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Bergman vs. Corman: Death vs. The Red Death

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In our Swampchat discussion of March’s Movie of the Month, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, I pointed out how great of a one-two punch the movie was in combination with February’s Movie of the Month, Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death. As a double feature, the two movies feed off each other well thematically, especially in their contemplation of an uncaring, inevitable Death. Even Roger Corman himself saw the similarities in the films’ subject matter, which lead to him delaying the production of Masque for years. According to Wikipedia, he was quoted as saying, “I kept moving The Masque of the Red Death back, because of the similarities, but it was really an artificial reason in my mind.” The films do have a similar doom & gloom aesthetic in their personifications of Death in the time of a plague, but the differences that ultimately make their connection “artificial” are very much fundamental in nature. The Seventh Seal and The Masque of the Red Death are connected by a plague and by Death’s portrayal as a living character, but both Death’s personality and the social effect of a plague on its suffering population are strikingly different in the two films.

Both The Seventh Seal & The Masque of the Red Death rightfully portray Death as an inevitability, but the personality traits they assign him are almost directly oppositional. In The Seventh Seal, Death allows himself to be amused. The movie’s iconic chess match, while a stay of execution for Antonius Black, is nothing more than a diversion, a light entertainment for Death. Death later continues his playful bemusement with Antonius by posing as a priest and taking his confession. Death has a sly sense of humor in this exchange, albeit one with a morbid result. In Corman’s Masque, The Red Death wouldn’t be caught alive participating in such tomfoolery. The Red Death is very much a professional in his duties, carrying the impartial poise of a courtroom judge in his interactions with Prince Prospero. The only time he allows himself to react to Prospero’s schemes is when the prince begs mercy for the captive Francesca and even then his reaction is only mild surprise.

The plagues that accompany Death & The Red Death are more or less interchangeable, but there’s an essential difference in Corman & Bergman’s interpretations of the victims’ reactions to the hardship. In both films the plagues are met (at least by some) with a form of naïve celebration, a kind of a party while the ship goes down. In The Masque of the Red Death, this party is a disgusting display, a vilification of opulence. Wealthy party guests assume they are above The Red Death’s inevitability merely by the merit of their breed & fortune. Considering themselves invincible, they shut the poor out of the gates of Prospero’s mansion and party their final hours away in excess. Their thirst for a good time while others suffer is a vile impulse that Corman represents disapprovingly and Vincent Price skillfully amplifies with gusto. As James first said in our Swampchat on The Seventh Seal (and which I later explored in my comparison of the film to Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey), the central couple “Jof and Mia who, while maybe naïve, fully embrace life, family, and art despite the dread and despair that surrounds them. As Jof, Mia, and Mikael are the only characters to survive the film, I think Bergman is trying to say that the only way to conquer the fear of death is to truly embrace life, which makes the film, in my eyes, an ultimately uplifting one.” In Bergman’s viewpoint, celebration in the time of Death is a human ideal. While the celebration in Masque is a hateful sin, the one in The Seventh Seal is a life-saving virtue. Bergman even pushes the idea further by having Jof receive visions from beyond this mortal realm. In some ways his naïve celebration of life is downright divine.

The surprising thing about the differences between Death & The Red Death is that they’re somewhat counterintuitive. As a superficial assumption I would think that The Seventh Seal, a black & white art house drama from Ingmar Bergman, would have been the film that portrayed Death as a somber executioner and the party that surrounds him a crime against man. I would also expect that The Masque of the Red Death, a Vincent Price horror film helmed by camp legend Roger Corman, would be the film that portrayed Death as a playful prankster and the celebration of life that surrounds him a moral asset. Instead, the two films find their respective art house pensiveness & over-the-top camp in other characters & plot devices, the trivial elements that bind them as a pair used for entirely different ends. Although their connection is primarily artificial, our back-to-back discussions of The Seventh Seal & The Masque of the Red Death will forever link them in my mind anyway, both for the ways they are superficially the same and in the considerable ways they differ on a fundamental level.

For more on March’s Movie of the Month, 1957’s The Seventh Seal, visit our Swampchat discussion of the film and last week’s exploration of its thematic similarities with Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.

-Brandon Ledet

Counterpoint: In Defense of Honeymoon (2014)

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Reading over James’ review of last year’s Honeymoon, I was a little surprised by how dismissive it was. Sure, Honeymoon was far from the most original horror film ever made, but as a low-budget creep-out I found it to be fairly effective. James started his review by comparing the film to how he would imagine an arranged marriage: “Forced into it, you look for the positives and hold out hope that it might end up working out, only to end up completely disappointed.” There are a few reasons I find that statement unfair. For one thing the film was very much low-profile, so it’s hard to imagine anyone being “forced into it.” I’m more interested, however, in exactly why the film left him disappointed: the fact that he had seen the same story told before.

Fans of horror should be more than familiar with a little repetition. Themes, images, music cues, and plot structures are copied so liberally in horror that it has one of the longest lists of subgenres out there (including the likes of “slashers”, “creature features”, “giallo” and so on), each complete with its own genre-trappings & clichés common to nearly every film under its umbrella. James’ central disappointment with Honeymoon seemed to be that the film did not surprise him on a plot level. When I had previously written about the film on this site, I compared its my-wife-is-not-my-wife story to both Slither and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It didn’t especially bother me that I had seen similar (and admittedly more surprising) versions of Honeymoon before, because all three films were so stylistically diverse. One thing I particularly liked about Honeymoon was how understated the central bodily invasion was in comparison to the fever pitch ridiculousness of Slither and the widespread panic of Body Snatchers. Honeymoon is a story we’ve seen told before, sure, but rarely this intimately or realistically, with the victim forgetting to batter French toast or awkwardly saying “take a sleep” instead of “take a nap” as the early signs that something is horribly wrong.

