A chicken mistakenly becomes a beloved apartment house pet. It is the stuff of children’s books and yet has the dystopian undercurrent of a cannibalistic snuff film. (spoiler alert) The affable patriarch kills and devours his charge. Rishi Chandna’s “Tungrus and His Chicken from Hell” is hilarious. This 12 and a half minute film is also devastating and profound. This chimera of good and evil leaves audiences wondering about the nature of both. This simple, Disney-like drama, pits the folk wisdom of a childhood on the farm against the realities of city life. The substance of the story is absurdly simple. How could this film be anything but a portrait of a monster? Ironically it is a paean the conundrum of cruelty being the vessel of kindness. In the spare concrete apartment a tight knit traditional family is put to a test of wills and a testament to love.
Chandna knows how to set a scene. The first moments of the film have seemingly incidental shots of a run down apartment block coupled with planes overhead approaching a nearby runway. By mainstream Western standards this setting is drab. In the context o Mumbai India, where many do not have running water, plumbing or electricity, this family is, relatively, well off. The affable patriarch purchases a chick and brings it home to the rest of the family, a wife, two sons and a daughter. The chicken is not the main entree. The overall reaction to the bird’s presence is the essence of the story. The title says a “chicken from hell”, but in fact he is a normal rooster. The hellish behavior is a result of being confined to a cell block apartment with 5 humans and two cats. The film is more precisely “Tungrus creates Hell for a Chicken.” Everyone gives their reaction to this unlikely guest. The father tells the story of buying the chick on a side street for his cats to “play with.” The expectation was a quick death at the hands of the felines. The cats, however, failed to discharge their duty and became the hunted. Everyone muses over this strange turn of fate. Ironically the father, the one who initially bought the bird as a disposable cat-toy, is most enamored. There are many sequences of him chased and being pursued by his erstwhile new family member. The others are both bemused and appalled. They note the rooster has integrated himself in the family by being playful and obstinate; going so far as to treat the matriarch as one of his hens. Despite the moments of levity everyone, aside of the father, is fed up with the crowing and droppings; not to mention the social awkwardness of explaining to the chicken’s presence to visitors. The uncomfortableness fails to erase the affection. All the children indicate they want the bird gone but not harmed. The mother gushes and said it would be very quiet around the house without him. She adds one of the elder son’s favorite food was chicken but he wouldn’t dream of eating this particular specimen. The father seems to be the most enthusiastic about the pet as there is a scene of him loving caressing the rooster. Then he casually explains, at about the 9 minute mark: “if not today, then tomorrow. We’ll have to slaughter him.” Is this dark humor? No he is deadly serious. He is not only going to kill him, he promises to eat him.
As the audience is swept up in the madcap chicken shenanigans and forgets the father brought the chick home as a sacrificial toy. Chandna cleverly integrates important clues as to the father’s dark choice. The patriarch has a village background. He is the only member of his family who lacks fluency in English. His dialogue is delivered with sub-titles sprinkled with the occasional English phrase. Although the children are clearly formally educated the father is an autodidact. One feels he has traveled far in his journey but never forgets the lessons of the rural village. He brought the chicken into his home. He is responsible for the chicken. The chicken was supposed to die. The chicken is causing problems. No one can afford to be sentimental. He is responsible for all the trouble and he will take care of the problem. No matter the cost. To an urban, educated person his decision seems cruel and heartless. In fact it is the opposite.
There are two other documentary stories that illustrate the fate of the more “civilized” decisions of either keeping the chicken or letting it “free.” This American Life tells the story of Veronica Chater who, as a teenager, bought a pet macaw parrot, Gideon. Ms. Chater is an author and, after receiving an MA, documented her difficult childhood in the book Waiting for the Apocalypse: A Memoir of Faith and Family. The radio story she tells takes place over two decades after she purchased the bird and concerns her own family. Parrots have a lifespan equivalent to humans so Gideon, now in his prime, is terrorizing Veronica’s family. Her sons do not succumb to death by macaw but unlike Tungrus’ story there is a real physical danger. The sons have been bitten and, judging by the interviews, are emotionally under siege. The parrot believes Veronica is her mate and, the mother readily admits the bird’s desire to kill her human children. The decision to choose the safety and well-being of her children might seem outrageous, until one hears the plight of Lucy.
Lucy was an unfortunate chimpanzee had the bad luck of having an encounter with those star children of the Enlightenment, Western Scientists. Lucy was born in captivity to a group of chimps that were circus performers. One might think that might be a cruel fate but nothing can compare to the horrors of a primate being raised as a human by a psychotherapist. This man of Science wanted to know what would happen if a chimp was raised as a human. He called Lucy his daughter. Once the doctor got his book Lucy was abandoned. After a harrowing journey it was decided to release her into the wild. Imagine, after a life being raised by a human parents in a city apartment, being released into in a jungle of human hunters and feral primates. One need not have an advanced degree to foretell the outcome.
Gideon and Lucy’s stories show the uneducated, simple man in Mumbai understood more than the doctor and credentialed author. Animals must be respected on their own terms. More importantly taking responsibility requires hard decisions. The last image in the film is the plastic barrel rocking back and forth. It is the vessel where where the beloved chicken is writhing after being decapitated by the butcher. Seeing that container going still is one of the grimmest moments I’ve seen on film… PERIOD. My gut tells me Tungrus is a monster. Then I thought of Lucy and Gideon. In this light the brutality is the better of the bad choices.
I have the opposite life experience than Tungrus but I concur with his heartbreaking decision. I was raised in the heart of a large city but now live on a farm. I have experienced having to put down an injured animal with a knife. (A sheep caught in a fence and hopelessly tangled and bleeding.) This led me to purchase a firearm. Many of my city friends don’t understand. Tungrus probably would. He understands dimensions of suffering in a way that many educated city-dwellers will never be able to comprehend. The choice of eating his pet adds to the seeming barbarity. His own family is horrified. I think that’s the point. In his mind he owed it to the bird. One might see it as having a relation to Christian traditions of metaphorical cannibalism as a cleansing ritual. In his mind he is simply eating crow. If you dare to see the film you might feel he’s still a horrible SOB. He wouldn’t disagree. It’s just the price one pays for being civilized.
PS — thanks to Erin for sending the original link to TUNGRUS & HIS CHICKEN FROM HELL
“I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”- Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales
“Your mother and her prayers can’t help us”― Antonio, Bicycle Thieves
“there are always in gatherings such as this sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth, of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work among the living. We have all of us living duties and living affections which claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavors” ― James Joyce, The Dead
Alfonso Cuaron brings us back home; specifically to his home. Roma, the eponymous neighborhood in Mexico City, comes to life during the turbulent 1970s. But this is not The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, in which a noble family is insulated from political upheaval. The domestic trauma stays domestic unlike Cuaron’s last feature, an outer space thriller entitled Gravity. Ironically Roma wrestles with another primordial force in nature, the matriarch. Being a innovative story-teller the director bring a new definition of that sacred office. As a master technician he can breath life into all parts of the universe. The craft behind the colorful, captivating dazzle of an exploding space station is equally deployed in making a mesmerizing tableau of the steady, black and white, diurnal rhythms of an upper-middle-class Mexican family.
The opening credit sequence, a floor being slowly scrubbed, is a powerful mirror image of the space-age special effects of the last project. The titles flow while the aged mud bricks are slowly bathed in mop water. This banal description belies the evoking of a prelapsarian innocence. The quietness hides the demands of a bold director putting an audience on notice: put away the endless chatter of the present! You are entering a quieter era, but don’t be fooled into thinking it is less dramatic. Romais the story of women’s ability to endure the barbarity of male privilege; but it is not a polemic. It is the tale of real suffering and hardship, yet it fosters a nostalgia for a bygone era. Cuaron celebrates the joy of the past without hiding the hardship. He is a master craftsman who meticulously frets over the details of each frame. Paradoxically that exacting work gives birth to a seemingly simple tapestry of the truth of yesterday. Strangely this informs those facing the difficulty of today.
The film takes place during Mexico’s dirty war against the left. This time period coincidences with women, within the same family, facing betrayal by their partners. The protagonist, Cleo, is a beloved domestic who has a front row view to the disintegration of her employer’s marriage. She is also struggling with a surprise pregnancy. Cuaron’s decision to place a lowly servant at the center of the drama is revolutionary. This unremarkable nanny/housekeeper is a surprising match for the captivating familiar paterfamilias archetypes. The standard trope is to have the king preside over his castle; Big Daddy pontificates in Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the Prince rules in Visconti’s The Leopard, Don Corleoni terrorizes in Coppola’s The Godfather… Cuaron’s matriarch is playing a quieter, longer game while the men strut and squawk.
We first meet the head of the household, a physician, as he pulls his car into the narrow driveway. He rolls his vehicle over the same tiled floor we see in the opening credits. The focus of the sequence is on his arm fastidiously shifting gears as an extended cigarette smolders between his fingers and classical music blares from the radio. There is pomp as his absurdly large, shiny, American limousine-like car barely squeezes against the ancient stone walls. The chrome mirror is nearly severed as the smoke settles and the orchestra plays on. The king of this castle is an officious tyrant; not so much evil as ridiculous.
This knave, however, is a giant compared to Cleo’s paramour. We first meet him in a hotel room where he has just made love. He comes out of the bathroom delivering the only moment of nudity in the film. Men bearing their parts delivers a comedic touch and Cuaron plays it to the hilt. The doctor, in his flashy car, was a pompous ass but he fails to compete with the absurdity of a man, in the raw, showing off his martial arts “skills” by twirling a shower rod. Cleo hides her guffaws under the covers but our big little man is too much of a narcissist to understand she is laughing AT him. His cut body only amplifies his foolishness. If youtube had existed he would, no doubt, be featured in a number of cringeworthy videos. He goes on to join a right wing para-military group led by a TV personality who has pretensions of being… a superhero. He leads his army in calisthenics/yoga in a caped costume with a cowl. This is probably a nod to fellow Mexican director Inarritu’s Birdman, a wonderfully comic paean to the absurdity of stardom.
Cleo is the only person able to follow the ersatz shaman’s most difficult yoga pose. The army men stumble in place as she, rigidly, commands a perfect position while being completely ignored. The boyfriend finally stops pretending not to see her and reels-off violent invectives while denying parternity. He ads she is merely “a servant.” This comes from someone whose idea of showing his might consists of flashing martial arts moves in a mirror. His complete abdication of responsibility matches Cleo’s boss, the doctor, refusing any monetary support for his wife and four children. He has left them to pursue a young single woman. The physicians’s chef d’oeuvre, however, is emptying their former apartment of “his” furniture. Roma, however, revolves around women, rather than male boorishness.
