game make it into reality before that game was even played? The only logical answer is that what we think is "reality" is in fact part of the same video game.

There are lots of other little things. Allegra is a pretty strange name, perhaps one chosen to be gender-neutral so that the role could be played by either a man or a woman. Even more bizarre is when she and  Ted Piker (Jude Law) pull aside at a gas station and encounter a station attendant literally just named "Gas" (Willem Dafoe). It could be a nickname, one which could easily have been picked for someone who was never planned to be a major character, or just a name they thought fitting for a gas station attendant.

Also notice the peculiar designs of the gamepods. As Piker notes, making a fully functioning virtual reality system out of animal parts should be impossible. The products themselves look somewhat sickly, like weird molds of flesh attached to the body by what looks like an umbilical cord. It is also curious that Piker has no understanding of how the games work throughout the film, even though he is in a world where he should be surrounded by them. All this provides a handful of small clues to the reveal at the end.

Early on, an assassination attempt is made on game designer Allegra Gellar (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who flees into the countryside with Piker. Unfortunately, it turns out hiding is not as easy as one would expect. Why? Because a lot of people don't want their perceptions of reality distorted. Their position is not to hard to see, and if we were to develop virtual reality of the calibre depicted here, it would not be inconceivable that certain parties would oppose it.

Allegra and Piker go into the game of eXistenZ to find out if there's any damage, but this is where a lot of the questions begin to come up. So far we think we know how to tell the difference between this game and what seems to be reality. It all should be simple enough, but as we've seen, there are little things that hint that this reality is not actually real, at least not in the way that we understand it.

The world of eXistenZ does somewhat resemble the way a video game today might work, the only difference being that you are fully immersed as opposed to watching a picture on a screen and pressing the appropriate buttons or keys. Many of the people they interact with in this segment behave like video game characters, repeating the same lines when prompted and simply going into a "game loop" while waiting for the players to respond to their dialogue.

The two of them are cast as unidentified characters, people who have to follow an unknown plot. Piker eventually goes on to point out that he doesn't like getting dragged along through this game with no obvious plot or goal, but really what he describes isn't much different from what we would consider to be "real" life. Here, free will seems to be almost non-existent, as both Allegra and Piker find themselves doing things out of instinct without thinking simply because the game requires them to. Piker builds the gristle gun out of habit, which also curiously resembles the same weapon used in the opening scene, yet another clue that the "reality" may not in fact be real.

The two of them finally get out of eXistenZ but things get even weirder. During a brief pause session, Piker notes that "reality" suddenly feels more like a game, and there is a reason for that. When the two of them emerge after apparently finishing eXistenZ, they realise that a disease that should have only existed in the game has somehow bled into the real world and infected Allegra's pod. This should not be possible... unless what we've thought was the "real world" was in fact another part of the game. Just like Inception, they've been playing in layers. What we have seen is literally a video game within a video game.

This notion is enforced when an explosion suddenly rocks the lodge at which Allegra and Piker have been staying, and Hugo Carlaw (Callum Keith Rennie), a seemingly fictional character from her game, enters dressed in combat fatigues. Both are confused about how this is possible. The game is destroyed, but what follows seems to play out like it could be in a video game. After evacuating the two leads from a burning building, Carlaw turns on them only to be shot by Kiri Vinokur (Ian Holm). He also has the gristle gun, and his justification for having it is the same as what Carlaw had told them in Allegra's video game (My dog brought it to me).

What becomes especially curious is the way the battle plays out. There seems to be people running all over shooting at each other, and explosions everywhere, and yet our two leads are able to sit in the open unaffected. In theory, with the chaos building up as it is, they should be in danger of being hit by a stray bullet or caught in an explosion... except it's not real. All that chaos is essentially just part of the scenery, probably serving nothing more than to add to the overall atmosphere.

The game may well have been programmed so they would never hit anywhere near the players, allowing for the final confrontation in which both Piker and Vinokur are shot dead. Additionally, if this is part of the game, and there is an end goal, how much of what has happened over the course of the film was a choice made by the characters? The entire game could have been planned from the beginning to end with the players killing each other off until only one remained.

Allegra is the only one left in the end, and then she is finally left to face the truth that she isn't who she thought she was. In fact, she is exactly the opposite. She stands out in the middle of the battle scene, and suddenly finds herself wearing all this other strange equipment. The reveal is that Allegra Gellar never actually existed. The award-winning game designer was herself nothing more than a video game character, and what we thought was reality was in fact part of another game called transCendenZ.

