Long Live Death

Whether you like them or not, the images are haunting. I saw this film 31 years ago and still remember some sequences vividly. You might argue that the anarcho-surrealism is intellectualised, a pose. But you cannot deny that it is effective. The message gets across, even if a sledgehammer approach is required. But it also is very poetic: the poetry of cruelty. I suppose this kind of establishment bashing was considered very chic in those days. Now it looks dated, unfortunately. But at the time, it shook me profoundly.

VIVA LA MUERTE does have amazing visuals and the idea of combining video with film was brilliant and ahead of its time. BUT the main problem of with VIVA LA MUERTE is that it's extremely repetitive. The film feels like it's made of 10 minute long short films that use the same direction, the same editing, the same pacing. With the film's running time at 90 minutes, it was like watching nine 10 minute long short films strung together, that all looked the same. So after the fourth or fifth 10 minute moments, I was slowly drifting away from the film, uninterested to whatever was happening on screen. It is an art film and should be viewed differently than your average movie but I thought the whole thing simply didn't gel together and the symbolism was heavy handed.

This film begins with a long credit sequence where a strangely catchy nonsense song sung by French schoolchildren is played over Boschian illustrations (by "Fantastic Planet's" Roland Topor) of torture and sadomasochism. And the film never lets up after that. This is the first film of Fernando Arrabal, a Spanish friend and collaborator of the more famous (and more notorious)Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. (Arrabal wrote the play on which Jodorowsky's first film "Fando y Lis" was loosely based). Although they would probably both be loath to admit it, both men owe an obvious debt to fellow countryman Luis Bunuel. But while Jodorowsky's films resemble the early, very surrealistic films Bunuel made with Salvador Dali (albeit with a lot of trendy 60's era Eastern mysticism thrown in), this film is more of an uncensored version of the films like "Los Oividados" that Bunuel made in Mexico in the 1950's which combine surrealism with neorealist social commentary.

This film is much more autobiographical than anything Bunuel or Jodorowsky ever did. It tells the story of a young boy, Fando (no doubt based on Arrabal himself), whose Republican father has been arrested by the Fascists in the dark days after the Spanish Civil War where people who supported the other side were rounded up and executed even if it meant "killing half the country". Much of the movie is based on the boy's memories of his father and bizarre surrealistic images he imagines of the fate that might have befallen him (including being buried up to his neck in the sand while Arabesque figures on horseback use his head to play polo, or being sewn alive into a cow's carcass). As in "Los Olvidados" the boy has a strange Oedipal love/hate relationship with his treacherous young mother who he finds out betrayed his father to the soldiers. He also has an "aunt" who seems to suffer from a bizarre combination of religious mania and nymphomania (Arrabal gives the Catholic Church all the credit it so richly deserves in the tragedy that befell Spain).

This movie is quite political. The title is based on a real quote by a fascist general: "Down with intelligence, long live death!" (a sentiment that by the 1970's was making its way across the Atlantic to Pinochet's Chile and the military government in Argentina). Ironically, this film which is a scathing indictment of human cruelty, has often drawn charges of animal cruelty. One act of "animal cruelty" involves a disgusting bug (good riddance). I would hope a scene where a lizard gets its head bitten of was faked (as much for the sake of the young actor as the lizard). The footage of a bull being butchered and castrated is definitely real, but animal rightists should be glad if anything since this occurs thousands of times a day and this scene shows how truly disgusting it is. Besides this is not an Italian cannibal film with a tacked-on political message to justify its animal slaughter--this scene will really hit home with the kind of people who have no stomach for animal suffering but think nothing of their government creating or permitting massive human suffering for the sake of high-minded political ideals. This is truly a brave, powerful, and memorable film.

Viva La Muerte is the first instalment in a trilogy of surrealistic / political films by Fernando Arrabal. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Arrabal, Viva La Muerte follows ten-year-old Fando as he explores friendship, sexuality, betrayal and death in the midst of the Spanish civil war.

After Fando's father is arrested for treason, his mother tells him that he committed suicide in prison but Fando is suspicious and seeks to learn the truth. He soon discovers that his mother was responsible for his father's arrest and that he is alive and well.

When Fando is not making effigies for his disturbed little puppet theatre he is either sticking close to his mothers side, having gruesome hallucinations or hanging out with his little gal pal Therese, who is never without her pet turkey. The hallucination sequences are some of the best scenes in the film, they range from Arrabal's obsession with defiling religious iconography to Fando fantasising about flooding the town with his urine and his mother taking a dump on his incarcerated father's head. These scenes were shot on video then filtered through various abstract colour schemes which produces some very unsettling visuals.

La Muerte's opening credits sequence features some absolutely stunning and horrific Bosch-esquire illustrations by Roland Topor, co-founder of the Panic Movement along with Arrabal and Jodorowsky, accompanied by a sweet children's refrain that really sets the tone for what is about to come.

Fando's relationship with his mother and aunt both seem to have Oedipal / incestuous undertones, which are especially notable in the scene where his aunt forces him to flagellate her, during which she violently grabs & twists his scrotum. Although, scenes like this and another wherein a soldier shoots a "faggot" poet in the asshole seem like nothing compared to the closing sequence where a bull is graphically slaughtered and Fando's mother writhes ecstatically in the hot fountain of blood, smearing her face with it then she proceeds to sew an unknown man into the carcass of the bull. Later on the bull's cadaver is castrated and his testicle sac emptied onto the ground. If that isn't enough for all you PETA sympathisers there's also a bunch of lambs mercilessly butchered.

Undoubtedly the scenes of animal slaughter may turn a lot of viewers off, but they are not used in the way that a film like, say, Cannibal Holocaust uses them. There is also footage of open heart surgery, but in the hands of Arrabal all of these easily exploitable elements actually go toward the films credit and fit perfectly within the perverse, violent and fantastic world that is Viva La Muerte.

After seeing this film my reaction was - who is this guy and what other films has he made? When I was told it was his first, I could hardly believe it. (I saw it when it first opened in 1970.) He was a writer in his 40's and the maturity shows.

It's surprising that this has not become a mainstay of the Art House cinemas. The use of allegory, childhood memories, repressed sexual desires, dream-like sequences (all those thing which evoke a visceral reaction in the viewer) are combined in a well directed, thought provoking, cinematic experience.