Review of Calvaire (2005) by Ross M — 04 Jun 2012

I won't make a false promise to you that you will love this film - you must have a certain black sense of humour and an appreciation for films such as those of the Dardenne Brothers, also Belgian if you haven't heard of them, and classic horror imagery + lanscapes from the 60's and 70's - but if you didn't like the film and rated it below 40 percent, you are decieving potential viewers because even on the sound design and cinematography, this film shows lots of interesting techniques, influenced by some great French and German films, often very well executed. While I can imagine it might frustrate some people, I found the overall look and feel of the film to be beautifully dark and nightmarish - the unsettling first five minutes and last five minutes could have been taken from a Dardenne film where Werner Herzog was the cinematographer. There are some obvious and banal comparisons that can be drawn between this film and Deliverance or The Hills Have Eyes or any other film mocking supossedly inbred Southern American states. This film has NOTHING to do with that politics or mocking tone and while the local population is certainly crazy and isolated, there is no mention of inbreeding or genetic mutations - they are crazy becasue they live in a horrible place, doing hard agricultural jobs and all of their woman have grown sick of it and left - identical to documentaries I have seen about such communities in isolated places. At one point the 'comedian' makes a joke about a midget football team dressed in red, then we see a group of children dressed in red waterproofs - they have been left to play in the woods - the next generation of lonely, sad people perhaps. You may well have personal reasons for not wanting to make the effort to give this film a chance because you have seen too many British and American 'torture porn' films and are sick of that 'genre' (which I never liked to begin with). This is NOT a torture porn film e.g. only one small breaking of human skin with a sharp implement appears in the entire film. The rest of the violence is executed with psychology, pervertion and farmers' rifels. There is no blood in the entire first two-thirds of the film. People are imagining that this is like some rubbish version of Wolf Creek - it is nothing like that in tone or intent. Also, this is not a Horror film by the commercial definition of that - it has been marketed all wrong. It is a psychological examination of lonelieness, delusion, determination, obsession, mysogyny, twisted love, the nature of performance, submission - the film makes no secret of any of this - the imagery is very obvious e.g. when a comedy award statue in the shape of a smiling mask falls beside the injured protaginist's head onto the floorboards, or the constant appearance of wall pictures of disturbed male ancenstors - but then why shouldn't it be? Does every dark film have to be predominantly cryptic? This film is intentionally open and bleak - the ending tells you this. There is no clever ironic way to portray real loneliness. At each stage, the acting is excellent in every part, if a little bit mad, inconsistant or 'surreal' for some people's taste - as with Possession, 1981. You may notice that people who say this film is a rip-off of other films like Deliverance provide very few specific examples - that is because they were thinking of other films while watching it instead of watching what was infront of them e.g. the appearance of a pig, is NOT a reference to the fanmous line from Deliverance but one of various references throughout the filmn to a BELGIAN film called Vase de Noces made at the same time in the 70s. This is not some gratuitous voyeur film, it is just a strange film about slipping into insanity and loneliness, from the point of view of the most sane or 'normal' person in the film, who gradually becomes less so. As in Frankenstein, 1994, we begin with a detached horror at what we see then (like Vincent Van Gogh when he visited this desolate part of the Belgian country side, where various famous crimes and murders have been committed in recent years) we start to slip into the mists and dark brooding forests or wetlands. I could have watched the final journey into the wilderness for a while longer personally.

Every time I thought the director was making a reference to another film like The Wicker Man, the film went in a completely opposite direction. After having watched it properly, the films that certain sections did remind me of are as follows: Seul Contre Tous (1998), Frankenstein (1994), Le Fils, Awakenings, One Few Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Fitzcarraldo (1982), Trainspotting, 12 Monkeys, Possession (1980), Anti-Christ, The Fall of the House of Usher, Gus Van Sant's 'Jerry' and 'Last Days', Valhalla Rising, The Crying Game, Ils (2006), Wake Wood (2010), Blood On Satan's Claw, The Mask of the Red Death. If the director did rip off other films to produce this one, there are so many candidates that it is ultimately immaterial, not to mention hypocritical given some of the films listed in your favourites.

Another thing to consider - if this film is pointless amateurish trash as the extremists would claim, why did he produce a film like Vinyan afterwards, another film about gradually being driven mad by longing after loved ones and again based in isolated locations, compared in it's cinematography to certain parts of Apocalypse Now? If viewers cared to get into the right frame of mind and pay attention most people would give this about 60%. I personally liked it more and connected with the imagery and style, so I would give it about 85%. And just to piss people off I recorded my score as 100%. Thanks for reading.