James’ secondary complaint was that “the first third of Honeymoon is almost entirely the two [newlywed protagonists] fawning, staring longingly into each other’s eyes, and discussing their future. It is as tedious as it sounds.” I believe the sickening tedium of young love was an intentional effect here, especially considering that the film was set so early in a marriage instead of at a later stage. Throughout the early flirtations in the film it’s revealed that the young husband doesn’t really know his new bride well at all. He’s surprised by her boating abilities, stories from her past involving the place they’re vacationing, and her opposition to having children. Early in the film he even asks her “Who are you?” in a playful way. Later, after the life-altering/body-snatching event in the woods, he again asks “Who are you?” with a much more terrifying intent. There’s also a connection to the way he playfully threatens to tie her up in bed while they’re flirting and the way he forcefully ties her up in the scene James describes as “a flurry of gore that had the other people I was watching it with cover their eyes”. I think a lot of the point of Honeymoon was that although the couple was in the sickeningly sweet PDA part of their relationship at the beginning of the film, the marriage was already troubled. Jealousy, distrust, and a general lack of knowledge of each other were already major problems for the couple before that fateful meeting in the woods. When James notes that late in the film “Paul, terrified, starts to believe Bea is no longer the person he married,” he’s right, but I’m not sure Paul ever had a firm grasp of who it was he married in the first place, which is a scary thought with or without the gorey, supernatural context.

Honeymoon’s resolution may be “predictable”, but I disagree that the film that ramps up to it is “underwhelming”. It’s more that it’s a low-key, intimate take on an old story, one with new things to say about the ways young love can be scary. One of the best things about horror as a genre is the way old tropes can be reconfigured into new ideas and I think Honeymoon does just that in an admirable way, even if it’s not a home run. To be fair, I’m making a somewhat superficial distinction here between the movie being “not great” or “pretty good, actually”, but I feel it’s an important distinction all the same.

-Brandon Ledet

Bergman’s Image of Death in The Seventh Seal (1957) and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

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In our Swampchat discussion about Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal last week, James pointed out that “the film is now remembered mostly for its historical significance and that iconic image of Death, parodied in movies like Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and Last Action Hero, rather than its substance.” It’s no wonder to me why. There’s more than one way to be a cinephile after all. Some folks gravitate toward the artier side of cinema, preferring to grapple with life’s big questions about art and morality and death every time they pop in a movie. Others are more escapist in their tastes, seeking out mindless films that that are less confrontational & more purely entertaining in both story & style. I would like to think that most people are somewhere in the middle, like a cinematic version of a Kinsey scale, appreciating both the heftiest art & the trashiest pleasures in varied amounts. Folks who are watching Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey aren’t necessarily interested in confronting the nature of death & “The Silence of God” in those 90min, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t appreciate a reference to a more “important” film that does. In fact, acknowledging the existence of an art house classic in a dumb, time-traveling stoner comedy can only enhance the film’s gleeful stupidity by way of comparison.

As a sequel to a deliberately lowbrow buddy comedy, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey could have easily been an uninspired retread. Instead of taking the expected step of having the time-traveling goofballs collecting historical figures to pass a college course (as opposed to the high school course they pass in the first one), Bogus Journey readjusts the franchise’s plot to make room for “fully full-on evil” robot doppelgangers, space aliens, God, Satan, and the rock band Primus. Mixing practical effects & overreaching set design with then-impressive CGI, the film aims to achieve a lot more than sequels to hit comedies generally do. One of the film’s most impressive ambitions of all is its eagerness to interact with Bergman’s daunting The Seventh Seal.

On the surface, Bogus Journey & The Seventh Seal are unlikely bedmates. One is set in the future; the other in the past. One features deviously evil robots as its antagonists; the other an indifferent Death. One is a stoner comedy about winning over bodacious babes; the other art house cinema that tackles “The Silence of God”. However, the two films share an oddly similar moral. As James stated in our conversation about The Seventh Seal’s central couple, “Jof and Mia who, while maybe naïve, fully embrace life, family, and art despite the dread and despair that surrounds them. As Jof, Mia, and Mikael are the only characters to survive the film, I think Bergman is trying to say that the only way to conquer the fear of death is to truly embrace life, which makes the film, in my eyes, an ultimately uplifting one.” If Jof & Mia are naïve, Bill & Ted are barely mentally functional. They are constantly cheerful (even while being murdered) and their central message of “Be excellent to each other” is not at all dissimilar to how Jof & Mia escape The Seventh Seal unharmed. I’m not sure if Ingmar Bergman would have seen or enjoyed Bogus Journey before he died but if he did I would hope he would at least appreciate the film’s central philosophy.

That’s not to say that Bogus Journey gets everything right about The Seventh Seal. In Bergman’s classic Death only participates in the film’s iconic chess match as a diversion, an amusement that allows the protagonist Antonius Black to delay his inevitable fate. In Bogus Journey, Bill & Ted challenge Death as the ultimate wager, the fate of their souls hanging in the balance. The gag involving Death losing to the boys in Battleship, Clue, electric football, and Twister is pretty damn hilarious, but does sort of miss the point of the chess match in The Seventh Seal entirely. Bill & Ted also visit both Heaven & Hell in the film, which I’m not sure are places that exist in The Seventh Seal’s worldview and Death takes more of the position of the butt of jokes than the menacing, but playful figure he is in Bergman’s film. When the boys give Death a wedgie and exclaim “I can’t believe we just melvined Death!” it’s a far cry from the character’s opposing presence in The Seventh Seal. That’s okay, though. It is a dumb comedy after all.

Attempts at defining the meaning of life and the nature of death couldn’t be more varied than they are in The Seventh Seal and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. What’s more interesting than their differences, though, is the common moral they share, namely that we enjoy this good thing before it’s gone and above all else we should “be excellent to each other.” Whether you want that message packaged in a somber, black & white art film or an endearingly idiotic stoner comedy can vary depending on taste & mood. Either way, it’s an admirable message all the same and it’s awesome that Bogus Journey used a reference to Bergman’s character design for Death (which I earlier described as “somewhere between a mime & a wizard”) to bridge the gap between those two aesthetics.

For more of March’s Movie of the Month, 1957’s The Seventh Seal, visit last week’s Swampchat on the film.

-Brandon Ledet

Pop Music Cinema & That Thing You Do! (1996)

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After spilling what most likely already amounts to way too much ink on pro wrestling movies, we here at Swampflix decided to collect all of our reviews & articles about the “sport” on a single page titled Wrestling Cinema. As time has gone on it’s become apparent that we have more than wrestling on our minds. We also like movies about pop music. From Björk to ABBA to KISS, movies about or featuring musicians are apparently a source of fascination for us, so we’re starting a Pop Music Cinema page to give those movies their own home as well. To commemorate the birth of our Pop Music Cinema page, I’d like to revisit one of the most delightful examples of the genre I can remember: 1996’s That Thing You Do!

The first feature film written & directed by America’s goofy uncle, Tom Hanks, That Thing You Do! is remarkable both in its effortless charm and in its perceptive mimicry & satirization of pop music clichés. The only film that’s maybe covered more pop music ground in the twenty years since its release is 2007’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. The difference is that Walk Hard, while gust-bustingly funny, is poking fun at the pop music biopic & all of its genre-trappings while That Thing You Do! proudly wears the costume of the pop music biopic, playing some jokes at its expense, but mostly honoring it through homage. It toes a fine line between honoring & making fun, between nostalgia & derision, between parody & the real thing. Tom Hanks wrote & executed a very funny, perceptive script with his first feature, something that he failed to do a second time with his back-to-college midlife crisis comedy Larry Crowne just five years later.

Part of what makes That Thing You Do! work so well is its succinct accuracy. Framed as the biopic of a single American, Beatles-imitating one hit wonder group, the story is more the biopic of every American, Beatles-imitating one hit wonder group. It follows the entire birth, rise, and fall life-cycle of the fictional group The (one hit) Wonders. The film opens with the band writing their signature song & trying to agree on a name for their group. They then win a local talent show that leads to a steady gig at a restaurant near the airport where their fan base swells to the point where they decide it’s time to cut a record. An upstart manager takes an interest in the band, gets their song played on the radio, and books touring gigs that eventually lead to them losing touch with the friends, families, and lovers they leave behind in their small town. The band bombs their first major concert, but lands an incredible record deal anyway and begin to tour with much bigger acts, groups they’ve idolized for years. While on tour their hit song climbs the Billboard charts in the inevitable climbing-the-Billboard-charts montage. They land opportunities to appear in movies & television until their popularity reaches a breaking point where their egos are far too oversized for the band to continue. They then dissolve & separate, the band of their dreams now a pleasant, but distant memory as they assume new identities as studio musicians & has-beens. As Tom Hanks himself says in the film, “It’s a very common tale.”

As cynical of a take on pop music as a business as all that sounds, the film is still remarkably celebratory. There’s an infectious nostalgia for the mic’d handclaps, groovy wardrobes, and shoddy Gidget movies of yesteryear. The hit song at center of the film is legitimately enjoyable, which is a great advantage since it plays at least a dozen times throughout the runtime- the same way you’d expect to hear a hit song repetitively on the radio. The cast (which includes Tom Hanks, Charlize Theron, Liv Tyler, Giovani Ribisi and a brief early glimpse of Bryan Cranston) is thoroughly likeable. Even Steve Zahn, who can grate on me in large doses, is nothing but charming as the world’s only lead guitarist who can’t seem to get laid. His brand of smart-ass comedy is the funniest it’s ever been; the way he sells lines like “A man in a really nice camper wants to put our songs on the radio!” are among the best moments of his entire career. It’s as if the entire cast and, by extension, the film itself borrowed Tom Hanks’ likeability as if it were a pair of shoes. The main protagonist, played by Tom Everett Scoott, borrowed so much that he even eerily looks like he could be Hanks’ offspring.

That Thing You Do!‘s central message seems to be encapsulated in the line “Ain’t no way to keep a band together. Bands come and go.” It’s smart to recognize, however, that when a band is in full glory it can be a magical thing. The ecstatic look on girls’ faces as The Wonders play on television, the excitement musicians feel when meeting their idols & living their dreams, and the inevitably sappy true-love conclusion to the story all make the fleeting, somewhat meaningless success of a pop group seem like the most important thing in the world. That Thing You Do! showed me that you can be critical of how a thing works on a fundamental level while still finding a deep appreciation for its benefits. It also taught me that Tom Hanks can be terrifying when he’s acting mean. It’s not the most important film about pop music ever made, but it is an immensely enjoyable one & it’s one that has a lot to say about what the genre means as an art form. I’m sure as time goes on that we’ll cover many films that have a lot to say about the genre as well. The nature of pop music seems to be be an endlessly fascinating subject for both folks behind the camera and the rest of us here in the audience.

