Neil Snowdon, Author at Diabolique Magazine

Surrealist inspired horror; expressionist fantasy; a dark and disturbing tale of terror… As Nazi Germany wages war across Europe and fascism begins infecting 1930’s Prague, a professional cremator finds the political climate emboldening to his increasingly deranged ideas for the ‘salvation of the world’. Maybe I was an unusually sensitive child, but Monty Python scared me. Not all the time, and it’s not as if they didn’t thrill me, fascinate me, and make me laugh as well, but as a child, something about the series - and the member’s other works like Ripping Yarns (1976-1979), Jabberwocky (1977), and Time Bandits (1981) - unsettled me; made me uncomfortable; and yes, made me scared. I’m 40 years old now, and of course that effect has changed, but still, there’s something in what got under my skin back then that I still find disturbing today to this day. Something more insidious and more upsetting that what we’d normally think of as ‘Horror’. Something I still find in some of Terry Gilliam’s work when he still decides to go there. It’s tied to what Hannah Arendt called ‘the banality of evil’ in her description of Adolf Eichmann and his part in the implementation of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’, as well as to the work of Franz Kafka, Roland Topor, Roman Polanski and to some degree Stanley Kubrick as well. It is about a particular kind of absurdist horror - maybe even, absurdist evil - that I find utterly chilling because at heart it seems to me so frighteningly true. This then is The Cremator (Spaclov mrtvol), directed in 1969 by Juraj Herz; a masterpiece of ‘Absurdist Horror’. But where most such films and literature present us with an ostensibly ‘innocent’ protagonist, consumed, terrorised, or otherwise in conflict with an an unknowable system seemingly predicated on their persecution, here it is the audience who are - in a sense - placed in conflict with the film; its protagonist presenting an absurd logic against which we must surely revolt, but find ourselves consistently drawn in by… horrified by what is unfolding before us, but unable (unwilling?) to stop it, even as we know where it is heading. In a cinema setting, we are - of course - physically unable to stop it from happening (we cannot stop the film from unspooling on the screen), though we are free to leave. But even when stopping the film is as simple as clicking the remote with our thumbs, still, the film making is so enthralling, the technique so seductive and persuasive, that we still find ourselves unable (unwilling?) to act; to stop the madness into which we are being drawn. In his essay The Myth Of Sisyphus, Albert Camus describes a world and an existence that is Absurd and suggests that faced with this Absurd Existence, we have but two choices: Suicide, or Revolt.[1] Why then, do we not revolt? Why do we not walk out or stop the film? I’d suggest it is because Herz, presenting us with an Absurd world in his film, nonetheless presents it with such persuasive and overwhelming technique that like the coming of war, or the insidious onset of fascism itself, we only notice that it has gone too far, that we are in too deep; when it is too late to do anything about it. In The Cremator, Herz presents us with the madness of an Absurd idea made real. And yet, despite what we can see before us, we refuse to believe that it is really happening. It happens anyway… and we sit back and watch. So the act of watching the film becomes a precise and terrifying example of how seemingly Absurd, certainly abhorrent, ideas and actions can overtake us. Can be allowed to happen, because ‘normal’ people fail to act. Herz’ technique is astonishing. He makes us complicit by our passivity as viewers. The film is a work of Art. Do I think Juraj Herz ever thought that anyone would actually walk out of the film? Not really, no. But still, the way that he executes his film (pun very much intended) and the position in which the experience places the viewer, has - in and of itself - an immense significance in this case. Herz’s background was not, like some of his contemporaries, in the Film And TV Faculty of Prague’s Academy Of Performing Arts, but rather, like Jan Svankmajer, in the Theatre Faculty where, from 1954-1958, he studied puppetry.