by Josh Slates
"IT'S LIKE THE SIXTIES, ONLY WITH LESS HOPE":
FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE 59TH CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
SHORTBUS (midnight show, Out of Competition) (USA, dir: John Cameron Mitchell)
I've often seen the phrase "polymorphous perversity" bandied out in the context of high-falutin' literary and film criticism. Finally, I have discovered a movie that could best be described as exhibiting exactly that.
A balls-to-the-wall (sometimes literally) exploration of sexual experimentation amongst post-9/11 New York City counter-culture, Shortbus was originally conceived as an improvisational workshop piece by John Cameron Mitchell (creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch).
Through a series of articles in alternative weekly newspapers in which he solicited non-professional actors and actresses to send him "rehearsal tapes" describing past sexual experiences, Mitchell pieced together a large ensemble cast and tackled the task of creating a narrative that would compliment their participation and presence.
Mitchell chose this unorthodox casting process because he had grown tired of talking to actors who were enthusiastic about working with him but otherwise nervous about tarnishing their potential "sitcom careers" with such explicit sexual material.
Nevertheless, a tempest in a tea-pot erupted when Mitchell cast the well-known Canadian Broadcasting Corporation DJ (and former MuchMusic vee-jay) Sook-Yin Lee in the pivotal lead role of Sofia, a frigid sex therapist.
In the film, Sofia is lured into an underworld of "shortbus parties" in which a diverse collection of outsider artists, glowering dominatrixes and retired public officials gather on a weekly basis to push the limits of what human sexuality is capable of. "It's like the sixties," opines real-life drag queen Justin Bond, "only with less hope."
When the CBC discovered that the role in question required Ms. Lee, who hosts a program devoted to youth-oriented Canadian pop-culture, to spend approximately 35 percent of the film's running time diddling herself in a frustrated (and extremely explicit) fashion, company executives threatened to terminate her contract.
For comparison's sake, let's imagine what would happen if Carson Daly decided to take a role in a film that required him to spend half of the film with a remote-controlled vibrating egg lodged in the most private of one's areas, as Ms. Lee so gallantly does.
In a testament to her popularity in her native Canada, a majority of her listening audience balked at the CBC's draconian response to her personal creative endeavors, leaving the CBC to subsequently relent on their position.
But as for the movie itself, considering that it was included in a festival that often programs films in which hardcore sexual content serves as a substitute for philosophical or intellectual content, Shortbus is that rare film that allows the audience to gain a greater empathetic grasp of its characters by beckoning you to join them and observe what's going on behind closed doors. It is also a disarmingly sweet romantic comedy that offers some knowing observations about what it means to maintain your sense of self within the context of either a modern relationship or a modern-day New York City.
LES ANGES EXTERMINATEURS (aka "The Exterminating Angels") (Directors Fortnight) (France, dir: Jean-Claude Brisseau)
Much like John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus, French filmmaker Jean-Claude Brisseau decided to create an experimental narrative film (the 2002 feature Secret Things) based around "audition tapes" of actresses discussing their sexual fantasies and performing explicit acts on-camera.
Unlike Mitchell, who was lauded for his work with a (honest-to-goodness) standing ovation in the Grand Theatre Lumiere, Brisseau was accused of sexual harassment by four actresses who "auditioned" for (and did not receive) roles in Secret Things.
Although Brisseau insisted that the audition tapes were "indispensable" to his efforts in creating Secret Things, a French court sided with the actresses and saddled him with a one-year suspended sentence and a fine of 15,000 Euros.
In an effort to regain his creative footing, restore his professional standing as a filmmaker, and perhaps even attempt to explain why he believes that videotaping actresses diddling themselves in public places is "indispensable" to the filmmaking process, Brisseau presented Les Anges Exterminateurs in this year's Directors Fortnight program.
Brisseau's new movie focuses on a filmmaker named Francois, who has dedicated himself to an experimental film in which he uses videotaped auditions of aspiring actresses masturbating and discussing their sexual fantasies (sound familiar?) in order to explore the "transgressive" nature of female sexuality. The "trangressions" on display here involve exhibitionism, voyeurism, bi-sexuality, group sex, mutual masturbation below the tablecloths of four-star French restaurants, and so forth.
