BLEAK WEEK: CINEMA OF DESPAIR
The Beacon Cinema is thrilled to partner with the American Cinematheque and cinemas around this horrible nation to present BLEAK WEEK, an annual weeklong festival spotlighting some of the greatest films from around the world that explore the darkest sides of humanity, as well as some of the bleakest points in human history. A harrowing, yet powerful lineup of films defined by stark imagery, unimaginable tragedies, existential fear, nihilism and shocking acts of brutality, this series features the world’s leading filmmakers who wholly embrace a cinema of despair in pursuit of unpleasant truths and raw empathy.
Films in this Program
Elem Klimov
142 minutes
This legendary film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in what is now known as Belarus, teenage Flyora (Alexei Kravchenko, in a searing depiction of anguish) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camera work and expressionistic sound design. Nearly blocked from being made by Soviet censors, who took seven years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.
“There have been many Russian movies on the subject of World War II but none more ferocious than Elem Klimov's COME AND SEE. Seldom if ever have wartime atrocities been depicted so vividle - and with such hallucinated fervor.” - J. Hoberman, NYT
“There have been many Russian movies on the subject of World War II but none more ferocious than Elem Klimov's COME AND SEE. Seldom if ever have wartime atrocities been depicted so vividle - and with such hallucinated fervor.” - J. Hoberman, NYT
Agustí Villaronga
112 minutes
Years after committing atrocities as a torturer of interned children during the Holocaust, Nazi doctor and pedophile Klaus (Günter Meisner) continues to murder little boys. After a gruesomely botched suicide attempt leaves Klaus imprisoned in an iron lung, he gives up his sickening pastime. But when a mysterious teenager named Angelo (David Sust) arrives at his home claiming to be a nurse, Klaus happily hires the boy as his new attendant — a decision he soon regrets. A depraved fairy tale about circles of abuse, power, fascism and Spain's WWII moral complicity, IN A GLASS CAGE is one of the all-time great gothic shockers.
“Spain’s increasing cinematic freedom during the ‘80s produced nothing more harrowing than this astonishing, utterly fearless debut feature from filmmaker Agusti Villaronga. This film was eventually discovered by adventurous horror connoisseurs, who quickly placed it alongside SALO and CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST in the pantheon of beautifully-made cinematic atrocities. However, even among such barbed company, this one still packs a punch that leaves many viewers reeling long afterwards.” - Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital
“Cold and bleak, but with a clear warmth and empathy for its damaged characters that keeps it from ever devolving into empty transgression.” - Liz Purchell
“Spain’s increasing cinematic freedom during the ‘80s produced nothing more harrowing than this astonishing, utterly fearless debut feature from filmmaker Agusti Villaronga. This film was eventually discovered by adventurous horror connoisseurs, who quickly placed it alongside SALO and CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST in the pantheon of beautifully-made cinematic atrocities. However, even among such barbed company, this one still packs a punch that leaves many viewers reeling long afterwards.” - Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital
“Cold and bleak, but with a clear warmth and empathy for its damaged characters that keeps it from ever devolving into empty transgression.” - Liz Purchell
Michael Haneke
109 minutes
Michael Haneke’s most notorious provocation, FUNNY GAMES spares no detail in its depiction of the agony of a bourgeois family held captive at their vacation home by a pair of white-gloved young men. In a series of escalating “games,” the sadistic duo subject their victims to unspeakable physical and psychological torture over the course of a night. A home-invasion thriller in which the genre’s threat of bloodshed is made stomach-churningly real, the film ratchets up shocks even as its executioners interrupt the action to address the audience, drawing queasy attention to the way that cinema milks pleasure from pain and stokes our appetite for atrocity. With this controversial treatise on violence and entertainment, Haneke issued a summation of his cinematic philosophy, implicating his audience in a spectacle of unbearable cruelty.
