If you were lucky enough to catch last year's Zizek! then you have a pretty good idea what you're in for with Perverts. In three 50 minute episodes (yes, that's right, this movie is nearly two and a half hours long! That's good value for your movie-ticket dollar!) Slovenian Marxist-Lacanian philosopher and cultural theorist super-star Slavoj Zizek gives a sweeping reading of desire, fantasy and nightmare in cinema, with emphasis on Hitchcock, Chaplin, Kieslowski, Tarkovsky and Lynch, but not forgetting to visit The Matrix and Fight Club along the way.
The film gives the subject the proper amount of respect, neither too dour nor too reverent. Zizek is laugh out-loud funny at times, and clever staging is used to insert him in to the scenes he's currently discussing to hilarious effect. Words cannot describe my glee at seeing Neo suddenly replaced in the red pill / blue pill scene by this great bearded teddy-bear of bombast.
The ideas come fast and furious, and it's impossible to keep up. The highest recommendation that I can give this film is that I'm going to buy it as soon as it comes out on DVD and watch it over and over again, and probably rent most of the movies it references too. (But this time with scheduled bathroom breaks)
Thursday, September 07 5:00 PM ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM
What a great way to start this years TIFF, a movie about movies featuring the famous "rock-star philosopher" Slavoj Zizek.
If you've seen Zizek! then you already know the man, but what you didn't know is that he's a serious movie fan.
It starts with The Matrix and The Birds and among many other things Zizek explains how movies tell us how to desire. At this point, you've got the whole "I just watched a seriously intellectual movie and it's something I now must think about" thing going. Then Part 2 starts. Here we move into Psycho and The Marx Brothers and (again, among many other things) Zizek explains how it's all based on the the psychological concepts of Id, Ego, Superego. By now, you're probably reeling like a punch-drunk boxer. Now Part 3 starts, and Zizek gets into David Lynch and Stalinist Russian Musicals and goes _really_ abstract!
Seriously, it could make your head 'splode all over the place.
This movie was divided up into 3 sections for very good reason.
You should probably watch Part 1, take a half hour break, watch Part 2, another break, then Part 3, then go to bed and sleep it off. As it was, I found it to be much more Zizek then one man can possibly take in in a single sitting.
Or perhaps I'm just not hardcore enough. 8 )