Throughout, we are occasionally treated to the thoughts and scheming designs of two seemingly sinister apparitions (Raphaele Godin, Margaret Zenou) who appear to be steering Francois in the direction of personal and professional ruin.
Brisseau does have some interesting ideas about the strangely destructive nature of human sexuality. One of the "auditioning" actresses (Maroussia Dubreuil) is a well-meaning but clinically depressed lot; once she participates in these "screen tests" and discovers a side to herself that she previously never knew existed, it represents a tipping point that sends her spiraling into personal annihilation.
It would be difficult to argue, creative ambitions and intellectual rationalization aside, that Francois (and, transitively, Brisseau himself) isn't to some degree exploiting these actresses for his own erotic curiosities. While the filmmaker can't be wholly responsible for one of his actresses experiencing an emotional meltdown after she discovers the true nature of her repressed sexuality, it is clear that he is completely unprepared for (and, to a certain degree, unconcerned with) the off-camera consequences of his misadventures.
Alas, Brisseau is so obsessed with exonerating himself in the court of public opinion that he refuses to cast his protagonist doppelganger in anything other than a sympathetic and martyred light. As a result, I left the theater with a nagging feeling that the filmmaker was omitting a detail here and a detail there that might have otherwise skewed my opinion of his "creative exploits."
Still, independent of the exterior ramifications of Les Anges Exterminateurs, this low-budget 35mm production is polished to a spit-shine and sports a cross-section of the most beautifully constructed French actresses working in cinema today. (Proceed at your own risk ... )
THE HOST (Directors Fortnight)
(South Korea, dir: Bong Joon-Ho)
On a rather peculiar end of the critical spectrum, film critic Manohla Dargis proclaimed in The New York Times that Bong Joon-Ho's The Host was "the best film I've seen to date at this year's festival."
So just what is The Host? Is it an intimate chamber piece detailing a Victorian-era caste conflict involving the host of exclusive dinner parties? No, it is an unabashedly old-fashioned monster movie about a tadpole that grows to the size of an eighteen-wheel diesel rig and develops a (literal) hunger for petite Korean schoolgirls, much to the consternation of the simpletons who live along the river that the monster calls home.
In a twist that serves as a tip-of-the-hat to such genre classics as Godzilla, the catalyst of the monster's creation is the result of contemporary political machinations; namely, the American military's presence in South Korea and what the filmmakers perceive as its lack of respect for the sovereignty (and environment) of its host nation.
It may come as a surprise to some that the upturned noses of so many film critics would sniff out and take to such a gooey genre item. Yet, considering that most of said film critics are so starved for political satire that they will practically lap-dance any movie that displays even the most mealy-mouthed and kid-gloved satirical content -- I'm looking directly at you, Thank You For Smoking -- perhaps it's not such a surprise after all.
Such reckless over-praise aside (let's cool off on the comparisons to Jaws and Alien), The Host is undeniably one of the best monster movies of the new century, and the film's opening twenty minutes represent perhaps the most ably dexterous filmmaking that could ever conceivably be lavished upon such comparably ridiculous thematic material. Even though it largely lumbers through its second act, there are enough sly and genuine scares throughout to encourage you to forego that 80-minute nap as you patiently wait for the ultimate showdown between human ingenuity and amphibious ickiness.
Bottom line: way better than Deep Rising or The Relic.
PRINCESS (Opening Night, Directors Fortnight) (Denmark, dir: Anders Morganthaler)
Les Anges Exterminateurs wasn't the only film screening in the Directors Fortnight to examine the complex moral relationship between pornographers and their subject matter. Princess, an odd and thoroughly original animated movie produced by Lars Von Trier's Zentropa Entertainment and directed by Anders Morganthaler, concerns a priest named August who learns of the untimely demise of his sister, Christina, and agrees to care for his now-orphaned young niece, Mia.
What we soon discover is that Christina is better known to the world as "Princess," a prolific and shameless pornographic actress who has recently expired as a result of years of punishing drug abuse. August attempts to rescue Mia from Christina's sordid world, relocating her and her happy-go-lucky "imaginary" stuffed-animal friend Multe, to the safe haven of his spacious, upscale urban apartment.
Yet everywhere this trio turns, they are reminded of Christina's dalliances with the pornographic realm ... from her recognizable face upon the covers of the girlie magazines for sale at the ice cream shoppe where August treats Mia to a dessert one afternoon, to the concrete phalluses that line the walkway of Christina's tomb ...
