Liv Ullmann and David Carradine.
I am really not quite sure what really is "The Serpent's Egg" more weighing flaw: The whole alienating premise of the film or David Carradine's robotic performance. But basing my choice on my better judgment, I'm gearing more towards the latter.
Throughout this whole Ingmar Bergman-directed feature, aside from that final, pseudo-scientific revelation, the film really felt nothing but an aimless exercise in existential angst. With our disillusioned and hapless protagonist roaming the decaying streets of 1920's Berlin that is completely unaware of a governmental take-over being led by someone named Adolf Hitler, I think that the groundwork as to why he's slowly being consumed by despair was not properly established, resulting with us being left with a main character that is both underwhelming and emotionally plodding.
I just don't think that David Carradine, a cult actor known for roles such as "Caine" in "Kung Fu" (a bit unrelated but it's interesting to note that his character here is then named "Abel"; a sort of an unconscious biblical allusion) and later as "Bill" in Tarantino's "Kill Bill", fits these kinds of roles. He's just relatively too tough-looking to really make his character believable and empathetic. Even Liv Ullmann, an actress of great emotional depth, is a bit out of place playing a forgettable character.
But then, there's Sven Nykvist's calculated cinematography that constantly puts dread and bleakness even in the most joyous cabaret settings and at the same time, finds emptiness even in a crowd. This is particularly evident in the film's impressive and disturbingly ambiguous opening scene (that is, until the climactic final exposition) where Nykvist has shot a scene of people of different ages and walks of life descending a stair with deeply melancholic and exhausted faces in stark, grainy black and white.
At certain points, the film's flimsy hands seem to let go of my already fleeting attention, but there's no doubt about the uncannily fascinating impression that the climactic 'explanation' scene, pulled off rather brilliantly by Heinz Bennent who played an experimentation scientist who knows the core secret as to why people like Abel are slowly slipping off from sanity, has left me.
Yes, it does felt that that crucially revelatory sequence looked and sounded more like a scene that you may see from those 'mad scientist' movies rather than from 'art' films like this, but for it to prophetically foretell the Nazi revolution's supposed 'New Society' and at the same time highlighting and comparing its idealistic superiority to an old one founded by the goodness of man is truly unnerving and, in a way, very brave.
And considering that this is Ingmar Bergman's first and only Hollywood film, "The Serpent's Egg" should be remembered more as a testament of his unbounded audacity rather than as a disappointing speed bump in his otherwise flawless oeuvre.
Throughout this whole Ingmar Bergman-directed feature, aside from that final, pseudo-scientific revelation, the film really felt nothing but an aimless exercise in existential angst. With our disillusioned and hapless protagonist roaming the decaying streets of 1920's Berlin that is completely unaware of a governmental take-over being led by someone named Adolf Hitler, I think that the groundwork as to why he's slowly being consumed by despair was not properly established, resulting with us being left with a main character that is both underwhelming and emotionally plodding.
I just don't think that David Carradine, a cult actor known for roles such as "Caine" in "Kung Fu" (a bit unrelated but it's interesting to note that his character here is then named "Abel"; a sort of an unconscious biblical allusion) and later as "Bill" in Tarantino's "Kill Bill", fits these kinds of roles. He's just relatively too tough-looking to really make his character believable and empathetic. Even Liv Ullmann, an actress of great emotional depth, is a bit out of place playing a forgettable character.
But then, there's Sven Nykvist's calculated cinematography that constantly puts dread and bleakness even in the most joyous cabaret settings and at the same time, finds emptiness even in a crowd. This is particularly evident in the film's impressive and disturbingly ambiguous opening scene (that is, until the climactic final exposition) where Nykvist has shot a scene of people of different ages and walks of life descending a stair with deeply melancholic and exhausted faces in stark, grainy black and white.
At certain points, the film's flimsy hands seem to let go of my already fleeting attention, but there's no doubt about the uncannily fascinating impression that the climactic 'explanation' scene, pulled off rather brilliantly by Heinz Bennent who played an experimentation scientist who knows the core secret as to why people like Abel are slowly slipping off from sanity, has left me.
Yes, it does felt that that crucially revelatory sequence looked and sounded more like a scene that you may see from those 'mad scientist' movies rather than from 'art' films like this, but for it to prophetically foretell the Nazi revolution's supposed 'New Society' and at the same time highlighting and comparing its idealistic superiority to an old one founded by the goodness of man is truly unnerving and, in a way, very brave.
And considering that this is Ingmar Bergman's first and only Hollywood film, "The Serpent's Egg" should be remembered more as a testament of his unbounded audacity rather than as a disappointing speed bump in his otherwise flawless oeuvre.
FINAL RATING
No comments:
Post a Comment