Suddenly we are back where we started, but things are a bit different now. The game controllers are mechanical in nature, and look like something a lot more plausible than the flesh-based controllers seen throughout most of the film. Those were created purely as a stylistic choice for the game.  With her in the room are several of the actors we have encountered over the course of the film, though all of them appear to be very different people from who they were in the game.

If anything, they are the opposites of their in-game characters. The underground anti-game leader that Allegra and Piker met in eXistenZ turns out to be the game's programmer and despite being as psychotic as he was in the game "Gas" seems to be an okay guy outside of transCendenZ.  This is especially notable when the person we have known as the game designer Allegra turns out to herself be a radical who infiltrated a test of this new game with the intention of murdering its creator. She ends up shooting him and his assistant and almost firing on another player before he asks one simple question: are we still in the game?

This final scene seems slightly more realistic than before, but what seemed to be reality also seemed to make sense compared to the world of the game eXistenZ, and we now know that was all a simulation. This could very well be another part of the same video game, or perhaps an entirely different one. Really, when you get down to it, how can you be sure that what you are seeing is real? Countless philosophers have dedicated their lives to solving this problem. If it is not, what is real? Is anything real? Who can say for certain?

Such is the idea explored by eXistenZ. After playing a video game within a video game one can't really be certain if they are still in yet another game. Immersing yourself into a virtual reality makes it hard to tell just what is or isn't real, but in the end does it really matter? After all, who is to say that anything is in fact real at all. Just what exactly is "reality". These are all questions that can never truly be answered, and trying to do so will only result in disorientation and confusion.

In the end, what we have been led to think is reality was nothing more than part of the game. Everybody seemed to have a distinct personality and yet all of them in the end turned out to be just characters created for the purposes of the game. Memories were distorted and inserted. They didn't even know they were in a game the whole time until it was over. Ultimately, how do you know you are not just part of a video game yourself?

This post was written for the O Canada Blogathon hosted by Kristina at Speakeasy and Ruth of Silver Screenings

Don't Do Drugs, Kids: The Lesson to be Learned in Naked Lunch

There is a lot of stuff about David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch I still can’t explain with complete certainty. It is a bizarre movie and at first it is seemingly incomprehensible. However, underneath the giant bugs, the weird aliens, and the surreal international conspiracy, the story is really one about drug addiction. It is certainly an unusual approach to discussing the subject of drugs and how they affect people who take them.

The obvious approach would normally be to clearly show the person's degeneration and how they affect everyone and everything around them. Cronenberg instead opts for a slightly different method by getting inside the head of an addict, and presenting to us how he experiences the effects of taking these weird drugs. The result is a surreal, possibly incomprehensible but strangely brilliant film about just why you shouldn't take any of the weird and unusual drugs people have come up with.

Naked Lunch involves plenty of weird drugs. The whole thing gets started when exterminator Bill Lee (Peter Weller) finds his supply of bug powder mysteriously running short and runs out after starting a job. Turns out his wife Joan (Judy Davis) is the one responsible for its disappearance. She has been injecting the stuff into herself, which according to her produces “a literary high”. It is fitting that something designed to kill bugs is the first of many strange drugs to be introduced. Bug powder is generally meant to kill bugs, and drugs are often known to lead to the deaths of those who become addicted to them.

As Joan describes it “It’s a Kafka high… you feel like a bug.” The reference to Kafka is an early clue to what we are going to be in for with this film. Joan’s remark obviously refers to Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, which centers around a travelling salesman who wakes up to find he has inexplicably transformed into “a monstrous vermin.” The result of the transformation is often depicted as a giant bug-like creature, sometimes with a human face. Later on we encounter many large and similarly grotesque bugs, some of which are merged with typewriters similar to how the hybrid creature depicted in some illustrations of Kafka's story.

Bill tries to consult a specialist, Dr. Benway, for help with Joan’s addiction. He gives him a powdery substance called “blackmeat” made from giant centipedes, explaining the interesting idea that it is to be mixed in with the bug powder. According to Benway, it will gradually block out the part of the brain that gets stimulated by the drug which makes the addict cease to be addicted. If only breaking habits was so easy, and as you would expect, it proves to be too good to be true.

