4 ½ Purportedly Shocking 2011 Films That Weren't That Shocking
Was Shame really that shameful, or Drive that driving? We think not.
by Lauren Genovesi
I’m the type of moviegoer who likes to be shaken up — anything to jolt me up out of my humdrum existence and bring me back to life. Of course, I don't expect every film to do this, but I haven’t been even mildly unsettled in over a year. Here are four-and-a-half films, all hyped as edgy for various reasons, that tried and failed to disturb me in 2011.
1. Drive
Drive shows us what L.A. would look like if it was suddenly hit with an epidemic of facial paralysis. I get the film’s critique of the gorgeously empty movie industry, and I’ve heard the argument that stylized violence can be art. And the inconsistencies in Gosling’s character (self-effacing puppy-dog smile one minute, hammer-wielding murder the next) could be excused if we weren’t expected to believe that his desire for revenge is motivated by his true love of Carey Mulligan — precipitated by her smiling at him a few times? The image that does stick with me is Gosling staring eerily into the window of a pizza parlor while wearing his stunt mask as Katyna Ranieri belts her mesmerizing aria in the background. Moments like that gave Drive slow-burn heat, but the sudden flashes of violence took away from the film's quieter moments.
2. Martha Marcy May Marlene
More than one friend refused to see this movie with me on the grounds that it would require too much “emotional energy,” so I steeled myself for the emotional equivalent of a Krav Maga workout and went alone. Unfortunately, what I got was a low-impact water-aerobics class. For a film that promises to horrify with the absence of the self, there is surprisingly little tension and barely any emotional impact. Not that the film isn’t punctuated with scenes that work — there’s a genuinely upsetting scene where Martha walks in on her sister and her husband having sex, and then doesn’t leave. But ultimately, it’s a film that pretends to build towards something major, only to squander all that with a flat, ambiguous ending that implies (spoiler alert) it was only kidding the whole time.
3. A Dangerous Method
All the ingredients of an unsettling film flicker in David Cronenberg’s latest, which tells the story of the relationship between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and his patient/lover/enthusiastic spank-ee/eventual colleague, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). The film’s question — when should you act on your desires and when should you suppress them? — is the central point of conflict, but its resolution just feels bland. Jung eventually ends his affair with Spielrein out of guilt and obligation to his family — he explains to Sabina at the end of the film that “Sometimes you have to do something unforgivable just to go on living.” But what might have seemed unforgivable to Jung is just kind of boring to the audience. Jung’s adultery and low-key epiphany seem like a penny-ante game compared to the tragedies that occurred in the other characters’ lives after the movies’ action (starvation, persecution by Nazis, and death).
4. Shame
Steve McQueen combining his visual flair with full-frontal Michael Fassbender to tell the story of a sex addict, should have made for a troubling and darkly beautiful film. And Shame almost was. Despite some missteps (such as the shot where Fassbender actually kneels on a pier in the rain and cries skyward, and the uncomfortable suggestion that at one point that Fassbender has fallen so far into perversity that he is forced to enter — gasp! — a gay club), there is a real emotional core to the work, but it’s obscured by spectacle. Fassbender’s relationship with his sister (Carey Mulligan) and his failed attempt at actual intimacy create compelling drama, but unfortunately, any further depth is obstructed by the film’s richly empty visuals. The characters' problems are presented but never truly confronted, and so the film is far less cathartic than it should be.
4 ½. Melancholia
Lars von Trier’s end-of-the-planet picture is by far the most affecting film on this list. The dysfunctional-wedding-half is sewn to the more visual, planet-colliding-into-the-earth half with gorgeous digital stitching that foreshadows the characters’ demise from the first frames. What makes Melancholia compelling is that von Trier is the only filmmaker of these five who follows his subjects to their inevitable conclusion. The movie doesn't shy away from justifying a nihilistic worldview, arguing in visual and dramatic terms that the depressives were onto something all along. Still, as devastating as the film is, there’s something self-justifying about a movie that brands depressives as sages, and ultimately, it's a little too self-satisfied to be really disturbing.
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Commentarium (48 Comments)
The only film that ever shocked me- not now, but when I actually saw them in the Cinema when they actually came out- were by David Lynch. (Namely, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive.) None of the above films shocked me though I kind of liked the last, "Melancholia".
