- Also Known As:
- Unknown
- Version:
- Language:
- Length:
- 110 minutes: Uncut
- Review Format:
- DVD
- Year:
- 2011
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Thriller
- Director:
- Outstanding Performances:
- Premiss:
- Writer relocates with his wife to her hometown. Violent tensions soon build between the couple and the love-starved local males.
- Themes:
- Alienation | Atheism | Christianity | Coming-of-age | Courage | Curative | Destiny | Emotional repression | Erotophobia | Gynophobia | Identity | Individualism | Loneliness | Love | Narcissism | Nostalgia | Personal | Personal change | Political | Religion | Sadomasochism | Schizophrenia | Self-Esteem | Sexism | Sexual Repression | Solipsism | Stereotyping | White culture
- Similar to:
You Can’t Go Home Again
Shitkicker Heaven
Engaging attempt at exploring White lower-class resentments - as well as the educated being hated by the uneducated - within the context of a White trash Hillbilly environment in the United States.
The predatory nature of White culture is exposed in the hunting of wild animals for no real reason; in rape as a form of allegedly-painless and healthy sexual-expression; & in hunting each other at the climax of the movie. Here, White cultural exclusiveness even extends to other Whites.
The implicitly-neurotic wife of the leading character is unable (& does not try very hard) to escape her Caucasian upbringing and learn to stand on her own two feet. Her immaturity is evenly-matched by her cowardly husband, who is unable to beat the local yokels at their own game - so tries to join them. His inevitable failure, given that he does not share their values, leads him to try and use their own kind of violence against them to punish their predation and parasitism.
The White claim that when in Rome, do as the Romans do is always designed to give the pre-existing Romans the right to abuse others - even if one is a Roman oneself. Roman-ness, or otherwise, is never the issue: It is whether or not one is a threat to anyone else’s delusional self-perceptions and unfledged lack of identity.
The usual White conflation of sexual intercourse with masturbation (arising from not understanding the different purposes of either activity) leads to the adoption of rape as a cure for sexual frustration, instead of masturbation (because the latter is deemed humiliating for a White man). Under the brittle social surface, there is no real human warmth nor genuine human desire here: Only suppressed rage, boredom, nostalgia, despair, a morbid focus on physical sensations and a lack of faith in the future.
The emotional neediness of the personal relationships here is matched by both protagonists and antagonists so that everyone is implicated in a whirligig of emotional turmoil whose end can only be violence. Wanting others to compensate for what is lacking inside of oneself is well-reflected in a retarded character being used as an Of Mice and Men metaphor for White emotional incontinence and inadequacy.
A thrilling piece of work fleshed-out by a superb cast, but lacking an honest analysis of why Whites are like this in real life and why they shy away from the truth about their real selves in works like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment