Harry here.... Well yesterday, Mongo liked it, and today.... Well read for yourself. Different strokes for different folks ya know... Here it is...
Angry French butcher gets a gun and angrily walks around being angry.
I Stand Alone / Seul Contre Tous
"Personally son, I always prefer my pregnant wife-beating courtesy of Nil By Mouth, oh, and if you see your mother this weekend etc. etc."
I Stand Alone has no soul, no substance, no insight and no restraint. It is the indulgent pseudo-intellectual ramblings of a pretentious and woe, woe, woefully deluded Angst-chic Situationist throwback who ought to realise that it isn't big and it Jesus-H.-Bastard-Mother-Of-God-Son Of-A-Sinner-Arse-Of-A-Horse-Christ sure isn't clever.
The film came out over here in Britain around March/April to rave reviews from everyone from the broadsheets to the gutter press, and the way it was described immediately attracted me. So on that fateful April day I suggested to my friend Gareth that we go and see this new French film. What's it about? Butcher goes psycho. Excellent.
I Stand Alone is not merely a bad film. It is a dangerous film. Because say if one of the She's All That crowd somehow found their way into the theatre whilst looking for McDonalds? This is the film that 13 year olds think foreign films are, and if someone was to misguidedly break off in the middle of their jedi training and expose themselves to this when they weren't fully ready, they would never trust "films" ever again and movies - the dark side - would gain yet another ally in the eternal battle. I'm inclined to agree with Gareth's theory that it is an evil conspiracy instigated by Bay. Now, Gareth is a veteran and I somehow made it battered and bruised to the end, but others might not be so lucky.
You know when words absolutely fail you and all you can do to express yourself is swear? Copiously? At lamp posts? Well, that's what I experience when I think of this film, which is ironic because it was also what the lead actor experienced while making this film. Unless that's meant to be the script. You know when you are 15 / 16 years old and in the throes of bitter teen angst and you feel so genuine and that every body else is fake, and you write lyrics and poetry? This film feels like reading that poetry now. Writer / Director Gaspar Noe really does think he is profound. He think's he's Truffaut as well, but lets just stick with the profound bit. Opening the film is a man with a gun, spouting off to a couple of others in a bar about such high flown concepts as Justice and Morality, and this kind of misguided pretentious drivel is representative of the entire duration (or enduration or whatever) of the film. There's enough material here for an entire Mansun album (plus B-sides). I don't know if anyone out there in the big wide electronic world happens to read Melody Maker, but the thing that this constantly reminded me of was The Diary Of A Manic Street Preacher's Fan: "I hate Thursdays. Shallowality and Mindless Mindlessness stalk the land like a maggot." Except I Stand Alone isn't funny (apart from maybe the stunning revelation that all Germans are "Nazis and sons of Nazis") or ironic. It is deadly serious.
Gaspar Noe's previous filmic foray was apparently a short film about a butcher who loses the plot. This suggests that he thinks he's found some deep symbol of mankind. Sigh. The script is so clunking in its presentation that you can see right through everything that Noe tries to do, his clockwork invocation of nationalist pride into his main character is just one cringingly obvious element in this whole sorry affair. And it is boring. So boring. And no-one seems to have mentioned the deafening bangs that keep happening and the constant crashing bullet zooms which are annoying as hell right from the start AND HAPPEN ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE BASTARD FILM.
After lots of angry walking angrily around being angry, Everyone's Favourite Angry French Butcher goes to see his estranged daughter, who is mute and living in an institution, and he takes her out, telling the nurses that he wants to show her the city. Suddenly, as they are travelling, the countdown appears, jolting you into putting down that razor blade and sitting up in your seat. We are informed on the screen that we have 30 seconds to leave the cinema, and the 30 counts down to zero. This is in fact a sick joke, again perpetrated by Bay, because of course you don't leave the cinema and forever after wish that you had. What then ensues is a sequence in which our cuddly incestuous sociopath contemplates suicide ("Do it! Do it!") and then we have the ending in which Noe seems to attempt to justify incest. Hmmm. Whatever blows your goat, Gaspar.
This is where the reviews come in. Another evil plot? Of course another evil plot! It just seems to me that the critics - a gentle, easily-led race - were innocently fooled, by Noe's self-belief. A few points. 1) JUST BECAUSE IT FEATURES POOR PEOPLE DOESN'T MEAN IT'S GENUINE 2) JUST BECAUSE IT DOESN'T HAVE SPECIAL EFFECTS DOESN'T MEAN IT'S GOOD 3) JUST BECAUSE IT WENT TO THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL DOESN'T MEAN IT'S COOL and finally 4) JUST BECAUSE IT HAS BIG WORDS DOESN'T MEAN THEY'RE USED PROPERLY.
After the last shot, the screen switches to black and - in a suitably, almost parody-like prentious manner - displays the message in large screen-filling letters: "YOU HAVE BEEN WATCHING A FILM BY GASPAR NOE", to which my friend immediately replied "and if you've got any sense you'll never watch another one."
Mooch
