Mother of Tears

Sunday, June 8, 2008

It's a great time to be alive. This weekend saw the release of not one, but two highly anticipated horror movies from two of the greats of the genre, Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon. I have the coolest girlfriend in the world, who was not only willing, but actually enthusiastic about doing a double feature. Life is sweet.

First up is Dario Argento's Mother of Tears, the completion of a loose trilogy of films about evil witches, following Suspiria and Inferno. And the main thrill here is... well, Argento is an all-time favorite of mine, and for the first time in my life I saw one of his films in the theater. That's a real joy right there, and I'm glad I finally had the opportunity. One day I hope to catch a revival of one of his klassiks, but if that never happens then at least I'll have been to one. It's a milestone.

As for the film itself... I'm gonna have to go ahead and label it "For Argento Fans Only." It's got serious problems. You have to take it for granted that 9 times out of 10, in an Argento picture, the acting won't be too hot (and often poorly dubbed), and the story won't always be entirely coherent. Sometimes this actually works in the movie's favor. I mean, it's all the strange acting and weird, counterintuitive plot developments that give Opera a real unique feeling. And Inferno probably wouldn't be any good at all, if it weren't for it's dreamlike, illogical story. But the problem here is that there is SO MUCH acting and plot, and none of it is good, and it dominates much of the movie.

There's this part in Suspiria that I absolutely hate, where this one guy, in a rather long winded fashion, explains the backstory to the heroine, which essentially boils down to "witches exist." But then he tells the heroine that he knows someone else who is more of an expert, so this other guy comes out and even more longwindedly explains that, um, there are witches. And the thing about Mother of Tears is, it's probably made up 30% of scenes like that. Maybe more. People rambling on and on and a plot that isn't particularly hard to grasp, and not very interesting. All performed by characters who seem over-developed, yet completely without personality.

As far as the triolgy goes, this isn't as beautifully shot and stylish as Suspiria (in fact, I'm super dissappointed that Argento dropped the over-saturated color look of the first two films), and it's not as nightmarish and structurally fucking crazy as Inferno. It's easily the worst of the three.

Yet, I still liked it. It's true that I'm more forgiving of some of his recent work than most others (I'm actually quite fond of The Card Player) but it's clear that Argento isn't what he used to be, and will probably never reach the heights of greatness/style/lunacy that he did in the 70's and 80's. So once you accept that his klassiks are behind him, you can watch the movie for what it is, and enjoy what he does well.

And what he does well here is extended sequences of batshit crazy violence and debauchery. This is probably his most violent film, and at times really wallows in some gross-out moments. In places it's almost like a slicker, more skillful version of a Lucio Fulci movie. There's disembowling, flaying, baby murder, cannibalism, hacked-off limbs, slit throats, a spear up the vagina, not to mention scads of copious sex and nudity, including lesbianism and some extreme sadomasochism. This is an obvious comment I'm going to make, but the best parts of the movie are when Argento plays to his strengths, i.e. contrasting his classy (though baroque) visual style with his impulses towards lunacy and sleaze. There's an electricity to all the scenes of lurid sex and violence here unqiue to Argento; nobody does debauchery quite like him.

He's not the stylist he used to be, but he's still got some of the old magic, and he'll never stop being a fucking nutcase. I mean, even his shitty movies are more interesting than 90% of other horror movies. No one else has ever quite captured his brand of weirdness, so it's comforting that Argento is still churning them out.