This was second on <a href=https://www.criterion.com/explore/27-steve-buscemi-s-top-10>Steve Buscemi's Top 10</a> list of films in the Criterion Collection.

Melodrama tends to miss more than hit with me, and that was overall true here. I lost interest in the backstory flashbacks after the second. I was relieved that we didn't have to sit through one for Kid Coy, a one note joke that stopped being funny early. Jack Overman does what he can to inject some levity into the picture as the big lug, but it just felt like the wrong brand of levity.

Art Smith and John Hoyt, however, did infuse the film with the right brand of levity as Dr. Walters and Spencer, respectively. The humor befitting these people and this world has to be worn out, not to actually elicit laughter but merely to reassure the speaker that his ability to construct a joke still functions long after it's made anyone laugh. This is a defense mechanism I know well, having used it reflexively throughout all manner of crises, including both of my inpatient hospitalizations for suicidal depression.

Smith's Dr. Walters is the film's conscience, the only real protagonist we have since the two leads are the sadistic Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn, as chilling as any screen villain I've yet to see) and inmate leader Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster, intense but not particularly inspiring). It's easy to root against the totalitarian Munsey, but it's hard to root <I>for</I> Joe. The best we have to work with is that somehow or other, Joe has to get out to persuade poor innocent Ruth to undergo some kind of lifesaving surgery because no one else can talk her into it.

If I was invested in Ruth, maybe that would have been enough. As it is, she's little more than a shorthand for giving Joe (and by extension, the entire film) the impetus for the jailbreak. I was reminded of the sequences in <I>Bride of Frankenstein</I> with the hermit...except that I managed to care about the hermit enough that watching his world torn apart bothers me. Watching Ruth say goodbye to Joe, oblivious to what will come of him or their relationship, meant nothing to me.

I was significantly more invested in Tom Lister (Whit Bissell). I suspect many, if not most, viewers dismiss Lister as being pathetic and weak, too worried about a wife who doesn't return his devotion to take care of himself and therefore not particularly worth their consideration. He was, of course, the one I related to the most. I can appreciate the kind of desperation that drove him to steal money for a fur coat for his wife in the first place, to send her letter after letter from inside, and ultimately to take his own life in light of being told she wanted a divorce.

There's something I'd love to see: Cora Lister demanding an inquiry into the death of her husband, particularly if her filing for divorce was a fabrication of Munsey's. Maybe she was going to leave Tom. She admits to choosing materialism over decency. On the other hand, there's Munsey filtering their entire relationship.

I will say that as the film wore on, I became increasingly mindful that the rules of that era dictated that wrongdoers <I>must</I> be punished onscreen, and that meant that somehow or other, Joe and Munsey both would have to go down. The climactic battle isn't so much primitive as it is primal. It's terribly simplistic, but this works in the film's favor, as it isn't fixated on trying to impress us with how clever it all is. Instead, we simply get on with the relentless cruelty.

I live in the same county as one of our state's penitentiaries. It's a major employer in this area, and I've grown up knowing quite a few people who have worked in corrections in various positions over the years, including members of my own family. The thesis of <I>Brute Force</I> is every bit as valid today as it was in 1947. As Dr. Walters put it:

<blockquote>Do you know what this prison is, Mr. McCollum? One big human bomb! And you say, "Kick it, and it'll be quiet. Smash it, and it won't explode."</blockquote>

One of the people I know who has worked in corrections has been caught up in a major prison riot. It wasn't at the facility where he worked, though. He was one of quite a few state corrections workers who were called in to assist when a privatized prison erupted. He was adamant that what led to that riot was precisely the draconian ruthlessness personified here by Captain Munsey and Mr. McCollum. The morality of <I>Brute Force</I> may be simplistic and it may be delivered clumsily in places, but it's sadly every bit as relevant today as at the time of its release 69 years ago.

<I>Star Trek</I> aside: This ensemble features three actors who appeared in the original series; Whit Bissell ("The Trouble with Tribbles"), Jeff Corey ("The Cloudminders"), and John Hoyt (Dr. Boyce in the original pilot, "The Cage").

<B><I>Brute Force</I> entered my Flickchart at #1016/1846</B>

<I>The Honeymoon Killers</I> is third on <a href=https://www.criterion.com/explore/27-steve-buscemi-s-top-10>Steve Buscemi's Top 10</I> list of Criterion Collection titles. I can appreciate its sensationalist blending of grim brutality and gallows humor, the intensity of the performances by leads Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco, and the stark black and white photography by Oliver Wood.

