Nightmare? No -- Brilliant Social Criticism!

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2006)

Most commentators and reviewers writing about this extraordinary film cannot see the genuine message of the movie. They concentrate on all the shocking and grotesque violence and gore. But look elsewhere! Look deeper. This film is about at least three things. First, it's about the smugness, shallowness and adolescent arrogance of the contemporary Western youth culture. Second, it's about an absolute moral and cultural devastation of the post-Cold-War Eastern Europe. Third, it's about the collision between the two.
A bunch of Western students are advised to travel to a town in provincial Slovakia, where they are promised to be serviced by the most beautiful local girls. Their interest is piqued by the fact that these "local girls" allegedly dream of nothing more honorable than taking care of the sexual needs of horny Westerners. Tarantino and Roth brilliantly show the vanity, smugness and complete contempt thinly papered by shameless bravado with which the trio of Western young men anticipate their sojourn in Slovakia. They have a sense of entitlement. They expect to be treated like "white gods" in the land of "post-communist savages." Their little pathetic egos are stroked by the fact that they think they do not have to make any effort to even try to appeal to these girls. These girls should submit to them by the virtue of one fact -- the guys represent the superior, victories and rich West. The initial turn of events confirms all these attitudes of smug superiority. But very quickly we learn that the local "worship the gods of the West" is nothing but illusory. The defeated and ravaged societies of the post-Communist Eastern Europe have a few horrible tricks up their sleeves...
The creators of the movie do an absolutely fantastic job at portraying the social rot and cultural-moral devastation of post-communism. The picture contradicts the New York Times presentation of post-communism as the age of social and moral revival. But the "local girls" (the human symbols of Eastern Europe) are not at all what they are thought to be by the Western horn-dogs. They crave nothing more than to punishment those who deprive them of their human honor and dignity even before they actually see them. They fight the attitude of colonizers and cultural missionaries with which so many Westerners have in all kinds ways treated Eastern Europe. Their revenge is horrible and excruciatingly cruel. But it comes from a deep-seated sense of despair, of struggling to preserve the modicum of dignity in the world where all values had collapsed, where everything is for sale, where whole countries and regions exist only for providing entertainment for the fancy of the foreign wealthy....
This movie is brilliant and politically sharp achievement. Bravo Tarantino and Roth!