Rubber (2010) – Review

B-Movies have always relied on simple set-ups, often so simple they’re summed up by the title itself. Earth vs. Flying Saucers, The Fly, Night of the Living Dead and so on. More ridiculous single-title premises include The Wasp Woman, The Killer Shrews, and over time these bizarre creations lead to self-aware stupidity such as Attack of the Killer Tomatoes in 1978 and countless buzzword combinations throughout the 1980’s, often “Cannibal” or “Zombie” followed by gruesome or apocalyptic word. Fast forward to 2010 and Rubber is released, threatening to trump even Killer Tomatoes for a single-mindedly ridiculous concept – a movie about a killer tyre. Selling itself as a straight-up B-Movie, it’s very soon evident however that this is something else; instilling various arthouse-y ideas into the plot results in an even stranger movie than the concept suggests.

This is the main character – it’s a tyre that kills people…

Opening with a long take of a car slowly knocking down chairs placed irregularly on a road, a police officer climbs out of the boot of the car to deliver a long monologue directly to camera about the following film having “no reason”, much like many other films that have “no reason”, such as E.T.: “Why is E.T. brown instead of green? No reason”. Odd attempts at humour sneak in; “Why does J.F.K. end in the sudden assassination of the president? No reason.”. They aren’t particularly funny, but add to a bizarre, hypnotic feeling that this film has where nothing is anywhere near as clever as it seems to think it is. The reveal of an in-movie “audience” watching Robert from afar as he discovers his ability to make small animals & people’s heads explode is another layer of this incredibly frustrating yet oddly compelling self-awareness running throughout the film. Sequences later on in the movie push the self-reference even further but I realised after the first half an hour or so that I’d all but submitted to the dreamlike surreality of it.

It’s a film about a killer tyre…

Shot on a Canon DSLR with a slim budget of around $500,000, this film looks a great deal better than you might expect. Great use of the desert landcapes gives a desolate, slow-paced feel, even though the film never drags. At least 80% of the effects for Robert (the name given to the tyre in the credits) are obviously someone just out of shot making it move in a lifelike manner or the cameraman giving it a little nudge to keep on rolling along, but the remaining shots depict Robert some impossible to replicate actions in wide shots that really make you pay attention. Never resorting to CGI, these shots are achieved with a brilliant remote control gimmick that director Quentin Dupieux likens to a hamster wheel. Nonetheless, whether you’re happy about it or not is irrelevant; the result is it really does seem like this tyre is alive. The action is far from non-stop as may have been expected prior to watching the movie, but when Robert does get murderous the practical effects are wonderfully gruesome, so we’re not entirely denied the B-Movie nonsense that was promised, and aside from the fourth-wall-breaking winks and nudges, the moments of more conventional humour are actually pretty funny.

Seriously, it’s about a tyre. Called Robert.

This is actually my second time watching Rubber, and it’s only after this second viewing that I read some interviews with Quentin Dupieux. Where I had expected him to claim some sort of hidden higher purpose to the film; some sort of commentary on film-making, audiences in general, or perhaps even something as pretentious as “the nature of reality”, the matter-of-fact and humorous insight into his method of writing the movie where he simply put in things he thought might be funny or interested him brings it all back to the opening scene’s monologue: there is truly “no reason” to any of it. It’s not a film for everyone; people attracted by the “Killer Tyre” concept expecting a stupid gore-fest will certainly be scratching their heads after a short while. Even knowing there isn’t a hidden subtext there remains a sense of pretention about it – perhaps even unintentional – but as a hypnotic, incomprehensible, and downright odd take on a B-Movie this serves as a fascinating curio as long as you manage to let yourself… roll with it… ugh.

6/10

Possession (1981) – Review

One of the 72 films labeled as a ‘Video Nasty’ in the someone-think-of-the-children hysteria of the 1980’s, Possession was not available uncut in the UK until 1999. The notoriety that comes with the ‘Video Nasty’ label suggests a film will be gratuitously excessive in sex and/or violence and, as is the case with many of them, rather thin on plot. This film is an exception to the second rule at least, directed by the Polish Arthouse director Andrzej Żuławski it is an allegorical, largely character-driven, and often incomprehensible take on the splatter-horror of the 70’s and 80’s.

“You’ve bred RAPTO- oh, wrong film.”

Starring Sam Neill, long before he was being chased by dinosaurs, as a man who works for an unexplained organisation who speak almost entirely in mysterious babble for the viewer to try and piece together, he returns home from an assignment of some sort to his wife and young son. His marriage is evidently falling apart and it is very soon discovered that his wife is having an affair. From here the film meanders along the point as both characters take turns in completely losing it at each other and their surroundings in scenes that could have come across as ridiculous if it wasn’t for the film’s two main strengths: it is shot with a rawness unusual for it’s time – lots of handheld cameras and claustrophobic close-ups create an unconfortable energy, while Neill, and Isabelle Adjani as his wife, give brilliant, extreme performances; most notably in a longer-than-it-ought-to-be breakdown scene involving Adjani enduring what is supposed to be a misscarriage. Barely an inch off some sort of macarbre interpretive dance, Adjani writhes and tumbles around a gloomy subway tunnel screaming and exuding various colours of bloody goo (even from her head) for what feels like a very long time. This scene is representative of many more key scenes in the film – it makes no sense to the plot at face value as she was never pregnant; the miscarriage is visually expressing one of a few fourth-wall-breaking monologues; it continues for an uncomfortable length of time, and on paper it could fit into any of the splatter-gore trash films of the era, but between the heavy-handed direction and devoted acting it is somehow hypnotic to watch, even if you’re watching it with a face expressing a mixture of repulsion and confusion.

I’m not a doctor, but…

The acceptance that what is happening probably isn’t happening but what is actually happening isn’t immediately visible is where viewers either love or hate this film. While I personally like a film that makes you think after it ends, this is a film that takes the idea further into these arthouse roots so that you must read between the lines so to speak and embellish what you find with your own ideas to have even a weak grip on what the majority of the elements in this film actually mean. A film that spends a lot of it’s first act barely skirting the genre of horror, a third act that is brutal, horrific, and very destructive (in terms of character as well as physical), ends on a disturbing final image that on one hand throws a whole new perspective to consider at anyone brave enough to attempt dissecting the film and on the other, provides yet another moment of bewildered horror. A number of sacreligious discussions and images provide the obligatory mix of controversy and self-important intellect in ways that may prove important to an individual’s interpretation of the movie but at face value feel forced and a little bit pretentious.

[Insert religious context]

I can’t say it’s an objectively bad film, as the main cast are excellent while the director has given great care to planting countless pieces to the puzzle that is the purpose of the film, details such as what colours some characters wear at certain points seem important, and small events in one scene tie in to much greater events in another. Even the Possession of the title doesn’t refer explicitly to a single entity. However my view is that a film shouldn’t require this cross-examination and, to an extent guesswork, to be able to say what it was even about; the best films I think make some level of sense on a first watch, rewarding the viewer on repeat viewings with either deeper meanings or a clearer understanding of how or why certain things occur.

Definitely not a film for everyone and, while I appreciate the numerous good points it has, I ultimately found it just too frustrating to make me want to solve the puzzle it presents.

4/10