August determines that, in order to shelter Mia from the otherwise inescapable influence of her pitiful mother (and assuage his own unaddressed guilt over his complicity in his sister's meteoric rise to infamy), he will issue an ultimatum to her producers -- either they immediately destroy every physical souvenir of her pornographic career, or he will do so himself and wreak a bloody havoc upon them in the process.
Much has been written about how Princess represents a baldly anti-pornographic treatise against the adult entertainment industry. While it's certainly doubtful that the film will inspire any aspiring young hopefuls to book an afternoon on the casting couch with Ed Powers, I personally think that the narrative is more precisely focused on the folly of sheltering loved ones, and oneself, from an unfortunate but inescapable reality.
It is clear that August has had many opportunities in the past in which he could have steered his sister away from her course of self-destruction; now that she is gone, his guilt and regret has given birth to an obsessively single-minded (yet impossible) mission to right the wrongs of the past, all to the detriment of Mia's (and his own) well-being. Unable to take his own Christian teachings of forgiveness to heart, August is as much the villain of this story as the pornographers that exploited and ruined his sister.
SHORT FILMS (Out of Competition):
"The Water Diaries" (Australia, dir: Jane Campion)
"SIDA" (France, dir: Gaspar Noe)
"A Curtain Raiser" (France, dir: Francois Ozon)
"Stanley's Girlfriend" (USA, dir: Monte Hellman)
"The Water Diaries" and "SIDA" were both commissioned by the United Nations as part of a film series to raise awareness of environmental and health concerns facing the world today. Jane Campion tackles the subject of drought in interior Australia with a short film that makes her requisite points with a (typically Campion-esque) chorus of morose but emotionally resilient Australian teenage girls.
Although Gaspar Noe (the filmmaker responsible for the sickeningly nihilistic 2002 Cannes entry "Irreversible") might be considered an unusual choice to serve as a United Nations media ambassador, he provides an insightful and affecting documentary portrait of a man dying of AIDS in Burkina Faso.
From his ramshackle hospital room, the patient recalls the poor judgment that led him to become infected and describes his day-to-day turmoil that the disease creates. If the purpose of this short film is to remind viewers of how easy it is to catch HIV and how thoroughly the disease can destroy your body and your sense of well-being, then Gaspar Noe has succeeded with flying colors.
Noe punctuated his short film with a head-pounding assortment of low-frequency, heartbeat-like sound effects; unfortunately, the brain-splittingly rhythmic popping noises that could be heard throughout Francois Ozon's short film weren't at all intentional.
The only screening of "The Curtain Raiser," a slight but amusing tale of a fussy young Frenchman (Louis Garrell, from "The Dreamers" and "Ma Mere") and his growing infuriation with his endlessly tardy girlfriend (Vahina Giocante), was almost undone from the word go by a recurring (and relentless) audio glitch on the optical soundtrack.
Just as the glitch had been corrected (a result of the filmmaker's escort-for-the-evening storming the projection booth in high-heels and giving the projectionist a piece of her mind), it was time for said projectionist to change over from the first reel of the film to the second reel ... at which point the entire sorry symphony roared up once again.
I honestly felt bad for Francois Ozon. It reminds you that, just because you're an internationally celebrated film director and you're presenting a new short film in Cannes and you've got a magazine cover-girl on your arm, common-place technical difficulties can still conspire to completely ruin your evening.
Cult filmmaker Monte Hellman was in Cannes to head up the jury of the Un Certain Regard, which awarded its top prize to the Chinese film "Luxury Car" by Wang Chao.
This occasion also allowed Hellman an opportunity to present his new short film, "Stanley's Girlfriend," out of competition in the Official Selection. Detailing a romantic rivalry between two Hollywood screenwriters and the unexpected supernatural intrigue that ensues as a result, "Stanley's Girlfriend" co-stars the inimitable John Saxon and will be released stateside as part of a horror anthology project titled "Trapped Ashes."
IKLIMLER (aka "Climates") (Competition) (Turkey, dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
This spare high-definition video feature from iconoclastic Turkish filmmaker (and 2003 Grand Prix winner) Nuri Bilge Ceylan unfolds over the course of a year and uses the contrasting weather patterns of his chosen locations to underscore the tilting emotional tides of his introverted and largely self-obsessed characters.