Cuaron’s slowly crawling camera carefully uncovers the tribulations of Cleo and the titular matriarch of the house. Pain is the ink of this remarkable portrait and Cuaron uses it to delineate our heriones’ numerous journeys. One such outing is an amazing sequence in which the mother and nanny take their children to the movies. The heart of Mexico City bristled with the forgotten street energy before the ubiquitousness of chain stores and screen technology. Interestingly the family is heading to see the film Marooned. There is a small clip of an astronaut stranded in outer space, which is obviously the seed of Cuaron’s Gravity. Cleo anchors the scene as she rushes up the street in search of her wayward charges. They accidentally encounter their father on a date.
Cleo is the mainstay, once again, in another magnificent foray into the countryside. A rich friend has taken pity on the abandoned family and invited them for a getaway in his magical hacienda. Cuaron borrows a sequence from Malick’s magisterial biblical visual poem set in America’s rural heartland, Days of Heaven. A fire erupts in the sprawling forest. All the guests and their servants rush out and pitch a primordial battle against the rushing flames. There is the backdrop of class struggle as some dispossessed peasants are thought to have been behind the arson. The focus, however, is on Cleo and her boss and their emotional struggles. Despite the beauty and old world opulence, these two women desperately hold their own against awkward social constraints. Cleo is being introduced to men by supportive friends, despite being reluctant. Her counterpart fights off an advance from a fellow guest who sees an opportunity for a dalliance. Whereas Malick focused on the men’s burning passion, Cuaron sees through the smoke of objectification. He captures the point of view of the objects of desire.
There is a unforgettable moment when Cleo encounters a grotesque monument to subjugation that masquerades as a loving tribute. The Lords of this manor have a tradition of mounting the heads of all the dogs that have been a part of the family. They are exquisitely displayed, creating a fearsome uncanny-valley. One half expects these beloved canines to start wagging their tongues. Such is the fate of all who are given honorary membership in the family. Cuaron continiually illustrates the limits of this status. There is a scene in which Cleo is invited to watch TV with the parents and her charges. The children clutch her hand. They are genuinely more attached to her than their biological parents. The serenity of the group gathering is broken when the father directs Cleo to get him a beverage. The children object but the mother dutifully directs Cleo to her task,while quieting the children.The father knows that servants should expect the veneer of family, and nothing more. The most damning example of his cruel facade is exposed when Cleo is facing near death in the hospital. Rather than accompany the terrified woman, he gives Cleo’s female physician an excuse for being absent. The Doctor’s words are the metaphorical equivalent of the show of love for all those pets at his friend’s hacienda. Cleo is given the family script but, the male directors of this world, relegate her to being a prop. She is expected to do the heavy lifting, both physically and spiritually, but her reward is ending up as emotional taxidermy. Ditto for the Doctor’s wife, who, along with his children are metaphorically, forgotten trophies of a time gone by.
Cuaron endlessly points out the pomposity of male privilege and its mask of power. In reality the white flag of abandoment is flown every time trouble erupts. There is a recurring motif of an army band, made up of young cadets, who proudly march by the house in new uniforms. They are nowhere to be seen during civil unrest. The legions of thugs, made up of the same absurd fake ninjas who worship the fraudster TV superhero, are hired by the government execute the peaceful crowd. This spills over into the department store where Cleo is shopping for her crib. It is the GRANDMOTHER who comes to the rescue when the shots are fired and the water breaks. It is the MOTHER who comforts the children with strategic bromides until they are ready for the truth. She delivers the “Daddy is not coming home” speech with a masterful combination of restraint and compassion. This follows Cleo’s rescue of the children in the ocean despite not being able to swim. There is no basking in heroics. She is merely doing the right thing by pushing herself beyond what is humanly possible. This tour de force scene is a denouement of all the emotional turmoil and finally brings all, Cleo, mother and children, into that hug that binds for eternity. It is the antidote for the harrowing hospital birthing sequence. This showcases the best of male efficiency twinned with female compassion. It is a excruciating few minutes. It evokes the horror and pathos of E. Eugene Smith’s photo Tomoko Uemura in her bath, which portrays a mother cradling her poisoned daughter. It is a maelstrom of emotion and Cleo’s dignity and strength hold firm. Her power eclipses all the men, and most of the women. It is everlasting.
It is interesting to note that Cuaron is the son of a prominent international scientist yet Roma, is dedicated to Libo. Liboria “Libo” Rodríguez, a domestic servant of Mixtec heritage who was hired into his family’s household when he was a child. She became his beloved spiritual mother, despite having no standing in the conventional sense. The memories of her tenderness, however, are the cornerstone of Roma. There is a brief interlude where a child is playing cowboys and Indians and is “shot.” The boy goes to his nanny. She is toiling amidst of the never-ending laundry lines which adorn the roof. She patiently breaks away from her chores and carefully plays along. They lie down at opposite sides of the table-like outcropping. The top of their heads are touching as they pretend to be dead. This is one of the myriad of life-affirming moments so delicately drawn by this careful director.
Given Cleo’s status as a nanny/washerwoman it would be easy for class to be the center of the narrative. The feature length social commentary Beatrice at Dinnershowcases the cauldron of rage fomented by a spoiled upper class elite towards those in their service. Cuaron eschews being a polemicist. His inspiration is a subtler rendering of the upstairs downstairs divide brilliantly brought to life Renior’s masterpiece The Rules of the Game. Romatakes Renoir’s vision of class and station and places the unseen in plain view. This might sound ponderous, but the slow focus on the ordinary leads to a paradigm shift in experiencing family life.
