An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this movie but, since it was included in the ‘1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’ list, I was quite eager to check it out. It’s only afterwards that I discovered that this movie had such an abysmal IMDb score (2.9). On the other hand, I can’t say I was really surprised since the damned thing was rather unpleasant to watch. In fact, it was probably one the most unsettling movies I have seen, no less than that. It’s not that it was violent, sexually explicit or that the content was really shocking. It was more how chaotic, dark and disorienting it was. For example, it was shot in a way that I had no sense of space, there were many close-ups and never one establishing wide shot where we were actually able to see where we were. There was no narrative structure, with obviously no plot but also no real beginning (at least, they gave us the title card) and no end either. Most of the running time was basically about Jack Smith (who was also an experimental filmmaker) doing pretty much whatever and sometimes some really weird stuff. The fact that Smith kept saying/shouting/singing some random stuff constantly and unrelated to what he saw on the screen made the whole thing even more disorienting. I think that it was also what bothered many viewers, the fact that it all looked like some random video that some guys shot during some party or whatever. I have to admit that I was myself not really convinced but I was not so dismissive and I wouldn’t consider it some real garbage. Indeed, I always believed that, even if you don’t understand a piece of Art, you still don’t have to like it but you shouldn’t outright dismiss it (at least, you should try). In this case, the whole unpleasant aspect was actually obviously a ‘feature’. It was some really anarchist filmmaking, basically the birth of trash, and it was not surprising that it had been a major influence on John Waters. Anyway, to conclude, even though I’m not sure if I should recommend this movie, considering how unpopular it seems to be, I thought it was still a decent watch, even if I was glad that it was fairly short.