[2] During the period when he was studying, not only was Albert Camus’ popularity and influence at its peak, so was the Absurdist theatre of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jerzy Grotowski, in which the very relationship between the actors and audience (the relationship of fact and fiction?), and the line between them were being tested, twisted and blurred in the name of provocation. In a sense, the theatrical experience itself was in a state of ‘revolution’. All of which would surely have filtered into Herz’ study and understanding of Art, Drama, and Theatre; the platform from which he then launched his career in Film. I first saw The Cremator back in 2006, when Second Run released it as part of their first wave of dvds. I was running a video rental store at the time (and yes it was an ill-advised decision to open it as the rental market was going down the drain… but c’est la vie… we follow our dreams), and was adding Second Run titles to the catalogue with glee. One of the greatest pleasures of Second Run’s releases was, and remains, the sense of discovery. I knew nothing about the film except what the cover told me. But from the word go, the label was so well curated that it was a joy every time they released something. It’s only fitting then that, having built on their success in the DVD/SD market, and in a sense now created an audience for these films, that they should return to one of their most important titles as they move into Blu-ray/HD. The film, as you’d expect looks beautiful - crisp, clear, bringing out ever more the austere clinical sheen of the images, their seeming simplicity, and their chilling beauty. Kopfrkingl’s oiled hair has never looked more carefully, precisely styled as he retouches it with the comb he also uses to make the dead look their best before he burns them... sorry, before he ‘liberates the soul from their bodies’. It had been a while since I last watched the film. What struck me so forcibly this time, was Herz’ extraordinary use of technique. I took twelve pages of notes watching this film, and most of it was in the opening sequence. For all that it is, in essence, a ‘quiet’ scene of a man and his family visiting the zoo, still the shots, the editing, the dialogue and voice-over combined to take my breath away. It was overwhelming. Like a wave, it knocked me back and pulled me under. Not that the film is a barrage of the latter day Tony Scott rapid editing, but still the rhythm of the edits is persistent; deceptive; propulsive and compulsive. Every element is working to strike sparks off the others, whether in the traditional sense of montage as one shot collides with another to create a specific idea or feeling, or in the way Herz uses voiceover and dialogue to create a further layer of Audio/Visual montage, where the two do not quite match, but spark a yet another feeling, yet another thought or idea; or, in the way Herz uses vertical montage, juxtaposing elements within the frame itself in terms of set design, action and composition. [All of this he uses simultaneously.] This is not the traditional ‘invisible editing‘ of Hollywood narrative cinema, but neither is it quite what we might think of as avant-garde, though it is certainly influenced by that. Still, the total effect of Herz’s sound and image is so immersive and so compulsive, as to be almost ‘invisible’, and without a pause button, or the ability to examine the film frame by frame, you can’t keep up, you can only give in and let the current - and the film - take you where it will. * The film opens on the image of a cage and a leopard roaming within it, pacing back and forth; a visual metaphor for Kopfrkingl’s skewed vision of mankind, wherein the majestic wild soul is imprisoned within the cage of our bodies, and he is the liberator who will set it free. The bars fill the screen, we cannot see their limits, and so to all intent and purpose, they are limitless, all-encompassing of the life that paces back and forth within, impatient and roaring to be free. As the images cut from human eyes to animal eyes, to hair and teeth and frowns and smiles, so the voiceover explains this with a kind of yearning romanticism. For all that Kopfrkingl’s glances are often furtive, his brow frequently furrowed in isolated close-up, he smiles beatifically in wide shots that frame him with his wife, Marie, whom he calls Lakme. The cuts and images come thick and fast, his eyes, his mouth, his brow, all in close up; his eyes furtive as he looks from the leopard to his wife, his mouth and then the tiger’s - open wide - its teeth and tongue and throat on full display, it wants to bite, surely, to devour… as he describes how it wants to be free. Already there’s a sense of danger in Kopfrkingl’s idea of freedom, a dangerous association between him and the animal. He’s telling his wife about how the old leopard, that was there when they first visited has died, been ‘relieved of its shackles’, and now another takes its place. He’s talking of ‘liberation’ and ‘freedom’, and perhaps reincarnation. The way he then smoothly segues from this to “I always have the feeling that I do so little for you...” is deftly done and ultimately chilling. In just a few words, and without missing a beat, we are suddenly wondering what exactly he wants to do for her then… in just 44 seconds of screen time, we are worried about this man’s relationship to this woman; we are unnerved, even as his soft features and smiling face will try to charm and calm us. “We’re not doing badly,” she says. “Not badly…” he replies, as Herz cuts to a close shot of a snake, symbol of cold-blooded cunning, pushing home our sense of mistrust in this man and his words. Cut to a rhino as they talk of her...