Strangely the children are a peripatetic blur of agreeable narcissists who tumble in and out of scenes unmindful of the mothers’ emotional mayhem. That is as it should be. Possessing an innate obliviousness to the burdens of adulthood is what it means to be a child. The adult Cuaron, however, embraces the mature perspective. He vividly illuminates all the sturm und drang but glorifies the selfless angels, rather than the myriad of showy devils. The fancy cars and kung fu moves are no match for Cleo. Children might be repulsed by her fastidiously scrubbing dog-shit from the cobblestone driveway. In adulthood, however, these same children might reflect on her work ethic combined with her emotional generosity. Rather than wallow in bitterness wrought by cruelty, Romabasks in a glow of gentleness. Cuaron reminds us childhood’s journey ends with a realization that cleverness and winning acclaim can never hold a candle to the calmness of being in the moment. Youngsters are consumed by flash and spectacle but sleep in the cacoon of knowing “mommy is there.” The film’s slow pans reveal the warmth of a home sustained by nurturing women. Cuaron asks us, as adults, to reflect on those who were always there to, metaphorically and physically, hold our hands. Romais a thank you to the unsung and unfashionable heroes of our youth.
Perhaps, through Cuaron’s efforts, the world is taking note. Now, for the first time in the history Mexico’s Vogue magazine, a native beauty is being showcased on their cover. It is none other than Yalitza Aparicio, the actress who plays Cleo. This small gesture shows the power of Roma’s vision. After all these years Cuaron has helped us all see the beauty of Cleo; or the real-life Libo. The half a century old, deceivingly slow, black and white, meandering tour of an old Mexico City neighborhood has the power to change our contemporary world view. He is putting capes and cowls on the unseen army of strong women languishing in the shadows. They are suddenly highlighted; or more precisely the glasses dissappear and we realize Clark Kent’s real identity.
These superhero matriarchs have grit that is lacking in the father’s ephemeral adrenaline rush. The power of Libo is embracing and eternal. The patriarchs tend to be fleeing and fleeting. In Roma, do as the women do. Boys will be… boys. Home is where mothers take care of business. A warm embrace is more powerful than an army of martial arts experts. Percy Shelley’s Ozymandiascaptures the folly of the those men who have the pretense of being the king of kings. The traveller reads the boasts carved into the stone ruins of a monument to the great leader. He then looks up to see the wreck and “lone and level sands” that “stretch far away.” Cuaron shows us Cleo is standing on the horizon in a plain dress. She is smiling with the sigh of someone who has seen it all before. You might miss her. You have to look closely. She holds no degrees or bank accounts. She is unable to pull strings or call-in favors. Don’t mistake her for being powerless or unwise. She never loses sight of what is important. Most critically, she can guide you home when you’re in the desert.
Cuaron, like all great artists, simply lifts the veil on what is always there. Cleo was in Damascus Syria 10,000 years ago, Mexico City in 1961 and probably within a few miles of where you are presently sitting. This film can be seen as an extension of the work of the biblical writer Sirach. I have adjusted the pronoun in the following excerpt of these holy passages. After all Romais the memorial for those ‘who have no memorial.’
And there are some who have no memorial, who have perished as though they had not lived; they have become as though they had not been born, and so have their children after them. But these were women of mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten; their prosperity will remain with their descendants, and their inheritance to their children’s children. Their descendants stand by the covenants; their children also, for their sake. Their posterity will continue for ever, and their glory will not be blotted out. Their bodies were buried in peace and their name lives to all generations. People will declare their wisdom, and the congregation proclaims their praise.
― Donovan, from the song “Susan on the West Coast Waiting”
Lynne Ramsay did something extraordinary. She mixed all the ingredients of an obvious blockbuster and produced a bomb. This film is a thriller, starring one of the most prominent actors of our time, chockablock with all manner of lurid, audience-grabbing violent spectacle. The box-office for the American theatrical release strangely aped the title, You Were Never Never Really Here. Ironically the strength of her abilities as a filmmaker will see this contemporary commercial debacle evolve into a cult classic.
All expectations in this genre were abandoned. She twinned Norman Bates from Psycho with Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver and placed them in a Hieronymus Bosch diorama. It is a stark world which oscillates from abstract, dark, extreme close ups to exquisitely rendered tableaus. The threadbare storyline is informed by snippets of non-sequential flashbacks. The most extreme moments of violence are seen through the deadpan view of security cameras. Unfortunately the trailer promoted a commonplace action drama, riddle with gore and suggesting a taught storyline. The audience was sold a boxing match and witnessed a ballet.
The tension in the first twenty minutes of You Were Never Really Here is spawned by an uncomfortable feeling of witnessing bad things as a bystander. The claustrophobic close ups turn the audience member into a perplexed eyewitness rather than a passive viewer. What are we to make of the burning of the photograph of the child? Who is the distraught bearded protagonist? (Joaquin Phoenix as Joe). Why is he in this dingy hotel in the Mid West? When he dispatches a mugger in a dark alley it brings to mind the avengers from the 1970s, echoes of Dirty Harry & Deathwish, but with a more psychotic dimension. The root of his demons is revealed. We arrive in the daylight of New York. His solidly middle class elderly mother is the key to the mystery. This genuinely loving relationship is peppered with him secretly engaging in self-asphyxiation in moments of repose. According to opaque flashbacks this is his personal antidote to the terrifying domestic violence of his youth, which has corroded the man. He failed to protect his mother years ago, but he has certainly made up for the physical deficits of being a child. One images the father has been metaphorical killed many times over in acts of vigilantism or targeting “Charlie” during his stint in the military. His domestic world is a dichotomy of saccharine family tenderness and grim acts of violence and self destruction. Such a person must turn to a vocation that is based not on money or standing, but a compulsion to right a wrong. The focus of his professional life is to rescue the most vulnerable, exploited class in our society: young girls who have been sold into the sex trade.
