Review of The Iron Ministry (2014) by Ravine L — 18 Apr 2015

You know that space between passenger rail cars that has accordion partitions so people don't fall off the train? Well imagine spending the first 10 minutes of a film in that space, half the time in darkness because the filmmaker wants you to become mezmerized like he is by the mundane sound of the train.

Then the view gradually lightens and you yet have no idea what you're being shown or why, then you realize the camera is gazing at the plastic partitions in very close-up as if you are on acid and you find the folds and valleys of the partition oh so fascinating. After several minutes of this you realize the filmmaker must be obsessive-compulsive. Then you are shown, in close-up again, scenes of animal butchery--vegetarians, do not go to this movie! Again, the filmmaker finds all this oddly mezmerizing and fascinating, enough so that the camera holds for many long moments lovingly gazing on a hunk of raw meat, or a whole liver hanging from a string, and in-the-face closeups of poor elderly grizzled cigarette-smoking men, and other lovely images. That's all the movie is, just the filmmaker providing a portrait of an unpleasant claustrophobic environment where no one else seems to want to be either.