interview - The Pervert`s Guide to Cinema

INTERVIEW
POPCORNAND BRECHT
Miles Fielder gets a very idiosyncratic
theorist Slavoj Zizek.
guide to the movies from cultural
'You enjoy a film immediately, naively, but theorising about films spoils
enjoyment. I violently disagree with that,' says outspoken and influential
Siovenian philosopher and film lover Slavoj Zizek (pictured). 'If anything
I think it's the opposite.'
Zizek presents a compelling case in favour of film theory in his threepart filmed essay The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. It's a collaboration
with documentary filmmaker Sophie Fiennes (Hoover Street Revival) in
which Zizek delivers Freudian readings of classic and contemporary
Hollywood films from Chaplin to Hitchcock to Lynch. That might sound
stuffy, but The Pervert's Guide is enormously enjoyable, partly because
Zizek is wonderfully eccentric and partly because Fiennes has not only
illustrated his theories with some great film clips, she's also recreated
key scenes from the films and inserted her subject into them. Thus, for
example, Zizek's analysis of The Birds takes place on a boat bobbing
up and down on Bodega Bay.
'It was Sophie's idea,' Zizek says modestly. 'We just talked about it
generally then I simply copied out different fragments from my books
that I thought relevant. Sophie picked out what she thought would be of
interest. Based on that we improvised in front of the camera. The idea
was a Brechtian one. It's as if the movie starts to comment on itself.'
After digressing endlessly on his theories of Perverted Cinema, Zizek
adds with a laugh, 'I like this obscene idea. Sophie and me both think
that the only truly human contact is in dirty, tasteless, politically
incorrect, scatological jokes.' One example of that is the reconstruction
of the toilet bowl eye view shot in Francis Ford Coppola's surveillance
thriller The Conversation. Unlike the original shot with Gene Hackman
peering into the water, Zizek and Fiennes' bowl isn't empty.
Zizek says, 'People have said to me, "I think your theories are
abstract crap, but when I saw them in the film it works." Paradoxically,
one can really enjoy these films only through a little bit of a theory. The
idea is to make people think a little bit, so that the film loses its
innocence without spoiling your pleasure. I am a Brechtian who
believes that dialectical theory and pleasure are not opposed.'
. The Pervert's Guide To Cinema is at GFT, Glasgow from Fri24-Sun 26 Nov
Dnly.See review, page 46.
THRILLER
""~
..
ANTIBODIES
......
(18) 122min
Devoutly
there might be the danger that one
would lose one's mind.' This might
sound very melodramatic and suggest
the big statement, but the film goes
out of its way to focus on the smallscale and immediate, no matter if, for
the tour guides at least, the safety
device isn't quite working.
(Tony McKibbin)
. Rlmhouse, Edinburgh on Tue 21
religious family man and
village pOliceman
Michael Martens
(Wotan Wilke Mohring) is having a bad
year. A young girl, his son's best
friend, has been murdered on his
patch, plus most of the village hates
him because he insists that DNA swab
samples
are taken from all 389
and
very entertaining three-part
examination of classic and
finally captured by big city police,
however, Michael is allowed time with
contemporary
Western cinema.
The ideas are culled from Zizek's
him to find out if girls had also been
published
part of his back catalogue. Engels
refuses to talk to anyone but Martens,
so the rural cop soon becomes central
he calls 'the ultimate
to the investigation,
Beautifully
realised fictionalised account of
thought-provoking
residents. When legendary serial boy
killer Gabriel Engel (Andre Hennicke) is
but the toll on him
- spiritually, emotionally
* Requiem
Novonly.
illuminating,
and physically
is to be huge.
writings
Freudian
on cinema
DOCUMENTARY
RAMPAGE
(15) 108min
(which
pervert's
art
[because] it tells you how to desire'),
and here they're illustrated with film
clips chosen
by Fiennes. The eccentric
and charismatic Zizek presents
theories himself, and his manic
his
enthusiasm and earthy scatological
humour is constantly charming,
the last years of Anneliese
Michel, the young German who
died in 1976 after undergoing
several exorcisms. See review,
frequently
academic.
funny and never dryly
Enjoyable enough as these
dialogues
are, Fiennes gives them a
page 45. Filmhouse, Edinburgh
from Fri 17 Nov.
marvellous cinematic twist by
recreating scenes from the films and
L
Pan's Labyrinth Guillermo
del Toro's returns to The Devi/'s
Backbone form with this
placing Zizek in them. (Miles Fielder)
.,\,,,,,,"
*
fantastical allegory set again
during the Spanish Civil War.
See review, page 43. Cameo,
Edmburghands~ecred
cinemas from Fri 24 Nov.
The Asphalt Jungle John
Huston's genre defining 1950
heist movie gets a lovely new
print. Praise be. See review,
page 45. Rlmhouse, Edinburgh
from Fri 17- Thu 23 Nov only.
*
* The
Pervert's
Guide to
Cinema Film theory made fun
by the clearly insane Siovenian
philosopher Slavoj Zizek. See
interview, page 44 and review,
page 46. GFT, Glasgow from
Fri 24-Sun 26 Nov only.
