Man Bites Dog (C'est arrivé près de chez vous): Maybe it's NOT so black & white...

My weird friend Alex insisted (for about a thousand years) that I see this film, and I have finally gotten to it. It's a "mockumentary" (but the lack of wacky tone leads me to label it a pseudo-documentary) by a group of film students about a french serial killer (aren't all serial killers french... I mean deep down?). They follow him around as he kills anyone who he can make money from, and they seem game to assist him as he needs it. The film is urging us to think about the blurred line between news item and reporter, and at which point do we, as observers, want to follow the news silently and objectively, and when do we feel we should stop the disaster on which we are reporting. And, finally, do we encourage the news item when we report on it?

All that's fine, but what struck me was how the film looked and acted like something from the sixties, or seventies (on grainy film, in black and white, full of french people making quaint jokes), even though it was made in 1992! It didn't really have a time, I suppose, since it was about (french) people, but now that I know, I really dig how innocent it seemed. I felt like it was trying to shock me with it's sudden violence, and disturb me with it's unblinking eye. I don't know... I guess I've been conditioned so that when a lunatic is waving a gun around, someone in the room is going to get suddenly shot.

What I think more what I took away was how much of a smarmy bastard the main character was. He loves to recite poems he's written, and make toasts, and off-handedly mention his large penis. He loves that he is the host of every situation, because he is the one with a gun, and no concience. This spills out into his attitude to the camera crew following him, as he enjoys orating about society, architecture, friends, love... and it is interesting to listen to. Indeed, I assumed it was the point, or heart of the film, so I payed extra attention to his philisophical waxings. Like I said, it has the un-self-aware pompousity of a sixties European film. And when it gets going, visually, it's extremely engrossing. My favorite moments were beautiful black and white close-ups of abandoned buildings, or sugar cubes dissolving in tonic, or simply the beach, the sky, pigeons. I should have known it was made in the past 15 years: it seems to get bored with it's heart, and return always to it's stomach. Whatever that means.