All that really seems to be accomplished is that Bill ends up getting addicted to the stuff himself. He begins hallucinating, and things get weird. He gets “busted” by the cops for having bug powder, and they don’t believe him when he explains he is an exterminator. The two of them note that they have “a bug” in the office and decide to see how it reacts to the powder. What they bring out is a giant box containing what looks like an oversized beetle that begins talking to Bill Lee through the mouth on its anus.

This beetle seems to be completely unaffected by the bug powder. If anything, it actually enjoys it and even asks Bill to pour some on its lips. The bug in question tells Bill that he needs to kill Joan, and suggests that she isn’t even human. Bill quickly realises he is probably hallucinating, which leads him to kill the bug with his shoe and make a run for it. Still, he hasn't broken the habit, and ends up trying to do a “William Tell routine” that results in him accidentally shooting Joan in the head anyway. As if that wasn’t enough, to rub salt on the wound, the glass Bill had meant to shoot off of Joan’s head is the one thing that remains intact.

This is about the point where it starts to become hard to tell where reality ends and hallucinations begin. It looks as though the bugs somehow influenced him to do the deed of shooting his wife, but at the same time, he was hardly thinking clearly. Even stranger is how Joan immediately complies with Bill’s statement, as though they had done it before. Neither was in their right minds at the time, however, given they were both high and possibly drunk.

The possibility of it all being coincidence becomes even stronger when you consider the fact that it this scene was inspired by a real incident in the life of William S. Burroughs, the author of the book the film was (loosely) adapted from. The actual incident happened in Mexico City, but like the movie, it involved Burroughs getting drunk and accidentally shooting his common-law wife while trying to imitate William Tell (a Swiss folk hero said to have shot an apple off a child’s head with a bow and arrow).

Bill Lee ends up meeting an alien creature called a "mugwump" who recommends he buy a specific typewriter and travel to “Interzone” (a shady port somewhere on the African coast). This begins a strange pattern in the narrative. Bill is clearly shown to receive a flight ticket from the mugwump, but later when asked to present it, he pulls out a bag filled with drugs, and similar interactions happen throughout. The fact that he is this confused seems to suggest he is hallucinating encounters like this one with the mugwump. Later on, typewriters appear normal one moment and as living creatures the next. It all ties into that theme of the inability to tell when reality ends and hallucinations begin, very much the sort of feeling an addict might go through.

The big question is whether there is in fact any truth to the existence of "Interzone". We did see that the "ticket" he presented was a bag of drugs, not exactly something that could get him onto a plane. We also never see him actually arriving at the port. It is possible (and perhaps even likely) therefore that he never actually left his home. Interzone, like the bugs, is all a product of his hallucinations.

he ends up encountering an exact duplicate of his wife in the form of Joan Frost (also played by Davis), along with her husband, a writer by the name of Tom Frost (Ian Holm). One thing about these two is that while these people may exist (and indeed were based on a couple Burroughs met in Morocco), their interactions might not be what they seem. There is one scene early on where Tom walks with Bill through a marketplace and tells him (and by extension, the audience) to watch his lips and listen to what he is saying. Sure enough, his mouth is out of sync with his dialogue, and it remains that way throughout the film. 

This suggests that what Bill thinks he hears Tom say does not actually line up with what he is really saying. Taking this logic into account, it seems that Joan Frost may not actually be a doppelganger to Joan Lee, but rather the result of Bill projecting her image onto another person. Perhaps something about Joan Frost reminds Bill of his wife, and in turn with all the other hallucinations going around, he sees her as resembling the latter. This would also justify why his “controller” (a weird typewriter-bug hybrid) insists that he complete his “mission” by seducing her.

Bill borrows a Martinelli typewriter from Tom, only to find it getting murdered by his own. They show an image of the two bugs fighting but in Bill’s delusional state, he could have easily smashed the typewriter without realising it, and that is probably exactly what happened. He is then told that it was an “enemy agent”, which appears to be from his typewriter in its supposed bug form when in truth it is simply his mind trying to rationalise a spur of the moment piece of vandalism.

The idea that these bugs are more or less hallucination is enforced when Bill goes to see Joan, who reveals that Tom also has an Arabic typewriter. He talks her into writing something but everything seems normal at first. Nothing actually happens until Joan is convinced to try some of the black meat. It is only after she does that the machine begins to transform into a bizarre centipede-like creature, and as soon as it falls out the window it turns back into a typewriter. Also note how the housekeeper Fadela (Monique Mercure) shows no surprise or confusion about the presence of such a thing or how it got there.  

