Movie Review: Caniba (2017)

Caniba (2017)

Directed by: Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel.

Featuring: Renée Hartevelt, Issei Sagawa, Jun Sagawa.

 

Even as far as documentaries about cannibals go, Caniba is strange. The film created a stir on the festival circuit when it came out there in 2017 – but pretty much disappeared after that – distributors guessing (rightly) that most audiences wouldn’t want to endure the films 90-minute runtime. The fil doesn’t give anyone what they would expect in a documentary like this – it gives them something entirely different, more immersive, more disturbing, but also perhaps more exploitative. Watching it all, I got the impression that it was precisely the film that filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel wanted to make – but was at a loss to figure out why they felt the need to make it at all.

 

The subject of the documentary is Issei Sagawa – who became famous when, as a student studying at the Sorbonne, he murdered fellow student Renée Hartevelt, raped her corpse, and then at parts of her body. But Sagawa was declared insane and unfit for trial – and sent back to Japan, where he has eked out a living based on his infamy – writing a manga about what he did, starring in specialized pornography, even being a food critic for a period of time. He also has never been shy about sitting for interviews with documentary filmmakers – and this is hardly the first film about him to be made.

 

That perhaps explain why directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor  & Verena Paravel from Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab don’t feel the need to dwell on the details of his crime all that much – we get them in onscreen text at the beginning of the film, before the film dives into a current day portrait of Sagawa – now in his 60s, and suffering from diabetes and the after effects of a stroke – he is now dependent on his older brother, Jun, to care for him. What ends up emerging in the film is a warped study of their brothers themselves – Issei admitting he still wants to eat people – and be eaten himself – and Jun still confessing that he doesn’t understand his brothers desires – before showing us his own rather extreme sadomasochistic desires as well.

 

I feel safe in saying that almost everyone reading this will not want to see Caniba, even those with a perverse fascination with the subject matter itself. The directors aren’t as interested in the details of his crime as clearly other filmmakers have been – and don’t really push Issei to explain what he did, or why. For his part, he seems tired of talking about it as well. While he admits that he is a monster, he also doesn’t really show anything resembling remorse either – and the filmmakers don’t push him to. The filmmaking is odd as well – with its relentless closeups of Issei and Jun, sometimes jostling for the frame. It’s off-putting in the extreme – and that’s even before we get to an extended clip of one of the porn films Issei starred in, or a reading, complete with pictures, of his disturbing manga – or the long sequence of Jun self-abusing. Caniba ends up being exhausting.

 

I have to admit watching the film, I often wondered what the point of it was. Why was Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel – clearly talented filmmakers that anyone who has seen their previous film, Leviathan can attest, making this film? In its own weird, fucked up way, the film I suppose humanizes both Issei and Jun – and invites you to think about your own desires – which are likely more mainstream then their own. Yet the film is also an endurance test – even at just 90 minutes – to see how much you can take, and is perhaps so off-putting that few will get what the filmmakers are going for – or want to. For them – and I think that’s most people – Caniba will be little more than a geek show.

Movie Review: Leviathan

Leviathan
Directed by: Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel.
Written by: Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel.

The reason why some critics will call Leviathan the best film of the year is the same reason why most audience members will not want to sit through the film – it’s not quite like anything I’ve ever seen before – and that’s both the films strength and its weakness. The film has come out of something called the “Sensory Ethnography Lab” at Harvard, and is co-directed by professor Lucien Castaing-Taylor, (who co-directed Sweetgrass, about sheep herding a few years back) along with Verena Paravel. The film is a documentary and an ethnographic film – yet, not really either one of those. It was shot aboard a fishing ship based in New Bedford, Massachusetts – but if you to see a film about fishing, its challenges, consequences or methodology, than really this isn’t the film for you. The film really doesn’t offer anything we traditionally think of when we watch a movie. The film immerses us in the sights and sounds on board the boat (and sometimes, overboard) but provides us with no context for anything. You simply sit back and let the film wash over you – or you fight it, and then you’re in for a very long 90 minutes. Unlike perhaps any other film this year, Leviathan offers images that you have never seen before, will probably not see again. The problem is these moments of brilliance often come right alongside some tedious moments. This is a brilliant half hour Avant garde film, stretched to 90 minutes. While I know why some have loved it – and will declare it a masterpiece (watch it to rank very high on year-end critics surveys) – I also know why when the film was released earlier this year, it grossed only $72K. This is a film that is made with little to no thought of the audience – which is refreshing and frustrating in equal degrees.

