Montage Pictures: November
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2018 11:05 pm
I caught up with November, Estonia's failed Oscar submission, after being wowed by the above poster, and the good news is that the visual flourish depicted above is carried over to the entire feature. Shot in stark black and white, the film is directed with a sharp eye for aesthetics that look like they belong in the liner notes for a Constellation Records LP. Apart from being nice to look at, though, the film has a real struggle in tone: ostensibly set in the 1800s, the denizens of the small Estonian village depicted here still use a melange of mythic approaches to explain scientific and other phenomena, ala the Ancient Greeks. Sometimes the film uses this idea quite well: the picture's best sequence involves the onset of the plague, which arrives via a beautiful woman who seeks passage across a stream. She kisses the man who carries her across, who immediately turns soot black. The plague's physical manifestation soon takes several additional forms before finally materializing as a sow. The townspeople eventually convince the Plague to pledge to spare two villagers, leading to the unforgettable image of a demonically-squealing pig being given a Bible to swear upon. But as compelling as this may sound, you can prob already spot the problem with this kind of approach: it's just too silly to take serious, and the film gets too silly too often for me to give it the rope to believe it isn't laughing at its own audacity. Even within this sequence, we have an absurd moment wherein the townspeople fool the Plague by putting their pants/skirts on their heads-- ostensibly this is to prevent the Plague from being contracted orally, so there's a certain weird logic to it, but the character who proposes the plan does so by stating it will work because the Plague "won't want anyone with two asses," a comic line that winks at how goofy this is. And that kind of tongue-in-cheek approach is deadly for a movie like this. The film prepares us for this approach in its opening sequence, which is singular in its audacity and absurdity (so much so that I won't even spoil it so as to preserve the pure WTFness of it, which is worth experiencing first-hand if you're actually intending to see this). But while it takes a certain kind of bravado to Go There, it never once works when it's employed here. The film is overstuffed with ideas that don't get fully explored (In addition to the character of the Plague, we get the Devil, a werewolf, a witch, and inanimate objects come to life to do menial labor and recite poetry, among others), too enamored with its obvious influences (Tarkovsky, Pasolini, any given Czech New Wave film, &c), and is disappointingly fixated on the scatalogical, a filthy well it will return to over and over. But there's so much thrown at the wall here that I can truthfully say I was never bored, and the movie is ultimately a noble failure that falls on its face for attempting too much and swinging too wide.domino harvey wrote: Sat Apr 21, 2018 4:17 pm
This is one of the best posters I've seen in a long, long time
