Steve’s Stuff

“Viva la Muerte” (Long Live Death - 1970) is the first and best film by Spanish surrealist, Fernando Arrabal. It’s an unusual aesthetic experience (even by surrealist standard), but an aesthetic experience worth having. If you’ve heard of the film before, chances are it was described similar to the Amos Vogel (author of the amazing “Film as a Subversive Art”), “Viva la Muerte is a paroxysm of anguish, a scream for liberty and probably one of the most ferocious, violent films ever made.” I was expecting something even more vicious than “Last House on the Left”. What I got was a sweet, wistful story about a young boy growing up amidst state-sponsord repression in Franco-era Spain, although the context isn’t explicitly stated and can thus stand for a more general reading of the human spirit versus the hegemonic political monster.

How could Vogel, who wrote a fantastic book on subversive film, get it so wrong? The only explanation I can offer is that his readers know him as an expert on extreme films and he wanted to see Viva as such. Sure, there’s some violence, but from the perspective of surrealism, it’s comical. It’s shocking and there are some disgusting images such as the slaughter of a cow, but we know that the surrealists desire to shock us and they we shouldn’t take it too seriously. They’re just trying to be provocative.

The story involves a boy, Fando, who is fascinated by his father, a free-thinker leftist who was turned into the police by his moralist, and crazy, wife. He has fantasies/visions/dreams throughout the film of his mother torturing and murdering his father. He dreams of becoming a radical and following in his father’s footsteps, though he can’t reject his mother. Incidentally, Freud would have a field day explaining the bizarre Oedipal implications!

My criticism is that these dreams and fantasies look terrible due to awful camera work and annoying color filters that obscure the action. Arrabal goes to a lot of trouble to set up very bizarre and disturbing images, but then films them in such a way that you can hardly tell what’s happening. If it was an aesthetic choice, that’s one thing. However, I think it’s probably more the case that Arrabal isn’t much of a film maker and in the process of wanting a way to differentiate between filmic reality and fantasy, he ended up making these scenes look pretty bad.

Another interesting feature is what these actors are willing to do for art. One lady eats a LOT of mud, another wrestles the main character in spaghetti, the mother slaughters a cow, spilling massive amounts of the blood in the process which she then rolls around in, you get the idea . . . I wouldn’t even wear the stretchy pants required to perform Vinko Globokar’s “Corporel?” for body percussion, so there’s no way someone is forcing fistfuls of sand down my throat!

OK, maybe the film does have some extreme content, but the mood is one of discover and wonder. It’s a semi-autobiographical look at Arrabal’s childhood, a time he happily remembers. I would highly recommend it to any fan of surrealism. He goes a lot further than Bunuel ever did (not necessarily good or bad), so make sure you know what you’re getting into. That said, it’s a unique cinematic experience. Just don’t try to rent it at Blockbuster.