The real question is why did she feel the need to throw a typewriter out the window? Well, later on, we see Fadela at a stall in the market selling black meat. Perhaps she is the one who really has the power in the household, and only pretends to be servatile. This is supported by the later scene where she is overseeing the distribution of Mugwump juice and the reveal about who she really is.

Tom then arrives demanding his Martinelli, only to find it smashed. What becomes really strange is that Bill’s typewriter is in its bug form throughout this scene, and yet when Tom goes to take it hostage he never seems to acknowledge that fact. He never questions the fact that the typewriter is talking and desperately trying to get away. Either he is used to seeing typewriters that can move on their own, or he is seeing something very different from us. The most likely explanation is that Bill is hallucinating, and Tom is in fact stealing a normal typewriter.

Bill ends up passed out in an alleyway and spending some time with a local boy named Kiki, who helps him “fix” the Martinelli. However, instead of being a normal typewriter, it comes out resembling a Mugwump’s head. The keyboard is apparently in its mouth, and it is not clear how Bill is supposed to fit the paper into it, but that does not stop him. Adding to the apparent hallucination is one scene where the “mugwriter” seemingly comes to life, transforming into a full mugwump, and begins talking to Lee before turning back into the weird-shaped typewriter.

Bill has to go see a strange man named Yves Cloquet and is accompanied by Kiki when they ride in the former’s “wonderful car”. During the ride, Bill relates an anecdote about a man who somehow taught his anus to speak as part of a circus show, only for it to eventually develop a mind of its own and eventually seal his mouth shut. This is a weird anecdote, even for this movie, but it might just explain a few things.

It is not clear if this man was someone Bill knew or if it was just a story he heard from someone else, but either way it would explain where that one detail about the bugs came from. The bugs seem to have mouths on their anuses throughout the film, and if they are hallucinations, that means they were created by Bill’s own mind. Having a story like that would explain where Bill’s mind got that idea.

At Cloquet’s house, we get to one of the strangest parts of this narrative. Kiki shows affection towards one of Cloquet’s parrots, and is talked into going upstairs to “play with” the others he owns. Meanwhile, Bill tries to get information about Dr. Benway. After the two spend some time talking, Bill walks in on Kiki being gruesomely murdered by Cloquet, now taking on the form of a giant centipede inside a bird cage. I still do not have a solid explanation for this scene.

Finally, Bill decides to get his old typewriter back by giving the mugwump typewriter to Tom Frost, which he accepts with gratitude and returns Bill his old device. One thing that is worth noting is that Tom refrains from opening the case containing the typewriter on-screen, so we do not know for sure if what he will pull out is in fact the mugwump head or if it is just a regular-looking typewriter. As noted before, the mugwump head was likely a product of Bill’s delusions.

Unfortunately, when Bill opens the case containing his typewriter, he finds it tortured and apparently dying. If there is no international conspiracy going on, than why would Tom Frost resort to torture in an effort to extract information from a regular typewriter? However, Tom did have every reason to be mad at Bill. The man was responsible for smashing both of his typewriters and showed no sign of remorse. It would not be inconceivable that Tom, who in his frustration might not have been thinking clearly, smashed the typewriter in a fit of anger (or possibly as an attempt at revenge). The mugwump typewriter was supposedly forged from Tom’s Martinelli, so in a sense Bill is returning it to its original owner. This in turn allows the two men to reconcile their differences, and as a result by returning Bill his own typewriter he is coming clean about what he had done.

The climax of the film comes up when Bill arrives at a factory filled with mugwumps who are all chained and hanging from the ceiling. Numerous people are drinking some kind of milky fluid out of the tubes in their heads, including several we have seen at different points in the film. Fadela is shown overseeing the process, establishing that she is evidently the one in control and not the other way around (ironic given she was established as the Frosts’ house keeper).

There is one thing about Fadela that comes up, though, which is that she is actually a man in drag. It turns out she is none other than Dr. Benway, the man behind everything. He gave Bill the black meat knowing it was a highly addictive drug and with the intent of drawing him into all kinds of weird things. Apparently black meat is going out of style and mugwump juice is the new industry. Bill agrees to work for Benway in a place called Annexia as long as Joan Frost can go with him.

