Just before Valentine's Day of this year, I watched I Spit On Your Grave, the review of which turned into a fitting blog post for how I was feeling at the time. Shortly thereafter, I made plans in my mind to do a similar thing with a film that had the reputation of being more grotesque than I Spit On Your Grave the following Valentine's Day. This was a film that, I thought, would require me to scour bittorrent sties to find a good, clean download of this film in a format I could readily play on my laptop.
On October 29th, 2011 that changed. While watching a clip from Attack Of The Show on Hulu, I learned that this film is available, legally and legitimately. After a search on Amazon, I found that this film was available on one day delivery in a price range that fit into my budget. This is why I bought and watched A Serbian Film. Don't believe me?
For the first part of the film, I didn't see anything of a nature that I hadn't seen in film before. Sure this film was about porn stars filming a pornographic movie, so some lines were crossed, but nothing that I wasn't prepared for or had not seen before. Then, at about forty-five minutes, I saw something I hadn't seen in a legitimate piece of cinema before. A man orgasming on a woman's face. This is something I had seen in pornography many times throughout the years, never once had I seen it in a cinematic film. After that, the film seemed to go downhill, something which was not unexpected. Let me explain.
I had an discussion once with a fellow writer in a writing class I took in college where I studied writing. In this discussion, it was my viewpoint that in order for a low point to have more effect you needed to start in a high point, or at least ramp up to a high before you hit the low. This makes the low point that you achieve have more of an impact, much like a rollercoaster. However, the fellow writer I was having a discussion with disagreed with me. He felt it was important to start low and to go lower, thereby reflecting the world as he saw it. Watching A Serbian Film reminded me of this discussion.
There was a great opportunity in this film to build up to a high point before hitting the low, and then hitting the other low, and then hitting the low below the low that you just hit. However, the makers of A Serbian Film failed to capitalize on this opportunity to make their low have more of an impact, due in part to the music that is played throughout this film.
The Nine Inch Nails album The Fragile is known for being littered with tracks that, in the years since it's release, have been used in trailers for movies such as 300, Terminator: Salvation, and The Avengers. The Fragile is also known for something else: Being really uncomfortable to listen to. The music in The Fragile sounds like something out of a dreary, grotesque, depressing, uncomfortable to watch horror film. The music in The Fragile reminds me of the music that fills A Serbian Film, except taken to a further step. The music in A Serbian Film sets the mood of a dark, dank, disgusting location where hope goes to die. The problem is that if you are trying to convey characters that have some sort of optimism in their lives you don't want to use music like that. Of course if the filmmakers had tried to convey such a optimistic viewpoint, audiences may have walked away form this film with the impression that the filmmakers were trying to fuck with them. This is due to all of the things that happen in A Serbian Film after the forty-five minute point.
There was some time after I played Silent Hill 3 that I refused to lend that game to anyone. This was due to the horrific images that I saw in that game, images that changed the way that I consume survival horror games. A Serbian Film may take that place in my library of movies. I may not even acknowledge that I own it after this. After the forty-five minute point, there are many scenes involving sex, murder, rape, and blood that will shock the normal viewer. This is where A Serbian Film earns it's reputation in spades. There are many scenes that I dare not describe, but there is one climatic scene that I can vaguely describe.
Have you ever heard the infamous and legendary joke The Aristocrats? Have you ever heard anyone tell that joke in a way that just revels in the disgusting nature of that joke? Well, there is a scene in A Serbian Film that resembles that joke, but this scene is not played for jokes. Not at all. This scene also incorporates blood, murder, and eye fucking. Yes, I'm not kidding, eye fucking. This scene, the scene that involves eye fucking, is not the most obscene scene in the film, but it is one of the more explicit ones.
I don't know how to accurately sum up A Serbian Film. While I can say that I did not enjoy watching this film, the film does contain a certain draw to me after having seen it. There is a part of me that, as a writer, wants to know the depths of human depravity so that I can reproduce it and convey it to readers of my work. However, if you do not have such a drive inside you, I can not suggest A Serbian Film to you. If you do watch A Serbian Film, let me give you this bit of advice: Watch it sober, while not eating anything, and, if you can, watch it alone. Much like any good pornographic movie out there, I would feel uncomfortable watching A Serbian Film with another person in the room.
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