Post by StevePulaski on Apr 4, 2017 21:33:02 GMT -5
Themroc (1973)
Directed by: Claude Faraldo
Directed by: Claude Faraldo
Rating: ★★★
NOTE: This film was recommended to me by Salem Kapsaki for "Steve Pulaski Sees It," a month where I watch twenty-five films requested by friends, fans, and readers.
Let's say you're a filmmaker with the intent to make a film. I couldn't begin to tell you the basic rules or requirements for making a film because by telling you what I felt should be required would be an affront to your creativity and your ideas if you chose to make a film. I could tell you what I've seen work in the past, or some common thread, if any, that exists in the films that I've enjoyed, on top of films that I believe are staples of their respective genres, but trying to breakdown something as formed and formless as the requirements for a film to succeed is a fool's errand.
I also refrain from compiling a mental list of things I feel a good film should have because every now and then I'm faced with a film like Claude Faraldo's Themroc, which torches every convention and cliche in the unwritten book of cinema. Presumably, while Jean-Luc Godard was mastering his craft heavily built around defying the typical structure of traditionalist French cinema, fellow Frenchman Faraldo was busy actively ripping up the syllabi and rubrics for making a film and decided his contribution to what was now an overhauled film culture would be a real bold piece of work.
The end result was Themroc, an act of cinematic anarchy that has only the vaguest remnants of a plot. Shot on a shoestring budget in 1973 with a lot of natural lighting and purposefully sloppy editing and directing, Themroc stars Michel Piccoli as the titular character, a disillusioned blue collar worker who rebels against society. His disappointment with society is almost Marxian in the way that Themroc views faceless individuals like himself that trade their bodies, their labor, and the longevity of their lives for exhausting ten to twelve hour days for meager wages. The enslavement is not ideal but it keeps them just afloat to live and simultaneously struggle so they can hopelessly come back to make end's meet.
Frustrated, Themroc progressively devolves from a functioning human (whatever that is in a blue collar French society) into a caveman in an urban jungle, getting through his days by grunting and gnawing his way through life. He returns home from work where his mother (Jeanne Herviale) finds him in a feral state of humanity (perhaps his species being, as Marx would suggest?) and eventually engaged in an incestuous relationship with his sister (Béatrice Romand). Initially, Themroc forgoes food until he can no longer continue, in which case he opts to cannibalize rather than live off of the food he's long been provided and what is sanctioned by society as an acceptable entree.
Themroc is unique in many ways, but quite possibly its most original attribute is that there is no intelligible dialog at any point in the film. The script, if there even was one that contained dialog of any kind, is entirely made up of gibberish and incomprehensible babble. The result is incredible, if at times frustrating, and after one-hundred minutes, excruciating. There should be some kind of reward for making it through this often exhausting affair that's utterly worthless, wordless soundtrack can make a person rapidly spiral into sanity by being comprised of nothing but auditory-assaulting noises.
I recommend Themroc for the reason that it deserves to be seen and not because I particularly enjoyed watching - quite frankly, I was uncomfortable or restless during much of it. On that note, perhaps it should only be seen by the most patient and curious viewers who feel they could stomach everything I just mentioned above. However, on a bigger level, I recommend Themroc because I recognize it has daring and aesthetically significant attributes that test the weight of film on a narrative and an adventurous level. Some of the most interesting films ever made, I'd argue, came out of 1960s - 1970s France, as directors like Godard, François Truffaut, and Faraldo were funding their own projects and forging their own set of rules in a DIY-like movement that didn't manifest in America until the 1990s.
Themroc is like a capstone project of the kind of creativity that flourished in that time period, not to mention the sheer lunacy of what can happen when a film is robbed of dialog, structure, and language. Faraldo has made a film that will stand the test of time by its audacious move to spit at the thought of adhering to things that have made film so perdurable and communicable as an art form.
Starring: Michel Piccoli, Béatrice Romand, and Jeanne Herviale. Directed by: Claude Faraldo.