Cherubin

I don´t understand how people can consider "The Hunt for Red October" to be a good movie. To be sure, Sean Connery is quite charismatic and likable as probably the least reptilian Russian communist to ever be portrayed in an American film and his talks about plans for living in the U.S. with another crew member are fun. And, the character of the classical music loving sonar/radar/whatnot specialist is at least superficially interesting. And of course, who wouldn´t like to look at melodramatic shots of huge, whale like submarines, relive some Cold War nostalgia, or hear some beautiful Russian classical music in the background ? People who consider explosions, gunshots and the suspense of waiting for them to be exciting in any form will also get a couple of brief scenes of that sort. Otherwise, though, this movie is extremely hard to follow. This is mainly because technojargon dialogue comes at the viewer so fast that he doesn´t even have time to think about what it means, because major plot twists seem to come out of nowhere rather than receive sufficient build up , giving the movie a fragmented feel that still doesn´t achieve the fast pace it aims for and also because when the characters constantly lie to each other, it is hard to tell what exactly is true at the point when it is most relevant. Amid this mess of so-called "intrigue" , there is then very little room for characterization. Most of the characters, including possible villains, just do their jobs with a straight face as if they were automatons and the viewer never receives any reason to care about what happens to them. Alec Baldwin´s character is especially wooden. He just seems to be a coldly analytical scientist type who knows all the answers which various government organizations don´t - and we never even quite know how he came to this knowledge. He just seems to know everything simply by being created according to every government agent cliche in the book . And the movie´s highly regarded suspense ? That just comes from the Russians and Americans not knowing what to expect from each other and that the conflict between them may lead to a military attack on the U.S. Granted, this keeps the movie watchable but again , if we don´t care about any of the characters in the movie , we don´t really care about their conflicts either. Furthermore, the movie is so devoid of eccentricity, weirdness or humor (attempts at which fall painfully flat) that it´s strictly left brain territory and just like any other mostly uninventive spy movie.

After first reading about "Salo" on the internet, I thought that it would be like my worst nightmare coming to life on film with innocent teenagers being defenseless against the worst tortures imaginable. Plotwise, that is obviously still the case but what keeps the film watchable is that most of the film is presented from the point of view of the Nazi torturers while the teenage victims are left undercharacterized. The Nazis, though all behaving similarly and hence being somewhat undercharacterized themselves, may very well rank as some of filmdom´s greatest villains simply due to their arrogance, which is pushed to extremely absurd limits. Indeed, most of what they do is relax in the highest state of luxury with no worry as to what will happen next while casually discussing various philosophies and cracking dirty jokes. However, when they feel the hankering to enjoy the luxury of having innocent victims completely at their mercy, they just go off to see their teenage prisoners and in a state of complete calm, regardless of the victims´ hysterical protests, force them to do whatever they want them to do just by being firm, which is usually some kind of sexual activity or feces eating (an activity the Nazis themselves surprisingly enjoy, taking the traditional metaphor of evil being connected with feces to its most literal level) . All this is actually quite funny because what is happening is so weird that it seems almost cartoonish. The horror increases a bit at the end as extreme acts of violence like the burning of and cutting off of limbs are finally more blatantly forced on the teenagers than any of the previous orders. But by this point, the viewer is so lost in "Salo"´s hallucinatory atmosphere that such acts do not even hit him or her as much as they are supposed to. One might even find his or her feelings of sadism being disturbingly appealed to. The teenage victims, who in an American movie would most likely utilize plenty of pathos and fire in their protests and probably even defeat the Nazis at the end through a "prison riot", are here rather resigned to their fate , only rebelling against them through a couple of smartmouthed remarks and secretly disobeying their orders, constantly just hoping that some stroke of fate will save them if they just play along. Though some lose their lives rather than stay prisoners any longer and although one girl keeps crying to another girl that she "just can´t take it anymore", the basic attitude is so submissive that the victims don´t even complain much but just look tired, confused and submissive. The most obvious metaphor then is that if one does not rebel against fascism or dictatorships, they will keep wronging and injuring him or her with increasing severity. In such a scenario, dying on one´s feet is better than living on one´s knees. However, if you are a ruler in such a system , you will probably have a superficially grand old time at the cost of renouncing your humanity and most of the things it should naturally abhor. Otherwise, with its grossout soft porn and lack of strong plot, "Salo" is hardly a great movie but the above features definitely make it unique, fascinating and thought provoking.