Joe frees child hostages abducted by pedophile rings. Think of the premise of the films series Taken but with Scorsese’ unhinged taxi driver instead of Liam Nielsen’s button down, white collar CIA operative. This avenger is an amalgamation of brute force born of raw emotion, rather than a purveyor of sophisticated spy techniques. You give him a picture and an address and he will bash his way into getting your the children. His weapon of choice is a ball-peen hammer. This tool is designed to smash metal but it does a very good job of crushing skulls and breaking bones. His one true friend, a fixer lawyer whom he might have met in the service, makes the arrangements. The rest unfolds as a calculated set piece. Anything that gets in his way receives a physical blow or a verbal lashing. This grim routine is upended when a mission to free an angelic blond child triggers a political scandal. The powers that be, like our avenging angel, have zero tolerance for missteps. Joe and his world must be terminated. The bulk of You Were Never Really Here’s narrative is consumed by this particular battle between the evil, all powerful, ruling male elite and our troubled lone wolf righter of wrongs.
The genius of this film lies in Ramsay making you believe the unbelievable. This angry deranged vet takes on an army of police and yet the absurdity of the story is never an issue. The film works as the director’s artistry in pulling the plot along with just the right amount of obscure flashback, clever daring-do and counterintuitive staging. Whereas a lesser director would highlight the fight scene with accented choreography and special effects, Ramsay gives us the terror of a silent CVT camera. There isn’t time to consider realism. We are caught in Ramsay’s world which showcases Joe’s prison of righteousness. One of the compelling elements of his character is the knowledge that most people are soldiers and not generals. Typically in this genre the protagonist exacts unspeakable revenge on hapless bit players. Joe is all business and channels all emotion to the task at hand. Nowhere is this more clear than when he confronts the agents who have taken the life of the person closest to him. Rather than an extended scene of torture (think Hannibal Lector engaging in cannibalism) Joe divvies-out a pain-killer while asking for information. It ends with the two lying on the floor singing a duet of a pop song which is playing in the background on the radio. Such is the demise of the foot soldiers in the battle of good and evil. Personal vengeance is a luxury reserved for the ruling class.
As grim as the setting can be there are numerous moments of tenderness. Ramsay reinterprets the canonical death scene of the woman under water from Night of the Hunter in a moving sequence where Joe buries the person most dear to him. You Were Never Really Here is filled with numerous extreme close ups that linger, rendering it a re-action movie, rather than action drama. The denouement comes when our hero rediscovers his charge. Unfortunately his baby has, metaphorically, grown up.
Joe’s mission in avenging the innocent is to safeguard their goodness. He fails. He contemplates the path of all true believers in complete despair. He demands perfection in others and it would be a sin to hold himself to a different standard. His associates are judged harshly: the gun runner who is late for an appointment is knocked unconscious; the trusted liaison defies a direct order and allows his child to see Joe’s face and is therefore banished forever. So what can we expect when his beloved charge follows his path of brutality? It is HIS fault. He has accidentally spawned a spiritual progeny, rather than a saintly child. All is not lost however as this silent young girl tames the beast. They are extremely damaged and no doubt face a lifetime of emotional torture, but they are together. Two blood soaked innocents joined as father and daughter. Their past might be exorcised with the hard work of being a family. Sex slaves are liberated. Oppressors are vanished. Guardians prevail. In the end they might ask the question: were we ever really there? That suggests a happy ending.
“A Report on the Banality of Evil” - Hannah Arendt, subtitle to Eichmann in Jerusalem
Hereditary, Ari Aster’s horror feature, casts a dark spell over reviewers. Many believe this to be a seminal masterpiece. Here are a smattering of accolades: “craft(s) its own scare vocabulary” (Slate), “new horror classic… Oscar calling” (Rolling Stone), “it’s own spin on terror” (The New York Post), “It’s pure emotional terrorism” (the AV Club)….. The last blurb might be true, but not in the way the critic intended. What does it mean when so many knowledgable people are moved by second rate writing, directing and storytelling? Hereditary is over-wrought, over-thought and derivative. It steals and butchers a genuine classic from half a century ago that features an innocent mother who is impregnated by the devil himself. Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby established this sub category of horror, it is unfortunate Aster has so little to add to this well worn genre.
Hereditary borrows the troupe of hosting the demon but the film, metaphorically, goes to hell in hand-basket. There is nothing in the Aster remake that improved upon Polanski’s work. In fact, just the opposite. Rosemary’s Baby and it’s spawn, The Exorcist & The Omen, gave us clearly delineated actions that made sense in the carefully constructed logic of the film. Hereditary is just a muddle. Rosemary’s husband’s betrayal is brought on by greed and vanity. This dovetails beautifully with the Christian exhortations against such indulgences. This also made the film a cultural touchstone at height of the 60s social chaos. Who can forget the pregnant Rosemary sitting her obstetricians office picking up a copy of Time Magazine entitled “Is God Dead?”. Hereditary sheds no light on the origin of the darkness. Why is the matriarch sacrificing her daughter, granddaughter, son-in-law and grandson to the demon? Her motivations are as opaque as most of the principles. What was the grandmother’s original association with the cult? Why does the husband indulge his wife when she has tried to kill their son? Pouring paint thinner on the boy and trying to light a match would be sign to most humans that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to leave the two unattended. It would also be a red flag regarding joining the wife in forcing the son to participate in an impromptu seance to revive the dead sister. Did I mention that this young girl was killed in an auto mis-hap caused by the brother? That might have also prompted the father to forbid the wife from creating a miniature doll-house recreation of the event, complete with the daughter’s tiny decapitated head. Daddy seems to reason that Mommy is an artist by profession and therefore has license to torment the son. Incidentally that car tragedy was triggered by another bizarre decision. Why would a mother force a teenage boy to take his socially maladjusted younger sister to unchaperoned party? The plot conceits might be acceptable in a more thoughtfully constructed story. Unfortunately the twists and turns are made to showcase the horror. All the pressure builds for an obligatory feast of carnage during the last 10 minutes, replete with another decapitation. Mother mimics her daughters demise by losing her head by her own hand. This filmmaker felt all the “turn of screw” waiting is justified in a finale of immolation and mutilation. It was his chef d’oeuvres, but in a negative sense. In mature work the gruesome spectacle is an internal part of the story and not a showy bacchanalia of gore. The director Nicolas Roeg proves the point in his seminal horror film, Don’t Look Now. Roeg’s single display of a throat being slashed has infinitely more punch than Aster’s parade of horrors.
There are bright spots amongst the missed opportunities. Toni Collette’s rendering of the mother matches the brilliance of another tortured parent, Shelly Duvall in The Shinning. Alex Wolff, as the son, show an ability to channel emotion with simple gesture and expression. Aster borrows a trick from Joseph Losey’s Accident. In that film the facade of a country house accompanies the soundtrack of a car racing and crashing. The result amplifies the horror. Aster has audio the mother’s discovery of her daughter’s headless body being seen through the despondent dead-pan face of the young son. It is a beautifully rendered grizzly moment, made strong by Wolff’s grim visage of despair, guilt and shame. The sister, Milly Shapiro, is also effective as the embodiment creepiness. She brings to mind a sinister version of the 1970’s oddball child-actor Mason Reese. There is a discordant melding of wholesome innocence and weird deformity. You don’t have to be a child psychologist, priest or physiologist to know that something is wrong, in an unearthly way. The most famous member of the cast, Gabriel Byrne is the least interesting character and performance. One imagines the producers & director saying, “So Gabriel, lets try an American accent”. His response would have been in his natural brogue, “No, I’m just gonna just talk the way I talk”. I’m sure he took the part thinking no one would ever see a film based on the clunky script. Maybe this experience taught him the devil works in mysterious ways. On cannot blame the lack of effort as the character is, metaphorically, a castrated dimwit. What would motivate a talented actor to take the part of an unlikeable foil that allows his family to drift into disaster? Maybe money is the root of all evil.
One wonders if the dark forces are strong or whether the good guys are just too damn dumb. This illustrates the central problem with Hereditary. None of the set-pieces, such as the father, are rooted in the broader narrative. In Polanski’s precursor, all the side characters, the husband, the lady next door, the doctor are central to the cult and its agenda. The cast of Hereditary are primarily walk-ons pushing plot points, rather than furthering the devil’s work. The cadre of demons that appear in the finale, are completely absent from the central narrative with the except of the woman from the grief support group. Once again her role, inspiring the grieving mother to wake her family for an impromptu seance, is crippled by credulity. Perhaps the mother’s miniature dioramas should have come to life to push the mother along her path to madness and suicide. Unfortunately they woodenly reflect the mother’s psychological deterioration. All those oddly terrifying still life models never dynamically inform the story. Yes she recreates the accident, but the art needed to be a character in itself in the manner of the mansion in the Shinning. When you expend that amount of camera time on those little rooms and shrunken manikins, it should dovetail with the main event — i.e. the cult’s plan to raise one of the king’s of the underworld. In order for this to have resonance Aster needs to be more in touch with our present zeitgeist of evil. Who are our devils?
As the old saying goes, “we live in interesting times” and the list of dark forces grows with every news cycle. Even the weather has been cast in the battle of good and evil. Aster’s scenario, anti-Christ in the burbs, is old hat. Our tech titans, the ones that speak of living forever and doing no evil, are the perfect candidates for the modern Mephistopheles. Their forbidden fruit is the promise of a better tomorrow if you, painlessly, hand your every waking (and sleeping) moment. The challenge of the future is to rise above merely being algorithms in the service of commerce. The films Ex Machina and Her are recent features that illustrate the plight of man’s soul in the man vs. machine conundrum. Aster must be reminded, the devil is in the details. It is not enough to invoke the genuine article. It is the ingenuity of evil that it parades as goodness. The job of a director is to give reason for supping with a long spoon. Hereditary shows the specter of evil in our genes. Perhaps it’s really in our screens.
