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What A Confused Movie

posted 13 years ago by afilmaday
2 replies | jump to latest

The opening must set the tone of a movie and this one sets it with a sense of ambiguity; there are half naked people rolling around on the floor, joggers in a marathon and our protagonist falling from a ladder, onto the floor whilst in the midst of painting his room.

The nudity makes sense, this dark macabre attitude towards the human body and him falling is no doubt the end of the piece due to come round in full circle, but the jogging made no sense! Nothing is mentioned in the movie about him jogging, he’s not a fitness fanatic, if we are to believe this is the mental state of a serial killer, and seems needless padding to draw out the panting, having already implied as illicit sex during the first few cuts. I would understand if this was meant to be a younger Schramm, a flashback into what life was like before a traumatic event occurred, but not only is he the same actor, but also there is no transformation asking & answering “Why is he a serial killer?” Sometimes movies have evil characters for the sake of evil, but having a seemingly normal past implies that a catastrophic event occurred for this radical change into psychopathic tendencies; even later on in the movie there are flashbacks to his childhood, but again nothing is explained!

Full review, check it out

http://anyfilmaday.blogspot.com/2011/03/schramm.html

[–] KafkaArtist 13 years ago

The cuts of people running in some sort of organized race alludes to one of the two things Schramm enjoys most: running. In the only running scene not of merely legs, if you look closely he is running in one of the crowds, indicating that he still does or at least used to run. Tie this with the surreal cuts of his leg miraculously separating from his torso with a clean cut and one can conclude that running is one of his more heart felt hobbies. Thus, he hallucinates about losing his leg as one of his main fears.

The next thing of which he enjoys the most would be masturbation. This is why he starts telling Monika Ms character about his penis-less dream (subconscious fear) in addition to the surreal amorphous vagina with teeth trying to bite off his phallus on numerous occasions.

Hope this clears everything up for you

Best regards

[–] polysicsarebest 11 years ago

There are no half-naked bodies writhing on the floor in the opening, what are you talking about? There's Schramm's body dead on the floor, shots of paint, and shots of running. Unless you are talking about the naked dead bodies posed about 10 minutes into the film, though that's no part of the opening. There are quick black and white flashes in-between credits of a naked body, presumably schramm's, against a black background, that probably symbolize his ascension into dying; just being a naked corpse on a table.

As far as the running, you clearly haven't watched this film as "nothing is mentioned in the movie about him jogging", since about 12 minutes into the film, the camera shows the shot from the beginning of the film, merely panning the camera up to show one of the people jogging is Scramm!

Also, he wears a brace on his leg, which to me suggests a disability, he sees images of his leg falling off his body; perhaps he has a leg injury that causes him frustration since he does like to jog. This frustration can be one thing that lead to him killing.

As far as "nothing being explained", you have to read in between the lines. This is filmed more like an arthouse flick, especially the childhood sequences, so not everything is spelled out perfectly but the film is super easy to follow and you can discern a lot from its symbolism.

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Shuji Terayama forever.