City of Lost Children

If you’ve ever seen the movie City of Lost Children (La Cité des enfants perdus, 1995), you know that I’m talking about yet another surrealist dystopian nightmare, much like Delicatessen (which is basically by the same crew) or a Terry Gilliam film (such as Brazil or The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, as well as some odd similarities with Jellowbeard), or even a Wes Anderson flick (such as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). The main story is about mad genius Krank (“Sick”) who abducts children to steal their dreams, with the hope of reversing his accelerated aging because he himself cannot dream. And then there’s the carnival strongman (Ron Perlman), who – with the help of the streetwise orphan Miette (“Little Crumb”) – searches for his little brother who of course has been kidnapped by Krank’s henchmen. This is one of those crazy, weird, dark movies you have to be in the mood for. I thought the acting was a little lame, but the story poses interesting questions about the incredible ways coincidences and accidents add up to important events in life. Maybe you’d like to give this one a try.

Dark City

Dark City (1998) is another one of those noir postmodern dystopian futuristic science fiction films. It’s directed by Alex Proyas who also did The Crow and I, Robot. We get a stellar cast that includes William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connolly, Ian Richardson, and Rufus Sewell in the lead. We’re also treated with cinematic references to Metropolis, M, Nosferatu, The Twilight Zone, Blade Runner, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and even his short The Crimson Permanent Assurance, not to mention the Rocky Horror Show and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There are literary references to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” to Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Frederik Pohl. With a set up like that, it’s hard to go wrong! The plot involves parasitical extraterrestrials maliciously manipulating human memories as well as the perpetually nocturnal urban landscape in an attempt at discovering the essential nature of the human soul in hopes of saving their own species. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, don’t watch it! Hahahaha!

Delicatessen

Watching Man Bites Dog the other day made me realize that I’ve been meaning to check out Delicatessen for a while ... and then wondered if I had seen it before ... it all seemed so familiar... (Did I really see it before?) The setting is some post-apocalyptic France seemingly circa 1950, with much if not all of civilization, politics and economy burned to cinders. The plot centers on an apartment building run by the local butcher. I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I add that most animals have become extinct due to hunting, and that therefore the butcher doesn’t trade in animal meat, if you know what I mean... The best-known sequence is also the funniest, in which we see and especially hear tenants in the building play cello along a metronome, pump a bicycle wheel, beat a carpet, paint the ceiling, knit, drill holes in those little animal-call boxes, all in the rhythm set by the landlord making love to his mistress atop the squeaking bedsprings... Hahahaha! Definitely worth watching if you care for dark humor, but you have to be in the mood for weirdness... (And I haven’t even mentioned the Troglodists!)