Italian Film Festival It's
*
unlucky for some but the 13th
outing of this festival boasts an
exceptionally fine programme
which includes Nanni Moretti's
The Caiman and Kim Rossi
Stuart's Along the Ridge. See
Five Reasons, page 44. GFT,
Glasgow & Filmhouse,
Edinburgh from Fri 17 Nov.
Johanna
Strikingly bizarre
musical take on the Joan of Arc
*
legend with a sexualised drug
addict taking the centre
ground. See review, page 44.
GFT, Glasgow from Mon 27
Nov.
KZ Powerful holocaust
*
documentary that looks at the
dehumanising effects of
working in the camps today.
See review, page 46. Out now
(Optimum Classics).
The Green Man Alistair
*
Sim and Ealing's finest hour
finally gets a DVD release. A
must. See review, page 47. Out
now (Optimum Classics).
"
. GFr; Glasgow from Fri 24-8un
Nov. See interview, page 44.
26
Immensely promising German
auteur, and former editor of German
movie fanzine X- mo,
Christian
Alvert's
Rampage
second feature (after 1999's unsettling
sadomasochist
thriller Curiosity & the
Cat) is an expertly realised, darkly
engrossing
sequence
looked at how music plays a part in
US army life in Iraq. Rampage follows
affair. A superb opening
gives way to a thriller, which,
Elliot Lovett, a very gifted young
rapper who Gittoes met while he was
though feted for its similarities in parts
to both Se7en and The Silence of the
Lambs,
actually
serving in Iraq, back to the Brown Sub
project he comes from in Miami, an
shares more ground
with Sidney Lumet's
policiers
procedural
area that the Lovett believes is way
more dangerous than Baghdad. From
(Prince of the City, Q&A),
Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man (from a
this pOint Gittoes plays everything by
ear and enters the Lovett family world
where Elliot's equally talented brothers
theological meltdown perspective
anyway) and Wolf Rilla's remarkable
minimalist
adaptation
of John
Filmed over five weeks at the Austrian
Wyndham's Village of the Damned.
Despite its excessive length and
concentration
documentarian
occasionally
follows tour guides and tourists
around the site as visitors discover
terrible sCript - full of arse
aching exposition
- and some really
dodgy shouty performances
(mostly
from the big city pigs) Antibodies still
manages to intrigue and fascinate
details one man's decent into a
is the middle film in a trilogy
by Australian filmmaker George
Gittoes. The first Soundtrack of War
as it
personal
hell. Alvert, who is currently
shooting
social worker
camp, Mauthausen,
Rex Bloomstein
drip drip accumulation
try to survive in what is basically a war
zone in America's backyard. Death,
however,
everyone
the
of the
has a way of surprising
and Gittoes follows this
close family through
grief and their
attempts to escape the ghetto.
This leisurely, impassioned and
dehumanisation
process.
As the guides move from room to
genuinely
moving film takes equal
room explaining
influence
from Steve James Hoop
how when the
prisoners arrived they would be
stripped and shaved all over, then
Dreams and Nick Broomfield's Biggie
and Tupac. The trouble is that Gittoes
with Renee Zellweger, is certainly a
filmmaker to keep an eye on from the
detail the impossibly meagre diet, the
very limited sanitary conditions and,
is a kindly if awkward
Deutsch
finally, the bodies crammed
Republik.
thriller Case 39
(Paul Dale)
. Cineworld Renfrew
from Fri 17 Nov.
Street, Glasgow
into the
presence
and unnatural
in his own film, for at least
half the film he clumsily
bumbles
showers that doubled up as gas
chambers, KZ works its way into our
inner consciousness.
As someone
around in search of an angle and
when he finds one it almost seems to
THE PERVERT'SGUIDE
TO CINEMA
says about the instruments
raw portrait of the struggles of the US
underclass at this time of war and
(15) 150min
accepting the presence of these things
is 'an attack on the mind'. One of the
repression. Despite its community
video feel and cheesecake
Hip Hop
If you want to know why Northern
guides admits just how much the
California's avian population went nuts
in The Birds, or how The Wizard of Oz
camp has altered his life. Since taking
on the job eight years ago he's
become an alcoholic, argues with his
wife constantly and takes anti-
euphoria it's still a bold attempt to
really examine US street music and the
DOCUMENTARY/EDUCATIONAL
.....
was able to send Dorothy
Kansas despite
home to
being a fraudulent
huckster, then this is the film for you. A
collaboration
between Siovenian
philosopher,
psychoanalyst
and film
buff Slavoj Zizek and English
documentary
filmmaker Sophie
Fiennes, The Pervert's Guide is an
devices
and
used in the death camp, just
depressants.
A voiceover
during the credits states:
overwhelm
him. This is, however, a
machinations
of the companies that
are trying to translate it into dollars. As
a state of the nation snap shot it
deserves to be bracketed alongside
Spike Lee's much feted Hurricane
'There is no need to grasp the full
Katrina documentary
extent of the tragedy that took place
here. There is a safety device inside
Broke. (Paul Dale)
. Odeon Fort Kinnaird,
you that will protect
from Fri24 Nov.
you. Otherwise
When the Levees
Edinburgh
.