Enemy (2013, Denis Villeneuve): the Tragedy of Mankind

Let me tell you a story about a guy. His name was Anthony Claire. Worked as an actor, wishing some day he'd become rich and famous. Each single night he had sex with this astonishing gorgeous blonde:  Mélanie Laurent, also known as the au-revoir Shoshanna girl, or even the other girl (super hot too), or both in a threesome... Those days! Riding a bike. Feeling the wind on his face. Living the dream! Very happy. Free!

But then something terrible happen (it felt like an explosion... or like a car accident: Boom on his face!!!) Blondie "forgot" to take her birth control pills, and now she's knocked up.

So, is the oldest story really. Like something taken from certain 80's masterpiece

He had to get married, had to get like a real job, like a boring life now.  Now he is a History teacher. He's teaching history for God's sake!!! Could you imagine a worse destiny?

And she made him do it! She's the one controlling everything now... like in a Dictatorship, "control, is all about control"... or like a... like a spider.

That's it! A giant disgusting hairy Spider! With her spider webs all over the place, feeling the vibrations on her web, ready to make a meal out of you, searching your pockets, looking through your internet browser history, your phone calls, msgs... 

Whenever he says no, whenever he puts a limit, they get into a fight... and you know there's no possible victory from that, cause she's pregnant now (and so she is "Fra-gile") also she's the one with the vagina, so if the guy refuse to submit he won't get any action. 

Vagina and spiders... I'm gonna point out this -for the third time in this blog I think - Hairy spiders are a symbol of the vagina.

I don't know why?!!!... I guess snatches are hairy too... I guess they catch unwary insects (I don't mean snatches here, I meant spiders, or did I?... idk, lost myself in the analogy...) Well whatever, they catch insects with their webs (which they produce right out of their abdomen) 

Get their food without having to fight for it? It's the primary trickster animal!

I'm not the one being misogynistic. Myths are! You can blame Claude Lévi Strauss, and sir James George Frazer for it

So, yeah: like in that scene where he wants to get some (after watching the movie), but she won't unless he gets a new job. 

Or the scene where they are having sex and suddenly she starts screaming cause she sees the mark of the ring on his finger (like a destiny thing) but not ring on it: Symbolically she demands to get married! 

Yes. We are not talking about just one guy here, but also about one woman (not two).

Anyway, she did it. Her life's achievement. Something to be proud of. The Spider-Woman. With her Spider-Ally: The Mother.

Doesn't matter if she's your mother or hers... Women always fight each other or become allies... and, I tell you, you sorry sob, you better pray they like each other and choose to be allies...

Anthony is no longer an individual... He is a... an Adam Bell now.

Disgusting, just disgusting...

Dressing that white shirt with brown yellow trousers (no more leather jackets for him). Teaching History (poetry's boring sister). Driving a van. Talking with his colleagues about movies (not women). He's just a shadow of his former self: crying silently, nestled over the couch, waiting for her to come and "take" him. After the mating, she'll eat him alive. Devour his soul.

This guy we're talking about he's on the verge of suicide. Sometimes he fantasizes: "What if I crash this FUCKING car and kill us both? I swear... if she starts again, I'll do it... I'll do it!"

Fortunately, he finds a healthiest path. The immemorial solution to this eternal problem. He -of course-, resorts to hookers.

[I feel like this just gave me the perfect excuse to compose a big collage of my favorite movie hookers!]

You know, hookers are spiders too. Trust me, you don't want to get in a liaison with a hooker. But the thing is that for the right price they're always available. They might have spider heads (that's why you don't kiss them) but their bodies remain feminine... human.

That's more than you can say about wives. As soon as they get married they start eating. And they don't shave. And they leave their panties on the handle of the shower. And everything starts to fall: varicose veins, stretch marks, acne. You don't wanna know the whole picture.

Whatever. In a dark room of some lost motel, waiting for the hooker. this guy finds himself.

"Oooh, there you are Peter!!!"

And then accepts who he really is: I'm a Man, goddammit! I have needs. I want to breath. I have hopes and dreams. I want to join a gentleman's secret sex club!

So he gets a key (identical to Eyes Wide Shut). 

And here we come to the end of our story... I don't know how some people get that the spider at the end of the movie is afraid of him.

Watch the scene again. That spider is FURIOUS!!! She's about to jump and rip his freaking head off.

"What do you mean you think you can go out?! Where to? Whit Whom?! Cause honey... I've just talked to your mother - the only other human being you're allowed to interact with -, and I KNOW you're not going out with her! So... Wait a minute! What's that in your pocket?!!! Is that a Personal and Confidential White Envelope? Are you lying to me? Are you hiding things from me? Do you have like an interior life I know nothing about?!!"

Ok. That's one plausible explanation. The other one is that she's finally having the baby. This movie is like Alien (upside down) and the coming of the baby is like the spider-alien here.

Yeah I know she's only 6 months, but this guy's mind is all twisted up, so... Who knows really.

When women go into labor they tend to blame their husbands (specially with the first child):

"Go grab the bag. Don't forget the papers. Drive faster you stupid sob, you want me to have this baby here? On this filthy street? Where I could catch filthy street diseases? Slower you maniac!!!, you wanna kill us both? You wanna murder your own offspring?! 

Take that one. A jam, I told you not to go this way!!! Call mom. Get the doctor. Call YOUR mother. Get the nurse. Get me some epidural. Stop breathing: I'm the one in labor!"

So, yeah. Great movie. A pain to watch.

(by pelida77) 

Alien 3 is a movie about Rape

I think people hate this movie cause is not fun... daaah!; but really, is just depressing.

Symbolically it's a movie about rape. Well, the franchise itself is a very rapey one. Facehuggers force people into fellatio, and the chest burst moment is always sexually violent,

(And the idea of having an alien inside you is reminiscent of an unwanted pregnancy or even fantasies about having a deformed child).

But specially this one. We could say the whole plot is about a woman getting gang-raped, becoming pregnant, and then deciding on having an abortion (and dying in the process) Deep Shit!

Fury 161 it's a penal colony filled with rapist that have found "some sort of redemption", God in the ass-end of space.

"You don't want to know me, lady. I'm a murderer and rapist of women." Says Dillon [BTW Charles Dutton is amazing in this movie. He was really convicted for manslaughter; murdered some dude in a fight (though he claimed it was in self defense), and spent 10 years in a federal prison... While in solitary confinement read an anthology of Black Plays: that's how he learned acting... This dude knows his shit... He's not pretending, he's being there... I try to think of him whenever I hear stories about people like Jared Leto sending used rubbers and dead rats to his female co-workers, cuz he's a serious method actor (Fuck You!)] 

"We've twenty-five prisoners in this facility... all double-Y chromos... all thieves, rapists, murderers, child molesters... all scum." Resumes Superintendent Andrews insisting on the sexual nature of the inmates crimes.

But to this Lost Paradise comes a Woman!

"We view the presence of any outsider... especially a woman, as a violation of the harmony... a potential break in the spiritual unity." (Dillon)

In the Paradise before the Fall there's always a peaceful harmonious coexistence between man and beast: represented in the movie by the relation between the inmates and their dog...

But like in the Genesis tale and other myths of creation, Women are always the cause of the lost of this universal harmony.

Traditionally Women are blamed for the Fall of humanity (and everything really)... The Woman here, with her coming to the planet, turns the dog into a nasty man-hunting Beast (which is how the inmates now, in biblical fashion call the alien)

So it becomes a symbol of that, but also of something even darker: lust, and rape that turns men into beasts.    

  

Andrews is specially concerned about the possibility of Ripley getting raped. He wants to prevent that...  But what's his solution?:

Secluding her "confined to the infirmary. Quarantined" like she were a filthy, sick, disgusting being

"I don't want a woman walking around giving them ideas."

There's a terrible subliminal message here. Victim Blaming: Women are the cause of rape, they shouldn't be allowed to go out alone! 

Young, attractive women, who flirt and wear revealing clothes, are raped. They should wear fucking burkas or something. Also, the idea that once a man is sexually aroused he cannot help himself: he has to have sex.

You don't want that sort of Women-hate message, When the protagonist, the hero of your movie is a Woman (and one of the most awesome female characters in cinema history).

Aliens (1986)-James Cameron movie-, was all about female empowerment... Vazquez with her muscles and big gun, and Ripley. She's the one saving all the marines from the alien's nest. 