I think the only movie that 'shocked' me (in terms of an actual moment of shock) last year was House of Pleasures, but in terms of disturbing/shocking content Project Nim and The Skin I Live In were both pretty solid.
Also, I'm not sure what you think happened at the end of Martha Marcy May Marlene (nor am I sure how to discuss it without being a spoilery douche), but as far as I was concerned the end was pretty bleak, and not at all winking.
oh sweet jesus, The Skin I Live In... one of the only movies I've ever seen that I realized at the time was really super good in all ways that matter, but that just made me so uncomfortable the whole experience was a struggle for me not to leave the theater. I'm with you on that. I guess that because it actually WAS shocking, it is excluded from this list.
A Clockwork Orange shocked me when I first saw it - I don't know whether it would now, since I remember very little about it. The other was Cronenberg's Crash, but he doesn't do shocking or disturbing anymore.
Crash was the first movie I thought of when I saw the title of the article. Saw it on my honeymoon, so it holds a special place in my heart. I was hardly a wide-eyed innocent by the time I met my husband, so seeing "Crash" was like the one new thing he could expose me to.
"Breaking The Waves" really blew my mind too. I sobbed uncontrollably for several days after seeing that movie. Really not the movie to watch when you've just been married for six weeks.
Irreversible shocked me. I knew it was violent... but I dont think I've ever struggled that much to sit through a movie I *wanted* to finish watching.
I think the director of Irreversible isn't so much an artist as someone who revels in shock. That being said, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn, and the narrative structure being reversed made it "work". The hideous trauma of the first half of the movie gave way to a little less discomfort, then a little less, then the final scene which left me feeling more refreshed than before.
I don't know... the way the story played out in "reverse" left me feeling worse. It made the events of the first half more devastating (in my opinion, anyway).
I'd say the one film that shocked me the most very recently was another Von Trier film, "Antichrist." That film, albeit not a great one, was so incredibly disturbing. The final 30 minutes is unnerving and grotesque. I am rarely ever shocked by films or art, but Von Trier seems to know how to do it. Cormac McCarthy is also quite good at evoking such things with his novels, namely "Child of God," "Outer Dark," and "Blood Meridian."
I'll agree with Antichrist. I found myself telling a co-worker about it the next day. She thought I was making it up and refused to listen to anymore.
Last two films to shock me were probably Dogtooth and Into The Void.
I loved Drive, and I'm kind of surprised to see it on this list. Not because it was in fact shocking, but I don't think it was ever sold that way (either commercially or in reviews). Everything I read about the film (although I tried to not read too much) sold it as a masterful genre exercise...a "quiet" action movie punctuated with quick bouts of violence; and it delivered exactly on that promise.
Spoiler alert: and even though I didn't think it was a shocking movie, how could you not be stunned by the manner in which Albert Brooks kills Bryan Cranston character. The politeness with which he slit his veins...my stomach did drop during that scene.
these are just kind of tardy movie reviews. For the most part, I don't feel like the "purportedly shocking" elements of the films were well articulated, much less debunked.
I Didn't Get It: The List
I mean hell, it's not even like these films aren't worth a second look or two after the world at large arbitrarily bestowed Instant Classic status upon them. It's just that there are better ways to do that than saying "Hey you know how these movies are supposed to be good? Well they're actually NOT, heh. Deal with it."
I agree. What confused the issue further is that the article is written with the premise of downplaying the supposedly shocking nature of the films, but what we get instead is just a bunch of gripes.
I really don't understand what the editors of this site are up to when they green light articles like this. Unless they intentionally let a deeply flawed product out to the public anticipating that it will motivate people to comment on the article, thus driving up site traffic which, now that I write it out, makes a lot of sense.
You're reminding me of that story about the Coke executive responding to a question about whether the whole New Coke debacle was a cunning scheme to make people love Old Coke. I think what he said was "We're not that smart and we're not that stupid."
We try to publish articles with interesting opinions that will start conversations. Those opinions don't have to be our own, necessarily, as long as they're thought-provoking.
The tag on this article is "Was Shame really that shameful, or Drive that driving? We think not."
WE think not. So... guess we'll just assume the author is using the royal "we" from now on, shall we?
Thanks for your response, and I can appreciate that you want to publish interesting opinions.
I guess my objection to the article really doesn't have to do with the opinions themselves, but the premise under which they're delivered. For example, one would think that in her paragraph on Drive, the author would explain what people found shocking about it and then go on to explain why people needn't feel so wound up (based on precedent set in other film, or whatever). And one would expect that based on the article's title.
However, Genovesi really doesn't deliver on her premise. Again, using the paragraph on Drive as an example, she delivers a general critique. And while I found some of the critique to be well-founded (the love between Irene and The Driver may, upon a second or third viewing, be read as a little thin) none of it really addresses the film in the contest of its "shocking" elements.
Hence my negative reaction.
*context
To me the most "WTF was all the fuss about?" movie of all time has to be The Excorcist. I expected something to make my flesh crawl and ended up watching a piece of B-movie schlock.
The most shcoking film I saw this year was probably "We Need To Talk About Kevin." Quite a kid, that Kevin. All-time most shocking, more like disturbing, movie for me was "Requiem for a Dream."
Ellen Burston is AMAZING in that movie.
wait til you get a chance to see "Snowtown." The most disturbing film I've seen in a long time, especially when you factor in that it's basically all true.
Did you mean "Snowbound"? Neil Patrick Harris and Kelli Williams playing that young couple who got stuck in the mountains somewhere?
No, Snowtown - as in the Snowtown murders in Australia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowtown_%28film%29
And he's right -- holy shit. Straight out of the Michael Haneke playbook.
Yes, definitely meant Snowtown. Interesting comparison to Haneke with Snowtown... I hadn't considered that. What makes you say that? Just the feel of the film or do you see some parallels in style or something? (for reference, I've only seen Haneke's Cache and the original version of Funny Games... both brilliant and both unsettling)
Similarities in philosophy, I guess. A similar recognition of both the seductive nature and the total banality of violence and atrocities, both in the lives of the characters onscreen and how we relate to them as the audience.
I have only seen three movies that I can think of that were truly disturbing to me. The first is Carriers. It's one of those movies about the world after a virulent outbreak that kills everybody. It's really depressing at the end. The second is Descent. I'm talking about the Rosario Dawson movie not the one about women in caves. That one contains the most horrifying rape scene I've ever seen... actually... two of them. The last - and this is the worst/best one - is a movie called Elephant. It's about a high school shooting rampage. I couldn't smile for weeks after seeing that. There's nothing sensational about it.
Yes! I totally forgot about Elephant. That stayed with me for a while too.
I had to LOL at the Neil Patrick Harris film query. That's a good one if it wasn't a serious question.
Well I clearly have a weaker constitution than this writer, because I found Drive very disturbing. Not because of the violence per se, because of the way the sudden brutal violence would jump through the dreamy 80s snyth pop at the exact moment I was almost in a trance.
Despite thinking it was a terrific movie, I have to agree with the comments re: "Shame." The script writer copped out by only making vague references to both the main character and his sister's history and never came across with anything substantial. I think that's what created the two-dimensional feeling. "Melancholia" I couldn't sit through; will have to give it another try.
Wow, I cannot overstate how much shit I think you are talking, re: Drive. You criticize the film's depiction of "his true love of Carey Mulligan — precipitated by her smiling at him a few times?" Well... yeah, it's a fucking movie, lady. There has to be kind of a shorthand for how these things happen. I could literally make that criticism for any famous love story and make it sound like horseshit.
"So Scarlett O'Hara falls in love with Rhett Butler -- precipitated by her seeing him walk down some stairs?"
The two ridiculously attractive leads of a movie meet, their eyes lock... OK, they're in love now. If that type of thing gives you agita, you must be annoyed by all movies ever. It's pretty much just something you have to understand so they can tell you the rest of the story.
And the "sudden flashes of violence took away from the film's quieter moments"??? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. Without moments of violence, of release, there's no meaning to the quieter moments. The flashes of violence give the quiet parts suspense and weight -- it gives the film a tempo. It's like a Pixies song, the bridge goes along kind of soft and quiet, and then the chorus comes in really loud and hard, but you have to have both parts -- otherwise neither part is as effective.
Regarding the love between Irene and the Driver, I think it's worth pointing that we never really get a concrete length of time between their first meeting and the return of Standard. So while all we see is a few key glances, there may be much more in between the cuts.
It's also worth considering that their relationship isn't meant to be a depiction of romance and that it signifies more than typical human love. Everyone in the movie (right down to the Driver's friend Shannon) wants something from the Driver, with the exception of Irene. Theyre relationship, then, could be said to symbolize a mode of existence outside of the predatory/parasitic world of modern L.A., or America, or the world.
Oh, I agree that the nature (and symbolism) of the relationship is left vague, almost certainly by the choice of the filmmaker. But to ignore a fairly established cinema shorthand for "THESE TWO CHARACTERS ARE IN LOVE NOW" so one can make the joke "he fell in love with a girl who just smiled at him? LOL weirdo!" is just being fucking obtuse.
The Driver IS a weirdo though. People don't act like that, and comparing Rhett and Scarlett to these two is just ridiculous. By suggesting that their love story isn't developed enough to justify his actions, Genovesi is missing the point, but you're also missing the point by suggesting that the cinematic shorthand here is meant to suggest a deeper connection. Their relationship is purposefully undeveloped because it makes the intensity of his violence on her behalf all the more unsettling. He's doing all of these crazy things for a woman who may or may not even like him. If Refn wanted to make a movie about a guy who dates a girl and then has to save her life through heroism, he could have, and it would be perfectly Hollywood and make perfect sense and we would understand the Driver's actions completely. But he made a movie about a guy who creepily fixates on a girl and then saves her life through horrific and possibly unnecessary violence. This isn't a guy we are supposed to be able to completely get behind and root for, and if we end up rooting for him, shouldn't we be feeling at least a little bit strange about it? He does slap the SHIT out of Joan Holloway. And then to complicate it even further, Refn casts this total dreamboat as the woman-beating face-stomping toothpick chewer and ends the movie with a song called "A Real Hero". Did you honestly watch this whole movie and not once feel uncomfortable with the Driver's actions? That's the beauty of Refn's movies: in "Bronson" he also cast an attractive guy, Tom Hardy, and then made him do grotesque, subhuman things, all set to music that made it impossible not to cheer him on as he took hostages and savaged prison guards and what not. Refn's movies are kind about what it means to be a man and act violently, and when that is justified and when it's not, and if you watched "Drive" and thought there was a clear answer to that question throughout, you weren't paying attention.
sweet analysis
LOLOLOL Jax thank you from the bottom of my heart on this post. I truly hate pretentious assholes, but it just irks me to think of how many people missed the complete and utter cinematic beauty and near perfection that the Move Drive is. It will eventually be recognized as one of the top 100 films of all time, in my opinion.
The way that I interpreted "Drive" was not at all dependent on The Driver being a "consistent" character. I think the point of the film is that its hero acts in completely irrational and erratic and unpredictable ways. That's why it's effective as a commentary on the action genre as a whole. We have this handsome dude who would be making wise-cracks and having sex with all sorts of women in just about any other car-chase movie, who would generally serve as a relatable/enviable avatar for the male viewer, but instead we don't really get any indication of what he's thinking, and even judging by his behavior alone, he's not entirely compos mentis. As a matter of fact, the best point of comparison I can think of is "Taxi Driver", another movie with a character driven to acts of insane violence by an irrational attachment to someone he barely knows, and someone who is in fact alienated from him because of this violence (look at Carrie Mulligan's face post-head stomp and tell me she's not at least a little bit scared of The Driver). The fact that Genovesi was affected by the image of him in the rubber head suggests that she at least appreciated the aesthetic qualities of the film, but scenes like that carry so much more meaning when you consider what that surface appearance is actually suggesting: the Driver might as well be faceless. He's an archetype of brooding masculinity taken to the extreme, and yet Refn chose to cast this very attractive actor to play him, and that's the main reason that people saw the film. Ryan Gosling got them in the seats, and then they watched two hours of him behaving like a crazy loner schizo lunatic. If it was anything, it was unexpected.
A small note: a little more credit should maybe go to Gosling who, if I recall, actually recommended Refn to direct the film.
