Yaaatoob

In the directorial debut of special effects guru Paul Hyatt, young actress Rosie Day plays Angel, a deaf and mute girl who sees her family brutally murdered before she is dragged to the eponymous Seasoning House, where kidnapped girls are forced to into prostitution for soldiers of a bleak and senseless Balkan war. The first half of the film has a very dream-like quality to it, as Angel, who is enslaved to care for the prostituted girls, performs her daily routine of doping the victims, and then cleaning them up after they have suffered the soldiers often disturbingly brutal attentions. Hyatt has said he was heavily influenced by Pan's Labyrinth, and it certainly shows in this half as Angel silently wanders the seasoning house and we glimpse the world as she senses, or more accurately, doesn't sense it. But when ruthless soldier Goran, played by Sean Pertwee, and his men arrive on the scene, the same soldiers responsible for murdering Angel's family, she takes drastic action and the film swerves from darkly depressing, to a taut, tense and brutal game of cat and mouse. Rosie Day does well in the lead role, her character, subdued and distant in the beginning, shows signs of life as she recalls memories of her family, slowly bonds with one of the prostitutes who fortuitously knows sign language, and eventually comes to her aid as she suffers horrifically at the hands of one of Goran's men, the monstrous Ivan, while Goran himself is a fittingly cruel and tenacious main villain. The savage scenes of rape in the first half are offset by the brutal acts of revenge and survival in the second, each accompanied, as you would expect, by some great visual effects, but while the film is engaging throughout and comes to a satisfying conclusion, it felt slightly disjointed and meandered in places. However, that doesn't ever detract from the overall tone of the film, darkly foreboding and laced with a palpable sense of menace, it's a tense and disturbing ride.

This ambitious Polish science-fiction film first began production in 1975, but in 1977, with eighty percent of filming complete, the Polish government ordered production to stop and all sets, costumes and footage to be destroyed, over fears that some themes present in the film were an allegorical criticism of Poland's communist rule. The surviving reels of footage, smuggled out of Poland by the director and crew, lay dormant until the fall of communism and, although incomplete, the film was finally released in 1988. As much of the footage was lost or indeed never filmed, the narrative was incomplete and in a daring move Żuławski decided to narrate the missing scenes and include their destruction as part of the narrative, this narration being presented over footage of a busy Polish city that zips by the camera as Żuławski fills in the gaps, also providing clear dividing points between the three main acts.

The film itself deals with the cyclical nature of existence, the ethics of freedom, the power of belief and the dangers of allowing that belief to fuel ideology, all told through the anthropology of an emerging society created when three astronauts from Earth crash land on a distant planet. For the film's first act we follow the point of view Peter who records events on a video-camera, as he, Marta & Thomas attempt to survive and start a new life in the barren, alien wilderness. After Marta becomes pregnant and gives birth to Thomas' baby, the astronauts realise that the child is growing at an accelerated rate. The film jumps forwards erratically as we are presented with snippets of a society emerging in front of Peter's camera lens, as the astronaut's children grow to maturity and themselves begin to procreate. The children begin to deify their astronaut parents, who seemingly never age as generations pass. The first act ends with Marta and Thomas dead and Peter, now referred to only as 'The Old Man', alone in a society of his children who do not understand his ravings, nor why he will not die like the others and ultimately they begin to resent his presence. Eventually, Peter returns to his space-craft and sends his hours of recorded footage back to Earth.

The second act revolves around Marek, the owner of the space agency that funded the first mission, who himself heads to the planet to escape the pain of a lost love, only to find a savage, incomprehensible and divided society of people who have been awaiting his prophesied arrival. He is regarded as their messiah and through his eyes we are introduced to the advancements in the beliefs and structure of the society since we last saw them. Marek becomes embroiled in his role as deity, guiding the society under his rule and leading the charge against a race of bird- like creatures from across the sea called 'Sherns' who steal women to mate with and produce mutated half-human, half-Shern offspring. The final act takes place primarily on Earth, where another astronaut named Jack is attempting to discern what befell Marek's mission to the planet. He is caught up in an affair with Ava, the woman for whom Marek left Earth, and in a fit of drug addled depression he himself heads to the planet, only to find the people's messiah, Marek, crucified in grisly fashion. Ultimately, Żuławski is dealing with some heavy themes here, asserting that humanity has a need to continually create and destroy his gods, that without belief there cannot be understanding and that without understanding their can be no happiness.

The world Żuławski presents is stark and beautiful, the Baltic shores, Caucasus mountains and Mongolian desert providing the barren and isolated landscapes that so capture the imagination throughout the film, but also it's the wonderfully designed costumes and props and cold, grey-blue cinematography that lend these places a true alien feel. Overall 'On the Silver Globe' is as intriguing as it is impenetrable. The frenetic camera work launches us directly into the midst of the chaos on-screen, events later explained more by action than dialogue as characters descend further into erratic and emotional madness, exploring the reasons for their being and the world around them through pained and awkward ad-libbed philosophical diatribes. While the narrative is most certainly confused, partly because of the unique journey of the film's production and release, and partly because of the confounding dialogue, the over-reaching story told is one that still conveys a powerful message about the nature of belief in human society and the desire to comprehend our existence. While most certainly not a film for everyone, 'On the Silver Globe' is a tough two and a half hour experience to endure, but one that repays it's viewer's diligence with some compelling food for thought and some truly beautiful cinematic scenes.

Just saw a screening of this spiritual successor to The Wicker Man at the London FrightFest. Director Robin Hardy's film (based on his own book 'Cowboys for Christ') shares many similarities with the cult British horror classic that he found success with in the 1970's, but The Wicker Tree is different enough to stand-out on it's own and not be classified as more of the same, even if the basic plot-lines are almost identical. This time around it's about a born again duo of evangelical country & western singers who have come to Scotland as 'redeemers' to convert an isolated pagan village to the path of Christ. However, where The Wicker Man was at turns as equally dark as it was intriguing, The Wicker Tree is a far more satirical affair, with jibes aimed at the genre and the background and beliefs of the protagonists.

Christopher Lee makes a brief appearance as an old man in a flash back, who may or may not be intended as an elderly Lord Summerisle, but while his ill-health prevented him from taking on the role of the main villain his shoes are well filled by Graham McTavish, who provides some much needed fire and brimstone in contrast to the rather stilted performances from the two lead characters, although there were some good performances from the supporting cast, most notably Clive Russel as the butler Beame and Honeysuckle Weeks as the promiscuous pagan Lolly.

I found the setting and direction to be excellent and again Hardy has created an intriguing pagan culture that I would loved to have seen more focus upon, but while we all know what the outcome of the story is going to be at the outset of the film it often seems to concern itself more with poking fun than with captivating and intriguing, or even scaring the audience. It got a good share of laughs throughout and even a round of applause at one point, and I enjoyed it in that respects, but as a horror film, as a film doomed to stand in the shadow of The Wicker Man, I found it to be lacking.