Glover’s This Is America: The 4 Minute Invisible Man
There will be time to murder, and create
-T.S. Elliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
It was not Martin Luther King who emancipated the modern Negro, but Stepin Fetchit. It was Step, who elevated the Negro to the dignity of a Hollywood star. I made the Negro a first-class citizen all over the world
-Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, first black millionaire entertainer who played Stepin Fetchit
Donald Glover freezes his pose as the emptiness envelopes him. This is the first time, almost 3/4 of the way into his 4 minute, This Is Americavideo, that the man-himself is revealed. The person comes through the armor of performance. He catches his breath and holds his invisible pistol outstretched. The sheer act of doing nothing turns offense into defense. The gripping of a gun morphed into the the shackled hands of a slave being dragged. The bond is broken when the hands come down to his side. Glover catches his breath and smokes a joint. This fifteen seconds stretches into an eternity of repose. This is, as the Coca Cola company used to say, “the pause that refreshes”. Now Glover channels another great American performer, Bob Fosse. This multi-talented actor, performer, choreographer, singer, made an autobiographical feature, All That Jazz (1979), that highlighted the cost of even the most glorious showbiz career. Each day begins with the character facing the mirror and muttering “showtime”. Glover, a grammy winning vocalist in addition to being a television writer/actor/director, savors his break and takes Fosse’ cue for the video’s grand finale. Following an expansive intermission the lyric opens with “They gonna find you that blocka (blaow)” a reference to the drug used to revive opiate addicts who have fallen into a death spiral. This dire end seems to be the fate of the scores of people who appear in the background mimicking the harshness of underclass life and the never-ending carnage of the opioid crisis. Then comes a reprise of a grandmother’s admonishment of “get your money, BLACK MAN”. Followed by a message to those fans who follow him: “you motherfuckers owe me.” This is all encased in a tableaux of Glover dancing amidst a strange array of unstylish, out of date, automobiles. It is the mirror image of the boxing phenom Floyd Mayweather with his fleet of top of the line sports cars. It harkens back to Otis Redding’s riposte to Carla Thomas in the soul classic TRAMP, accusing him of being a hayseed. The man from the dock of the bay belts out his standing with a recitation of all his cars, “ I got six Cadillacs, five Lincolns, four Fords, Six Mecurys, Three T-Birds, Mustangs….” This ostentatious laundry list of vehicles confirms Otis’ underclass status. It is the same effect in Glover’s video as this moment, more than any other, merges him with the background of ghetto violence. In the somber closing number that follows, the lyrics use the metaphor of being a big dog, but chained in a backyard.
It’s hard to imagine Glover being restrained. This is someone who defines America in less time than it takes to cook a hard boiled egg. His nom de guerre, or more correctly nom de chanson, is “Childish Gambino”. It is an audacious moniker mashing callow innocence with one of New York’s most feared mafia families. There is ‘walk’ behind the ‘talk’. He has penned episodes of 30 Rock, as well as acting and producing his own much lauded shows. His side gig as a rapper has garnered a Grammy. Any one of these would have established a formidable career but this renaissance man of entertainment has one-upped himself with his definition of America. As of this writing, not even a month after its release, it has over 200 million views. What is everyone watching? Or, for that matter, who is everyone watching?
Glover is everything he isn’t. An African American who grew up in a central gathering spot for the modern Ku Klux Klan. A small town boy who collaborates with a wide a ray of international talent including Hiro Murai, the Japanese born director, and Sherrie Silver, the Rwandan born cheograpier. This entertainment juggernaut was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, the radical Christian Sect that preaches against having birthday parties. His work, This is Americashould be titled Glover Agonistes. It begins as a world music pastoral and descends into a gangsta rap, free for all. Our hero/anti-hero starts as a master of ceremonies of a kaleidoscopic apocalypse and ends as a powerless victim being stalked by a mob. It is political, yet never leaves the orbit of being first class entertainment. It is a dystopian national anthem that peeks behind our imprimatur of optimism. The Europeans brought Liberté, égalité, fraternité, habeas corpus, in addition to slavery, mass lynching and genocide. It is not the ying/yang that intrigues Glover as much as the notion that enthusiastically taking sides is a requirement for citizenship. What do we do with those who refuse the neat characterizations of “good” and “bad”? Are they allowed to be Americans?
What is America? The video opens with a avuncular younger version of the Disney character, Uncle Remus, strumming a guitar. He isn’t singing his hallmark song of carefree slave-life, “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” but rather a modern palliative with an upbeat chorus about “partying”. Our anti-hero is revealed clad in the same outfit (no shirt, gold chains, white slacks) as an iconic 1970s image of Al Green, the romantic balladeer. It is a perfect set piece of escapist popular entertainment. Then the party ends rather abruptly. The camera glides back to the friendly guitarist. Now he is bound and gagged with a hood of white canvas. It brings to mind the the black clad Abu Ghraib Iraqi prison torture tableaux. Just as the scene is digested, Glover pulls out a pistol and executes him with one single shot to the back of the head. The music shifts into a discordant gangsta rap beat as someone steps off camera to retrieve the weapon with a red handkerchief. Our anti-hero dances and gives us his first lyrics, a hypnotic incantation of “This is America, Don’t Catch you slipping up”. It is an ironic puritanical call against the cardinal sin of LAZINESS but Glover is interested something more than being a scold against sloth.
Artistically This Is Americafollows the lead of other works of art that touch the zeitgeist by posing questions rather than giving answers. There is always danger mistaking the desire for understanding with a definitive version of the artist’s intent. Glover is clever enough not to be explicit or preach. He won’t talk about meaning. That is the job of the endless number of explanatory Youtube videos or bloggers such as myself. There is a sea of chatter regarding the closing moments of the video in which our anti-hero/hero is running in a tunnel of darkness. Is this a nod to the cocoon of darkness illustrated in Jordan Peele’s Get Out? Is it a reference to the thousands who ran down streets and through woods in their final moments before being lynched? Is this picking up themes from the prophetic novel Day of the Locust, which focuses onthe dark side of celebrity fandom? The questions mount as the images fade. Is the closing refrain “You just a Black man in this world” linked to Michael Kiwanuka’s “Black Man in a White World”? In that stunning video the singer/protagonist/antihero rises above a car crash caused by a police car as downtown LA loom in the background. Whatever the answers, the closing moments touch on the rarest commodity in entertainment, true emotion. The expression on Glover’s face is unabashed terror. It makes a lasting impression. The mob chasing him is amorphous lacking a specific grievance. Glover is guilty of being Glover but it would be a mistake to simply see him as a ‘stand in’ for people of color. This video has a larger resonance that the silos of race or gun control, to name just a few of the proposed cypher keys.
