9 August 2016

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: EARLY WORKS- A COLLECTION OF 12 FILMS. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.




JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: EARLY WORKS. A COLLECTION OF 12 FILMS. (1995-2003) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

When I was given this box-set to review, I immediately pictured Joshua Oppenheimer as a much older man. I was therefore gobsmacked when I saw the picture of him on the back of the 24-page essay that's included in the set. He's flippin' gorgeous.

He's only forty-one but he looks much younger. With his perfectly-shaped shaved head, beautiful eyes and fantastic teeth, he could be a model. He's gay though, sadly for me, haha, but I can still fancy him from afar. There's no law whatsoever against appreciating the male form, whatever the sexual orientation of the object of desire...!

Joshua ('Can I call you Joshua...?!') was born in Texas. He has a list of qualifications and awards won as long as your arm, so we won't list all of them here. Well, I'll mention just one which seems particularly fancy. In 2014, he was a recipient of an accolade known as the 'MacArthur “Genius” Award.' Very impressive-sounding, I must say.

Genius, eh? That's certainly the impression you get when you listen to him talk in his interview, the impression that you're listening to someone very talented, very committed and very passionate who really, really knows his onions. I could well imagine him as a young prodigy.

He made his first films when he was only in his early twenties, but they're not the cinematic premature ejaculate (excuse my bluntness, I'm just keeping it real...!) of the callow youth. They're the fully-realised, carefully thought-out and daringly executed triumphs of the more experienced director and, I must say, from the moment I pressed 'PLAY' I was hooked.

Let's not do this in any particular order. My mind must be free to flit from flower to flower, like a butterfly. Wait a minute. Butterfly? Entymology. Insects. Cockroaches! Can you see how I got there? A BRIEF HISTORY OF PARADISE AS TOLD BY THE COCKROACHES (2002) is only a minute or two long but it's surely a classic amongst short films.

Two cockroaches on dental floss leashes have a conversation while the theme music from the movie LOVE STORY plays in the background, almost drowning them out. It's not what they're saying that's important, though the word 'cupcakes' is mentioned and that would be a highly crucial topic of conversation in my humble opinion.

It's more the idea behind the film and the mind behind the idea that would interest me. What kind of a thinking-outside-the-box brain could come up with such a novel concept? OUTSIDE THE BOX could have been a possible alternative title for this collection of films. I doubt if the handsome Monsieur Oppenheimer ever thinks in any other way, and I mean that as a compliment.

THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE (1997) isn't at all about what it sounds like. It's actually Oppenheimer's attempt to free some of the essential truths from the story of a woman called Mary Anne Ward, who supposedly killed her baby daughter by microwaving her.

We're treated to some very out there comments from some of the people interviewed in this film. We hear from a 'self-proclaimed Anti-Christ' who thinks that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were in fact the Beatles, and that their song 'LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS' actually prophesied the aforementioned Apocalypse, but on his own mother's admission: 'For an Anti-Christ, you're not real smart...!'

I marvelled at the seemingly genuine speculation in the film as to whether or not Mary Anne's pregnancy was 'alien-induced,' as she was claiming an Immaculate Conception-type situation and her boyfriend was denying all knowledge of how the baby 'got started,' as it were.

There's a disturbing recreation of the microwave murder, during which 'Mary Anne' tells us that 'she wanted to end the war between good and evil forever by sending the baby back to Heaven.' Sadly, there are some crazy people in the world. Seems like most of 'em ended up on this one reel of film...! The burning chairs that came later in the film, well, I just can't get 'em out of my head no-how.

THE GLOBALISATION TAPES (2002) is a straightforward documentary, unlike some of the other films which get their message across through clever metaphors. This is a film 'by workers, for workers,' and it tells of the shocking work conditions endured by the people of Indonesia, something to which I'd never given the slightest thought before. I'm grateful to the film-maker for bringing it to people's attention.

At the time the film was made, the palm oil workers of Indonesia were the lowest-paid in the world. A man with a family of six to feed was being paid one dollar and fourteen cents a day, if you can get your head around that. That was fourteen years ago. I wonder if things have changed at all since then. That wasn't even the worst thing in the film, though. Nope, folks, that was the Gramoxone...

Gramoxone is a pesticide that killed 3-4 million workers annually at the time of filming, most of them women. The job of spraying it on the crops fell mostly to the female workers. I suppose the men were off doing the more dangerous job of felling the trees from which the palm oil is extracted but, quite honestly, the job of spraying the pesticide seemed to me to be nearly more perilous.

I felt sick to my stomach as I watched these lovely smiley women talking about how they were supplied with no safety clothing or equipment by their employers with which to safely handly this toxic substance Gramoxone. Gramoxone, by the way, is the brand name of something called 'paraquat.'

This 'something' causes death by lesions in the liver, heart and kidneys and bleeding in the lungs. It causes rashes, itching and loss of hair and eyesight. These women all have children and families. Who's going to look after these families when the mothers die from handling this horrible pesticide? How many women at the time of filming had already died or been left unable to work because of it? It hardly bears thinking about.

A lot of poor countries like Indonesia put all their eggs into the 'export' basket because that's the only way they can make any money. They've become used, over the years, to providing cheap raw materials for their colonial masters at the expense of growing rice and other foodstuffs for themselves. They can never get clear of their colossal debts, though, no matter how many things they export.

They export palm oil, an edible vegetable oil which is used for making everything from soap to margarine to mayonnaise, and they also export coffee, chocolate and rubber. LUX in particular was a brand name that came in for a bit of a battering in the film. Unless I'm much mistaken here, it's a brand for which workers have died during the production of it (if that ain't not bad grammar!), presumably from pesticide poisoning.

I remember using LUX soap from my childhood days. I think I have some in the bathroom right now. I buy stuff like that that I need for the house without even thinking about it, as I suppose most of us do. If I'd known, however, that women with families to feed had been hurt or even died just to get that product to my bathroom shelf, then I might have thought differently about it. (PS, things may have changed in this industry since 2002, or then again, they may not have.)

I was also shocked to hear about how few rights workers have in these poorer-off countries. Here in Ireland we all complain about our bosses, but imagine if every time you asked to see your boss in person, he was behind his desk flanked by armed guards wielding machine guns? It kind of puts the Monday Morning Blues into perspective, doesn't it...?

Joshua Oppenheimer, former student of Cosmology and Theoretical Physics, comes across as a lovely genuine guy in the twenty-three minute interview. Hear about how he didn't really like films when he was a kid, and how being bullied as a child and physically attacked later on just for being a gay man made him want to try to get inside the mindset of the people who would do such things and show the results in some of his work. I think he manages that feat rather heroically, personally.

He's 'looking for his own truths through the medium of sound and images.' I think he does a great job. Certainly, before seeing his films I would never have equated a helpless animal being taken for slaughter with a human being's experience of an abduction by aliens. Think about it, or better yet, watch the films. They'll tell you what to do alright...!

SECOND RUN released this rather marvellous box-set earlier this summer, complete with the interview and the aforementioned free booklet featuring a new essay by writer and curator Gareth Evans. It only costs a piddly twelve ninety-nine too, which hopefully won't break the bank.

This type of non-fiction film might not be the usual viewing material for folks like me and my horror buddies, but that's good. It's good to watch something totally different every now and then. It broadens the horizons nicely. Plus, it opened my eyes to a few things and even for that reason alone this excellent box-set would be worth the watching.

   AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

 You can contact Sandra at:


http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com







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