Monday, September 13, 2010

Oh The Inhumanity

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"In a Glass Cage is a great film, but I'm scared to show it to any of my friends." - John Waters

I know how John feels. I felt dirty being in the same room as my boyfriend watching this movie, like I was a bad person for bringing it into the house and exposing him to it. As if I haven't exposed him to enough horror and filth already.

But this movie's the real deal. Too real a deal, maybe. You go out of your way to find movies that'll disturb you and then you find one that succeeds and suddenly you're wondering what the hell you're doing with your life. Agustí Villaronga's 1987 debut is profoundly disturbing, in a way that burrows inside of you and makes you squirm. It's also elegantly shot and performed, which only furthers its madness.


In a Glass Cage tells the story of an escaped Nazi pedophile and the young man who finds him and becomes obsessed with his former crimes. Just think Apt Pupil but with Ian McKellen trapped in an iron lung and a couple of little boys stripped half-naked and murdered while the camera lingers... and lingers... and lingers. On their exposed bodies, and on their death throes.

And yet... yet... while it tows and then trashes the line, it doesn't feel without purpose. A film that deals with disturbing subjects like pedophilia and the Holocaust has no right not disturbing its audience. Entwining the two in a film so slickly designed, well it definitely gets uncomfortable. It redefines uncomfortable. It pushes back. I can't say it entirely succeeds. I'm not even going to recommend anyone seek the film out. There are things inside of it that I wish I could un-see, honestly.

But there is truth in that. There are some scars that will never heal. There are some scars that should never heal. There are scars that need to be remembered even if we'd all rather just look away from them. Sometimes it's the very foundation of the world that's been torn open, and reinspecting those wounds, maybe finding a way to turn that past into something more, a lesson, sometimes it's the only thing keeping us from the grave at all. In a Glass Cage ponders whether we deserve that tiny bit of grace, even if we remember.
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5 comments:

Simon said...

I heard of this, but I've been too freaked out to actually see it...I mean, how do you describe it in a way that'll convince your mother not to watch it with you, without using either 'Nazi' or 'pedophile'? Delicate situation, tis.

Derreck said...

oh, wow. i kinda want to see this. I will probably hate myself for watching it, but i'm curious.

Is it much worse than Requiem for a dream or pretty much on par?

Ms Scrappy said...

Where did you see it? Is it up there with 'Salo'? If it is, I think I'll pass.

Jason Adams said...

It's not as good as Requiem, Derreck, which makes the more questionable aspects less... consistent, I guess? It doesn't stick the landing as consitently, as effectively, as Requiem does, I mean. You never care about the people in Cage the way you do about Sarah Goldfarb, that's for sure.

Scrappy, I found Salo less disturbing that this, actually. I didn't really find Salo that disturbing to watch. I found it fascinating, but I didn't have that much trouble making it through it. Everything there was so metaphorical that it was more of a mental exercise than an emotional one.

I just realized those two paragraphs sort of contradict each other. But somehow they still make sense to me.

Joe Reid said...

Yeah, Salo was so loud about its intentions to punish you that it never gave itself the chance to pull you close enough to shove your face in (actual) shit.

That said, I don't do poop and eyeballs, as a rule, which means no second viewing for Salo.