by iofilm.com

On a high: raver in Gambling, Gods, and LSD

Gambling, Gods, and LSD
Theatrical release late February
Reviewed by Robert Alstead

Swiss-Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler works at the experimental end of cinema’s spectrum. Although Gambling, Gods and LSD (picture above) has been nominated for a Genie award for documentary, it defies easy categorization, ranging in style from travelogue to music video, from video art to video essay.

Mettler wanted to show the human quest for transcendence and meaning. If the final work lacks a clear synthesis this was a gamble that he was prepared to take. As he travels from the Toronto airport, the casinos of Las Vegas, mist-drenched Alpine outposts in Switzerland and religious ceremonies in India, his aim is to let his camera "intuit" what is going on around him, rather than impose a vision of the world.

He is tireless in his search for different ways of viewing, employing myriad artistic devices and at one point, it appears, filming from a moving boat with the camera on its side.

This unashamedly unconventional approach pays off frequently with arrestingly beautiful imagery and richly textured soundscapes. He finds an almost natural order in industry (or is it an industrial order in nature?) through his meditative, slow-mo sequences of air traffic controllers at work in Toronto or crumpled electricity pylons as they lean against the sky like fatigued giants. At his most exhibitionist, the screen becomes awash in a torrent of images, hundreds in seconds, piled layer upon layer. At another point, during an exuberant rave sequence, the whole screen becomes a pulsating strobe light.

At times, the film takes a more sensationalist tone, with interviews with the Las Vegas inventor of a sexual pleasure machine and reformed drug users talking about shooting up. Some sequences seem too drawn out and unnecessary, but you can forgive Mettler taking his time - the film is a challenging three hours long - because again and again he shows that good things come to those who wait.

Spider
Theatrical release 28 February
Reviewed by The Wolf

Madness is full of mischief and when the truth becomes distorted, reality has no meaning. A question hangs in the air, "What reality?"

A child, driven insane by emotional duplicity, grows up in mental institutions. Twenty years later, released unprepared, into a scary world. Surprisingly, it is one of Cronenberg’s least odd movies, which may sound contradictory, as Miranda Richardson plays two-and-a-half roles.

Ralph Fiennes turned his back on Hollywood after Schindler’s List and The English Patient, in order to appear in films like this that demand serious effort from an actor. His performance makes Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump look cute and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man self-consciously mannered.

Told through the mind’s eye of a schizophrenic, Spider teases the audience with intimations of reality, as the man struggles in vain against the iron discipline of Mrs Wilkinson’s (Lynn Redgrave at her withering best) halfway house in the East End of London, England.

He revisits his 10-year-old self (Bradley Hall), loving mother (Richardson) and plumber dad (Gabriel Byrne), who spends his evenings at the pub, flirting with the busty flamboyant Yvonne (Richardson). The boy’s life changes forever when this tarty good-time girl replaces his mother in the family home and he decides to take matters into his own hands.

In many respects Patrick McGrath’s novel is too subtle for cinema, as it investigates the damage done to a young mind by trauma and heightened imagination. Fiennes remains locked into the mumbling, shuffling shell of a man who has never known freedom of expression, except when scribbling insect words into a notebook.

Richardson is magnificent, while Byrne has the hardest task of appearing villainous and normal at the same time. Cronenberg is not playing tricks, neither does he indulge in horror. What you see is not the same as what there is.




Top