Rubber, O Pneu Assassino

No reason.

Why do people hate this film? No reason.

Why do people love this film? No reason.

Why did they make this film? No reason.

Why did we all watch this film? No reason.

Why do we want to watch this film again? No reason.

Why haven't they make a sequel? No reason.

Why would we watch that sequel if it was made? No reason.

Why is the tyre called Robert? Watch until the very end of the film to find out...

This struck me as a film people were pained to sit through, but say they enjoyed to make themselves look cool. Outside of some nice camera-work and a good soundtrack, this was an hour and a half of pointless,cynical faffing around that would have done better as a short film.

The premise of Rubber is interesting, but does not carry the whole film. There are only so many times I can watch a tire roll around from different angles and explode heads, after which point it becomes excessive, gory and just plain boring. Films of course should convey a message, but they are at their heart entertainment. If you can't engage your audience (why are we watching a film based on no reason?) and we have no characters to become invested in, the film isn't good.

If we take Rubber as a discussion of Hollywood movies and mass media in general, how they are mindless, violent for no reason and feed on their audiences, continuing as long someone is watching (reality TV/blockbusters) and as time goes on becomes destructive and inane, that is an incredibly interesting topic to deal with and thats the worst part. Rubber could have been an incredibly interesting film, but instead it relied on poor acting, poor dialogue and constantly shoving metaphor and absurdity in our face. There is no subtlety at all. We are constantly told the film is pointless, not real etc etc. So why are we watching? The film hates movies, hates its audience which it poisons for being interested. Its so cynical you are left wondering, if cinema is so bad, instead of complaining about it, why don't they just make a good film?

It was a rainy Sunday and I went looking for cheese, but found a savory meal. Frankly, I was hoping to kill off a few brain cells in the mindless fun of watching a movie about a killer tire. Expecting something along the lines of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, I wanted to drown myself in delicious B-movie goodness. This coming from the man that cannot change the channel when my remote calls up images of Joan Collins being eaten by giant ants in Empire of the Ants.

Yet soon I realized that this film was so much more than horror spoof or a silly gimmick film. The movie opens with a desert road randomly strewn with simple wooden parsonage chairs facing in all directions. Next a car appears and begins deliberately swerving into the chairs, breaking each one of them, until it comes to a halt. At that point, a sheriff emerges (from out of the trunk?!) and knocks on the driver door where he is handed a full glass of water. The sheriff breaks the fourth wall and begins addressing the audience by speaking of the "no reason" principle of famous movies like E.T., Love Story and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This narration immediately reminded me of the criminologist from Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I suddenly did not know what to expect from this movie.

I honestly think the less said about this film the better. Suffice it to say that Rubber is one part B-movie schlock, one part David Lynch, and one part Hitchcock. (Did I just actually go there?) On my first watching of the movie, I appreciated its style. The camera angles, the homage to Psycho, the riveting and unnerving sound track were somehow quite effective in producing suspense. Quite remarkable when the serial tire is a generic tire! Juxtaposed against this atmospheric cinematography was a very healthy dose of absurdity and dark humor. This makes for an extremely interesting viewing experience, where the audience switches abruptly from anticipation to laughter to abject confusion.

The sheriff tells us that there is "no reason" for this film. What a deceit! Because there is a reason for virtually everything – from the opening scene of the destruction of chairs, to the irony of a Nascar race, to the well placed remake of the song "Just Don't Want to be Lonely" to (yes!) the turkey. Irony abounds even as our in character heroine proclaims that she cannot read the lines of dialog because they are garbage.

The second time I watched this movie, I focused on its true theme. I realized with delight that the movie is about movies and their audiences. Pay very close attention to every scene with the bystanders on the road and you will realize that the killer tire story is not the actual plot at all. Also, on second viewing, you can revel in the brilliant personification of the killer tire (Robert). A tire that learns, sleeps, recreates, dreams, and even has flashbacks to his previous inanimate incarnation on an actual car. Observe the film structure and use of the reflecting glass and incineration scene as key catalysts. You will be amazed at all you missed when first watching this movie.

Astonishingly, this became my favorite movie of 2011 so far. Lovers of film should not miss this.

"The film you are about to see is an homage to 'no reason', that most powerful element of style." This is the manifesto that opens Rubber, delivered directly to the audience in a breaking of the fourth wall that is somewhat like taking a pound of dynamite to a pane of glass.

Rubber is a "horror" film about a black rubber car tyre that kills people by making their heads explode. With telepathy. And when I say "horror" I do of course mean "side-splittingly funny, pitch black, absurdist comedy." The opening scenes of Rubber are a deliberate assault on the separation between the audience and the film. Normally the opening sequence of a film seeks to bring you into the world of the film; the audience is encouraged to step through the silver screen and forget about the real world for the duration of the story. Rubber perverts these expectations. The film comes crashing through the screen, into the world of the audience. It reminds us at every turn that we are watching a film, and indeed that the very act of our watching is what makes the film happen.

There are actually two plot lines at work in Rubber. The first concerns a murderous inanimate object , an innocent but spirited young woman on the run from some troubled element of her past, and the county sheriff on the trail of the vulcanised psychopath. This is ostensibly the core thread of the movie, but we soon see that this action only serves as a literal distraction for the audience, who exist in the film, embodied as actual participants, though ones who remain clearly and distinctly removed from the action, watching events at a distance through field glasses. This distraction covers the real story, that of the sheriff, who is in fact the antagonist of the story, attempting to kill off the audience (through the manoeuvrings of his toady, The Accountant) so that the film can end and he can go home.

