Serious criticism

Rating: Null/10 (5 November 2003)

(First of all, did you feel uncomfortable during or after this film and were not entirely sure why? Lets see if I can help.)
I have to say that I haven't been as close to walking out on a film since my one and only actual mid-film departure during Joel Shumacher's '8mm'. The exact point was just after our 'heroine' has stabbed a mother to death in front of her poor child. Its not the act of putting that on film that riles me as much as how QT deals with it. Having Uma Thurman's make-uped face twist round and sexily stuff some heinous twaddly retort in my face about the woman 'having it coming to her' just rips the will to live in this world right out of my little humanistic heart. Having lost a mother as a child myself, I would never dream of cartooning this moment of trauma, of utter nightmare in such a frivolous manner. It is symptomatic of a large moral blindspot that continues to plague the more mainstream, bigger budget kill fests of late. This film is simply a flick made by a guy who has not just seen a lot of kung fu films, but adores and respects them far too much.
With regards to all the other violence in the film- I accept that this film was to all intents and purposes a cartoon. Its respect for life was cartoonish. So why the issue? Because this was shot on film and was presented as a live action feature. This makes me uncomfortable as the medium of film is intrinsically realistic. Films photographic-ness lends a realism that makes us suture into events as though they were real. What do I say to people who say 'Chill out man, its only a film?' Well, you can bet that there is a small percentage of people out there that don't have the mental capacity to understand the complexities of what they are witnessing when they witness a filmic massacre. To them, and perhaps underneath to a larger majority, the film panders to the same base human desires that make people want to distribute sick photos of deformities and accidents and the like over the internet, or slow down to gaze at a fresh car crash. Its an ugly, un-constructive human trait.
But it is not the violence itself that I object to, as I hinted at above, it's the handling of the violence- the treatment of human tragedy. This film, as well as many others has a complete and utter disrespect for it. Most mainstream films are simply representations of life, and amongst those representations, ideas are formed and tossed out for the audience to catch. Having a film full of throw away tragedy is consistently tossing ignorant ideas at an audience to the point where you become de-sensitised. It's this, and the context, that makes the violence palatable. If the scene I described above happened at the end of a Ken Loach film, it would be highly disturbing, because instead of being surrounded by drivel, the event would be surrounded by events and ideas that give life the respect it deserves.
Micheal Haneke's Funny Games is a worthy antidote to this rubbish. The cheapening of life in films has to stop.