Werewolves! Karate! Frilly Shirts!
Jul. 10th, 2004 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaWho here has seen the French movie Brotherhood of the Wolf? Anyone? I am in love! It is my new favorite B movie. It somehow manages to have nearly everything I love in a B movie, all mooshed together.
1) Set in the late 18th c. This means:
a) Men with long hair in queues, which they can then pull loose and shake. I love it when men do this quintessentially feminine thing.
b) Frilly shirts, tricorne hats... tricorne hats in the rain, great big wigs, long leather duster coats with big cuffs and sweeping skirts; and of course the all-important tall leather boots with cuffed tops.
c) Galloping on horseback; galloping on horseback in the rain.
d) Chateaux, torchlight. Bach in the soundtrack.
e) Borzois.
2) Martial arts
a) Hard to explain how a movie set in 1770s rural France and involving folklore, the Legend of the Beast, corrupt Catholics, satanism, incest, and shape-changing can also include a lot of kung fu (some of it nearly naked, yay, and some in frilly shirts and tricorne hats, double yay). But it does, and I am happy.
b) Also, kung fu with exotic weapons such as singlesticks, two-pronged garden implements, snaky swordy things.
c) Body paint and tats. Again, how this fits into 18th-c France is a little hard to follow, but nevermind.
d) Kung fu in the rain.
3) Gorgeous landscapes, often bleak and wintry, or fogbound and shimmering with silver and green lights, or silent and filled with the whispers of an animate Nature, watching. Also meadows at twilight; meadows at twilight in the rain. Also, slo-mo of horse hoofs splashing through same. And small flocks of birds flying up suddenly into sunlight.
4) Rain This does not require explanation.
The plot? Oh, the plot is something about a werewolf or something that is killing people in rural France. There is a lot of fancy stuff about the Enlightenment vs. the Dark and Ancient Forces of Nature, and the Ancien Regime vs. the Spirit of the New (i.e. looming French Rev), and Rationalism vs. the Old Ways, when humans and animals understood one another, and so on. There is a bit of a love story, and ample slash in the subtext. There is the wonderful Vincent Cassel, little known in the US (unless you saw him as Camille Desmoulins in the otherwise wretched "Jefferson in Paris"). And there is the veryverypretty Mark Dacascos, doing his veryverypretty thang. But really, who cares about the plot?
1) Set in the late 18th c. This means:
a) Men with long hair in queues, which they can then pull loose and shake. I love it when men do this quintessentially feminine thing.
b) Frilly shirts, tricorne hats... tricorne hats in the rain, great big wigs, long leather duster coats with big cuffs and sweeping skirts; and of course the all-important tall leather boots with cuffed tops.
c) Galloping on horseback; galloping on horseback in the rain.
d) Chateaux, torchlight. Bach in the soundtrack.
e) Borzois.
2) Martial arts
a) Hard to explain how a movie set in 1770s rural France and involving folklore, the Legend of the Beast, corrupt Catholics, satanism, incest, and shape-changing can also include a lot of kung fu (some of it nearly naked, yay, and some in frilly shirts and tricorne hats, double yay). But it does, and I am happy.
b) Also, kung fu with exotic weapons such as singlesticks, two-pronged garden implements, snaky swordy things.
c) Body paint and tats. Again, how this fits into 18th-c France is a little hard to follow, but nevermind.
d) Kung fu in the rain.
3) Gorgeous landscapes, often bleak and wintry, or fogbound and shimmering with silver and green lights, or silent and filled with the whispers of an animate Nature, watching. Also meadows at twilight; meadows at twilight in the rain. Also, slo-mo of horse hoofs splashing through same. And small flocks of birds flying up suddenly into sunlight.
4) Rain This does not require explanation.
The plot? Oh, the plot is something about a werewolf or something that is killing people in rural France. There is a lot of fancy stuff about the Enlightenment vs. the Dark and Ancient Forces of Nature, and the Ancien Regime vs. the Spirit of the New (i.e. looming French Rev), and Rationalism vs. the Old Ways, when humans and animals understood one another, and so on. There is a bit of a love story, and ample slash in the subtext. There is the wonderful Vincent Cassel, little known in the US (unless you saw him as Camille Desmoulins in the otherwise wretched "Jefferson in Paris"). And there is the veryverypretty Mark Dacascos, doing his veryverypretty thang. But really, who cares about the plot?
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 12:33 am (UTC)That's because I frequently carry on conversations so obscure that I myself have no idea what I'm talking about. Wuh.
though I have seen "Night of the Hunter"--I think--that's the one with Robert Mitchum as the murdering preacher, right? love and hate tatooed across the knuckles of his hands...
Right. The only movie Charles Laughton ever directed, and well worth renting if you haven't seen it in a while. It's an odd movie--half serious film, half garish noir thriller. As you may recall, it's about an evil man called the Preacher who chases two small children through the wilderness to find out where their father hid some money and then to kill them. Among other things, it's full of weird stylized images of animals and the state of nature at night (clouds of insects swarming, a cobweb). The children flee on a boat down a river at night, and as they pass, we see lots of little vignettes of innocent animals--frogs, moths, owls, tortoises, and lastly a pair of bunnies, out in the wild late at night alone, vulnerable, but somehow safe, because danger comes not from nature, which is benign, but from "civilization"--the Preacher and his murderous religious-fanatic kind.
In "Brotherhood of the Wolf" there's a similar narrative line about nature vs civilization, with the Beast being either a symbol of the terrifying and uncontrolled State of Nature or, conversely, the violence and bestiality of men. At one point the Beast attacks two children and kills one, but the other escapes by hiding in a small cave that is shown to her by a white wolf, who is a friend (or possibly brother) of the Indian Shaman Guy. When the Indian Shaman Guy searches for her, he looks in the cave and first sees 2 small bunnies--a shot that is a direct citation of a similar shot of 2 bunnies in "Night of the Hunter." It's so direct that it has to be conscious. Anyway, Night of the Hunter is one of those cult films that directors love to cite. (Spike Lee put the tats on the hands in "Do The Right Thing.")
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 06:21 am (UTC)Likewise, in trying to recall Brotherhood, I keep getting flashes of ... I think... Ridicule, which I found disappointing. But I do remember something about werewolves, and LotR-style lushness, and some of the themes you mention.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 10:28 am (UTC):-D Nice.
Yes, sort of; there are strange twinking starfields and a lot of general voiceover singing of eerie hymns and children's songs, including a lullaby that says, in part, "Fear is just a dream/so dream, Little One, dream." Eeeee. As Lillian Gish says, "It's a hard world for little things."
Likewise, in trying to recall Brotherhood, I keep getting flashes of ... I think... Ridicule, which I found disappointing.
Me too. I am a whore for movies set in the 18th c, but most of them do not live up to potential. (Dangerous Liaisons was a fine exception, and I will always love the original Scarlet Pimpernel.)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 10:51 am (UTC)loves them both. Leslie Howard! But Merle Oberon wasn't a match for him.