There's the film's economic storytelling to be appreciated, too. Writer/director Leonard Kastle was judicious in what information to give us. For instance, we witness the selection process for each mark, and then we cut to just before the end of her fate, whatever it may be. We don't have to endure the ritualistic courtship each time. We've already seen how Ray worked on Martha; we know what every other woman experienced with him without us having to sit through it.

And yet....

Somewhere along the way, the movie just began to feel too episodic for me. Though I could see for myself the escalation from merely robbing Doris to murdering not only Delphine but her daughter Rainelle, somehow I didn't <I>feel</I> any escalation. Before we even got to Delphine, I'd already begun to wonder how many more of these sequences stood between where I was in the film and its end credits.

According to Gary Giddins in his Criterion essay, <a href=https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/293-the-honeymoon-killers-broken-promises>"<I>The Honeymoon Killers</I>: Broken Promises"</a>, by time Janet Fay meets her demise, "...the film has already disposed of her humanity, mining for laughter her penny-pinching deceits and Jesus icons, defying the most saintly among us to forswear thoughts of homicide every time she chirps, 'Innat cuuuute?'”

This is the key element that eluded me. Giddins emphasizes how morosely comedic the film is, and this aspect just did not engage me. It's not that the jokes were over my head. They just didn't land for me. Perhaps if I saw this with an audience, the humor would have engaged me more, and if that had been the case, perhaps the film itself would have engaged me more.

I was intrigued by the recurring jabs at American patriotism and Catholicism. They're played for laughs, and of course they're also there to signify to us how indecent Martha and Ray are, but there's something about the specificity that did catch my eye. For instance, that Doris should sing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in the bathtub, or the one portrait of Jesus that basically looks like it would be His Tinder profile pic. Smooth Operator Jesus is one of the lesser discussed Jesuses.

I can, however, see this turning out to be another of those films that initially underwhelmed me but germinates until I find myself fascinated by it. It certainly has enough of the elements that tend to get under my skin.

<B><I>The Honeymoon Killers</I> entered my Flickchart at #1007/1847</B>

<I>Man Bites Dog</I> is fourth on <a href=https://www.criterion.com/explore/27-steve-buscemi-s-top-10>Steve Buscemi's Top 10</a> Criterion list. He notes, "It’s not for everybody, but it genuinely shocked me while I laughed my ass off." I don't know how shocked I was while watching it tonight, 24 years after Buscemi first saw it, but I did laugh aloud several times and that's highly unusual for me.

There are plenty of obvious discussions to have after viewing a film like this, and I'd be interested to participate in most of them. In his essay for Criterion, <a href=https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/221-man-bites-dog-cinema-of-entrapment>"<I>Man Bites Dog</I>: Cinema of Entrapment"</a>, Matt Zoller Seitz expounds on the ethics of the documentarian: "The filmmakers become ensnared in a double-bind: If they allow events to unfold 'naturally' without getting in the way, they are complicit in murder; if they do interfere, they are breaking the rules of verité."

I'm curious about how the mockumentary milieu appeals to that part of us that wishes to live vicariously through fictitious characters and how it functions differently from straightforward narrative fiction. What's the difference between watching Benoit here versus watching Christian Bale's performance as Patrick Bateman in <I>American Psycho</I>, for instance? I feel certain there <I>is</I> a difference unique to this milieu, but I'm not entirely sure I understand what it is.

I mean, yeah, there's clearly a greater effort to impersonate reality. The movie pretends not to know it's a movie, hoping we'll play along. I confess, I was underwhelmed by <I>This Is Spinal Tap</I> when I saw it a few years ago, and I think a big part of that was that I just wasn't compelled to play along. For whatever reason, though, I was willing to play along with <I>Man Bites Dog</I>. Benoit lecturing on the proper ballast ratios for weighting corpses cracked me up within the first few minutes of the film. I think in some way, just as the film played at being a documentary, I was coaxed into playing at being a viewer of that documentary, all the while really being a viewer of the mockumentary.

I was taken out of the experience by the gang rape sequence. It's within the established parameters of the film so I can't say it's "out of place", necessarily, but regardless of context, this is the kind of thing that's simply too upsetting for me to witness. This is where Matt Zoller Seitz's questioning of the ethics of documentarian reaches its apex; they're not merely aiding or abetting Benoit. They're active co-assailants.

I will say, though, that the macabre absurdity of the birthday dinner sequence pulled me back into the film for its final act. The staging of Benoit's accidental (yet entirely obvious) shooting is flawless. The framing, the panning, and the composed stoicism on the blood spattered faces of Valérie Parent and Jenny Drye are perfect. I have no idea how many takes it took for them to get the footage we see, but their work paid off brilliantly.