“A firestarter for post-screening arguments, alight with ghastly images and actions, and essayed by a spot-on cast and storyline that flows seamlessly from one nightmarish incident to the next. Brilliant, radical, provocative, it's a masterpiece that is at times barely watchable.” - Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
“A firestarter for post-screening arguments, alight with ghastly images and actions, and essayed by a spot-on cast and storyline that flows seamlessly from one nightmarish incident to the next. Brilliant, radical, provocative, it's a masterpiece that is at times barely watchable.” - Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
Buddy Giovinazzo
91 minutes
Frankie Dunlan (Rick Giovinazzo) barely survived the Vietnam War, but his current home life on Staten Island is even worse. Unemployed and struggling to care for a mutant baby that's been deformed by his past exposure to Agent Orange, Frankie takes to the streets to try to make ends meet – only to discover that a very different kind of war is still being waged on the homefront.
The original theatrical trailer for COMBAT SHOCK promises “fighting… killing… maiming” alongside images of intravenous drug use, the aforementioned child’s terrifying visage, and just about every explosion in the film. The result is a palpable exercise in grindhouse-era hucksterism, hoodwinking unassuming 42nd street audiences into witnessing the closest approximation to PTSD as cinema could realize at the time. It’s an acidic anti-war takedown trojan-horsed into theaters for the same audience that enjoyed RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II the previous summer. A truly all-American feel-bad movie for the ages.
“Y'know, you see a movie described as TAXI DRIVER cross-bred with ERASERHEAD and you think, 'Nah, that's the usual trash film hyperbole,' and then you actually watch the movie and not only can it be accurately described as TAXI DRIVER cross-bred with ERASERHEAD, there are distinct notes of THE DEER HUNTER, Knut Hamsun's Hunger and even THE BICYCLE fucking THIEF mixed in there too.” - Ira Brooker
The original theatrical trailer for COMBAT SHOCK promises “fighting… killing… maiming” alongside images of intravenous drug use, the aforementioned child’s terrifying visage, and just about every explosion in the film. The result is a palpable exercise in grindhouse-era hucksterism, hoodwinking unassuming 42nd street audiences into witnessing the closest approximation to PTSD as cinema could realize at the time. It’s an acidic anti-war takedown trojan-horsed into theaters for the same audience that enjoyed RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II the previous summer. A truly all-American feel-bad movie for the ages.
“Y'know, you see a movie described as TAXI DRIVER cross-bred with ERASERHEAD and you think, 'Nah, that's the usual trash film hyperbole,' and then you actually watch the movie and not only can it be accurately described as TAXI DRIVER cross-bred with ERASERHEAD, there are distinct notes of THE DEER HUNTER, Knut Hamsun's Hunger and even THE BICYCLE fucking THIEF mixed in there too.” - Ira Brooker
Nagisa Ōshima
118 minutes
Genius provocateur Nagisa Ōshima, a towering figure in the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s, made one of his most startling political statements with the compelling pitch-black satire DEATH BY HANGING. In this macabre farce, a Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next. At once disturbing and oddly amusing, Oshima’s constantly surprising film is a subversive and surreal indictment of both capital punishment and the treatment of Korean immigrants in his country.
"Ōshima is often likened to Godard, but I think the true kindred spirit is Fassbinder — for the restless intellect and furious productivity, and the rage, wit, and lucidity with which they probed their respective national psyches. DEATH BY HANGING of the most devastating films ever made about racism." - Dennis Lim
"Ōshima is often likened to Godard, but I think the true kindred spirit is Fassbinder — for the restless intellect and furious productivity, and the rage, wit, and lucidity with which they probed their respective national psyches. DEATH BY HANGING of the most devastating films ever made about racism." - Dennis Lim
Lars von Trier
140 minutes
Experimentally minded Icelandic chanteuse Björk made her astonishing film debut in von Trier’s gutting musical melodrama, featuring original songs written and performed by the lead actress. An immigrant Washington state factory worker succumbing to the effects of a degenerative eye condition, Selma (Björk) escapes from her drab reality in musical fantasias of the mind in von Trier’s de-glammed, grotty, digitally shot deconstruction of the movie musical, which also boasts the song-and-dance talents of THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG’s Catherine Deneuve and CABARET’s Joel Grey.
