Ridicule, Mr. Death, & The Innocents

Ridicule makes me wonder about what I was thinking getting this right after Dirty Pictures. Who else thought I was going to discuss urolagnia in two straight posts? Well, this wasn't really sexual pleasure derived from urination, but there was on-screen urination in the first scene. That was certainly unexpected. Watching it so soon after Marie Antoinette also wasn't intended. Fanny Ardant, Jean Rochefort, and Charles Berling were good, and the movie had some funny lines, but the main reason to see this film, was Judith Godrèche, who was both a moral center and a luminous presence, but ultimately was just a pretty thing to look at. As a whole, the film just felt a little paint-by-numbers, with the good people being rewarded and the bad ones punished, just like a typical Hollywood film. The touches of quirk the film has (the diving bells especially) just make it seem slightly less hokey. But it is hokey. Admittedly, I enjoyed it while watching, but there's little there. Oh, rich people at court are superficial. What a surprise. Sorry, make better films. At least Patrice Leconte went on to make the excellent The Girl on the Bridge. So he isn't that bad.

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. is another look by Errol Morris at some quirky person who few people would really remember. Unless you're Jewish or a Holocaust denier. If so, then maybe you remember about the guy who builds execution machines (lethal injection, gallows, gas chambers, and electric chairs) who was a complete moron and thought he proved the Holocaust didn't happen. And subsequently lost his job, wife, and all respect from the vast majority of people out there who are not crazy Holocaust deniers. The eventual downfall couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, but man, he deserves everything he gets trying to gain some measure of popularity by doing messed up cyanide detecting tests and then going around to denial conferences to speak about them. The Holocaust happened, and those who don't believe it deserve all the lambasting they get, and a lot more besides. That said, the film did humanize him, and, as an Errol Morris film, was extremely well-made. Even with my distaste, no make that abhorrence, for capital punishment, I couldn't help appreciating his desire to make it more humane, even if it never will be truly so. As much as I hated Fred Leuchter, I felt bad that he was so desperate for attention that he would produce shoddy science that proved nothing and destroyed his life, even as I'm extremely distressed at how far his misinformation was pushed.

The Innocents was billed (in a terrible trailer that has more shots from the last scene than any other in the film) as an "adult" chiller. Really, it's a ghost story that doesn't insult the audience. This excellent version of The Turn of the Screw will probably never be topped as an adaptation of the script. My only real complaint is how I feel disappointed by The Others as a film, due to its obvious inspiration from this, although it doesn't work nearly as well as this film. Which again proves that explicitness is fine, but it doesn't add to the scariness of a film. A creepy atmosphere, realistic characters just slightly off-kilter, and great performances will always freak me out more. And the more you wonder about whether any of this was really happening, or whether it was a psychotic episode, or whether Miss Giddens was just a sexually-suppressed governess, the more effective the little touches become.