Issue 19, 2013 - Balliol College - University of Oxford

college features
This Week at the Cinema
By Tim Adamo (2009)
The winning entry in Balliol’s satire writing competition
We Need to Talk About
Human Centipede
(18; 2hrs 5 mins. Dir. Andrezj Barhkowiak)
Plot synopsis:
Donald (Dwayne Johnson) and Lydia (Kimberly Denise
Jones) are the archetype of the modern American
Dream: a happily married pair of affluent surgeons living
a cosmopolitan lifestyle on the north side of Chicago.
But as middle age approaches, and their libertine friends
become few and far between, the couple find themselves
facing uncomfortable questions they’d never dreamed
of before. In a fit of ultra-conscious Darwinism, the
pair decide that a child is just the thing for their slowly
stagnating lives; however, in a twist as ironic as Johnson’s
previous career in professional wrestling, it is revealed
that Donald is infertile. Unwilling to adopt or attempt
artificial insemination, the couple put their surgical
prowess to work, and create a Human Centipede (Chris
Tucker, John Stamos, Eva Longoria) from John Doe
patients at their hospital.
In an act of storytelling that is at times both tender
and jarring, director Andrezj Barhkowiak (Exit Wounds,
Prince of the City, US Marshals) takes us through the
slow erosion of Donald and Lydia’s superficial American
Dream precipitated by the arrival of the Human
Centipede in their lives. While Donald strives to be the
perfect father, the Human Centipede spurns his affection
and shows no interest or aptitude in their activities
together (basketball, wrestling). Lydia desperately
attempts to balance her commitments as a mother with
her self-image as an independent modern woman. These
tensions build as the film races towards its inevitable
climax: when Human Centipede commits an act of
unspeakable violence in their community, how will
Donald and Lydia cope
Reviews:
‘Six thumbs up . . . cuts to the heart of the postmodern
dilemma of young American professionals.’
Roger Ebert
‘Johnson is magnificent as a well-intentioned but
short-sighted Donald, and Stamos deserves praise
for his understated performance as the middle link
in Human Centipede.’ USA Today
‘A film to make us laugh and cry and take a good
hard look at our own lives . . . [Johnson’s] misguided
paternal figure truly makes him “The People’s Father”
for the modern epoch.’ Empire Magazine
‘Perhaps the first post-family film . . .’ LA Times
Twilight: Brokeback
Source Code
(18; 3hrs 20 mins. Dir. Duncan Jones)
Plot synopsis:
US Air Force Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) had
it all: a beautiful wife (Maggie Gyllenhaal), talented kids
(Samuel Jackson and John Cena), a great job, and a name
worthy of a porn star. But in Duncan Jones’s mind-shattering
follow-up to the triumph Moon from 2009, we watch firsthand
as it all comes falling apart in spectacular fashion.
When a brooding but brilliant new analyst Edward Cullen
(Robert Pattinson) turns up at the Dallas intelligence outfit
where Stevens works, it’s only a matter of time before the
competitive work environment and a tense international
crisis boil over into outright homo-eroticism. While he
struggles to control these new urges at the workplace (where
Pattinson’s uniform is inexplicably, but inevitably, made
entirely of spandex), the family life of this model patriot
slowly crumbles. His eldest son (Jackson) is bullied by
homophobic, rumour-fuelled drug dealers at school; the
youngest (Cena) acts out by repeatedly suplexing furniture
around the house and talking back via ‘the people’s eyebrow’;
and his wife slowly comes to the realisation that, once again,
it isn’t just fishing trips that her husband is taking.
But even as the viewer is forced to come to terms with
the widening cracks in Stevens’s American Dream, not
everything is as it seems . . . Why are soldiers at the base
going missing, then turning up days later with their blood
drained and mysterious bite marks on their necks Why is it
that Cullen sparkles whenever sunlight touches him Why do
the two main protagonists insist on addressing each other as
‘spidermonkey’ even in public In the end, Stevens is forced
to choose between a forbidden love and saving those around
him from an evil older than America itself. Once again,
director Jones shows us the unsettling power of cinema, with
every facet of the film crafted to maximise awkwardness:
whether it’s casting the protagonist’s real-life sister as his wife
or forcing us all to go through THAT scene in Brokeback
Mountain again (but now with a vampire, in a US military
base, and much, much longer), we are clearly shown a
talent unmatched since Hitchcock. Some viewers may
be turned off by the film’s lack of a coherent narrative,
bizarre casting decisions, and possible allegorisation
of the don’t-ask-don’t-tell debate, but the true
connoisseur of cinema is in for a treat.
Reviews:
‘Gyllenhaal and Pattinson strip away [literally]
everything to give the most heartfelt performances
of their careers.’ The Independent
‘Exquisite film-making . . . Jones utilises the
conservative backdrop of Dallas as the ultimate
cinematic canvas . . . a film that is sure to do for
Dallas what Boyz n the Hood did for South Central
Los Angeles.’ Rolling Stone
‘Unacceptable.’ Dallas Times
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issue no.19 may 2013
19