One detail tells you all you need to know about how harrowing this film is: After the exhaustive production, Björk vowed never to act on film again. A true Renée Jeanne Falconetti for our times.
“A feature-length music video with interspersed dialogue that deserves to be seen because it’s a freakish provocation. Harsh, operatic, and deeply affecting, DANCER IN THE DARK turns the musical form against itself offering no escape, only feeling.” - Jonathan Rosenbaum
One detail tells you all you need to know about how harrowing this film is: After the exhaustive production, Björk vowed never to act on film again. A true Renée Jeanne Falconetti for our times.
“A feature-length music video with interspersed dialogue that deserves to be seen because it’s a freakish provocation. Harsh, operatic, and deeply affecting, DANCER IN THE DARK turns the musical form against itself offering no escape, only feeling.” - Jonathan Rosenbaum
Gus Van Sant
81 minutes
Gus Van Sant’s Palme D’or winning ELEPHANT chronicles a single day at a typical American high school in Portland, Oregon. What begins as an ordinary school day quickly turns into tragedy, as two suburban teenage boys go on a shooting rampage through their school. Van Sant’s controversial cinematic experiment not only addresses the distinctly American phenomenon of mass shooting, but also confronts the hauntingly mundane side of such forms of senseless violence and evil.
“Few American filmmakers have reinvented themselves as consistently or successfully as Gus Van Sant, whose shape-shifting skill set over an almost 40-year career has kept viewers impressed and guessing. After the mainstream success of GOOD WILL HUNTING — and the equally high-profile debacle of his shot-for-shot PSYCHOremake — Van Sant started styling himself as an austere long-take specialist à la European grandmasters like Béla Tarr, ramping up camera movement even as he slowed the pace of his scenes down to a deliberate crawl. This half-entrancing, half-alienating aesthetic was perfected in ELEPHANT, a strategic re-creation of the Columbine shootings that split the difference between naturalism, myth, and horror-movie exploitation; the tracking shots through high school hallways before, during, and in the aftermath of a massacre evoked the menace of HALLOWEEN. Viewed now, ELEPHANT can’t help but play as a product of its time (i.e., the casting of THAT'S MY BUSH! star Timothy Bottoms as a drunk dad in an ominously funny prologue), but it remains one of the most unsettlingly accomplished American movies of the new millennium, and exactly as difficult to categorize or definitively interpret as its maker intended.“ - Adam Nayman, The Ringer
“Few American filmmakers have reinvented themselves as consistently or successfully as Gus Van Sant, whose shape-shifting skill set over an almost 40-year career has kept viewers impressed and guessing. After the mainstream success of GOOD WILL HUNTING — and the equally high-profile debacle of his shot-for-shot PSYCHOremake — Van Sant started styling himself as an austere long-take specialist à la European grandmasters like Béla Tarr, ramping up camera movement even as he slowed the pace of his scenes down to a deliberate crawl. This half-entrancing, half-alienating aesthetic was perfected in ELEPHANT, a strategic re-creation of the Columbine shootings that split the difference between naturalism, myth, and horror-movie exploitation; the tracking shots through high school hallways before, during, and in the aftermath of a massacre evoked the menace of HALLOWEEN. Viewed now, ELEPHANT can’t help but play as a product of its time (i.e., the casting of THAT'S MY BUSH! star Timothy Bottoms as a drunk dad in an ominously funny prologue), but it remains one of the most unsettlingly accomplished American movies of the new millennium, and exactly as difficult to categorize or definitively interpret as its maker intended.“ - Adam Nayman, The Ringer
Catherine Breillat
86 minutes
Twelve-year-old Anaïs is fat. Her sister, fifteen-year-old Elena, is a beauty. While the girls are on vacation with their parents, Anaïs tags along as Elena explores the dreary seaside town. Elena meets Fernando, an Italian law student; he seduces her with promises of love, and the ever-watchful Anaïs bears witness to the corruption of her sister’s innocence. FAT GIRL is not only a portrayal of female adolescent sexuality and the complicated bond between siblings but also a shocking assertion by the always controversial Catherine Breillat that violent oppression exists at the core of male-female relations.