-Brandon Ledet

The Magic, Mystique, and Merchandising of KISS on Film

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One thing is for certain in regards to the rock band KISS: they’re far better businessmen than they are musicians. That’s not to say they’re particularly bad musicians or they don’t have at least a few great pop tunes (I’m personally partial to “Love Gun”); it’s more of a testament to how great they are at selling themselves as a product. The range of KISS merchandise is staggering. In addition to standard rock n’ roll commodities like t-shirts & guitar picks, the band sells everything from beach towels & throw pillows to baseballs, oven mitts, garden gnomes, pinball machines and air fresheners featuring their likeness. This dedication to branding not only made relatively harmless songs about partying seem downright demonic to unsuspecting parents in the 70s, it’s also given the band a strange longevity in the pop culture landscape. No matter how ugly KISS are (both morally & physically) without their makeup or how boring they are without the glam rock showmanship covering up their underlying mundanity, their flare for merchandising makes them an ever-present powerhouse. Their two forays into feature films, 1999’s Detroit Rock City & 1978’s KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, are merely an extension of that keen, pragmatic business sense. KISS on film is not all that much different than KISS on lunchboxes or KISS on lava lamps, all things considered.

The 1999 film Detroit Rock City was my first major exposure to both KISS as a band and KISS as a product. As a young teen misanthrope with an unfortunate affinity for nu metal (it was a different time, folks) I was firmly in the film’s target demographic. Conceived & filmed around the same time as That 70s Show, Detroit Rock City works with a very similar visual language: glorifying the era’s outsider teen ennui while also nostalgically celebrating its more commercial curiosities like vintage K-Mart fashion & disco. I identified with the film pretty deeply at the time. In what basically amounts to a standard stoner comedy/road trip movie, four members of a KISS cover band embark on individual journeys to score tickets to their favorite group’s show in the KISS mecca of Detroit. The characters aren’t nearly as likeable as I remembered (their fondness for the word “fag” is definitely a turn-off), but it’s easy to see what drew teen me to the film. Along their journey to The Concert of Their Lives, the four bumbling fools satisfy typical rebellious teen urges like getting laid, smoking weed, and telling their parents to fuck off. The stoner gags are fairly effective as far as those things go and there are several good turns from a few actors of note. A young Edward Furlong sells menacing teen angst uncomfortably well. Natasha Lyonne is beyond fabulous as a party-hungry disco queen. Character actress Lin Shaye steals the show as an obnoxiously uptight & overeager Christian mother. There’s a lot to love about Detroit Rock City even when the four main characters aren’t themselves loveable.

One thing Detroit Rock City does very well is sell the legend of KISS. Lin Shaye’s overprotective mother leads a conservative protest group called Mothers Against the Music of KISS. She’s the type that proclaims rock n’ roll to be “The Devil’s Music” and has no doubt that KISS is Satan’s favorite group among the worst of the worst. She genuinely, foolishly believes the band’s name to be a sly acronym for “Knights in Satan’s Service”. This attitude, of course, makes the band all the more attractive to her teenage son, who worships KISS in his every waking moment. In addition to the KISS cover band he drums for, the protagonist Jam is the exact kind of kid who collects KISS belt buckles, posters, drumsticks, and so on (behind his mother’s back, of course). The film really does make the band feel like a supernatural phenomenon, like the greatest thing that has ever happened to popular music or maybe even to modern society as a whole. KISS is not just a band to the four main characters; it’s an identity. It’s a personal rebellion that gives them a sense of purpose & sets them apart from straight-laced normals who can’t get it through their thick skulls that “disco sucks!” Like all false idols, no band could ever live up to that level of importance & mystique, so the movie smartly limits the amount of screen time KISS gets in a film designed to constantly remind you about how awesome they are. Detroit Rock City’s killer 70s soundtrack is era-defining, including cuts from The Runaways, T. Rex, Thin Lizzy, Edgar Winter, Black Sabbath, David Bowie and The Ramones. KISS does make up nearly half of the soundtrack, but they’re never allowed to overpower it. As much praise as the band receives during the film’s 90min runtime, they only physically appear at the climactic concert in Detroit, which is the exact opposite of other band-worship films like, say, ABBA: The Movie. It’s an effective tactic, as it affords the band a mysterious, magical charisma.

In 1978’s made-for-TV feature KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, the band’s charisma is literally magical. During the opening credits KISS soars through the air, playing loud rock music over footage of amusement park rides. They then fade to the background during a fairly dull stretch of rising action involving a mad scientist who narrow-mindedly sets his sights on dominating an amusement park instead of the world at large. When the band returns it’s in glorious fashion: they descend from space, shooting laser beams from their eyes and breathing fire while lightning dances around them. Apparently KISS can read minds, burst through walls, roar like lions, and master martial arts maneuvers that would make Batman envious. In KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, the band members aren’t merely Peter, Paul, Gene and Ace. They’re Cat Man, Star Child, Space Ace and The Demon. Although the mad scientist plot starts slowly, it pays off by affording the magical foursome the opportunity to fight opponents like android werewolves and Frankenstein’s monster. It also allows for strange details like a not-so-subtle Star Wars nod in some androids’ light-up swords and strange magical talismans that provides the band their special powers.

