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Reviews
The Fall of the Louse of Usher: A Gothic Tale for the 21st Century (2002)
Movie history is made - in Russell's personal madhouse.
I've just had the pleasure of seeing the premiere of this extraordinary movie in London - it's a trashy, hallucinatory riot that just proves what can be done with a shoestring budget and lots of enthusiasm.
It's rare to see any movie these days without having been exposed to a large amount of hype, reviews etc, before even entering the cinema. Here, I had no idea what to expect. In some ways it's a shame that this film is likely to receive the critical acclaim and cinema release it deserves: but this also helps to keep it a delicious underground secret. Search it out and enjoy.
The rarest thing of all is to see a cinematic genius and artistic visionary like Ken Russell take full command of a movie, shooting it at home on digital video without interference (or budget) from a studio.
There are several ways that people have attempted this in the past: we have Lars von Trier's Dogme manifesto that used video to create a documentary-style gritty realism. Then there was the Blair Witch, which was more an exercise in clever marketing than a real innovation: the video medium was used - as in von Trier's movies - to convince the audience of the reality of the situation. Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh's recent 'Anniversary Party' was shot on DV but pretended to be celluloid, showing that a low-budget video could look like a much more expensive affair.
But with the Louse of Usher, Russell goes with the video grain, revelling in the cheap nasty look of DV, and creates a hallucinatory world from deliberately cheapo blow-up toys, joke-shop props and even bouncy castles. The ugly, contrasty look of DV enhances the crumbling white makeup and tombstone teeth of the characters. Far from the documentary-style realism of Dogme, Russell creates moments of decadent synthetic visual madness that fully suit the video medium.
It's hard to imagine that this project was initially intended to be a studio-funded, medium budget film: the whole concept is so suited to the bargain-basement production values. The deliberate use of cheap blow-up plastic toys reminds me of how John Carpenter used a beach-ball for the alien in 'Dark Star'... instead of trying for something a bit more realistic and expensive looking, both directors choose to use their low budget to humorous effect by exaggerating the cheapness of the props.
Then there's the plot... oh yes, the plot.. umm... poaching Poe's plots and themes and whipping them up alongside fetishy gore-trash and terrible double-entendre jokes hardly makes for coherency. Other wild Russell films have much in common with this movie in its crazed mess of a plot... but that's not what we're here for. In fact, the disorientation is deliberate - we're being shown the muddled state of a crazed musician's mind, in great style and humour.
The cast (an a-z of 'underground') and all who took part were contributing their free time at weekends, and clearly having a huge laugh in the process. Tulip Junkie as Nurse ABC Smith stood out especially- a gorgeous, kinky, trashy presence. Russell's own performance as the deranged Dr. Caligari is, of course, hilarious - and central to the manic feel of the film.
Essentially an art movie put together with all the enthusiasm and messy imagination of a home movie, the fusion creates something entirely new, totally tripped-out and hopefully a great inspiration to any film-makers who worry that DV can't be used artistically, stylishly. Bravo Ken.
Quills (2000)
Intelligent, accessible, relevant
Quills deals with the issues surrounding freedom of spirit and speech with great intelligence. The four main characters are convincingly portrayed, Rush and Phoenix in particular, with panache. The film perfectly balances a bawdy, camp sense of humour with some of the most serious issues imaginable. It can deal with 'taboo' subjects and yet could be enjoyed by a viewer of almost any age.
Reviewers who suggest that the Marquis de Sade's true "unpleasant" nature was avoided are missing the point on multiple levels. The work is a fiction in the same vein as "Shakespeare in Love". But de Sade - years ahead of his time - also had his personal behaviour and the subjects he wrote about confused by the public. We can't assume that we understand his early life, just because his sexuality wasn't understood at the time. Much less can we judge it by the standards that he was judged. Try taking some of our "modern" kinky or even gay sex practices back a couple of hundred years in a time machine, and you'd find yourself in exactly the sort of trouble that the divine Marquis did - accused of anything the authorities dreamt up. Especially if you were an aristocrat and the point in history you chose was the French Revolution!
The exploration of creative freedom and its consequences are also satisfyingly dealt with- writers (or directors) tackling 'incendiary' subjects are often blamed for any "copycat crimes" that follow. In Quills, de Sade's 'perverted' writing is automatically blamed for the terrible murder that follows- even though the act was carried out by a "madman" who was clearly a menace before hearing de Sade's prose. This, like most of the moral points explored in Quills, sadly applies today just as it did then.
De Sade's fantasies are also clearly shown as rooted in the violence and moral/sexual hypocrisy of the day, suggesting that his fantasy life was actually born of opposition to the dreadful tortures he witnessed (and, ironically, ultimately endured) in the name of law or religion. Perhaps his mind turned the real brutality around and created a internal fantasy world of abused power and abused sex from it- and an outlet for such fantasies in the form of his writing. The unenlightened public and those in power in his day, even today, see 'perverted' behaviour as more dangerous than the 'powers' it mocks.
See this film if you value your freedom of speech!