Jan
21
The remoteness of the world is…
January 21, 2010 | |
The remoteness of the midwife precisely is essentially gone. The spread of technology and information has cast a connected net (no computer pun intended), that with rather few exceptions, spreads throughout. But, I still recollect a for the present when the unbelievable seemed to posses impervious, unreachable locales where hardly men had tread. Pursuing then I could imagine there capacity be places that held exotic mystery, jeopardy likely to be, and unseen wonders. Today? Not so much. These days Leo Dicaprio takes a trip via prop level surface and raft into the goodness of the Amazon to observe lone of its most isolated tribes, only to have one of the tribesmen, who stills hunts because his meals, doesn’t rub off last a stitch of clothing, or appearance of to posses any flavour of the month tools, point at Dicaprio and guess, “Titantic!”
Way back in the far simpler days of 1979 (but released in 1980), Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust took the stance that for all the civilized world’s superiority, modern man can still too easily fall into callous and cruel behavior. And, that he did it in a jungle/cannibal film, just goes to show why genre cinema has always been the best place to get your message flick mixed in with some good, cheap, vulgar, exploitation thrills.
Documentary filmmaker Alan Yates (Gabriel Yorke), his girlfriend Faye Daniels (Francesca Ciardi), two cameramen, and a guide disappeared while filming in the Amazon. Professor Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman) leads a small expedition into the jungle to find out what happened to them. Besides the inherent danger they face from nature, they venture into areas that are inhabited by warring tribes of cannibals, most notably the swamp dwellers, the Shamatori, and the elusive “tree people,” the Yanomamo. As Monroe feared, Yate’s documentary crew met a grisly end at the hand of the cannibals, however what he finds on the crew’s recovered footage tells a far more disturbing story than he could have expected.
This is a very well known film, but I am still going to play coy with the details because it serves the film better for any newbies. Suffice to say, what starts out as a by-the-numbers cannibal/jungle film, changes in the last half where we witness the raw documentary footage of the Yates expedition and the film takes on a cinema verite air. As a matter of fact, that the last half was the obvious inspiration for The Blair Witch Project- the viewer is meant to not be sure if what they are seeing is real. The film was also promoted as such, using unknown actors, selling the idea that it all actually happened. What is also most noted about the film is its grue and gore, from tribesman performing ritualistic rape, abortions, castration, impaled bodies, not to mention the cannibalizing, as well as the films actual, all too real violence against animals, in this case a anteater-rat looking thing, a piglet, a turtle, and a monkey.
Now, I didn’t find out about Cannibal Holocaust until the mid-late 80’s and it took me a good number of years before I actually stumbled upon a fringe video store with an all day wine-drinking proprietor who stocked oodles of bootlegs and weird stuff. The one thing I’ve never quite wrapped my head around is that it came out in 1980. It feels so much like a post-Vietnam era grindhouse flick, that I always assumed it came out a good six to eight years earlier and some smart theater probably double billed it with Last House on the Left. Regardless if came after the first wave of disillusioned post-Vietnam cinema, Cannibal Holocaust is a definite reaction to those times.
Previous Euro jungle/cannibal films like Man From Deep River (1972) and Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978) took the typical stance of being adventure-horror films depicting modern man lost among the primitives. Deodato wasn’t content to just go for that. He had previously delivered another fine jungle film, Jungle Holocaust (1977, aka. The Last Survivor, The Last Cannibal World), that likewise explored similar themes and aimed for more then just entertaining thrills. While Cannibal Holocaust transports viewers to an exotic place full of strange customs and primitive behavior, the subtext takes a definite stab at the media. Again, that is why I say it feels like such a post-Vietnam film, because that was the first war where journalists exposed the horrors (and futility) of warfare and made it commonplace for ma, pa, and little Jimmy to sit around the tv at 6PM and see those atrocities right before their eyes. To hammer the point home further, one of the Yates crew can be heard saying, “It’s just like Cambodia, man.”
Cannibal Holocaust’s history is filled with controversy. Aside from the real animal violence causing it to be banned in over fifty countries, it’s fake violence proved to be convincing enough that Deodato was dragged into Italian court where he had to prove it was fictitious. He also went on tv talk shows with the actors in order to prove the Yate’s crew hadn’t met a grisly end in the primeval forest. He sort of paid the price thanks to film makers like Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, who infamously manufactured stagy scenes and paid off villagers, tribesmen, and Congo soldiers to gain material and fulfill their sensationalistic agenda for mondo documentaries like Mondo Cane, Goodbye Uncle Tom, and Africa Addio. Even to this day, the film hit another blockade when Grindhouse had to go through a number of printers and accommodations because of the DVD artwork.
And, in a karmic way, I think Deadato deserved all the hassles he got. He did allow the animals to be killed. He did exploit the natives he filmed and perpetuated a stereotype about them that is far from the truth. In that sense, despite any “message” the film might have, he is still no better than any other mondo doc or exploitation jungle film makers like Lenzi, Martino, Jacopetti, or Prosperi.
I say all that, and I really like the film. Without a doubt, the film’s content and method is questionable, and those that abhor violence and cruelty to animals have every right to object to the film and flat out should not watch it. However, part of being a human being is that one can make allowances in their art and entertainment. Some things are a product of their time, and I’d no sooner totally damn Cannibal Holocaust than I would Birth of a Nation. And, hell, Robert Mapplethorpe’s subject matter might not always have been pleasant, but damn if his compositions werent pretty. You can sort of say the same here- I don’t condone everything I see onscreen in the film, yet, as conflicting as it may seem, I think the harsher material does artistically further the film as a work of shock cinema.
Despite being a group of filmgoers known for their sadistic streaks, for many horror fans Cannibal Holocaust manages to be too bleak and off-putting. Like the Pope said about Passion of the Christ, “It is what it is.” To complain about a cannibal film being disturbing and distasteful is a bit like complaining about a musical having too much song and dance.
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Dale Delorenzo