After seeing how extensively KISS was worshiped by their fans (or “The KISS Army”, if you will) in Detroit Rock City it’s satisfying to see them act as literal deities in Phantom of the Park. The only problem is that it’s hard to imagine that The KISS Army would have enjoyed the film at all, because it not only tries to appease them, but also tries to win over their parents. Scenes showing the band’s gentler side in heart-felt ballads, gags about an animatronic barber shop quartet, and an onslaught of corny one-liners all do a huge disservice to the band’s mystique. Only “The Demon” Gene comes out unscathed & still menacing while the rest of his bandmates are portrayed as truly good dudes under all that scary makeup. Personally, as a fan of cheese & schlock, I enjoyed how awful & miscalculated the humor was in Phantom of the Park. It’s just hard to imagine the bong water-soaked, KISS worshiping teens of Detroit Rock City feeling the same way, considering that the band’s demonic powers are used for good instead of party-minded chaos in the film. I imagine the band’s younger fans were over the moon for Phantom of the Park; I just can’t say the same about stoner teens.

Even for those who aren’t fans of KISS’s music, both Detroit Rock City and KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park are surprisingly watchable. It’s fascinating to an outsider how an okay-at-best party band branded themselves through mysterious lore and on-stage theatrics as fire-breathing, laser-shooting gods of rock n’ roll. As a stoner comedy, Detroit Rock City is an amusing glimpse into the late 90s’ nostalgic fascination with 70s cool. As a family-friendly, made-for-TV creature feature about robot werewolves and a band from outer space, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park is entertaining enough as how-was-this-even-made shlock. Together they help paint a picture of a rock group that was incredibly adept at brand-awareness, self-lore, and merchandising. KISS may not be the greatest musical act on record or on film, but they might very well be the best act on golf club covers, lip balms, snow globes and Christmas ornaments. That’s certainly a feat within itself.

-Brandon Ledet

Fan Art: An Ode to Large Marge

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As your headlights were shinning down that dark, lonely road
I knew that you would change my life forever
The dignified way you blew your big rig’s horn
Not a soul could ever do it better

Sitting behind the wheel with a blank stare on your face
Your dingy lumberjack shirt made you look a bit odd
You began to tell a tale filled with horror and fright
And I realized you were more than just some old broad

You explained the worst accident you had ever seen
And how it took place on this same road 10 years ago
The tone of your rough voice began to sound personal
Were you describing the death of someone you used to know?

Oh, but it was you that was killed in that terrible crash
Now you’re a ghost driving on a road that never ends
How I wish I could be sitting in your passenger seat
We could get to know each other and become best friends

-Britnee Lombas

Movie of the Month: The Seventh Seal (1957)

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Every month one of us makes the other two watch a movie they’ve never seen before & we discuss it afterwards. This month James made Britnee & Brandon watch The Seventh Seal (1957).

James:
Ingmar Bergman’s classic The Seventh Seal was the Swedish auteur’s first major film and helped establish art-house cinema when it won the Special Jury Prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. Set in Europe during the Black Death, the film follows Antonius Block, played by the great Max Von Sydow, as he tries to outwit the personification of Death in a game of chess. The film is now remembered mostly for its historical significance and that iconic image of Death, parodied in movies like Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and Last Action Hero, rather than its substance. That’s a shame because The Seventh Seal is thematically rich and a masterpiece of cinematography. A jester’s performance interrupted by a procession of the plague stricken. An innocent woman burned at the stake. The Dance of Death. The stark black & white images Bergman presents are haunting, evocative, and foreboding, staying with you long after the final credits.

But watching the film again, I can see why The Seventh Seal isn’t as highly regarded as some of Bergman’s later films. As an art-house film, it is an intellectual, philosophical movie that modern audience might find too heavy and bleak. It also tackles one of the deepest and most disturbing questions of existence: Why, in the face of so much evil, does God remain silent? The Silence of God is a theme Bergman would explore in later films like Through a Glass Darkly and Cries & Whispers but in those films he found more nuanced ways to get his message across. In The Seventh Seal, by contrast, Bergman strips away everything in the story that doesn’t embellish the allegory, making it feel almost like a sermon. And as with most sermons, the effect the film has on you depends greatly on if you are on board with its message. The film’s rejection of religious dogmatism in favor of humanism was something that was very powerful for me when I watched it as a teenager. The scene where Antonius confesses his doubts about God and lines like “In our fear we make an idol and call it God” fed the existential angst of my teenage years but now the film seems somewhat heavy-handed.

Brandon, do you feel the film’s lack of subtlety helps or hurts its overall message?

Brandon:
This may be a result of watching the film with fresh eyes, but the heavy-handed nature of the sermonizing worked for me, if not only because it was backed up by the strength of the film’s images. Death appears very early in the film & his iconic chess match with Max von Sydow’s Antonius is initiated almost right away. Also, the way the film is so conspicuously staged (it was mostly filmed on a studio lot) is mirrored in the traveling theatre troop’s performances, which feels like Bergman intentionally pointing out the artificiality of the world he’s created here. The movie’s honest & explicit about the fact that it’s sermonizing about the fruitlessness of life & The Silence of God and the atmosphere of a stage play is well suited for the task. The brutal imagery of the plague that haunts the proceedings also supports the weight of the lofty subjects discussed throughout. The only element that didn’t land for me was Bergman’s added gallows humor. The line of jokes surrounding the blacksmith’s wife’s affair was particularly flat for me, but ultimately it was so inconsequential in comparison to the towering presence of the film’s ideology & imagery that it didn’t affect my viewing too much.

Speaking of artificiality & stark imagery, it makes total sense that Death’s visage from this film has had such a long life in pop culture. Somewhere between a mime & a wizard, it’s a simple look, but an unnerving one all the same. Just like with last month’s The Masque of the Red Death, Death is portrayed in The Seventh Seal as an indifferent inevitability. The difference between the two portrayals is in Death’s sense of humor & amusement here. He allows himself to be tricked into the iconic chess match with Antonius because it amuses him and later poses as a priest to take the knight’s confession in a church for much of the same reason. The Red Death would never have participated in such tomfoolery. Bergman’s intense focus on portrayals of Death in art are prevalent throughout the film: an artist paints The Dance of Death in a church; the traveling actors wear a Death mask in their play; characters frequently sing about Death, God, and Satan in their leisure time. Even the image of Death playing chess that Bergman chose to portray early in The Seventh Seal is lifted from a real-life Medieval painting by Albertus Pictor, which is acknowledged by the knight in the film. When another knight asks the church painter why he paints images of Death, he responds: “To remind people that they’re going to die,” and reasons that people like to be scared & a skull can be more interesting than a naked woman. The church painter seems to be Bergman’s direct mouthpiece in this scene, an artist standing in for the artist at work.

Britnee, how did you react to the portrayal of Death in this film? Does his playfulness & humor detract from his scariness or only add to it?

Britnee:
I’ve avoided watching The Seventh Seal for years because artsy films about death just aren’t my thing, but I’m glad that Movie of the Month exists because I would’ve never given this remarkable film a chance. The film’s statements about the silence of God were so blunt and direct, which really took me by surprise and left me with some haunting thoughts. The scene with Antonius confessing to the priest, who was actually Death in disguise, was probably my favorite scene because he’s just so honest and genuine throughout his entire rant. My appreciation for his authenticity was at an all-time high at that point. Now, as for Death, I really believe that his humor and silliness most definitely contribute to his scariness. The fact that he’s having a good old time messing with Antonius is definitely creepy because it makes him seem almost human. I think the concept of the uncanny can explain how Death’s humor is terrifying. Humor, silliness, and playfulness are very human-like traits, but while these traits are familiar to us, the forces of Death are quite unfamiliar.

I really enjoyed the connection Antonius had with Jof & Mia. When he watches their family come together, there seems to be a change in his character. Jof, Mia, and their son, Mikael, are a sweet little family with nothing but love for each other, and they are so different from all the other characters Antonius encounters in the film. He is intrigued by their simplicity, morality, and the way they represent a sign of light in a world of darkness. He is waiting and searching for an opportunity to do something that would really give his life meaning, and at the end of the film, he is able to distract Death from taking the lives of Jof & Mia. After reading a couple of articles about the film, I noticed that many compare Jof, Mia, and Mikael to Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. Honestly, I don’t believe that they are direct representations of the Holy Family, but I do think they represent how being simple and virtuous can give meaning to life and make it worth living.

James, what do you think Bergman was trying to portray with the Jof and Mia? What do they symbolize?

James:
You hit the nail on the head when you describe Jof, Mia, and Mikael as a sign of light in a world of darkness and I think, through them, Bergman is trying to articulate his vision for the only real way to “cheat” death. For me, each major character (Antonius, the squire, and Jof and Mia) reacts differently to the “Silence of God” to represent a broader way that human beings deal with Death. There is Antonius, who reacts with anger, disillusionment, and hopelessness; the squire, who seems more cynical but at peace with the absurd nature of being alive; and Jof and Mia who, while maybe naive, fully embrace life, family, and art despite the dread and despair that surrounds them. As Jof, Mia, and Mikael are the only characters to survive the film, I think Bergman is trying to say that the only way to conquer the fear of death is to truly embrace life, which makes the film, in my eyes, an ultimately uplifting one.

Brandon, do you agree with this interpretation? What do the different ways that the characters react to death symbolize to you?

Brandon:
I agree that there is an undeniable dichotomy set up between the way Jof & Mia gaily approach mortality as opposed to Antonius’ unhealthy obsession with it. If no characters were to survive the film, the couple’s final days would have been much more pleasant than Antonius’ fretting over how to cheat his inevitable demise. Even their occupations reflect their relationship with mortality. As a knight, Antonius is duty-bound to interacting with death on a regular, militaristic basis. As traveling performers, Jof & Mia entertain the living, bringing amusement into people’s lives instead of protecting their demise or threatening to end them.

Jof & Mia’s playful, jocular approach to living is contrasted not only by Antonius’ morbid navel-gazing, but also in the interruption of their theatrical performance by a procession of doomsaying monks. If Bergman wasn’t trying to praise the couple’s zest for life through their survival of Death, he at least drew a distinction between their public performance and that of the self-flagellating monks, who basically spoil a pleasant afternoon. As a provider of joy & entertainment, Jof is portrayed as a holy character in the film, one that receives divine visions from beyond the mortal realm. The religious folks & Antonius are more or less party poopers that don’t know how to enjoy a good thing before it’s gone.

Britnee, where do you think Bergman’s film falls on that divide? Does it strive more to provide life-affirming entertainment & encourage joy or does it obsess over the more morbid aspects of the inevitability of our mortality?

