Hell is other people
Drag Me To Hell, Sam Raimi’s return to his schlock horror roots following his billion dollar Spider-Man successes, is an extremely entertaining movie about a girl who is tortured, humiliated, and frightened to death for 90 minutes. It stars Alison Lohman as the terrorized girl and Justin Long as an Apple store.
While enjoying this fun shriekfest I realized why many people loathe the very idea of Kinatay, the movie for which Brillante Mendoza won Best Director at Cannes. (Most of us have not seen Kinatay so we cannot discuss the work itself, only its reception.) It’s alright and even laudable to portray human suffering as long as it’s for entertainment purposes. It should only take place in an unreal and fantastic realm. The audience should be in on the joke so they can leave the theatre laughing, reassured that such horrors will never happen to them. These torments only befall fictional other people.
Or if it’s a serious movie with Oscar aspirations, the spectacle of suffering should make the viewer feel virtuous and well-informed about current issues. After leaving the cinema he could assuage his conscience by writing a letter to the editor decrying social injustice.
I gather Kinatay offers none of the above. Critics–even the admirers–have been unanimous in finding it neither entertaining nor comforting nor likely to make viewers feel good about themselves. The nerve of that Brillante Mendoza!
Movies should have a moral lesson we can all get behind, like “Be nice to old ladies.†And they should make us feel good. After all, someone else goes to hell.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
June 7th, 2009 at 02:18
I have not watched the movie either. But I have watched the press con streamed from the Cannes web site. Brilliante in his replies to the questions of journalist made it very clear that his story was inspired from a real life interview from a budding cop. In fact, he made chop-chop killings a common occurence in Manila. To provide the unnecesarry paradox, when asked if mass weddings really happen in the Phil, Maria Isabel Lopez said yes, because it is subsidized by the govt AND the Phil is a catholic country. For the most part, Brilliante’s answers to the journalist’s questions were not responsive as well as it should and have not provided any good reason why the journalists should not think of his film as crap.
June 8th, 2009 at 14:22
i thought of seeing the movie. i am oddly getting out of body experiences watching a sam raimi since his last production butchered my favorite book and i actually, idiotically watched it till the very end. bakero.