Aeternox Reviews

The Experiment (2001)

'torture lite'

[10/10 · 3 August 2004]

In 2003, the Pentagon held a screening of La Battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers, 1965), a classic anti-war movie about the anticolonial revolution in Algeria. Judging from what happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, they clearly didn't screen Das Experiment as well. Or maybe they did, but didn't learn anything from the movie. After all, it seems they did not learn anything from La Battaglia di Algeri either.

Not just the Pentagon, but anybody who still thinks 'torture lite' is acceptable, should see Das Experiment. This extremely gripping film shows how allowing even the seemingly most unthreatening 'torture lite' quickly leads to terrible excesses.

The barbarous tortures that happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were by no means 'accidents', as the Bush administration wants us to believe. These excesses are the logical result of allowing 'mild forms of pressure'. Das Experiment makes a very convincing case for this line of reasoning.

The Thing from Another World (1951)

sucks on the ideological level

[7/10 · 3 July 2004]

SPOILERS!

Nice movie except it sucks on the ideological level. It portrays the head scientist and the journalist as foolish. The scientist disobeys, lies, helps the monster breed, thinks he can persuade it not to kill them. The journalist fails to make a single good picture and eventually faints upon seeing the monster. The military chief on the other hand knows exactly what he's doing. This is the kind of picture painted by lots of movies, but that doesn't mean it's cool. In a strange twist of argument, the scientist mentions atomic technology when he defends science as the great hope of humankind. The soldiers laugh about this because of the atom bomb. As if only the scientists and not the military and politicians are to blame. Who decided to mass produce the atom bomb? Who decided to drop it on innocent people?

The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)

Fails

[5/10 · 22 August 2003]

This movie is overlong and lacks interesting plot twists. The narrative and the cinematography are boring. THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN fails as a horror movie and fails as a movie in general.

Just skip it, and watch THE DEVIL RIDES OUT instead. It is a fantastic Hammer Horror production! (and the reason why I tried this one...)

Under the Skin (1997)

Depth of Emotion

[9/10 · 7 February 2003]

This is a very good film. It grabbed my attention after seeing the great Morvern Callar last week, which also features Samantha Morton. As said in other comments, Under the Skin is considered her breakthrough. She is a truly gifted actress, I love her depth of emotion.

At one point in this movie she walks along a ribbed fence, while touching it with her right hand: taktaktaktaktak. I don't know if this is a reference, but it reminded me of a scene in one of Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs films (Rouge, I believe.) There an equally tormented woman walks along a brick wall in a similar way, wounding her right hand which starts to bleed heavily.

I wouldn't say those films are really the same, but I would certainly recommend the one if someone would like the other. In both films, as well as Morvern Callar, we follow a female protagonist unable to deal with a traumatic experience, the passing away of someone very close to her. We follow her down the road of estrangement, wondering if she will ever find peace.