Long Live Death (1971)
At the end of the Spanish civil war, Fando, a boy of about ten, tries to make sense of war and his father's arrest. His mother is religious, sympathetic to the Fascists; his father is accused of being a Red. Fando discovers that his mother may have aided in his father's arrest. Sometimes we witness Fando imagining explanations for what's going on; sometimes we see him at play, alone or with his friend Thérèse. Oedipal fantasies and a lad's natural curiosity about sex and death mix with his search for his mother's nature and his father's fate. Will Fando survive the search?
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one of my absolute favorites!
Absolutely amazing
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Viva La Muerte does what it says - Celebrates the idiot class (most humans) and their obsession with death. It shows how far we will go to show our egos, believe in our lies, propagate our savagery. This film shows that despite our belief in sophistication and civility, we are a barbaric species from A-Z. I've read the other reviews on this film and am glad some people found meaning in this portrayal of the lies we perpetuate on ourselves. I believe Arrabel should have been more severe in his depictions of love, lies, hate, nationalism and other bullshit human values. One review said it was a waste of film. I'll tell you what is a waste of film: things like American Beauty, Porky's, Heat, Top Gun, those inane baseball films, and generally most early black and white films. What a load of crap those films are!! Full of snivelling humans crapping on about nothing. Pathetic wastes of time for a pathetic race. Viva La Muerte!!
During the Spanish Civil War young boy named Fando is forced to watch as Garcia Lorca is executed by a taunting Fascist firing squad.He keeps asking his mother what happened to his father,and eventually learns that his mother betrayed him to the Franco government because of his unspoken leftist ideas.Fando imagines bizarre scenarios where his father is tortured and mutilated.Many of his visions present his mother as a monster who gouges out his father's eyes,or makes love to his captors in front of him,in addition to other gruesome and scatological horrors.Fando also shows signs of sexual interest in his libidinous aunt Clara and a neighbor girl,Thérèse,as he lives a miserable existence acting out the cruelty of his mother with small cruelties of his own.Fernando Arrabal is a well-known Spanish surrealist and "Viva la Muerte" is his first and most famous piece of work.The film has its share of shocking and unpleasant moments-the defecation scene and the bull slaughter moment especially come to my mind.Many of the hallucinatory scenes of violence,that include the father's head being stomped on by horses,a priest's genitals being cut off,and imagined sexual liaisons involving Fando's mother,were filmed on videotape,distorted via the use of colour filters and transferred to film.So if you liked this one I'd also recommend "Sweet Movie" and "The Cremator".7 out of 10.
This film begins with a long credit sequence where a strangely catchy nonsense song sung by French schoolchildren is played over Boschian illustrations (by "Fantastic Planet's" Roland Topor) of torture and sadomasochism. And the film never lets up after that. This is the first film of Fernando Arrabal, a Spanish friend and collaborator of the more famous (and more notorious)Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. (Arrabal wrote the play on which Jodorowsky's first film "Fando y Lis" was loosely based). Although they would probably both be loath to admit it, both men owe an obvious debt to fellow countryman Luis Bunuel. But while Jodorowsky's films resemble the early, very surrealistic films Bunuel made with Salvador Dali (albeit with a lot of trendy 60's era Eastern mysticism thrown in), this film is more of an uncensored version of the films like "Los Oividados" that Bunuel made in Mexico in the 1950's which combine surrealism with neorealist social commentary.This film is much more autobiographical than anything Bunuel or Jodorowsky ever did. It tells the story of a young boy, Fando (no doubt based on Arrabal himself), whose Republican father has been arrested by the Fascists in the dark days after the Spanish Civil War where people who supported the other side were rounded up and executed even if it meant "killing half the country". Much of the movie is based on the boy's memories of his father and bizarre surrealistic images he imagines of the fate that might have befallen him (including being buried up to his neck in the sand while Arabesque figures on horseback use his head to play polo, or being sewn alive into a cow's carcass). As in "Los Olvidados" the boy has a strange Oedipal love/hate relationship with his treacherous young mother who he finds out betrayed his father to the soldiers. He also has an "aunt" who seems to suffer from a bizarre combination of religious mania and nymphomania (Arrabal gives the Catholic Church all the credit it so richly deserves in the tragedy that befell Spain).This movie is quite political. The title is based on a real quote by a fascist general: "Down with intelligence, long live death!" (a sentiment that by the 1970's was making its way across the Atlantic to Pinochet's Chile and the military government in Argentina). Ironically, this film which is a scathing indictment of human cruelty, has often drawn charges of animal cruelty. One act of "animal cruelty" involves a disgusting bug (good riddance). I would hope a scene where a lizard gets its head bitten of was faked (as much for the sake of the young actor as the lizard). The footage of a bull being butchered and castrated is definitely real, but animal rightists should be glad if anything since this occurs thousands of times a day and this scene shows how truly disgusting it is. Besides this is not an Italian cannibal film with a tacked-on political message to justify its animal slaughter--this scene will really hit home with the kind of people who have no stomach for animal suffering but think nothing of their government creating or permitting massive human suffering for the sake of high-minded political ideals. This is truly a brave, powerful, and memorable film.
From it's corrosive opening credit sequence accompanied by a haunting child-sung (and used as a sort of chorus throughout and even plays out AFTER the credits end - so stay tuned), to its biting criticism of Franco's regime in Spain (it's title, "Long Live Death" might be considered an ironic echo of Patrick Henry's famous "Give Me Liberty or Give me Death"). The film proper begins and ends with the military proclaiming they will be peace to the country even if they have to kill everybody! The film is told thru patented surrealist devices such as dreams, fantasies, extreme violence, naturist drama & erotic visions - sometimes all at the same time. Arrabal and Cinematographer Jean-Marc Ripert often use imaginative camera tricks including a then-novel use of tinted videotape.With all this, I still can't wholeheartedly endorse the film. Much of it seems random or repetitive. It's clearly indebted to Luis Bunuel, SATRYRICON era Fellini & Jodorowsky (who of course, adapted Arabal's FANDO Y LIS - so the influence is mutual). Some of the visual metaphors are graphic in the extreme: Such as having the Mother (who is clearly symbolic of the morally corrupted country as a whole) actually cutting off the scrotum of a cow (and this isn't faked, in fact this is one film PETA members should not see).A worthwhile curio to seek out. Particularly those partial to Bunuel and Jodorowsky.