I live and work in LA. Here's the reason for my rating. First you take a random porn movie off the shelf, then you replace the physically attractive but creepy-brained human beings with the super ultra low rent versions of the same people. Only now they're large and less attractive, save one gravel-voiced sex cat, and they really truly believe they are making art. This causes every action and thought and move of the camera to s l o w w a y the f * * k d o w n. Then you take out most of the sex and replace it with documentary footage of, well, Mexico City.
It creates a drugged-out kind of sensation watching it, by planting actors like stiff cardboard cutouts in scene after scene, usually staring into space amid saying a line or two like "I just kidnapped a kid" in subtitled slang. Then we're at a whore house to dangle the would-be sexual carrot for a bit, and it's back to staring at a fat dude in a cloud of farm dust. As though it's in the same metaphysical dimension as watching City of God or Capote... or Harry freaking Potter. It blows my mind that there isn't a 14 year old in Quebec with a digital video phone that hasn't put together a more compelling film to replace one like this in the indie theaters. Adults having sex and all.
The true offense of Battle in Heaven isn't that it's a transparently disguised mindless self indulgence which only has common-thread relevance in a world that doesn't exist in reality (a 2006 world thirsting for high-art-concept low budget motion photographs of naked central casting hopefuls). It's not that you can see the actress' head tracking the camera and then relaxing when it landed on her, or the splicing of the edit in the bell ringing scene, or the totally scuzzy texture and manipulatively depressing guiding hand of the story and of its director. The real burr under my saddle was the potential I thought was there from watching the first scene, which seemed so erotic and new and animalistic and folksy and deeply visceral. It was arousing. Then, the movie seemed to relentlessly punish me, pummel me for hours and hours into a Latin America submission. The movie made me embarrassed to have been turned on at the beginning. More than that, it made me feel a little repulsed even at the thought of sex. When I got home I told actually told my pet parrot that a piece of me had just died. That hormonal piece that gets excited at the gates of Heaven even though what awaits me is just another Battle. Watching this film aged me. I grew up more than I wanted to today. It was icky.
I'm normally one to shun mean spirited criticism of other people's art, but obviously this is where I draw the line. These filmmakers deserve many things, but participation in Hollywood isn't one of them. I should know, I was in Gigli.
It creates a drugged-out kind of sensation watching it, by planting actors like stiff cardboard cutouts in scene after scene, usually staring into space amid saying a line or two like "I just kidnapped a kid" in subtitled slang. Then we're at a whore house to dangle the would-be sexual carrot for a bit, and it's back to staring at a fat dude in a cloud of farm dust. As though it's in the same metaphysical dimension as watching City of God or Capote... or Harry freaking Potter. It blows my mind that there isn't a 14 year old in Quebec with a digital video phone that hasn't put together a more compelling film to replace one like this in the indie theaters. Adults having sex and all.
The true offense of Battle in Heaven isn't that it's a transparently disguised mindless self indulgence which only has common-thread relevance in a world that doesn't exist in reality (a 2006 world thirsting for high-art-concept low budget motion photographs of naked central casting hopefuls). It's not that you can see the actress' head tracking the camera and then relaxing when it landed on her, or the splicing of the edit in the bell ringing scene, or the totally scuzzy texture and manipulatively depressing guiding hand of the story and of its director. The real burr under my saddle was the potential I thought was there from watching the first scene, which seemed so erotic and new and animalistic and folksy and deeply visceral. It was arousing. Then, the movie seemed to relentlessly punish me, pummel me for hours and hours into a Latin America submission. The movie made me embarrassed to have been turned on at the beginning. More than that, it made me feel a little repulsed even at the thought of sex. When I got home I told actually told my pet parrot that a piece of me had just died. That hormonal piece that gets excited at the gates of Heaven even though what awaits me is just another Battle. Watching this film aged me. I grew up more than I wanted to today. It was icky.
I'm normally one to shun mean spirited criticism of other people's art, but obviously this is where I draw the line. These filmmakers deserve many things, but participation in Hollywood isn't one of them. I should know, I was in Gigli.