Less than 10 minutes into A Sad Trumpet Ballad, we're shown the spectacle of a machete-wielding clown in a dress striding forth into a regiment of Spanish civil war soldiers, hacking open throats left, right and centre, his big comical shoes taking him forward through the shower of jugular sprays as he keeps on swinging. It's an amazing sequence of brutal, surreal imagery. As a moment of absurd revisionist history, it makes Inglorious Basterds seem overly safe and unambitious in comparison. It's one of the coolest things I've seen so far this year. And it's not even the best part of the film.
After this short prologue, we're whisked from 1937 to 1973 where we find that the main character of the film is the clown's son. He joins a circus hoping to follow in his father's footsteps, but the tragedies of his childhood have left him unable to make anyone laugh. So he becomes the sad clown, destined to continue a life where the jokes are all on him. His counterpart, the happy clown, is as confident as the sad clown is pathetic. A savage brute of a fellow, prone to unexpected violence, he keeps everyone in line with fear. He's also ploughing the sh!t out of the super hot trapeze girl and ensuring she doesn't stray by dishing out the occasional beating. When she takes a fancy to our main character, then these two clowns are set for a violent confrontation. Reeeeeal violent.
So there's a touch of Freaks to the plot, but apparently it's also intended to parallel the events of the Spanish civil war. I know nothing about Spain except that it has nice beaches and inattentive bartenders, so this side of the story went over my head. If I were to guess with my limited grasp of Spanish history, I'd say the happy clown is meant to represent Franco, the sad clown is the Republicans and the trapeze girl is Spain itself. That could be a load of balls though. Fortunately, you don't need to understand it on that level as there's plenty more to enjoy. Let's face it, history is boring as sh!t when compared to psychotic clowns, so put the subtext on the back-burner and just enjoy the show.
Did I mention the violence yet? One of the main complaints for the movie at festival screenings is that it's "too violent". I don't know what that phrase means, so I looked it up on dictionary.com and it still seemed like pure gibberish to me. From I can gather it means "too much awesomeness". Something like that anyway. But yeah, it's got plenty of nasty stuff happening. Structurally it's messy as hell, constantly changing tone and tightrope-walking between genres, from war movie to historical drama to dark comedy to romantic melodrama. But by the time the final third rolls around, we're into a full-bore, take-no-prisoners nightmare of madness and mutilation - a pure freak show.
Some may be put off by the total lack of sympathetic characters (the trapeze girl in particular is especially unlikeable) or the constant barrage of unpleasantness. But for me, the sheer level of originality and visual creativity more than makes up for any shortcomings. Nowadays, the retro throwback trend has made it fashionable to rape the corpse of post-modernism with nothing more than a lazy wink-at-the-audience to justify the lack of originality, so it's especially pleasing to see a movie acknowledge its influences and then expand on them. Gutsy filmmaking all-round from a director who's willing to push the art-form into territory we haven't seen before.
It's in my top 3 for 2010. Check it out
After this short prologue, we're whisked from 1937 to 1973 where we find that the main character of the film is the clown's son. He joins a circus hoping to follow in his father's footsteps, but the tragedies of his childhood have left him unable to make anyone laugh. So he becomes the sad clown, destined to continue a life where the jokes are all on him. His counterpart, the happy clown, is as confident as the sad clown is pathetic. A savage brute of a fellow, prone to unexpected violence, he keeps everyone in line with fear. He's also ploughing the sh!t out of the super hot trapeze girl and ensuring she doesn't stray by dishing out the occasional beating. When she takes a fancy to our main character, then these two clowns are set for a violent confrontation. Reeeeeal violent.
So there's a touch of Freaks to the plot, but apparently it's also intended to parallel the events of the Spanish civil war. I know nothing about Spain except that it has nice beaches and inattentive bartenders, so this side of the story went over my head. If I were to guess with my limited grasp of Spanish history, I'd say the happy clown is meant to represent Franco, the sad clown is the Republicans and the trapeze girl is Spain itself. That could be a load of balls though. Fortunately, you don't need to understand it on that level as there's plenty more to enjoy. Let's face it, history is boring as sh!t when compared to psychotic clowns, so put the subtext on the back-burner and just enjoy the show.
Did I mention the violence yet? One of the main complaints for the movie at festival screenings is that it's "too violent". I don't know what that phrase means, so I looked it up on dictionary.com and it still seemed like pure gibberish to me. From I can gather it means "too much awesomeness". Something like that anyway. But yeah, it's got plenty of nasty stuff happening. Structurally it's messy as hell, constantly changing tone and tightrope-walking between genres, from war movie to historical drama to dark comedy to romantic melodrama. But by the time the final third rolls around, we're into a full-bore, take-no-prisoners nightmare of madness and mutilation - a pure freak show.
Some may be put off by the total lack of sympathetic characters (the trapeze girl in particular is especially unlikeable) or the constant barrage of unpleasantness. But for me, the sheer level of originality and visual creativity more than makes up for any shortcomings. Nowadays, the retro throwback trend has made it fashionable to rape the corpse of post-modernism with nothing more than a lazy wink-at-the-audience to justify the lack of originality, so it's especially pleasing to see a movie acknowledge its influences and then expand on them. Gutsy filmmaking all-round from a director who's willing to push the art-form into territory we haven't seen before.
It's in my top 3 for 2010. Check it out