“Catherine Breillat’s FAT GIRL is a startling vision of the prickly crawlspace between innocence and sexual awakening. The film’s notions of perseverance are at once sensible and unnerving, so that love becomes indistinguishable from rape. The film’s brilliance lies in its deceptive simplicity—its dawdling sketch of virtue on the brink of collapse.” - Ed Gonzalez, Slant
“Catherine Breillat’s FAT GIRL is a startling vision of the prickly crawlspace between innocence and sexual awakening. The film’s notions of perseverance are at once sensible and unnerving, so that love becomes indistinguishable from rape. The film’s brilliance lies in its deceptive simplicity—its dawdling sketch of virtue on the brink of collapse.” - Ed Gonzalez, Slant
Pier Paolo Pasolini
116 minutes
See the film that broke up a relationship at its last Seattle screening!
The notorious final film from Pier Paolo Pasolini, SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM has been called nauseating, shocking, depraved, pornographic... It’s also a masterpiece. The controversial poet, novelist, and filmmaker’s transposition of the Marquis de Sade’s eighteenth-century opus of torture and degradation to Fascist Italy in 1944 remains one of the most passionately debated films of all time, a thought-provoking inquiry into the political, social, and sexual dynamics that define the world we live in.
“A heartfelt cry of outrage, SALO was conceived by its writer-director, the aging enfant terrible of Italian cinema, Pier Paolo Pasolini, as an act of revenge against twin terrors menacing the modern condition: the stifling wet blanket of consumer capitalism and lingering traces of totalitarianism, still ensconced in positions of authority, both of which he believed were ineluctable, corrosive influences on modern society. Turning his back on the exuberant, earthy sexuality celebrated in his previous three films, collectively known as the TRILOGY OF LIFE, Pasolini handed down a deadly earnest indictment of unchecked power’s commoditization and manipulation of the human form, yielding what Elaine Scarry dubbed, with terrible simplicity, ‘the body in pain.’ A bracing cinematic buzzkill, SALOwill wipe that shit-eating grin right off your face.” - Budd Wilkins, Slant
The notorious final film from Pier Paolo Pasolini, SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM has been called nauseating, shocking, depraved, pornographic... It’s also a masterpiece. The controversial poet, novelist, and filmmaker’s transposition of the Marquis de Sade’s eighteenth-century opus of torture and degradation to Fascist Italy in 1944 remains one of the most passionately debated films of all time, a thought-provoking inquiry into the political, social, and sexual dynamics that define the world we live in.
“A heartfelt cry of outrage, SALO was conceived by its writer-director, the aging enfant terrible of Italian cinema, Pier Paolo Pasolini, as an act of revenge against twin terrors menacing the modern condition: the stifling wet blanket of consumer capitalism and lingering traces of totalitarianism, still ensconced in positions of authority, both of which he believed were ineluctable, corrosive influences on modern society. Turning his back on the exuberant, earthy sexuality celebrated in his previous three films, collectively known as the TRILOGY OF LIFE, Pasolini handed down a deadly earnest indictment of unchecked power’s commoditization and manipulation of the human form, yielding what Elaine Scarry dubbed, with terrible simplicity, ‘the body in pain.’ A bracing cinematic buzzkill, SALOwill wipe that shit-eating grin right off your face.” - Budd Wilkins, Slant