Britnee:
I think the film successfully provides a positive view about the rather depressing fact that we are all going die. We all seem to be on the same page when it comes to the Carpe Diem attitude of Jof & Mia, and the couple’s influence on Antonius is what, in my opinion, makes this film fall more into the positive side of the divide. Antonius makes himself sick by obsessing over death and trying to give his life meaning before he cashes in his chips. After witnessing years of brutality as a Crusader and returning home only to find a town filled with Negative Nancys, it’s no wonder why he has no gusto or passion for living. He only seems to be truly happy once he meets Jof & Mia and spends time with them. Bergman makes the couple the standout characters in the film in order to create an optimistic view on life.

Lagniappe

Britnee:
We are all going to die at some point, so living in the moment and not worrying about our inevitable demise is the key to a happy, meaningful life. That’s the main message that I got from The Seventh Seal, and I really didn’t expect to have any positive lingering thoughts from a film best known for its personification of Death. There’s not much action or drama in the film, but the rich symbolism, thought provoking scenes, and intricate themes make up for anything the film may lack. I finally understand why The Seventh Seal is so legendary.

Brandon:
I’d just like to point out that our first few choices for Movie of the Month (The Seventh Seal, The Masque of the Red Death, Blood & Black Lace, and Crimes of Passion) are a pretty morbid group. I wonder if the cold weather’s getting to us. Maybe by the summer it’ll be all Gidget movies and stoner comedies. That being said, The Seventh Seal & The Masque of the Red Death were a pretty great one-two punch in the way they fed off of each other thematically. According to Wikipedia, Roger Corman himself was aware of the thematic similarities, admitting that he delayed the production of Masque because of them. He said, “I kept moving The Masque of the Red Death back, because of the similarities, but it was really an artificial reason in my mind.” Even if it is an artificial connection, they’ll be forever linked in my mind as well, because our back to back conversations about them here covered a lot of the same territory (mostly in our contemplation of an uncaring, inevitable Death).

James:
I thought it was interesting how The Masque of the Red Death and The Seventh Seal share similar themes, but the directors handle them in strikingly different ways. Bergman uses stark black and white images while Corman uses bright colors. Bergman’s dialogue is melodramatic while Corman’s is campy. The contrast really shows the tremendous influence a director’s style has on how we perceive a film. The art-house style of The Seventh Seal makes it feel more important and “deeper”, but, in my opinion, The Masque of the Red Death is the more enjoyable film. Regardless, The Seventh Seal is a bona fide classic and a great introduction to the world of Ingmar Bergman. Can’t wait until next month.

Upcoming Movie of the Months
April: Britnee presents Blood & Black Lace (1964)
May: Brandon presents Crimes of Passion (1984)

-The Swampflix Crew

How to Play the Exists (2014) Drinking Game

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Yesterday I reviewed the found footage Sasquatch movie Exists, directed by former Blair Witch luminary Eduardo Sánchez. The film is fun, but somewhat campier in premise than in execution, as it takes the threat of the Bigfoot very seriously and plays the material straight. I honestly believe that playing it straight was the right choice and the movie is all the goofier for it (even if Sánchez was aiming to make a serious work). Yesterday I wrote, “Its opening title cards read ‘Since 1967, there have been over 3,000 Bigfoot encounters in the U.S. alone. Experts agree that the creatures are only violent when provoked.’ While some may find this kind of self-serious nonsense to be a huge warning sign, it speaks to me as a fan of schlocky horror. It says to me, “This movie will be silly. Bring liquor.’” And since I recommended that you bring liquor, I guess I should provide you the rules for the Exists drinking game.

As I explained in my review, characters in Exists have a tendency to punctuate each & every sentence with either the word “dude” or “bro”. I even suggested that an alternate title for the film could be The Adventures of Camera Dude & Deer Bro in the honor of the film’s most entertaining characters’ personal preferences for the two words. Camera Dude & Deer Bro are not only the heart of the film; they’re the heart of the drinking game as well.

For a multiplayer experience
Assign each player either to drink every time a character says “dude” or every time a character says “bro”. I did not count how many times each word was uttered, but if I had to guess I’d say whoever gets assigned to “bro” would probably do most of the heavy lifting.

For a single-player experience
Just drink every time you hear the word “bro”. Deer Bro is the most likeable of the two characters so you might as well commemorate every goofy moment you get to spend with him by celebrating his favorite word.

Bonus points
Hell, drink every time you hear “dude” or “bro”. Just because I picked Deer Bro as my favorite doesn’t mean you have to take my word for it, bro. Maybe you’re more of a Camera Dude, dude. Dude, just make sure you remember to hydrate, dude & don’t plan on driving anywhere after the game is done, bro. And dude, watch out for Sasquatches, dude.

As always, play safe, bro!

-Brandon Ledet

UPDATE: The Indywood Kickstarter Campaign was a Success!

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Last week I wrote that the independent New Orleans cinema Indywood was looking to expand their programming through a Kickstarter campaign. The intimate theater has already been up and running at the edge of the French Quarter for just over a year now, but through a very reasonable requested donation they were looking to expand the scope of what services they could offer to the city’s cinephile community. At the time I wrote about their Kickstarter campaign it had two weeks to fund its project and just over half of its requested funds secured. I am happy to report that Indywood has since reached its goal and will now be able to expand its programming to include diverse offerings like Saturday morning cartoons, stand-up comedy, silent films with live musical accompaniment, “80’s VHS gems” and more.

In the last announcement I wrote that Indywood “occupies a strange, comfortable middle ground between watching a film in a traditional theater and popping in a DVD in a friend’s living room. Much like the experience of seeing a film at Zeitgeist or the outdoor Moonlight Movies screenings, there’s a communal aesthetic to Indywood that can’t be achieved at a larger, corporate-owned venue.” It’s awesome that the very community Indywood shares movies with stepped up to help them expand & grow. Personally, I very much look forward to watching to see what they bloom into and believe that, no matter what the scope of what they can accomplish, New Orleans will be all the richer for it.

