Andrea Tonacci’s Bang Bang represents one of the Brazilian Udigrudi, or 'Underground', movement’s most radical departures from conventional narratives. Defined by Tonacci as a “Maoist detective comedy,” the film is about a story that, for one reason or another, never quite begins. The film features an unnamed protagonist on the run from three gangsters and a magician. Who is this man? Why are the gangsters chasing him? Why does the magician keep interfering? These questions are never answered or even momentarily considered. Near the end, one of the gangsters, a beefy transvestite with a bottomless appetite, attempts to summarize the “plot” for the audience. The gangster can barely get out more than a couple sentences before she is silenced by a cream pie (originating off-camera) that flies into her face. The protagonist spends most of his time in the film getting into fights with taxi drivers over directions (a scene that is mercilessly repeated twice) and lounging around in his bathroom wearing a monkey mask. There are chase scenes bereft of impetus, explanation, and resolution. A conversation between a man and a woman is repeated successively five times in a row. And, perhaps most memorably, there is a musical number performed by the monkey-masked protagonist. With Bang Bang, Tonacci stripped the diegetic world of cinema of context, interpretation, and relevancy. With a mere 85 minutes’ worth of celluloid, he forced narrative cinema into obsolescence. But despite this, even with the proper cultural and historical context, Bang Bang is a blistering challenge to watch. It was never intended as an easy film for its audience, of course. But that doesn't work as an excuse for the casual, non-academic viewer.
5/10
0 Yorumlar