At the borders of Annexia, Bill ends up in a strange situation. A group of patrol guards pull over his car and ask for some identification. They demand proof that he is a writer by telling him to “write something”. Bill responds by waking up Joan Frost telling her it is time for them to work on their “William Tell routine”, much as he did with Joan Lee. The results are also the same, he shoots her in the head, while the glass on top remains unharmed. The border patrol guards then welcome him into Annexia.

It is harder to pinpoint exactly what goes on in this final scene, but it is possible that Bill is still delusional. The patrol guards’ outfits do look Eastern European, so it is possible he could have ended up in a real country thinking it was Annexia. The real question is why they let him in after watching him shoot a woman for no apparent reason. I’m afraid I don’t know for sure.

Nash and Tara of the website Radio Dead Air have a series called W.T.F.I.W.W.Y. (I’m not spelling out the full title) in which they discuss weird and bizarre news stories that often leave you wondering what the people involved were thinking. As a result, they have developed a few “rules for life” that make sense when you see their show, and one of those rules is “the old drugs still work”. That’s not to say that they encourage drug use, just that the stuff some people get high off of makes things like weed seem mild by comparison. I’m not sure there is a film that better exemplifies that rule than David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch. 

Really, though, it is something that is likely to deter anyone with the slightest interest in any kind of drug use. We should stop showing drug PSA’s to the kids and instead just do screenings of Naked Lunch. That will keep them away from illegal and harmful drugs. Don't do drugs or you'll get dragged into a surreal international conspiracy with giant talking bugs.

This post was written for the O Canada Blogathon hosted by Kristina at Speakeasy. and Ruth at Silver Screenings

David Cronenberg's Videodrome and the Role of Television in Our World

You might want to savor reading this post, because this is probably the only time on this blog you will ever hear me talk about pornography, snuff films, exploitation films, and other films of the sort. I'm not normally big on pornography for a variety of reasons, but my main justification is that I just don't like the idea of turning on a movie simply to watch two people I don't know have sex. I'd much rather be engaging in it myself than watching two strangers go at it. I'll also go out and say I'm even less inclined to see snuff films for reasons that should be obvious to any sane person.

While David Cronenberg's science fiction/horror film Videodrome doesn't exactly fit into any of those categories, they do play into its main narrative. Beneath the increased blurring of reality from hallucination, the twists and turns, the body horror, and the brown wig worn by a singer from a band called "Blondie", Videodrome is a strange piece of social commentary regarding the role television plays in our society. The technology used might be a bit dated but the underlying message is every bit as relevant today as it was back in 1983, if not in fact slightly more so.

The whole thing begins with Max Renn (James Woods), the producer of a small-time television network somewhere in the messed-up society of near-future Toronto, Canada. He is overjoyed when his technical assistant Harland (Peter Dvorsky) unscrambles a pirated television signal and finds a new show called "Videodrome". The show in question turns out to have no plot or characters, and is in fact literally nothing but an hour of non-stop torture and murder. That doesn't sound like a very appealing show, does it? 

I probably would not be inclined to view such a program, but in this messed-up world Max is quite taken with how "realistic" it is and begins taping it. One thing that is quickly established is that television is a dominating industry, just as it is in our world, but here perhaps even more so. There doesn't even seem to be much regard for quality anymore, and a lot of what is broadcasted is the stuff that we often see as dirty. Pornography seems to be a big thing now, especially evidenced by the fact that even Max is fed up with it and wants to find something new. 

Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry) sums it up early on when she is being interviewed. As she puts it, we live in a world where we are constantly looking for some form of stimulation, and that may in fact be extremely relevant today, perhaps even more than in 1983 with the internet. How many of us have spent hours watching videos on YouTube desperately trying to get some sort of stimulation out of pure and utter boredom? I know I have. 

Later on, we see Max and Nicki hanging out at the former's apartment with the obvious intention of having sex. One of the first things we see her do is rummage through Max's collection of VHS tapes looking for pornography (which she hopes will get her sexually aroused). This in itself seems a bit unusual. While there is no established rule and there probably are women who watch and even enjoy porn, the industry is more commonly associated with men.  You see men depicted enjoying porn far often than women, so the fact that it is Nicki who is actively looking for the porn is an interesting change and in some ways helps to establish how even she is being influenced by television. What she does find, however, is the snuff show Videodrome, which fascinates her to some... unhealthy levels. 

