Viva La Muerte! (Fernando Arrabal, 1971)

Perhaps it's because I still have The Holy Mountain in mind, but Fernando Arrabal's surrealist Vive La Muerte! didn't hit the mark. Arrabal and Jodorowsky were collaborators (I believe) as well as influences on one another, so it's normal that the two filmmakers be tied together. But what Arrabal tries to do in this film, juxtapose the everyday with the holy, the divine and the profane, would be better done in Jodorowsky's film two years later. The plot revolves around the desperation of Franco's Spain, where young Fando's father is dead. His mother tells him his father killed himself in jail, but Fando doesn't believe that. He has a vivid, at times shocking imagination, as well as a pretty big Oedipus complex. The mother-son sexuality is treated as one of the least shocking elements in the film. I can see how, at the time, the mixture of religious and sexual/violent imagery was shocking, but having seen Jodorowsky's work, as well as countless other, less talented filmmakers who have tried the same tactics, it's almost passe in contemporary times. Arrabal did shoot this film gorgeously, however. Fando's internal sequences were colored over with technicolors, such as bright pink and yellow, that sometimes blend and change during the sequence. While at first, this seemed inventive and different, after a while, it seemed almost amateur (too obvious a delineation between the real and the imagined) or film-schooly. If you like surrealist film, I do recommend Arrabal's Viva La Muerte! because, as I said, some of the images are stupendous: the mother with the knife in her mouth and Fando's bath scene come immediately to mind. But for surrealist imagery (young girlfriend with a turkey companion) that has a real gut impact, you're best to look elsewhere. Of note: there is a graphic animal murder (of a cow) onscreen that made me really upset. Sensitive vegetarians like myself should be aware - it comes near the end of the film and is definitely an eye-covering scene. 5.5/10

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Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1971)

Put Wanda in the forgotten classics hall of fame. Barbara Loden made this landmark of independent cinema in 1971, and it was one of the first films directed by a woman given wide theatrical release. It is the improvisational, intensely personal story of Wanda, who has deserted her husband and children and eventually falls in with a small-time criminal, accompanying him on a robbery that can only end in tragedy. Loden herself plays Wanda, and it's such a remarkably personal and realistic performance. The film, with its intense realism and lack of famous actors, feels almost like a documentary. It's not in any way polished, nor, at times, very compelling, but that's what life is like. Wanda's life is depressing and dead-end (she cannot even find a job in a textile factory because she is, according to the boss, too slow), and so is the movie, right down to the last shot. The film was shot in Kodachrome, making the colors washed-out and real. There is one notable shot, several minutes long, of Wanda in a white coat walking across a dingy landscape of dirt. She has no recognizable beginning or destination, but walks nonetheless. This is the problem of the second-wave woman, not that Wanda is a feminist, or even a strong person, but that there are some feelings that many women share. I am not an essentialist in any way, but watching this movie, I had the feeling that I had seen it before, or that I knew it in some way. That's how Wanda touched me. All those brilliant qualities aside, the exact lack of compelling action at times stopped me from loving it outright. But I think Wanda is a movie that doesn't want you to love it; rather, it gives the audience a problem with no solution. Barbara Loden died at 48, giving the world only this film, but what a legacy: this film precludes both much of independent cinema and feminist/female-directed cinema. This is certainly a film that deserves to be seen, and to be seen widely. 8/10

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