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A "no frills" presentation of Henry Rollins doing "the talking thing", in which he projects himself as a kind of hardcore drill instructor of righteousness and self improvement: a tattooed Anthony Robbins if you will. As with most populist commentators, he can claim to simplify the message through the use of aphorism and anecdotes in order to reach as wide an audience as possible. Often though, this is really symptomatic of a consistent inability to relate individual experience to a wider social context in an indepth and interesting way. One gets the disturbing impression that this stage act cannot maintain its illusion of spontaneity and loosening up. It seems carefully contrived, like Henry's weight lifting and rigorous work schedule, to render his responses automatic so as to eliminate any anxiety associated with uncertainty. This might explain the perfunctory character of this performance and its effect on the viewer. Regardless of what Rollins recalls in his anecdotes, there is a curious equivalency which renders them indistinguishable. While not without its charms, the main impression "Talking Out the Box" leaves behind is simply that Henry was there and lived to tell another tale.

Critics have attempted to undermine the grim intensity of this film by claiming it adopts a "separatist" position: the only sympathetic male character is an old derelict who poses no threat to the women. One could reply that it is equally plausible that the emphasis is intended as a corrective to many films which do not inquire into the gendered nature of violence. Instead, there is a tendency to focus on the "criminal genius" locked in mental combat with heroic authority figures. "Gebroken Spiegels" differs by drawing together the almost ritualised degradation experienced by the main characters who work in a brothel, and the repetitive atrocities of a serial killer. Irrespective of differences in individual circumstance, victims are shown to have been selected for a shared defining feature. The stark realism of the film has an almost documentary feel to it, and should stimulate debate on (feminist) resources of hope in diminished circumstances: one recalls how, in "A Hand Maid's Tale", (female) sociologists and other thinkers preferred to work as exotic entertainers for an elite who liked savouring the decadent pleasures forbidden to the "masses". Critical thought would be more tolerated in these circumstances than outside, if only as a kind of forbidden "exotic fruit". "GS" offers a different, although related context, which could also be usefully compared to "Female Perversions" and Lizzie Borden's revolutionary "Born in Flames."

A noble attempt to bring the Herman Hesse novel to the screen, enlivened by a complex and poignant performance by Max Von Sydow as the Steppenwolf, Harry Haller. His efforts are considerably aided by gloomy lighting and long meditative takes which convey the burden of the Steppenwolf's world view as a self proclaimed "outsider". Closely following the book, however, the film too, falls apart in its second half. It validates the asocial Steppenwolf, a misguided hero/martyr wanting to transcend personal inadequacy rooted in the disorder of the everyday world: his redemption comes through a woman who leads him into an enchanted magical world. Experience, with art often the privileged vehicle, might be better understood as redemptive if read in interpretive rather than metaphysical terms- i.e. it is a product of engagement with and not transcendence of or withdrawal from the social. Harry Haller reminds one of the "steppenwolf" in Apted's documentary "7 Up", Neil. Numerous visions of this transcendence, which can foster megalomania, are also evident in e.g.'s such as George Lucas's Jedi philosophy (Luke SKYWALKER), and Kubrick's Starchild in "2001". 2 documentaries on film making, "Hearts of Darkness" and "Burden of Dreams", show the difficulties faced by "control freak" directors in realising the theme of redemptive transcendence on the screen, given the teamwork of the production process etc. The Romantic poet in Cocteau's "Orphee" is similarly frustrated upon discovering the "afterlife" is routinised/bureaucratised. "Sphere" and "Solaris" also make critical overtures in this direction by questioning the desirability and possibility of experience bearing no disjuncture between thought and expression. But for a critique of "Steppenwolf" philosophy, it is hard to better the film adaptation of Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground".