And so it begins.... SIFF the First
May. 26th, 2006 07:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
The first day of the Seattle International Film Festival, after the opening night thingies of Thursday, and up on the menu was Adam's Apples. A black comedy about religion and the nature of good and evil by Danes - what's not to like?
Adam is a neo-Nazi who, as a condition of his parole, goes to stay at a small Danish rural church with the pastor and some other reformed convicts. Unfortunately, everyone in this town is a nutter, and the nuttiest of all is the reverend himself, so determined to believe in the good in the world that he simply refuses to see the unfortunate events that go on around him. And as he sets out to reform Adam, and Adam sets out to break the reverend's faith, Mysterious Things start to happen. Are the powers of Good and Evil really doing battle in this rural retreat?
There isn't a wasted moment in this film - every scene has a purpose that goes far beyond a good line, and every tightly-cut snippet needs to be watched as earlier references come back to haunt. It's very, very clever at what it does, and the changes of mood flipping back and forth between outright laughter and outright shock are deliberate and wrenching. This film isn't just Black, it's The Void - you need to be fairly shock-proof to enjoy this, with not a single genuine or truly sympathetic character in it, and not a single opportunity to trample all over the boundaries of taste missed. And the film's equally good when it's playing it understated, saying everything with Silence and Looks.
The imdb rating on this film would be considerably higher, except it's dragged down by three Danes who say it's too similar to the creator's previous films. Since I haven't seen those, I gave it a 4 out of 5 on the audience award vote, and the SO, being even more twisted than I and maybe less optimistic about the many films to come, gave it the full 5. For those native to the area, there's a second showing of this dose of sickness on Monday night, but that's at the Egyptian with the Seats of Evil - oh, wait, that's probably perfect!
Adam is a neo-Nazi who, as a condition of his parole, goes to stay at a small Danish rural church with the pastor and some other reformed convicts. Unfortunately, everyone in this town is a nutter, and the nuttiest of all is the reverend himself, so determined to believe in the good in the world that he simply refuses to see the unfortunate events that go on around him. And as he sets out to reform Adam, and Adam sets out to break the reverend's faith, Mysterious Things start to happen. Are the powers of Good and Evil really doing battle in this rural retreat?
There isn't a wasted moment in this film - every scene has a purpose that goes far beyond a good line, and every tightly-cut snippet needs to be watched as earlier references come back to haunt. It's very, very clever at what it does, and the changes of mood flipping back and forth between outright laughter and outright shock are deliberate and wrenching. This film isn't just Black, it's The Void - you need to be fairly shock-proof to enjoy this, with not a single genuine or truly sympathetic character in it, and not a single opportunity to trample all over the boundaries of taste missed. And the film's equally good when it's playing it understated, saying everything with Silence and Looks.
The imdb rating on this film would be considerably higher, except it's dragged down by three Danes who say it's too similar to the creator's previous films. Since I haven't seen those, I gave it a 4 out of 5 on the audience award vote, and the SO, being even more twisted than I and maybe less optimistic about the many films to come, gave it the full 5. For those native to the area, there's a second showing of this dose of sickness on Monday night, but that's at the Egyptian with the Seats of Evil - oh, wait, that's probably perfect!
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