Viva la muerte

Viva la Muerte begins with the credits over a view of surreal Roland Topor images while a pleasant tune plays. The film's central figure is a young boy named Fando, who lives with his mother. His father has been arrested during the Spanish Civil War. Fando later finds a letter and discovers his mother turned his father in to the authorities. This triggers off the many fantasy sequences of Fando. Arrabal uses grainy filtered footage during these sequences and gives them several different colours. The film is full of frenzy. It was created by someone with a furious imagination. The bull slaughter scene is a masterful surrealist sequence. It is a remarkable film and essential viewing for anyone interested in surrealism.

During the Spanish Civil War young boy named Fando is forced to watch as Garcia Lorca is executed by a taunting Fascist firing squad.He keeps asking his mother what happened to his father,and eventually learns that his mother betrayed him to the Franco government because of his unspoken leftist ideas.Fando imagines bizarre scenarios where his father is tortured and mutilated.Many of his visions present his mother as a monster who gouges out his father's eyes,or makes love to his captors in front of him,in addition to other gruesome and scatological horrors.Fando also shows signs of sexual interest in his libidinous aunt Clara and a neighbor girl,Thérèse,as he lives a miserable existence acting out the cruelty of his mother with small cruelties of his own.Fernando Arrabal is a well-known Spanish surrealist and "Viva la Muerte" is his first and most famous piece of work.The film has its share of shocking and unpleasant moments-the defecation scene and the bull slaughter moment especially come to my mind.Many of the hallucinatory scenes of violence,that include the father's head being stomped on by horses,a priest's genitals being cut off,and imagined sexual liaisons involving Fando's mother,were filmed on videotape,distorted via the use of colour filters and transferred to film.So if you liked this one I'd also recommend "Sweet Movie" and "The Cremator".7 out of 10.

After seeing this film my reaction was - who is this guy and what other films has he made? When I was told it was his first, I could hardly believe it. (I saw it when it first opened in 1970.) He was a writer in his 40's and the maturity shows.

It's surprising that this has not become a mainstay of the Art House cinemas. The use of allegory, childhood memories, repressed sexual desires, dream-like sequences (all those thing which evoke a visceral reaction in the viewer) are combined in a well directed, thought provoking, cinematic experience.

Viva La Muerte is the first instalment in a trilogy of surrealistic / political films by Fernando Arrabal. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Arrabal, Viva La Muerte follows ten-year-old Fando as he explores friendship, sexuality, betrayal and death in the midst of the Spanish civil war.

After Fando's father is arrested for treason, his mother tells him that he committed suicide in prison but Fando is suspicious and seeks to learn the truth. He soon discovers that his mother was responsible for his father's arrest and that he is alive and well.

When Fando is not making effigies for his disturbed little puppet theatre he is either sticking close to his mothers side, having gruesome hallucinations or hanging out with his little gal pal Therese, who is never without her pet turkey. The hallucination sequences are some of the best scenes in the film, they range from Arrabal's obsession with defiling religious iconography to Fando fantasising about flooding the town with his urine and his mother taking a dump on his incarcerated father's head. These scenes were shot on video then filtered through various abstract colour schemes which produces some very unsettling visuals.

La Muerte's opening credits sequence features some absolutely stunning and horrific Bosch-esquire illustrations by Roland Topor, co-founder of the Panic Movement along with Arrabal and Jodorowsky, accompanied by a sweet children's refrain that really sets the tone for what is about to come.

Fando's relationship with his mother and aunt both seem to have Oedipal / incestuous undertones, which are especially notable in the scene where his aunt forces him to flagellate her, during which she violently grabs & twists his scrotum. Although, scenes like this and another wherein a soldier shoots a "faggot" poet in the asshole seem like nothing compared to the closing sequence where a bull is graphically slaughtered and Fando's mother writhes ecstatically in the hot fountain of blood, smearing her face with it then she proceeds to sew an unknown man into the carcass of the bull. Later on the bull's cadaver is castrated and his testicle sac emptied onto the ground. If that isn't enough for all you PETA sympathisers there's also a bunch of lambs mercilessly butchered.

Undoubtedly the scenes of animal slaughter may turn a lot of viewers off, but they are not used in the way that a film like, say, Cannibal Holocaust uses them. There is also footage of open heart surgery, but in the hands of Arrabal all of these easily exploitable elements actually go toward the films credit and fit perfectly within the perverse, violent and fantastic world that is Viva La Muerte.

From it's corrosive opening credit sequence accompanied by a haunting child-sung (and used as a sort of chorus throughout and even plays out AFTER the credits end - so stay tuned), to its biting criticism of Franco's regime in Spain (it's title, "Long Live Death" might be considered an ironic echo of Patrick Henry's famous "Give Me Liberty or Give me Death"). The film proper begins and ends with the military proclaiming they will be peace to the country even if they have to kill everybody! The film is told thru patented surrealist devices such as dreams, fantasies, extreme violence, naturist drama & erotic visions - sometimes all at the same time. Arrabal and Cinematographer Jean-Marc Ripert often use imaginative camera tricks including a then-novel use of tinted videotape.

With all this, I still can't wholeheartedly endorse the film. Much of it seems random or repetitive. It's clearly indebted to Luis Bunuel, SATRYRICON era Fellini & Jodorowsky (who of course, adapted Arabal's FANDO Y LIS - so the influence is mutual). Some of the visual metaphors are graphic in the extreme: Such as having the Mother (who is clearly symbolic of the morally corrupted country as a whole) actually cutting off the scrotum of a cow (and this isn't faked, in fact this is one film PETA members should not see).

A worthwhile curio to seek out. Particularly those partial to Bunuel and Jodorowsky.