I really do not know what to say about the film – so I’ll describe the three ways in which is was shot. The first is a traditional documentary format – with the filmmakers with handheld cameras simply filming the men as they go about their work. Fair warning to people with sensitive stomachs – if you don’t think you can take extended scenes of fish being disemboweled, well then this isn’t the film for you. The second way the film is shot is with cameras mounted to the workers helmets, to capture their POV as they go about their work. The third, and most interesting way the film was shot, was with cameras that were literally tied to the giant fishing nets, and thrown out to sea. It is this way that the film produces the images you have likely never seen before – the roiling, rough see, haunting images shot of seagulls from underwater that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I haven’t seen this type of thing before – and likely won’t again. Who else would shoot this way?

You won’t really get an idea of what life on a fishing boat like this is like from Leviathan. The film is often shot in disorienting close-up, so it’s hard if not impossible to tell just exactly what you’re looking at. The voices of them men are drown out by the natural sounds of the ocean around them, and the unnatural sound of the machinery churning. One, very odd and very long, sequence simply sits back and watches the captain as he watches an episode of Deadliest Catch on TV – the show giving way to commercials. What the point of this scene is, I have no idea.

And that’s about all I can say about Leviathan. It is a film like nothing you have seen before – even the aforementioned Sweetgrass had a more traditional feel to it than this one. This one is all about its images – that it invites you to get lost in, and think of – well, whatever those images call to mind. It is deliberately ambiguous – it doesn’t argue for or against anything. Most people will have interest in the film whatsoever – I understand that. Some will proclaim it a masterpiece – I understand that as well. For me, I’m right in the middle. I admired the film, without ever really loving it. Perhaps had I seen it in a theater, where it’s easier to get lost in it, rather than at home, I would have liked it more than I did. A good test of whether the film is for you is when I mentioned “Sensory Ethnography Lab” above, did it peak your interest, or make you scratch your head in confusion. But I think if you made it this far in the review, you already know if the film is for you or not.

Movie Review: Sweetgrass

Sweetgrass ***
Directed By: Illisa Barbash & Lucien Castaing-Taylor.

I’m not sure that has ever been a documentary made about sheep herding before – and probably for good reason. Although old Westerns have filled audience’s heads with romantic notions of cattle rushes, and I suppose that is essentially what they do with the sheep here, it really isn’t all that glamorous. The cowboys are out on the range with their herd, or flock, and have to try and keep them all in line. It’s got to be tiring.

Illisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s Sweetgrass is not a glamorous documentary either. It is a largely wordless film, full of beautiful, mesmerizing images of these cowboys herding their sheep through the mountains passes and fields. It is not a film that most audience members would ever really want to see. But if you give yourself over to it, it is quietly beautiful, mournful, and even slightly profound.

I am really at a loss for words as to what to say about the film. It is a deceptively simple film. The directors do not try to make any of it seem fun or exciting – they simply content themselves in watching these men – with their sad, wrinkled faces like the Marlboro Man 30 years down the line – and of course the thousands of sheep, who move together in way that is quietly beautiful, and lets the audience either get swept up in it all, or turn away and become bored.

There is an air of sadness that hangs over the film – one that you cannot quite put your finger on until the film’s final frames – when for the first time the directors introduced title cards that explain why, perhaps, this seems like an end of an era – because in fact it is.

So many films try so hard to manipulate the emotions of the audience – and when they do try too hard, I usually resist, because I don’t like to be blatantly manipulated. But here, I found Sweetgrass to be quietly moving. Yes, it is a movie about sheep herding with almost no dialogue – and there are times when it can get rather dull. But if you are willing, these men are their sheep, may just move you in ways you didn’t see come coming when you sat down to watch the film.