Creepy
Midwesterngal continues her cinematic pilgrimage:
In the mood to be creeped out? Go see REQUIEM, a magnificent German film directed by Hans-Christian Schmid. I was disturbed (profoundly so). Here's the premise: German girl in an ultra-catholic town has undiagnosed epilepsy (or some such neurological disorder/illness) & her family and religious community deal with the illness by believing she's channelling demons. It was truly terrifying -- to think this is actually an accurate depiction of 1970s small-town parochial Deutschland. But the movie was beautiful -- the intermittent scenes of sanity were gorgeously drawn out (HSB -- I thought of you, of Oblomovian idyllic time that transcends the quantifiable), little mini-idylls that punctuated, and truncated, her crises.
Thumbs up on that one. I was worried it would just be an exorcist-style horror show; instead it was a harrowing spiral into despair, but told (shot) with total compassion, empathy and sensitivity. You can't help feeling for the protagonist and, in doing so, feel a certain amount of helplessness yourself.
In the mood to be creeped out? Go see REQUIEM, a magnificent German film directed by Hans-Christian Schmid. I was disturbed (profoundly so). Here's the premise: German girl in an ultra-catholic town has undiagnosed epilepsy (or some such neurological disorder/illness) & her family and religious community deal with the illness by believing she's channelling demons. It was truly terrifying -- to think this is actually an accurate depiction of 1970s small-town parochial Deutschland. But the movie was beautiful -- the intermittent scenes of sanity were gorgeously drawn out (HSB -- I thought of you, of Oblomovian idyllic time that transcends the quantifiable), little mini-idylls that punctuated, and truncated, her crises.
Thumbs up on that one. I was worried it would just be an exorcist-style horror show; instead it was a harrowing spiral into despair, but told (shot) with total compassion, empathy and sensitivity. You can't help feeling for the protagonist and, in doing so, feel a certain amount of helplessness yourself.