Against the staggering summertime visuals of a historic set of ruins, a mopey professor (Ceylan himself) and his equally frown-faced lover (the director's wife, Ebru Ceylan) sit in silence as they quietly stew in their own juices. There have been unhappy couples that have graced the silver screen in the past, but probably never two characters that audiences could so quickly and intuitively brand as completely hopeless.
He loses himself in the grandeur of their surroundings. She takes a nap on the beach and dreams that a tidal wave overtakes and drowns her; you don't need a guide to dream interpretation to figure out what's going on there. After a punishing half-hour, these two sad sacks come to realize what the audience grasped from the beginning -- a quick severance is the only conceivable course of action for both of them.
As the professor returns to the humdrum world of academia, he resumes what could only be described as a particularly unpleasant and rough recurring sexual tryst with the wife (Nazan Kirilmis) of one of his professorial peers. It is indicative of Ceylan's bleak world-view that the only whimper of comedy that emerges from this whole sad affair arrives in the form of a vicious (if consensual) bout of sexual intercourse against a hardwood floor.
After the close of the film, I was left to consider why certain people come to drift apart over time, and the well-intentioned but inadvisable ways in which those people attempt to revive relationships that were so clearly destined for the wastebasket. This is not to say that I would recommend this thoughtful but snooze-inducing movie to anyone other than stalwart Turkish cinema completists and aspiring movie-makers seeking a tutorial on how the proper use of high-definition video can increase a low-budget movie's production values by a zillion-fold.
A SCANNER DARKLY (Un Certain Regard) (USA, dir: Richard Linklater)
Approximately half an hour into Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly, I became completely overwhelmed with apprehension. My socks felt too tight. I wanted to leave. Something wasn't right. This was the moment I realized that the movie was driving me completely bonkers.
Once I could accept that, I knew that I could finish watching this animated adaptation of a famously "unfilmable" 1977 Philip K. Dick novel about a narcotics investigator (in this case, a rotoscoped Keanu Reeves) who obscures his identity behind a continuous strobe-flash of alternate identities created by a "scramble suit." Because no one knows his true identity, and he is having a schizophrenic reaction to a drug called Substace D, he soon discovers that he is spying on himself.
Dick's brand of paranoid and drug-addled characters is brought to life by a smorgasbord of (admittedly fabulous) "druggie" typecasting in the form of Rory Cochrane (Dazed and Confused), Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey, Jr.
A lot of people were really down on this movie because they thought that its animation style wasn't as fluid or imaginative as what they saw in Linklater's previous animated film, Waking Life. I think that the animation in A Scanner Darkly is deeply impressionistic, but it solely exists to serve the narrative, as it shows things and portrays events in ways that might not possible to visualize in a live-action film. By comparison, Waking Life had virtually no intellectual restrictions on what the rotoscope animators could or could not do with the footage that landed in their laps.
I went back and read the original novel, which I greatly enjoyed, and it left me curious to watch Linklater's adaptation again. But I will say that in the case of Philip K. Dick, he is in a rarefied league of authors (Burroughs, Shakespeare, what's-his-face) who cobble so many ideas and so much information onto a single printed page that sometimes it's best to consume their books in small, satisfying nibbles. Perhaps the hurdle with this film adaptation is that there's no escape, there's no retreating back into an objective "real world" frame of mind so that you can truly digest what you're ingesting.
SUBURBAN MAYHEM (Un Certain Regard) (Australia, dir: Paul Goldman)
So unapologetically commercial and derivative that I was left scratching my head as to how it landed a slot in the Official Selection, Suburban Mayhem nevertheless features a knockout performance from Emily Barclay as that sturdy film noir character archetype: the master manipulatrix who uses the lure of sex to compel otherwise level-headed men into landing themselves into compromising (and incriminating) positions.
Barclay stars as a spoiled and squabbly nineteen-year-old single mother named Katrina who demolishes her interpersonal relationships with a cataclysmic and unconcerned fury akin to her meteorological namesake. Katrina soon turns to murderous extremes in an effort to raise money for the legal defense of her (eerily) beloved brother, who has landed himself in hot water after decapitating a convenience-store cashier with a samurai sword in a robbery-gone-awry.
Enjoyable enough but completely inconsequential in equal brush strokes, the movie is particularly noteworthy for its memorable Australian post-punk soundtrack. The choral refrain ("I'm a fuck pig!") of the movie's theme song, "Sucker Love" by Magic Dirt (taken from their 2005 "Locket" maxi-single), provides what amounts to a glimpse into Katrina's interior Greek chorus.
SILK (midnight show, Out of Competition) (Taiwan, dir: Su Chao-Pin)
Count Silk as a barely-above-average entry in the (enough already) spooky-Asian-ghost-child sub-genre of horror films. The overly convoluted storyline (honestly, movies like this shouldn't drag on for 116 minutes) concerns an experimental device called the "Menger Sponge" that allows people to achieve tangible physical contact with the spirit world. In this instance, the "spirit world" is represented by a grumpy ghost-child who is all too eager to achieve murderous physical contact with the paranormal research team that is studying him.
This Taiwanese production will do the job for utterly undiscriminating Asian fright-film fans, although some of the special effects in Silk are so jerry-rigged that the audience at its gala world premiere screening had to stifle its reflexive laughter for fear of offending the film's director, who was also in attendance.
ELECTION 2 (midnight show, Out of Competition) (Hong Kong, dir: Johnnie To)
No, not a sequel to the Alexander Payne's 1999 comedy, rather a follow-up to Johnnie To's (still unreleased in the USA) 2005 crime thriller, which delineated the rituals associated with a bi-annual gangster tradition in which a rarefied echelon of Hong Kong Triad thugs chooses one of their own to represent them in an official capacity.
Election 2 takes place (surprise) two years after the original film, in which gangster boss Lok (good ol' Simon Yam) was "elected" amidst a campaign of intimidation and violent tomfoolery. The first Election featured some truly memorable moments, such as a scene in which a low-level flunkie proves his loyalty to the Triads by eating a porcelain spoon. But as the central conceit of Election 2 involves Lok breaking precedence and running for a second term as Public Enemy No. 1, To is more concerned with gangster procedurals than automatic weapons; as an unintended consequence, this sequel is as deathly dull as a parliamentary roll call vote.
(I'm not joking about the "deathly dull" part, just read this.
IL CAIMANO (Competition) (Italy, dir: Nanni Moretti)
Nanni Moretti's Il Caimano is a cautionary tale, not just about the chilling of dissident media opinion in Berlusconi-era Italy, but also about the specificity of satire.
Now that we're saddled with George W. Bush until 2008, what point is there in revisiting Fahrenheit 9/11 aside from eliciting self-congratulatory rage amongst a screening room filled with Moveon.org list-serv subscribers? Similarly, what sense is there in watching a feature-length anti-Berlusconi diatribe after the Italian media-magnate-turned-prime-minister suffered a humiliating defeat in recent elections?
Thankfully, Il Caimano is an excellent and very funny film removed from any political context, and it tells a timeless (if not entirely original) story about an apolitical everyman who suddenly re-ignites his inner passion by training his cross-hairs on a sacred cow.
More accurately, it is a story about what happens when a washed-up B-movie producer (played with manic fervor by Silvio Orlando), whose credits involve such would-be classics as "Moccasin Assassins" and "Maciste vs. Freud," agrees to shepherd an amateur filmmaker's thinly-veiled (if viciously indicting) account of Berlusconi's rise to power.
As one of many actors who stand in for the film's proverbial punching bag, Elio de Capitani makes for an unnervingly acute Berlusconi surrogate ... if (admittedly) not as bosomy or alluring as Sabina Guzzanti's Berlusconi surrogate in "Viva Zapatero!"
SABINA BEFORE:
SABINA AFTER:
INDIGENES (Competition) (France, dir: Rachid Bouchareb)
(winner, Best Actor (shared): Jamel Debbouze, Sami Naceri, Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem, Bernard Blancan)
A by-the-numbers World War II item with a politically-conscious twist, Indigenes focuses on the stories of Muslim men, living in French-occupied North Africa, and what happens when they take up arms in an effort to expel the Nazis from the homeland of their colonial rulers.
In an inspired move that was clearly in response to a certifiable lack of male lead performances that were unanimously worthy of the Prix d'Interpretation Masculin, the jury decided instead to allow the talented ensemble cast of "Indigenes" to share the prize.