Although the Kickstarter campaign has been fully funded, it’s still not too late to contribute if you haven’t already. They’ve secured the basic donation amount they’ve asked for, but more funding always helps. At this time there’s exactly one week left (until 8pm on March 5th to be exact) to contribute to the growth of New Orleans’ cinematic community & claim some truly cool rewards. There will also be a celebration for their backers (including a screening of The Big Lebowski) on March 5th to commemorate the success of the campaign. Hope to see you there!

-Brandon Ledet

An Angry Rant about the Angry Rant that is Birdman (2014)

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Look, I don’t take pleasure in hating on any film. As I noted on our About page, “We genuinely try our best to love every movie we watch, so know that it hurts us to give one a negative review. We’re looking for the gems in the garbage, not for films to shame.” I watch movies with the full intent of loving them, sometimes a little too eagerly, which often leads to positive reviews of questionable titles like Zombeavers and Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Internet is already full to the brim with vitriol and it’s a fairly tedious exercise to contribute to its negativity, but watch me do it anyway.

Birdman or (the Unamusing Pretension of Arrogance) is a terrible film with a truly nasty disposition. Like a wounded animal, it lashes out at every target within reach. Aging theatre types are too snooty to function; young people are narcissistic voids who bow before the false god of Social Media; average audiences are slack-jawed dullards who vapidly drool over celebrities & superheroes; more discerning critics are vindictive hacks; women are oversexed messes obsessed with their fathers & dying to make out with each other as soon as they can be alone. It’s a bitter worldview at best and a hopelessly misanthropic one at worst. However, that nasty disposition is not its Achilles heel. Birdman‘s major flaw is that as a lampoon of the entertainment industry, it’s not nearly as funny as it thinks it is. Pitch black misanthropy has worked for comedies like Happiness & Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the past, but those movies are also, you know, funny. When a film hates all of humanity and only roughly 20% of its jokes land, it’s a remarkably dire experience. Just ask That’s My Boy or Nothing but Trouble. A failed comedy is already painful enough without the hateful arrogance Birdman has in spades. If you’re going to believe yourself to be above everyone & everything, you probably should at least succeed in the most basic requirements of your genre.

Of course, I wouldn’t even be addressing a film I miserably suffered through several months ago if it weren’t for its recent Best Picture win at the Academy Awards. If it’s redundant for me to complain about a film online it’s almost reprehensible to add to the surprlus of complaints about a film that won the Oscars. Awards of that nature always have a way of splitting votes between idiosyncratic choices and allowing mediocrity to rise to the top and suffer excessive scrutiny. When was the last Best Picture win that truly felt deserved? The Silence of the Lambs in 1991? The Deer Hunter in 1978? There are plenty of enjoyable films that have won over the years, but it’s rare (if not impossible) for The Academy (and other awards-giving institutions) to “get it right”.

The 2014 awards season was particularly tiresome, however, because after a year packed with exciting cinema you’d think that Boyhood & Birdman were the only two films of any merit. They not only ate up all of the Oscar buzz; they topped almost every critical list imaginable. Boyhood this. Birdman that. They’re both films interesting in concept, but deeply flawed in execution. It’s great that two ambitious works have earned so much recognition, but there were plenty of other ambitious films released last year that were far more successful as finished products. Birdman’s Academy Award for Best Picture wasn’t an affront to the sanctity of cinema or anything as drastic as that. The film, although sour & unfunny, did have its occasionally impressive ideas and its cinematographer, longtime Alfonso Cuarón collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki, provided an intense visual appeal (when the single-take gimmick wasn’t being too distracting). My problem was more that after a long, tiring award season where the same two films ate up every prize available (Boyhood, Birdman, Birdman, Boyhood) the more viciously bitter of the two claimed the final trophy, arguably the most coveted prize of them all.

Plenty of people love Birdman and that’s perfectly fine. Duh. My own Best of 2014 picks never stood a chance of sweeping the awards season anyway. The trashy charms of titles like Snowpiercer, Interstellar, The Guest, and Wetlands aren’t the exactly the kind of artistic merits that earn accolades. Part of my failure to connect with Birdman might be a basic difference in personal sentiments. Perhaps I didn’t find it funny because we’re coming from opposing POV’s and the self-righteous humor of the film worked a lot better with folks on an entirely different wavelength. Although I personally failed to appreciate its final product, the film obviously clicked with a large audience so who am I to question its validity? It only took one mind a couple hours to write this diatribe against Birdman, but it took hundreds of people several months to complete the film itself, so it seems foolish at best to continue to rage against it.

Instead of ending on an angry, Birdman-esque note, I’d like to offer a few other 2014 titles for consideration as alternate viewing. For a similar attention to striking cinematography, I’d like to recommend Under the Skin, The Double, and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears. For dark, embittered comedies with genuine laughs, I’d recommend The Guest, Cheap Thrills and Wetlands. Most importantly, if you connected with Birdman’s attack on the artificiality & sex politics of life & theatre, I highly recommend Polanksi’s Venus in Fur. It accomplishes so much more with so many less moving parts, supplanting Birdman’s strained efforts with a simplistic grace and still somehow not losing a drop of the vitriol. Despite the reductive nature of awards seasons, I’d just like you to know that there were more than two films released last year and that Birdman was far from the best among them.

-Brandon Ledet