Not only is she captivated by the show, but it gets to the point where she openly decides to "audition" and participate in it. The fact that she wants to get onto a show that features nothing but nonstop torture is troubling enough, but then Max finds out the reason why the show is so "realistic" is because all the violence depicted is happening for real. From this point on, we never get a chance to see Nicki in person again. All subsequent appearances are on a television screen.

This is also about the point where it starts to become harder to distinguish reality from hallucination. Characters on the television (particularly Nicki) suddenly seem to start talking to him in pre-recorded material. Max seeks answers from Professor Brian O'Blivion (Jack Crely), who seems to know what's going on, but matters are only complicated when he finds he cannot get a one-on-one discussion and can only hear from him through prerecorded messages. 

As it turns out, Brian O'Blivion actually died several months before the film began, which makes it all the more bizarre that he was able to talk to Max. Matters are further confused when Nicki arrives during one of O'Blivion's recordings and strangles him, before she begins addressing Max. Even though the whole thing is supposedly pre-recorded, she seems to be aware of Max's presence. This is also the infamous scene where Max ends up having sex with his television, perhaps yet another (really strange) metaphor for how it has messed up his life.

Then of course there's all the body horror which may or may not be hallucinated. At one point, Max finds an open slit in his stomach which he slides a loaded gun into before suddenly finding that hole to have disappeared and the gun nowhere to be found. During the climax one hand alternates between being fused to said gun and appearing normal. Tapes appear to transform in Max's hands. It all gets to the point where one can hardly be certain where reality ends and the hallucinations begin. Videodrome has been affecting his mind from the beginning, but it is now that we can see it really taking hold of him. 

Worse still, as Max eventually discovers, he has become an unwitting test subject set up by a wealthy businessman who was also working with Harlan. One of his hallucinations is recorded, and in a bizarrely sick moment he finds himself on the set of Videodrome, where he repeatedly whips a television displaying Nicki, who still reacts with pain.

In the end, Max becomes nothing more than a puppet controlled by other networks. He is literally programmed to do as he is commanded (to the point where people literally put a tape into him) and he can't break free, much as it is hard for our own society to break free from the influence of television. Even when he is arguably "liberated" by Bianca O'Brien, he is still being manipulated by a television network. While her station seems slightly more benevolent compared to the guys behind the Videodrome signal, Max has been stripped of anything that made him an individual and is only capable of doing as she commands.

The only escape is his own death, and even that is not completely certain. Does he die in the end, or does he continue to live on the same as Nicki and Professor O'Brien seemingly have? The film ends there, on that open note. Whatever happens next, Max Renn is no longer the man we came to know in the movie's beginning. His mind has been distorted and manipulated by the television signal, and there is no definitive way he can set himself free.

We may not quite have anything like the signal used in Videodrome just yet, but one cannot deny that television plays a major role in our society. It does influence our everyday lives in ways we might not even notice. It's hard to break away from the grip of television programming. Even if you don't watch it regularly most of us have some show or another we tune in to see. Like it or not, television may very well be controlling your mind, and like Max Renn, there is nothing you can do to stop it.

This post was written for the O Canada Blogathon hosted by Kristina of Speakeasy and Ruth of Silver Screenings

Where Are the Canadian War Films?

Back in middle school, I was a bit crazy and as I've said before I often found myself living in the past. While the other boys in my classes were quoting the latest episodes of South Park, Family Guy, Robot Chicken, or whatever other shows they were watching at the time, I was always going back to the Marx Brothers and Monty Python. I've told this before, but it hardly stopped there. 

You see, in addition to enjoying a lot of old movies, I also became fascinated with history. It became one of my favourite subjects and while I was fascinated by everything, I would often find myself going through phases where I would fixate on specific points in time. Just seeing Zulu got me fascinated with the Anglo-Zulu war, and later on I became fascinated with the Battle of the Alamo after seeing John Wayne's take on it. I used to read my history textbook for fun (something that always baffled my classmates) and I remember once participating in a futuristic text-based RPG where I ended up with over a million different characters and all but maybe two or three were descendants of people who fought in famous battles (and I certainly made sure they didn't forget that fact).

However, one particular event that grabbed my attention was the First World War. I'm not sure precisely what it was that got me fascinated by it. Part of it may have had to do with that conflict being featured from time to time on Monty Python's Flying Circus but I think it also had to do with the fact that World War I failed to receive as much attention as World War II. I became particularly fascinated with the aviation of the time, and I even began to develop a special respect for the Canadian pilot Billy Bishop. I even went as far as to constantly put Billy Bishop into my stop motion LEGO movies (regardless of how much sense it made for him to be there) and write an essay about his accomplishments in middle school.

So naturally, I enjoy a good war film now and then, and there are plenty, but eventually one thing started to dawn on me, which while technically regarding films dealing with any 20th century war, especially applies to World Wars I and II. There are plenty of films dealing with both wars, from a variety of perspectives. There are World War II films shown from the point of view of Germany like The Desert Fox, Das Boot, Stalingrad, or the even more controversial Downfall. France has had its turn now and then (the American-produced Paths of Glory), as has Russia (Ballad of a Soldier, Doctor Zhivago, Enemy at the Gates), and Japan (Torah! Torah! Torah!, Grave of the Fireflies, Letters From Iwo Jima); 

What about Canada? So far, disregarding television programs and documentaries, I have found a grand total of one Canadian war movie: Passchendaele. This particular film has received mixed reviews (the common consensus, at least on IMDB, goes that it has some amazing battle scenes but could have done without the love story), but at least it does a better job of setting a romance against the backdrop of a famous tragedy than Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. I personally enjoyed it, and would not mind seeing it again. This is a movie that is not only Canadian-produced with a largely Canadian cast, but also depicts Canada's role in a major historical event. 

Unfortunately, films such as this seem to be a rarity. While there are plenty of war films dealing with other countries, the two that seem to be especially dominant in this market are America and Britain. Most of the best-known war films are shown from one of those two perspectives, or in some cases use a bit of both (i.e. The Great Escape and The Bridge Over the River Kwai). However, out of those two, America is the one that appears to have the greater output.

When you hear "war movie", it is likely that a large portion of the titles that immediately spring to mind will be American: The Caine Mutiny, The Enemy Below, The Dirty Dozen, Patton, The Big Red One, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Flags of Our Fathers, Inglorious Basterds, and the upcoming Fury and that's only for the Second World War. For instance, how many films are there that show the Vietnam war from any perspective besides the Americans? I have not found any yet. 

The thing is, American war films seem to enjoy making it look like America is the greatest and they did everything. Take the opening of Saving Private Ryan, for example. Going on this scene alone, one could easily get the impression that the Normandy Landings were a purely American effort on one beach, when in fact it was joint effort by several different countries (including us Canadians, which you probably didn't realise because nobody ever bothers to show other countries' involvements) across several different locations. 

According to Wikipedia, America has also produced a rather wide range of World War I films, and while not all of them are from the American perspective, I feel the need to bring up one that is. Sergeant York is a fairly well-known World War movie centred around a heroic American soldier. 

Well, I hate to break it to you, but America doesn't exactly have a long list of contributions to World War I. In fact, America was barely involved with that war. We Canadians were out there right from the start, and got involved with several key battles (Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Somme, and Regina Trench, just to name a few). We still get recognition in Belgium for all our contributions to the war. We also had some of the greatest pilots, including Billy Bishop who has a long list of heroics; not to mention that the famed Red Baron was reportedly shot down by a Canadian, Roy Brown.

Now, once in a while I have seen war films that have acknowledged Canada's presence, but not usually in the most satisfying way. A few of them do make a point of mentioning Canadians, so that's fair enough. On an even rarer occasion we get a war film which actually features a Canadian in a notable role, but played by a non-Canadian. This was one of the few flaws of the otherwise pretty good The Bridge on the River Kwai.

You have American actors playing the Americans, British actors playing the British, and Japanese actors playing the Japanese. Was it really that hard for the production team to find one Canadian actor to play Lt. Joyce? Were they really so scarce that you had to resort to casting an Argentinian in the role? Given how many Canadian actors end up playing Americans in Hollywood movies, I'm pretty sure they aren't that had to come by.

I mean, you don't even see so much as Hollywood trying to depict Canadian history. It seems that when it comes to both World Wars, they are willing to make movies that show every perspective except the Canadian one. Why is it that Passchendaele appears to be the only true Canadian war movie? Why can't we get more films about the role Canada has to play in both World Wars, or for that matter any major conflict of which we were a part, including Afghanistan? I don't have an answer, but I do believe we deserve better recognition than we are getting.