Jeff Wall: After Invisible Man, the prologue, by Ralph Ellison
Everyone wants a piece of Glover. The entertainment industry, the political class, the general public have THE answers. He is supposedly supporting/fighting THEIR agendas. He is having none of it. He is a latter day Ralph Ellison, whose Invisible Man, escortiates anyone who thinks they have the asnwer to his questions. Ellison escoriates the academics, cultural hustlers, left- wing ideologues and black nationalists who wish to mold his anti-hero to their varied truths. Glover shares this defiant individualism that goes beyond the tags of “rapper”, “writer”, “black man”, “hero”. He is the hip Jehovah’s Witness who knows how to play the game better than the city folk. Ellison’s hero ends up a safe-room stealing power to enlighten himself with hundreds of electric lightbulbs. It is the victory of an introvert. On the inside Glover might feel as alienated but he is going to channel his revenge in a much louder spectacle. Ellison wrote, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me”. Glover counters with: I am invisible but people are going to see me because I’m going to light up the reality they don’t want to see.
During most of the vidoe Glover manages to carrying himself without expressing a particular of point of view. There are a panoply of emotional flashes of joy, laughter, surprise, horror, terror, menace… He is a empath channeling a background. A dull white industrial blankness that becomes peopled with figures committing various, crimes or hanging out in a stupor of unproductiveness. It is prize footage from our national daily diary, the local TV newscast. These are the moments of conception for our endless murders, riots car-jackings and mass shootings. Traditional gangsta rap videos might produce a chorus line of undulating seductive women clad in heels and bikinis. Always the contrarian, Glover gives us his cheerleading squad for this dystopian vision. It is a group of attractive young people of both sexes dressed in traditional gray toned private/charter/parochial school uniforms. This is the army of industry guiding our anti-hero along in his productivity. It is important to take note that these dancers are, unlike much of the eye candy that routinely fills these rolls, are expert performers with top notch choreography. The performers jump and undulate with Swiss-like precision which is masked behind seemingly genuine expressions of joy. There are moments that reprise the the ‘feel good’ vibe of the first minute, despite the urban riot erupting. Will we end this experience on a hopeful note? About half way through we know the answer is a definitive, NO! Glover enters a room filled with a traditional gospel choir. He acts coyly and sweetly admires these representatives of a storied African American institution. Their incantation is sung in an uplifting chorus but remains strangely foreboding: “Grandma told me, get your money black man”. Is Glover signaling Al Green’s path to redemption as a Gospel singing Reverend?
Unfortunately Gospel and R&B are dead. They were killed off by rap. Glover is going to get his own, HIS WAY. Suddenly he catches a machine gun thrown from off-camera. He shoots and the chorus’ blood is splattered on the white wall. As he casually walks away. Are we at the Sunday school at Emanuel AME in Charleston, where the Bible class was executed? Is this a reference to the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, where the congregation was slaughtered? Or maybe we are taking a trip to the Tower at the University of Texas or Columbine or Sandy Hook or U of VA….. or maybe we are mourning Sam Cooke, the sweet-voiced Gospel singer turned pop sensation. He bled to death of gunshot wounds lying naked in the hallway of a seedy motel. No matter the horror, a unsettling routine kicks in that institutionalizes the carnage. The red-hankerchiefed gun retriever reprises his cameo and the weapon is whisked away. The first responders dutifully play their part as our anti-hero walks in the opposite direction continuing his parade of opposing emotions. The violent background movement increases. We witness carjacking, fire, suicide and other pantomimes of horror. Is that the horse of the apocalypse or General Lee lifted from the side of stone mountain? The music swells and a mantra of ‘not slipping’ intensifies. There is a camera pans overhead to children taking cell phone footage of the conflagrations. The dancing becomes more intricate and intense mimicking Glover’s outrageous faces. One minute he caricatures Beyonce, the next he seems bound in an African Dance ceremony or a black college fraturnity initiation ceremony. The lyrics make reference to contraband and “hunnid bands” (band of hundred dollar bills). The materialistic frenzy ends with that histrionic pose mimicking the shooting of a pistol. The “trigger” is pulled; then silence.
One can imagine a young African American boy looking at images of Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. It would have reminded him of the centerpiece of his hometown; the mirror image bas-relief homage to General Lee. Instinctively he might have known they were created by the same artist, Gutzon “John” Borglum. This sculptor, born in Idaho before it was officially a State, was a child of a polygamous marriage. The son of Danish immigrants, who belonged to a controversial religious sect, is an unlikely choice as the father of significant totems of Americana. But it wouldn’t surprise Donald Glover; after all, this is America. Get out of bed, look in the mirror and say “Showtime”. As the song says “Get your money, black man”. But he’s not just talking about black men and he’s not just talking about money. He’s explaining who he is by showing us what we’re not.
REVIEW OF THE SHORT FILM TUNGRUS & HIS CHICKEN FROM HELL
What did I know, what did I know, of love’s austere and lonely offices?……..Those Winter Sundays, Robert Hayden
