Illuminating Human Atrocity

Rating: 10/10 (14 December 2018)

Let's begin with the title's tone and purpose: a surrealist representation of human behavior and cultural phenomenon. The film follows with its two, constant components: husband and wife. Husband is a seemingly loving writer who represents the narcissistic perspective; the characteristics of human psyche that include delusion/egotism/cultism. Wife is the seemingly weak lover of her husband who has deep love for her partner that is unmatched by his, concluded by one of her final lines "You just love how much I love you". Wife represents the idea of constant rationality; the outsider ever looking in upon a situation. The film proceeds with a visitor who is then invited to stay in their home, easing the viewer (us), into the strangeness that ensues. We meet visitor's wife who is intrusive, rude, and completely self-centered. The way she guides Wife into allowing her to do ever increasing, obtrusive things represents how sane/rational individuals will allow such travesties for the sake of accommodation, keeping an even keel, hospitality. As the plot becomes more and more unreasonable and surreal: the murder of the visitor's son, the wake party, and finally the coming of the fans, we are brought along Wife's disquieting intrusion of her home, the rational passengers. As events unfold: the coming of many fans, Husband's fall into narcissistic egotism (feeling God-like), around his sensationalized work, caring more for these random intruders than for the care of Wife's impending labor, the plot's timeline shortens and condenses. We finally see scenes of sex trafficking, glorified sacrifice, and finally the accidental murder of Wife's infant (which I must add I will have nightmares of because the literal imagery used here was heart-stopping). The point here is to portray the horrific violence and insanity humans are capable in the name of an idea, disconnected from the actual violent acts being committed. As two working examples: the holocaust occurred under the vision of ordinary people but because events progress slowly, incrementally, people can accept ever increasing insane ideas like mass murder because it is spoon fed over time. Another example would be how Charles Manson was able to systematically convince normal individuals to murder strangers in horrifically violent manners. The practice of human sacrifice, the idea that we deify Jesus' death, what boils down to the murder of one man, someone's son, that individuals now glorify as the symbol of pure "goodness". The point of this film is to bring into the light the true inhumanity/insanity/incredulity of acts that have been accepted by our civilization simply because we were given the time to adjust and give them explanation. This film, in my opinion, was orchestrated very smartly and complexly to take its viewer on an emotional ride into the revelation of human atrocity.