The True Horror of Silence

 This movie -- Silenced (Do-ga-ni/; Korean, 2010) -- is really something else. The one current imdb review gives it high praise and pretty much parallels my take on it. It opened last week at a very limited amount of cinemas, is UNRATED for very good reason, and is a major dose of heart-wrenching bleakness. That it is based on a true story that ended tragically makes watching it almost unbearable.

The story involves a school for the deaf where very young students (pre-teen boys and girls) are being beaten, raped, and intimidated by senior faculty members and their immediate family members.  If it weren't true, it would sound outrageously improbable. In his LA Times review last Friday, critic Kenneth Turan attacked the film for sensationalizing the sexual crimes. I disagree that the graphic depictions of child abuse are included for the sake of sensationalism. They are included because they need to be. We need to see and feel what these children went through in order to fully comprehend how barbarically they were treated by their carers at the school and by the corrupt Korean court system. Not surprisingly, "important" and influential men were protected by the court as their victims were denied justice.

 At the center of the film is a young male teacher (Gong Yoo) who suspects the children are being abused almost immediately after beginning employment there. When he witnesses a shockingly brutal beating of a young male student by a colleague, his desire to intervene is natural and strong, but he encounters opposition driven by different agendas from the school's principal and his own mother. It's a human rights worker who provides him the courage to fight a very broken system.

The first half of Silenced (the literal Korean title is Crucible) involves the teacher's discovery of the school's dirty secrets.  The second half focuses on a court case in which the children take the witness stand in front of their abusers. Some crimes are recreated. All recreations are beyond what you'd see in an American or British film, although works such as Tim Roth's The War Zone and Angelica Huston's Bastard Out of Carolina carry some of the same dramatic weight.

 Silenced is obligatory viewing for many reasons, but the primary one is its courage. When Kenneth Turan criticizes the film for its "sensationalism", he's taking an easy swing at it. How should the film's horrors be conveyed, Kenneth? Should they be less shocking? More palatable to you as a viewer? Suitable for the average American viewer? Sanitized enough for a PG rating?

Fuck that! I can't help but reflect on stories we hear often about politicians who give their support to controversial laws -- stem cell research, for example -- after the life of a family member is saved. These changes of heart sicken me because they are the disgraceful folly of men with narrow, insular visions who are unable to empathize with the struggles of people (voters!) outside their immediate circles. Only when these idiots come face to face with the real possibility of loss do they do what they should have done long ago. The recreations of ugly, intimidating sex crimes against children do need to be graphic because graphic hits home. But it's not the sex that bruises the viewer of Silenced -- it's the violent intimidation that accompanies it. We see, in a way never conveyed so bluntly and brilliantly before, that the most heinous aspect of rape (of children and adults) is the intimidation of the victim by the cowardly rapist. The physical aspect of the rape ends, but the intimidation is maintained by the rapist, his family, the general public, and the courts. It's an endless nightmare.

 Aspects of Silenced reminded me of Dr. Lamb because, from a photographic point of view, the recreations are rich and moody. The film's grim tone echoes Blood and Bone, The War Zone, and Run and Kill. It's not a horror film in any traditional genre sense (there are no Freddy Krugers here), but it certainly explores horrific material, material more deeply disturbing than the recent Serbian Movie because the intimidation scenes accompanying the sexual abuse make the drama real.

Highly recommended for those not irritated by the sticky grit of truth.

The Life and Death of a Porno Gang

I've been terribly disappointed recently with the imitative state of world cinema. Few works have broken from the pack to assert their unique qualities.

A Serbian movie that has gotten more than its share of attention recently is Serbian Movie (reviewed on this blog).

However, the Serbian movie that truly deserves all the attention the other is getting is Mladen Djordjevic's The Life and Death of A Porno Gang (caught recently at a packed festival screening). This film, my friends, is a goddamn masterpiece.

The Life and Dearth of a Porno Gang does boast extreme content, but it's no mere showcase for it . On the contrary, it's a beautifully written, sharply edited, well acted, devastatingly emotional drama about a group of misfits attempting to survive in a world devoid of humanity and battered by years of war. The film's power, believe it or not, comes from its considerable restraint.

The film is not classifiable. It is what it is, and what it is is great.


The set-up is deceptively simple and does not telegraph the film's major revelations. Marko (Mihajlo Jovanovic) is an ambitious film director whose attempts to make a meangingful feature film are wearing him down. When he crosses paths with Cane (Srdjan Miletic), a shady porno producer, some work results. He gathers a crew of desperate misfits around him and creates some fairly conventional pornography. But Marko's ambitions are broader, and he yearns to create something truly groundbreaking and transgressive. His idea is a traveling porno cabaret in which sex acts are performed in front of mostly peasant audiences throughout the country. Although the gang encounters opposition to its venture from within and outside, they experience a sense of freedom and protest that fuels their passion. Unfortunately, the cabaret doesn't ultimately pay the bills, and the group begins to fracture. But when a mysterious stranger named Franc appears and offers Marko a way to make buckets of money, the group enters a world of murk from which they can't possibly recover.

