The Criterion Collection brings film lovers some of the most curious, consuming pictures ever made. National borders mean petite to the folks at this DVD company; they will release American films as readily as they will European cinema or documentaries about African dictators. Moreover, Criterion does not flinch from controversial films because they fill controversial themes. Thanks to this company, we can readily net estimable versions of Paul Morrissey’s “Flesh for Frankenstein” and “Blood for Dracula” along with the ultra violent “Robocop.” I have yet to fully peer the depths of Criterion’s film catalog, but their other discs must surely be as spicy as the titles I have viewed so far. Criterion finally released one of my common foreign films, the independent limited gem entitled “C’est Reach Pres de Chez Vous,” oddly translated as “Man Bites Dog.” Made in Belgium a itsy-bitsy over a decade ago, this inviting movie viciously satirizes the media and its like for dramatic violence. Criterion not only presents this movie with a heap of extras, they also restored the film to its uncut execute. This is well-known because the version I watched nearly ten years ago was missing two scenes that are arguably the most homely parts in the entire film.
Filmed entirely in the style of a dark and white documentary, “Man Bites Dog” is an often inferior excursion into the underground world of a sadistic thug named Benoit, a travelogue of the daily activities and random thoughts of a bloodthirsty sociopath. Most of the time he robs the elderly of their pensions, commits burglaries, drinks himself comic, or kills innocent people for no other reason than that he feels like it. In several scenes we recognize Ben instructing the film crew on how to weigh down bodies so they will not float when he dumps the corpses into an abandoned rock quarry. His associates are mostly a rather seedy lot: he often visits an aging woman of questionable virtue and hangs out with an heinous boxer. Reliable extinct Benny is not above suddenly killing a pal in a fit of rage, or giving an weak woman a fatal heart attack by screaming at the top of his lungs into her face. This guy is a fragment of work, but what truly makes the film painful to perceive is how Benoit gradually lures the filmmakers into sharing his unsightly crimes.
In a intention, and this is the proper genius of “Man Bites Dog,” the viewer can sometimes understand why the documentarians become interested in Benoit’s shenanigans. Even as he commits the most depraved of crimes, this hooligan is truly a charming character with many endearing traits. He often waxes philosophic about such disparate topics as architecture and poetry, has a lady friend who takes him to art galleries, and his generosity to the filmmakers chronicling his life knows no bounds. Benny is always willing to consume a drink or pitch in to aid pay for more film because he enjoys the company of his newfound buddies. Watching this guy play with children in the street even though he committed an spoiled crime against a youth in another scene presents the documentarians, and by extension the viewer, with a upright problem not easily resolved. Benoit does not portray what Hannah Arendt referred to as the “banality of imperfect” but rather an “ambiguity of noxious,” and it makes pigeonholing this character at times extremely problematic. To build it even more difficult for the viewer to despise Benoit, his likeable mother and grandfather appear from time to time. But hate him you will, especially after seeing the aftermath of a robbery in the suburbs and an encounter with a couple in an apartment after an all-night drunk. “Man Bites Dog” is a absorbing film.
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Even worse, this movie is often quite droll in the plan only the blackest of comedies can conclude. Benoit’s overdramatic French dialogue is a bawl, and many of his views on life are unprejudiced downright hysterical. You cannot benefit but laugh when Benoit forces the camera crew to rebury bodies that have suddenly reappeared when the quarry goes dry. I believe one of the funniest scenes in the movie occurs when a member of the documentary crew dies as a result of Benoit’s activities and we seek a member of the crew eulogize him on camera. When another filmmaker dies later in the film, this same guy performs another eulogy nearly indistinguishable from the first one. I have never felt as guilty about laughing during a film as I have with this one because I knew I honest should not, could not, dared not collect this droll, but in the slay I impartial could not wait on myself from giggling over Ben’s antics.
The extras on the Criterion disc are not all that impressive. There is a film short starring the actor who played Benoit that is not that great, an interview with the filmmakers that is rather short and does not stutter great about the film, a tranquil gallery, and some reviews concerning the movie. The transfer quality of the narrate is qualified, though, as are the subtitles for this French language film. As far as I know, we have never seen anything further from the people responsible for “Man Bites Dog.” Perhaps these guys were one hit wonders, and if so that is a darn shame. This movie is so brilliantly conceived and executed that it is difficult to imagine that whoever made it would sail into obscurity.
MBD will undoubtedly receive its equal part of lovers and loathers…this is a very hard film to discover due to its extremity of the violence. Though its articulate is unsightly to say the least, the overall carry out is a startlingly satirical contemplate at the media’s fascination at peering from the safety of our collective couches at the levels of violence that hurry rampant in television.
An extremely tight budgeted camera crew follow a poetry spouting serial killer through the streets of Belgium in a quasi-documentary. Adhering initially to the unofficial press “rule” of not interfereing with the outcome of events, they win the horrific details of Benoit’s bloodlust, which can only be equalled with the evident psychosis in his mind as He swings from controlled to chaotic. Ben is an gripping soul- fine, charismatic and intelligent- which provides a valid yet disturbing difference to the depravity of his actions. What gives MBD that extra degree of cinematic edge is the interviews with the crew and cast (all of which coincindently employ their true names in the movie, adding a greater sense of realism) …where they argue about costs, running out of equipment and film, again spurring on the documentary feel on a fictional film. When the line is crossed by the crew from neutral observers to participants, they follow the same overall repercussions as our diabolical hero.
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Based on Criterion’s history of giving aesthetic transfers, I will be optimistic that MBD will recieve the similar royal treatment. Past VHS copies had both the Unrated Prick (which was missing the unpleasant scene of Ben strangling a young boy) and the Unrated Director’s Gash (aforementioned scene intact) . From what I’ve heard, the DVD will be the unedited version. This essential movie’s message has become even more potent as the put a question to for “reality” shows has risen to ludicrous levels. We may rep MBD distatesful and disturbing, but are we able to ogle away?
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