To remind the audience (in Cannes, often peppered with French dignitaries and public officials) of how France's cautious-but-cordial relationship with the residents of its colonized African lands quickly deteriorated after the end of WWII, Bouchareb closes the film with an explanation as to how the real-life subjects of "Indigenes" had their French military pensions revoked once Algeria gained its independence in 1962.
BABEL (Competition) (Mexico / USA, dir: Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu)
(winner, Best Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu)
The equivalent, in quantitative pathos, of a sucker punch to the gut, director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (2005 Best Screenplay winner at Cannes for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) originally conceived Babel as a parable about how miscommunication in our modern world prevents disparate cultures from coming together and understanding one another in a more understanding and empathetic way. Yet, without all of the lofty speeches that you might be expecting from a movie that's trying to explain all of that ...
The hopscotching narrative whisks the audience from Morocco to Mexico to Japan at the flick of an imaginary switch, and into varying levels of anachronism within the established plot continuum. We are first introduced to the children of a poor Moroccan sheep herder, who have just been given a rifle to ward off predators ...
... meanwhile, in Japan, a dyspeptic deaf-mute teenage girl (Rinko Kikuchi) forfeits a varsity volleyball game after she angrily displays some gestures that are not included in any instructional sign-language courses. It is seemingly difficult for her to court young men as a result of her handicap; so she flashes an assembly of teenage boys at the food court of a shopping mall, and later sexually assaults her dentist during a routine cleaning ...
... and yet meanwhile, an American husband and wife (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) are visiting Morocco. He is clearly the more adventurous of the pair, as she spends more time weighing the risks of potential bacteriological infections than she does enjoying the scenery ...
... and yet still meanwhile in ye ol' USA, a downtrodden nanny (Adriana Barazza) is due in her native Mexico for the wedding of her son and is unable to find anyone to look after her young charges. With the aid of one of her wily relatives (Gael Garcia Bernal), she decides to entreat the children to an afternoon adventure, south of the border ...
Babel is the unique product of two serious-minded people who have set about the task of articulating how all of human society is more interconnected and interdependent than anyone might have otherwise realized. It is a seven-course meal that exhibits no less of the stream-of-consciousness montage and Jenga-like plot construction that have defined past collaborations between Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu and Guillermo Arriaga.
QUAND J'ETAIS CHANTEUR (Competition) (France, dir: Xavier Giannoli)
People looked at me like I was some kind of simpering moron when I even dared to suggest that Gerard Depardieu should at least be considered for the Best Actor prize for this (admittedly completely fly-weight) comedy-with-"hankies" about a mediocre never-was dance-hall singer (guess who) who shatters every law of physics and the universe by scoring a one-night stand with sexy-real-estate-agent Cecile de France (androgynous and hot as usual).
But I would really like to take up the issue of what other actor in the whole of this year's Competition had a role as meaty (and fatty) as the one that ol' Gerard gets to chew into. Maybe it is because I am a simpering moron, but it's oddly touching to watch him get all emotionally desperate and soldier through classic '60's French crooner-weepies (like Serge Gainsbourg's "L'Anamour") while "acting on the inside," although his relationship with de France ranks alongside any Woody Allen screen kiss of the last decade ...
EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO (aka "Pan's Labyrinth") (Competition) (Mexico, dir: Guillermo del Toro)
This movie would initially have you believe that it is a magical, fantastical, familiar journey through the wonders of youth and how-imagination-conquers-all, perhaps a la Bedknobs and Broomsticks. We watch as a little girl, who happens to be the daughter of a high-ranking fascist general in the waning days of the Spanish Civil War, retreats into a world of fantasy involving ghoulish creatures as a means of escaping the horrors that are present in the world that she lives in ...
... yet, you know that Guillermo del Toro is capable of much darker and more imaginative things than that ... and when you pause for a moment and wait for it, he really delivers. I can't imagine taking any young or impressionable child to see this movie, unless you want to school them in the graphic niceties of torture as it was practiced in the fascist Spain of the 1940's.
For all of the expert cinematography and editing and special visual and prosthetic effects on display and everything, you don't really notice that this guy has such a sturdy grasp on your heartstrings until he pulls all of them out, at once and on cue, in the final reel.
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