In tone, The Life and Death of a Porno Gang feels like something the Vienesse Aktionists might have made had they made narrative features at their peak. The traveling cabaret of perversion is a wonderful creation. It is both a celebration of sexual freedom and a guilt-free waltz with debauchery. Performed with Fellini-esque abandon, it provides the perfect dramatic centerpiece to a tale that revolves around the choices men and women make and their hefty consequences.


In every sense of the word, this is pure cinema, and it strikes provocative chords rarely struck these days. Admirably, It does not shy away from depicting fetishes and paraphilias that are usually the domain of the hardest worldwide web sites. Snippets of hardcore bestiality appear alongside harsh depictions of intercourse and even harsher drama involving voluntary murder and consensual snuff. Emphasizing characters and relationships over brutal set pieces, it achieves greatness as dramatic cinema and greatness as truly transgressive art.

Rumor has it that Synapse may be releasing the film in 2011. I look forward to a stellar presentation of the material.

Also of interest is the director's Made in Serbia, a fascinating look at life in the marginalized Serbian porn industry.

Serbian Movie

Several months ago, Srdjan Spasojevic's Serbian Movie started to circulate at festivals. aintitcool's Harry Knowles wrote a histrionic review that placed it on the must-see lists of hardcore horror fanatics. Other scribes discussed its extreme nature and went batshit hyping its taboo-breaking content. Some even questioned its reason for existing.

The usual cliched response to films with inflammatory intent is Why do we need to see this? It's a stupid question because the answer is we don't. Then again, we don't NEED to see Disney movies, either, or TV shows about crab fishermen risking their lives. We NEED to eat, sleep, drink, and breathe. Everything else is secondary.

Hysterics aside, Serbian Movie was clearly made to shock and provoke because it doesn't offer too much else. 99.9% of humans will find it objectionable and offensive (without even seeing it) and will stay away. The rest, like me, will let their curiosity get the better of them.

The film is technically polished. The compositions and lighting are on par with any American horror film in the Hostel budget range. The acting is decent, too. The film's lead (Sergej Trifunovic), who plays an ex-porno actor lured back into the business, bears a strange resemblance to Euro porn actor/director Christophe Clarke, and has a laconic, laid back manner that works well for his character. The film's villain (Srdjan Todorovic), a philosophy-spewing porno "artist", looks like a younger, better manicured Coffin Joe. The lead's wife, who is accepting of her husband's profession, is played with quiet authority by Katarina Zutic. Finally, the couple's son, who plays quite a special role in the film, is particularly impressive as an unfortunate young victim of demented minds.

Some of our favorite horror films are notable for extreme set pieces. Emmanuelle in America has a doozy, as does Salo, Cannibal Holocaust, and In A Glass Cage. Serbian Movie definitely deserves to be placed alongside these, if only for its extremity and perversion. One set piece in particular, involving a newborn, is the film's most harrowing. Clearly, no real infant was harmed, but the single angle and sound effects create a very disturbing ninety seconds you won't soon forget. Other horrors include an eye socket being penetrated with an erect penis and two unidentified bodies being carnally assaulted.

Horror in its purest sense allows us to confront the unspeakable in the safe environment of the cinema or home. Serbian Movie definitely dishes up the unspeakable and does so with style and solid craftsmanship. Although you will find material such as this in the literary works of authors such as Edward Lee, Marquis De Sade, Samuel R. Delany, and JF Gonzalez, filmic representations are, not surprisingly, not as common.

Unfortunately, the Serbian Movie script is rather undercooked, and its depiction of organized perversion amongst the elite is not believable. The villain, who not only looks like Coffin Joe, spouts philosophy like him, too. In this case, it's porno philosophy. This nutbag sees 'newborn porn' as the future of the genre, and carries on up the Khyber about love, art, and blood ad nauseum. Perhaps expressing the filmmaker's view, he says of Serbia: "...this is no country for real art." On porn, he offers: "(it exists) so those who can't get laid can come." Without a doubt, his most salient observation is: "'Victim sells." No horror fan can dispute that.

What separates Serbian Movie from a true masterwork such as Augustin Villaronga's In A Glass Cage are several things, the primary one being substance. Although its montages of public porno culture suggest sexualized commercialization is out of control, this thesis is not explored beyond a headline, and it's a stretch to link sexually provocative billboards to horrors such as baby rape and the fucking of beheaded women. The gulf between the two is vast.

Ultimately for the viewer, the film is an exercise in waiting for the next shocking set piece that will up the perversion ante. The bits between these are not of zero interest, but they're not exactly vital, either, and there's some narrative confusion in the final quarter as the lead character lurches about in a drug-induced haze.

Even after the final shocking revelation, a closing slice of dialog takes the perversion even further, bluntly re-stating the film's ultimate intentions.

As my brain cooled hours later after the experience, I felt like I'd eaten very greasy, slightly poisonous junkfood. This contrasted with my initial reaction to John McNaughton's Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer, another flick notable for its shocking content, but appreciated equally for its solid scripting, amazing performances, and characterization. Henry left me with the feeling that I'd seen something very special. Serbian Movie didn't feel special, but it sure felt like raw, unchained cinema.

Another Serbian movie, Life and Death of a Porno Gang, is worth checking out, too, and I will discuss it shortly.