"Shame" also plays around with the idea of a leading man: It garnered a lot of buzz for Fassbender's penis, but the entire point of the movie is that his penis is ruining his life. Yes, the scene on the pier in the rain is fucking ridiculous. So is the one preceding it where Brandon is on the subway and then suddenly realizes that his sister is going to kill herself and then RUNS AND SAVES HER. I thought the entire ending came close to ruining the film with its heavy-handedness, but there's also no denying the sheer power of scenes like the failed sexual encounter with his co-worker in the hotel room. That shot, beginning with him kissing her and ending with her leaving in complete silence, is six minutes of unbroken tension, three of which are spent in the most uncomfortable silence ever (she asks "should I go?" and he says "sure" and the camera just KEEPS ROLLING WHILE SHE GETS DRESSED GOD ITS BRUTAL). The way that he recovers from his encounter by dispassionately rogering a hooker in the same room is so illustrative of addiction. His futile attempts at fucking his way to numbness follow a natural progression: he overconfidently pursues the girl in the bar after he tells his sister to move out. He gets beaten up by her boyfriend, and he ends up at not so much a gay club as an ANONYOMOUS gay club, where he can still fuck someone even with his face messed up. And then he recovers from the shame of that experience by having a threesome with two beautiful prostitutes. The thing is that our culture often encourages us to view sex as an antidote to all of our problems, or at least as the type of thing you can never get enough of, and to make fucking someone the end goal of every night out as a single man. By showing us this guy who has access to just about any woman hoe wants but is still completely dissatisfied, "Shame" completely fucks with what sex is supposed to be, both in a movie and in real life. It is effectively a feature-length version of the five minutes of guilt following a frenzied masturbation session.
"And then he recovers from the shame of that experience by having a threesome with two beautiful prostitutes".... so is that your personal reading or your interpretation of his "shame"
This woman has no business writing film criticism.
First, the title is completely uninformed. I've neither read criticism nor seen ad campaigns touting any of these films---save "Shame"---as "shocking," particularly "Drive," "MMMM" and "Melancholia."
Second, I've never read such a flimsy and unexamined and childish film critique of "Drive," which I particularly loved despite its shortcomings. My take: it's a fairy tale for adults. A romantic, beautiful, violent and dark fable. A withdrawn, fragile, and reticent hero---a total homage to the prototypical Western hero as typified by Clint Eastwood---with bursts of Tarantino's violently passionate---almost adolescent---notion of love a la "True Romance." That scene in the elevator when Gosling stomps the man to death reminds me of Christian Slater offing Gary Oldman. The difference is Patricia Arquette proclaims "that's the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for me." Carey Mulligan backs away speechless and unbelieving. In the end, Gosling sacrifices the life he could have had----family man, husband and father---and his love for Mulligan to save her and the son. As for the violence, it was aesthetically jarring---almost out of place and excessive---but while it was stylized it certainly wasn't glamorous. It was gory and gruesome and juxtaposed with the quieter, more beautiful moments made it all the more distressing and horrible, and made Gosling's limited character fascinating.
And the end of "MMMM" winking as if it was joking the whole time??? How about paranoia and the difficulty of readjusting to a healthy life? The inability to trust the world around you and your own perception of reality? Christ, girl.
This is all I can bear to reply.
"if anyone ever harmed a single hair on your head I'd kill them."
nah, i explained the end of MMMM - the film pretty much does what it says on the tin. would you rather live in the woods with some rapist or would you rather live in middle class suburban america. which one is more scary? at the end would you want her to get caught and taken back to the woods or would you want her to stay in middle class america with her gross, shallow sister and go be lobotomised? the fact that it isn't a clear choice between not wanting to go and live with the forest guys makes you think a little about who we are. then ending: she's in the car, being taken against her will by those who 'love' her to a doctor that will dope her up and ruin her life, she will be label insane OR she will be taken back to the woods with the rapist. whether or not it's going to happen or not it forces you to consider which one you would prefer. she's in a pretty tight spot. America sucks.
I like movies with Wizards.
jason, very shocking
If you were Marcy in MMMM would you rather live with the happy couple in the gross world that they live in or in the forest in their awful world? i thik the ending provokes that you think about that when you start to wonder if the forest guys are after her. what would be better?- if she was caught and taken back or if she stayed? i though it was a great ending.
the pier shot in shame was too much. agreed.
My dear, what jolted you?
Now you say something