By the end of the movie becomes this bad-ass, shooting grenades and a flame thrower, that saves the day, even to macho character Corporal Hicks (blind and helpless like a fucking woosie) 

Instead, Alien 3 is like a depressing reminder of What's the real place of women in the world.

Finally the big subject of discussion after 'rape' (at least in a coffee table with left-wings): an unwanted pregnancy and the consequent abortion. 

Following the religious interpretation, Ripley here is like Lilith, Adam's first wife, a demonic figure who killed her newborn children (she strangled them). Ripley here is killing her baby!

"Why innocents must suffer?" Asks Charles Dutton character while they're dispossing of Ripleys symbolical child: Newt. 

According to the religious view the fetus is innocent.

She killed Newt... I mean she was fine there at the Terraformers base. We know she survived longer than 17 days there. So, I think her chances were good, but then we know what happened. Ripley "rescue" her.

Anyway, here, in Alien 3 the "autopsy" performed on Newt looks very abort-sy to me, with that bloody scalpel... yikes

In the Collective Unconsciousness (as Carl Jung, the patient banger, used to say) the scalpel is always related to abortions. So here, is not an autopsy but a symbolical abortion.

And the noises. They opened a 9-year-old chest with a saw, and you hear all the cracking of bones and slicing of skin: now go on, tell me this movie isn't fucking awesome!

In that final scene, when she throws herself into the fire, she's also having an abortion.

"We've got a surgical bay on the rescue ship. Come with me. You still can have a life. Children. Most important, you'll know it's dead." Says Bishop. 

But, alas... Sometimes the only choice Women have is the dirty illegal clinic over the backyard alley... and that often lead them to not being able to have children in the future (as Bishop reminds her) or even death. (but don't worry they took some blood samples... Omg! who though that could work?) 

Like I said. It's a very profound movie. But Nobody wants to watch a movie about rape, abortion or child molestation. This are horrible things!

IDK maybe I'm blinded by nostalgia, cause Alien 3 was my introduction to the franchise. I mean, I dig it at least as much as the other two. I saw it on TV back in the day and loved it! And in those days you couldn't choose what to watch, so if that night they decided to broadcast Alien 3 you were fucking grateful to your luck! super excited, cause it was so much better than getting something like A walk in the Clouds, The 3 Ninjas, or anything by Jim Carrey (I hate that fucker).

By the way, all I'm saying is not applicable to the Assembly Cut. Soon enough that's all people are gonna watch, millennial newcomers and revisiting old timers; and of course being such a boring cut they'd think Alien 3 is shit. 

Only morons like a cut ordered by a committee, like 10 years later from release to make money with DVD sales, with a bunch of extras unused shots and scenes, the discarded material: What they didn't use because...did not work!

What was the editor's criteria in the Assembly Cut? Well, if it makes for a longer movie is better. 

It doesn't matter if you end up putting a fucking space cow in one of the most awesome Sci-Fy movies from the 90's, if it gives you 15 more seconds is better!

And with the sum of all parts (most of them pointless changes) you end up with a movie that last 2h 24 minutes: in-fucking-tolerable, slow and boring.

People complain CGI in Alien 3 looks bad. You'd be surprise to know most of it is practical: but indeed, it does look bad! So that's Why they decided to leave it out.

"Hey I like the Assembly Cut, you can see what David Fincher was trying to do"

I don't know what David Fincher wanted to do. Nobody knows, probably not even Fincher. He doesn't really like to talk about Alien 3 that much, being such a terrible experience for him and all.

All I heard is some idea of making Ripley and that Golan dude the new Adam and Eve of space, or something, which sounds terrible...

I believe that some degree of Studio intrusion is always good (some, not completely fucking your own movie. But yeah, restraining a little bit the director, cuz as you know they're usually insane... Creativity and madness are very similar. Creative people are crazy, you need the suit assholes to ground them on reality)

I can say this much about David Fincher: I respect the dude, not because of his vision and shit; but because they probably offered him a ton of money to make a "Director's Cut" and he told them to fuck off.

Movies are what they are. And you can't fix the past! You can't make Grido shot first.

(by pelida77)