Melancholie der Engel

This movie is as though a lesser talented director took a shot at breaking every taboo boundary that exists. Unfortunately, even with English subs the overall story lacks significantly (if it exists at all). Instead, you are left with a long movie collage of ramblings and animal torture, disturbing , and images of corpses littered around religious monuments with no true background or context. "Extreme" movie done poorly.

What the heck was this movie about? I can never ever get back the 2.5 hours that I used of my life to watch this movie. There is very little sequential movement through this story and the randomness and extensive focus on the irrelevant produced a waking coma that I may never recover from. The symbolism is impossible to follow and even the nudity, to include random ball and sack shots, was out of place and added little to the comprehensibility of this film. This would be a perfect film for someone on death row who had nothing else to live for and was anxious to end their life in confusion.

I've owned a copy of Melancholie der Engel for a few years now, but never watched it as it was in German without subtitles. Recently, I found the movie on YouTube with English subs, so I finally gave it a whirl.

Even with subtitles, it didn't make sense.

Directed by Marian Dora, who gave us the disturbing Cannibal (2006), this film is an extreme arthouse horror that pushes the boundaries in terms of shocking content, the filth and debasement depicted including vomiting, stoma and anus fingering, and the five '-tions' - mutilation, urination, defecation, masturbation, and ejaculation (all shown in graphic detail). While this might be exactly what extreme cinema fans are looking for, the whole thing proves extremely boring thanks to its pretentious approach, unfathomable storytelling and excruciating two and a half hour plus runtime.

Fool that I am, I carried on to the bitter end regardless of the fact that the execution was very tedious and I soon became inured to the abhorrent acts inflicted on the cast. What I did find upsetting was the unnecessary cruelty towards a variety of innocent critters: a tiny newt is slowly crushed, a snail has its eyes cut off with scissors, a worm is sliced into pieces with a scalpel, and a cute cat is killed. People can do what the hell they like to each other in the name of their art (and they do), but leave the animals out of it (unlike the turtle in Cannibal Holocaust, I can't imagine that the cat became food for the cast and crew).

1/10. A repetitive, incomprehensible exercise in repugnant behaviour that couldn't be more wearisome if it tried. If you think you're hardcore enough, watch it back to back with Philosophy Of A Knife.

Always mentioned in forums and lists on the internet as one of the most disturbing horror films ever made, "Melancholie der Engel" (2009) justifies its reputation as a cursed film due to its scenes of scatology and extreme cruelty.

The film takes the viewer on an odyssey of disturbing and reflective moments, addressing themes such as life, death and moral decay from a nihilistic perspective. The oppressive aesthetic is in keeping with the genre's proposal, making it a truly frightening work of horror. Despite bringing interesting philosophical debates, a well-crafted soundtrack and careful framing in the photography, much of the experience is overshadowed by scenes that go beyond the limits of what is acceptable, such as explicit animal cruelty and sequences involving excrement, made without simulation or practical effects. The subtext does not support the project, making it clear that the enigmatic director Marian Dora intended to shock the public through an underground production aimed at art house cinema. For viewers unfamiliar with this type of transgressive content, the film may seem like nothing more than a jumble of bizarre images and disjointed philosophical dialogues.

"Melancholie der Engel" was not conceived for all audiences, but rather for a select group that enjoys the paraphilias portrayed in the film. Without its more problematic scenes, the film would certainly have achieved more consistent results, even if it would inevitably lose its infamous crown as a disturbing production.

Melancholie der Engel is a truly terrible movie. Far from the worst I've ever seen, but nonetheless awful.

First off, the positives:

The movie has decent cinematography. It is clear Marian Dora has talent as a director and cinematographer, and that is especially displayed in his film "Cannibal", a far superior film. As visually unattractive and dull as the camera looks, Marian Dora's shots are for the most part good. Sometimes, the camera gets irritatingly close to the object in sight to the point where it's hard to tell what you're looking at, but for the most, it's smooth and generally pretty.

Though the soundtrack is generally one of the negatives of this movie, there was one long organ piece that is played twice in the movie that was legitimately gorgeous. Those are all the positive things I have to say about this movie.

Now, the negatives:

The worst and most offensive thing about this film is that is the most excruciatingly pretentious film I have ever seen. I have nothing against arthouse cinema, and I appreciate genuinely deep, philosophical and artistic media. This film fails at that however. The philosophical insights of this film are not only incredibly nihilistic, but not very interesting, deep, or thought-provoking. The film uses imagery, visual symbolism, and parallels to depict this ideas, but they are not only annoyingly obvious and unsubtle, they are just plain boring. Melancholie der Engel poses itself as an intelligent, gorgeous, masterful art piece among the likes of Bergman and Tarkovsky, when it has very little to offer except surface-level quasi-Nietzschean philosophical ideas.

The reason for the film's infamy however, is another negative thing about it. The film is known for being "disturbing" and full of sadistic, perverse, and foul imagery. This links back to my previous criticism of pretentiousness, as the film acts like these obvious shock value material is deep and meaningful. The film is full of grisly animal abuse, defecation, bodily fluids, torture, rape, and much, much more. The scenes are usually completely out of context and serve no relevance to previous or future material. It is clear Marian Dora wanted to make a shock movie, but he also wanted it to be presented as "art". So he would include a plethora of repulsive imagery, throw some dramatic music over it, and label it as "powerful" and "deep". I would rather any day a movie that embraces its foulness like A Serbian Film that doesn't try to hide under the facade of being art.

Some more minor complaints include: The editing was disjointed, annoying, and full of low-effort transitions. The soundtrack, with the exception of the one aforementioned organ piece, was generally very cheesy, melodramatic, sappy, and for the most part, extremely irritating. It certainly contributed to the pretentiousness of the film. One character, the old man, serves no purpose to the film besides killing animals and beating women. Additionally, the acting was mostly bad, with Katze being the main exception.

The film was overlong, overstuffed, and plain boring. You'd expect a film this full of nasty, gross imagery to be anything but a snoozefest, but it absolutely was. The film isn't disturbing, it's icky and revolting. And being stomach-churning doesn't stop it from being incredibly boring. The film is full of dull monologues that it becomes incredibly tedious and difficult to sit through. I found myself getting very drowsy and almost falling asleep during the first. The nasty imagery couldn't keep my interest, since it was also not very interesting or shocking either.

I will admit, I prefer this over August Underground or Slaughtered Vomit Dolls. There are some good things about this movie. But it was unbearably pretentious - it tried desperately to be "high-brow" and "artsy" but it failed horrendously. Just because the film isn't entirely bad doesn't mean it's worth your time. It was still a waste of time and a terrible experience. If you want a deep, philosophical arthouse movie that's actually good, watch "Stalker", "Andrei Rublev", or "The Seventh Seal". Want a disturbing and horrifying movie that isn't garbage? Watch Come and See, In a Glass Cage, Salo; Or the 120 Days of Sodom, or Cannibal Holocaust. There are so many better options than this stinker of a movie. God bless.

2/10.