<B><I>Man Bites Dog</I> entered my Flickchart at #388/1848</B>

I've been meaning to see <I>My Own Private Idaho</I> ever since I first began participating in the annual DVD Talk Criterion challenges in 2010. It's been named on four of their celebrity-curated Top 10 lists, including <a href=https://www.criterion.com/explore/27-steve-buscemi-s-top-10>Steve Buscemi's</a>, which I'm presently working my way through to start this year's challenge.

The moment when I knew I was entirely invested in the movie was when Mike and Scott are on the stolen bike, having the following exchange:
<blockquote>SCOTT: Hey, Mikey, how long have I been here on the streets on this crusade?
MIKE: Huh. Well, I came back to town around three and a half years ago, and that's when I met you. So it's been...
SCOTT: It's been three years, Mike.
MIKE: Yeah, almost four years. That's a long time.
SCOTT: What I'm getting at, Mike, is that we're still alive.
MIKE: Yeah, well, that's obvious, isn't it?
SCOTT: Yeah. It's incredibly obvious!</blockquote>

Scott then goes on to say that, "They could drop a big old bomb on this city" and asks if Mike knows what they'd do. Mike answers, "Take shelter?" The sense of whimsy and naivete that dominate this scene is an elixir, reminding me why I watch movies in the first place. I've had those moments, and though mine aren't preserved in recordings of any kind, it's always nice to witness those moments reenacted, even if they aren't actually about me.

I had very little awareness of movies or pop culture figures like Keanu Reeves or River Phoenix at the time of the film's production and release. I'd seen Phoenix in <I>Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade</I>, but that was it. I didn't even know that it was any kind of big deal that he was the actor playing young Indy until years after I'd seen it. I can easily appreciate now all the acclaim I've ever heard for him as an actor, particularly after reading just now how the most pivotal part of the entire picture, the campfire scene, was entirely his revision of writer/director Gus Van Sant's script.

Mike's confession of romantic feelings for Scott was painful to watch. It's one of the most authentic such conversations I can recall offhand having ever seen in a movie. I don't know how long the scene runs in real time, but it's a world unto itself. It was one of those magical times where I felt myself living in that setting, its emotional truth so recognizable to one of my own.

In her essay, <a href=https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/596-my-own-private-idaho-private-places>"Private Places"</a> for Criterion, Amy Taubin relays Van Sant's account of that scene and Phoenix's work on it:

<blockquote>When I interviewed Van Sant at the time of the film’s release, he said that he’d originally thought the scene would be much more casual. “The character of Mike was originally kind of asexual. Sex was something that he traded in, so he had no real sexual identity. But because he’s bored and they’re in the desert, he makes a pass at his friend. And it just sort of goes by, but his friend also notices that he needs something, he needs to be close, so he says, ‘We can be friends,’ and he hugs him. That was all it was going to be. But River makes it more like he’s attracted to his friend, that he’s really in love with him. He made the whole character that way.”</blockquote>

Indeed, that anchors the entire film so much that the bohemian surrealism that dominates Act I almost feels necessary. One of the complaints I've had about some of the other films on Buscemi's list that I've watched is that they've felt episodic. I think had the campfire scene played out as Van Sant had intended, this film might also have felt that way for me. With Phoenix looking downward while pouring out his heart in as few words as possible, though, all the <I>Henry IV</I> rabble rousing becomes the necessary preamble to get us to a place in the film, in our understanding of his relationship with Scott, and also in our own relationship with these characters where we can really understand what this means for Mike.

The film's exploration of the nature of family is also one that resonates with me. I learned as a child that DNA =/= family. I've been fortunate over the years to develop several relationships that hold for me the value that I know to be deserving of that designation, all while having no relationship whatsoever with plenty of people with whom I share genetic markers. So, yeah, I see some of myself reflected by Mike and also by Scott in this respect.

Of course, I <I>don't</I> have any life experience comparable to being a transient sex worker. I only know enough to know my imagination isn't qualified to guess what that's like. I can only say that, from what I've grasped, there's a good deal of authenticity to the depiction shown here. I appreciated the candor of the characters, none of them playing into the tired narrative of lost souls needing to be rescued. They're searching for their own ways and answers, handling their situations as best they know how. It's as simple as that. For a film with so much sexual content, <I>My Own Private Idaho</I> isn't even about sex. Business, yes, and love, but not really about sex.

One last note: Udo Kier has stolen every scene I think I've ever seen him in, in anything. There's something about his fearlessness on-screen that makes every character he plays feel unpredictable. I never knew just how comfortable to feel about Hans, and even now that I've finished watching it, I <I>still</I> don't know how comfortable I feel about him. It's not easy to take supporting roles and make them that nuanced and that interesting, but Kier has done it time and again.

<B><I>My Own Private Idaho</I> entered my Flickchart at #174/1849</B>