Teach-7

You haven't experienced cinematic boredom until you watch this incoherent mess. You know you're in trouble early on when the voice-over (usually the saving grace of hopeless movie-directors) singularly fail to explain what is going on. You, the viewer, is on your own here, completely deserted by Monster a go go.

The actors sit around a lot, talk a lot, whatever. The monster doesn't really relate to anything else happening here, but he does look frighteningly emaciated and wasted (and very tall). Trouble is, he doesn't get much screen time. When the ending finally arrives a celebration is in order. Admire yourself enormously for sitting through this. It's an achievement, believe me. The second worst movie ever. Manos-hands of fate is even worse, but not by much.

Sweet William, Rosemary, Violet, Basil and the rest. Named after flowers and herbs, people growing together in your typical family garden of mismatched souls. Little William, trying to be something that sets him apart from the rest, something nobody can touch or change. He grows up to be a gay and obese teenager. Lusting after his closest friend. Not the easiest of lives. We meet Willy 10 years later, returning home to celebrate his sister Rosemary's wedding. He is now a slim, attractive young man. But what has happened during those ten years? And who is the little boy running around the house?

Every time I watch this small masterpiece, new layers of meaning turn up. The plot structure gives away some undiscovered truths, together with dialogue pointers I didn't notice before. That, to me, is a film worth seeing! When we showed this at our local film society, it got a great reception, one of the best we ever had for a film.

The Hanging garden is short, bittersweet and - sadly - true to life. You'll find something in this garden for you, whoever you may be!

Imagine Charlie Chaplin making a sweet and charming gay love story in his best silent-comedy style, and you have War Story.

Ronnie, a strapping, good-looking soldier going off to WW1 takes the place of Edna Purviance, and the tramp-character is here played by Metly Morville, a wide-eyed fellow in a bowler-hat working as a waiter. Ronnie and Metly fall in love, yet there are problems....

War story could be written off as brilliant pastiche, of course. The stock characters are all here: The fat man with the huge moustache, the silly old dame, the lovely young thing, the sneaky thief. The pratfalls, the fisticuffs, the captions, - all here! The interior of the restaurant looks exactly like a set at Mack Sennett-studios in 1915.

And yet: There is a scene of two men being beaten up and thrown out of the restaurant for being "pansies". That, of course, is the way gays were treated back then. So there is a darker message of ignorance and intolerance being addressed here. And, of course, you would never see two men fall in love like this in the silents. Unthinkable.

Overall, I give this film a 10/10, if only for the sheer audacity and novelty of it. I hope Baumgartner will return to this simple way of making films. His audience will love him for it.