The movie within the movie begins with a sequence that could have come straight from Leone's scrapbook. A man lies face down in a desert. Slowly, he rises, and shakes himself off. He staggers along, and falls. He rises again, and continues to stagger on, through the endless desert. Except that the "man" in question is a rubber tyre (Roger, according to the credits). This is the brilliance of Rubber; that it can appropriate the cinematic language that we are so familiar with, and apply it to situations that cannot be anything but utterly absurd.

Other scenes lift from a variety of sources, including a sequence that takes place in what is clearly the Bates hotel from the original Psycho. For a film that claims to be dedicated to meaninglessness, it is ironic that not a single frame is without a clear purpose. Every shot serves to either ensconce us in the impossible world of a rubber tyre who murders people, or tear us forcibly out of it, as we return repeatedly to the plight of the poor audience, stranded in the desert with no food, and prey to depredations of a murderous cast member, or possibly character. It's never clear whether the antagonist is an actor who wants to stop playing his role, or a character in a story who wants the story itself to end; the latter appeals, if only for its deeply apocalyptic subtext. When the film ends, where does the character go?).

Even the choice of the supposed villain must have taken a great deal of thought. It's such an elegant choice; an object capable of locomotion, but without moving parts to cutely animate. Something that has an element of menace (after all, a tyre, attached to a vehicle, can do a lot of damage), but is also innately ridiculous. An object that can fulfill the emotive needs of the film yet has remarkably little capacity to emote. Consider that all this thing can do is roll forward, roll backwards, fall over, stand up, and vibrate its sides. That's a sum total of five things you can ask your star to do for you on screen. As a film-making challenge alone, that's a spectacular feat to undertake.

I could go on for days about the tiniest of "seemingly irrelevant but incredibly well thought out" details that litter the film. That Rubber invites such complex readings is a testament to the subtlety that underlies the simple brilliance of the film itself. Whatever you may think about the subtext and meaning of this supposedly meaningless film, it doesn't really matter if Rubber "means" anything or not, because whatever else it may be, the film is absolutely hilarious. We are talking literal "tears of laughter" funny here.

Quentin Dupieux provides us with excellent cinematography, full of lingering establishing shots and vivid, often deliberately off-frame close-ups, and the cast all turn in magnificent performances, especially Jack Plotnick, who demonstrates the ability to carry a scene from laugh out loud funny to deeply uncomfortable in a matter of seconds. The script is tightly written, and the humour builds on itself in layers, rising from the initial "WTF?" moments of nervous laughter to the farcical crescendo of the closing scenes, where every element of the film collides in a scene that, if nothing else, will mean that I'll never look at tricycles the same way again.

I could continue to pick at Rubber, pulling out detail after detail, examining each one in turn to find new facets, new thoughts and revelations. None of that really matters though; what you need to know is that Rubber is the strangest, funniest, and most dazzlingly original film you will see this year, and considering that Scott Pilgrim vs The World just came out, that's one hell of an achievement.

Originally from http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=9032

Which two words would you, and hopefully any other reasonable human being, use to describe a movie with a plot synopsis like this: an ordinary rubber tire comes to life in the middle of the Californian desert, quickly discovers that he disposes of dangerous telepathic powers and goes on a murderous stroll. The tire violently blows up people's heads left, right and center while a cinematic audience follows his joyful escapades from a safe distance through binoculars. Well, most likely but completely justified you will use the words "absurd" and "random". The most clever gimmick about this film, however, is that it actually points out the randomness before you even have the opportunity to ponder about it. "Rubber" opens with an extended spoken monologue by one of the characters and he repeatedly emphasizes the fact that everything in this film happens for absolutely no reason at all. Even more so, "Rubber" is an hour and a half long homage to randomness. Robert the tire comes to life for no reason. He can make small animals and human heads explode for no reason. He chases a cute brunette girl around for no reason. A group of bizarre people observe him like it's a real life movie for no reason. You get the picture.

One could claim, of course, that writer/director Quintin Dupieux' approach is innovative, courageous and humorous. This is true, in fact, but sadly just for a very brief period. The first few images of a seemingly half-drunken tire rolling through the sand and causing cute little bunny rabbits to explode are undeniably hilarious (if you share the same twisted sense of humor, that is) but it becomes dull and derivative enormously fast. The "no reason" gimmick quickly loses its panache and general fun-factor. Okay, so there's a psychopathic tire on a rampage and it doesn't make any sense. We would have understand that after five exploding heads instead of fifty as well. If "Rubber" had been a short feature, it would have been equally effective. Perhaps even more. Also, and this might be a purely personal opinion, I don't really like it when director hide themselves behind the randomness excuse. Everyone can think up a story that makes absolutely no sense. It's too easy like that. Obviously I think there are several good things to enjoy about "Rubber" as well, otherwise I wouldn't have given the average rating. The desolate filming locations and complementary references towards older movies are fun to spot. It was also tremendously cool to see former B-movie star Wings Hauser ("Night Shadows", "Vice Squad") in a prominent role again after so long. The special effects and make-up art look adorably cheesy and the electro/experimental soundtrack is quite awesome. The latter quality shouldn't come too much as a surprise, since writer/director Quintin Dupieux is primarily known as a musician and scored a humongous hit in the late 1990's as Mr. Oizo with "Flat Beat".