Black Gate

I saw 60 feature films or showcases of short films this year at the Fantasia International Film Festival. As is the case every year, seeing so many wild visions so close together was a powerful experience. If one film didn’t work, there’d be another one coming right after that’d be completely different. Having been slowed down by a bad cold the last few weeks, I’ve had time to think about what I took away from the Fantasia adventure this year in particular, and I keep coming back to things that struck me during the festival itself: the ability of the programmers to select films; the power of seeing the films as part of an audience and indeed part of a community; and the way those things interact.

Let me begin explaining that by thanking the Fantasia team for another excellent festival. I particularly want to thank the people who I spoke with and helped me in my coverage, including Rupert Bottenberg, Mitch Davis, Ted Geoghegan, Kaila Hier, and Steven Lee. I also want to thank a number of fellow writers who helped make the festival even more enjoyable. I’ll specifically note here Giles Edwards, Yves Gendron, Dave Harris, Agustín Leon, and Thomas O’Connor.

I mention all these people because I’ve been thinking about what makes the experience of Fantasia different from watching an equivalent number of movies in an equivalent amount of time on Netflix or blu-ray in the comfort of my own home. Some of it’s getting to see the films on a big screen, of course. But much of it also has to do with the experience of having an audience around you, and so of being able to talk about the films afterward. And, especially, it has to do with the quality of the films and their overall character — the identity of the festival, the overall feel of it that shapes the event.

Spending time at Fantasia is a very specific experience and in writing these posts I try to catch moments outside the movies themselves that strike me as characteristic of that Fantasia feel — the way a theatre may be set up for a special screening, or the way an audience reacts to key moments. Several times over the past few years I’ve mentioned that Fantasia audiences can help elevate the experience of watching a film. Enthusiastic, responsive, but not usually obtrusive, they give another dimension of life to a film. You’re watching a story as part of a crowd, part of a collective whose reaction helps shape the pacing and perception of the tale. Films being films, the director has to try to plan ahead for a crowd reaction, and I think Fantasia audiences on the whole rise to a director’s hopes. That means there’s a special value to being able to see a film alongside an audience, different from watching the same film in solitude or even (usually) at a media screening to an audience of critics. So start with that.

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My last film of Fantasia 2018 was a late surprise. The Festival often starts with a screening slot still to be announced, as the Directors negotiate to add one last film to their line-up. This year, just a few days before Fantasia ended, they announced that they’d close this year’s festival with a screening of Lords of Chaos, a film by Jonas Åkerlund based on the true story of the band Mayhem in the early 1990s. It’s a drama, with a lot of very dark comedy, involving murder, suicide, and church burnings. The version of the film that played Fantasia was the same unrated version that premiered at the Sundance festival earlier this year; apparently cuts will have to be made before the movie can be shown again in a North American theatre. (I can’t say with absolute certainty what those cuts will be or what the reason for them is, but the leading theory I heard is that they have to do with the film’s realistic depiction of suicide.)

Lords of Chaos is based on the book of the same name by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind, with a script by Dennis Magusson in collaboration with Åkerlund. It’s worth noting that in the mid-80s Åkerlund was briefly a member of Bathory, a band that laid the groundwork for the black metal scene that emerged a few years later. Definitions are tricky in metal, and some will argue that Bathory was one of the creators of black metal; the point is that Åkerlund has roots in this world as well as being an experienced director with a long list of credits.

The film he’s made now claims to be “based on truth and lies.” Starting in 1987, we’re introduced at once to young Norwegian metal musician Øystein Aarseth (Rory Culkin), who is our narrator: “this is my story, and it will end badly,” he promises. Aarseth, under the name Euronymous, leads the band Mayhem, which has hit a plateau — but when a new singer sends in an audition tape (along with a dead mouse), Euronmymous sees new hope for the band. Per Yngve Ohlin (Jack Kilmer), who takes the name Dead, is deeply troubled but immensely talented, and Mayhem takes off, helped also by Euronymous’s knack for self-promotion: he positions Mayhem as “true Norwegian black metal,” in contrast to the proliferation of un-true Swedish death metal bands. Mayhem, he implies, is at the vanguard of a movement, harder and more unyielding than anyone else. More evil.

And so we get a moment in which an enthusiastic young fan approaches Euronymous to gush about the band, Euronymous stares at him in a long silence, then points to a patch on the fan’s jacket and reads out “Scorpions” in a flat and chillingly ironic tone. The old-school German hard rock band’s used like a bludgeon, a sign of the un-trueness of the fan, who is crushed; and we realise how Euronymous can and will pick instantly on a small tell to dominate and manipulate people around him. Because the fan, Kristian (Emory Cohen), isn’t driven away but instead becomes even more determined to gain Euronymous’s approval. Dead commits suicide, but if Euronymous is affected, he doesn’t show it much. With his parents’ money he opens a metal record store, and in the basement holds meetings of a “black circle” of favoured musicians. “I was building my own empire,” he reflects. “Everything that had happened had made me immune to reality.” Kristian, still a fan, wants to be a part of this group — for he’s a musician, too, and, it turns out, a talented one. Brought into the circle, he takes new names, Varg Vikernes and Count Grishnackh, and slowly emerges as a rival for Euronymous among the black circle. The two young men compete with each other to say and do ever more extreme things, driving each other further and further, and it is very clear that Euronymous’s early promise is true: this can only end badly.

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The two final movies I’d watch at the 2018 Fantasia International Film Festival were both in the big Hall Theatre. It’s perhaps appropriate that the first of those two aspired to be a crowd-pleasing blockbuster. Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (Di Renjie zhi Sidatianwang, 狄仁杰之四大天王) was directed by veteran Tsui Hark and written by Chang Chialu. It’s nominally a prequel to two other movies, though no knowledge of those films is required.

(Before the movie played we saw a short film, “No One Will Ever Believe You,” written and directed by Frédéric Chalté. A young girl wants to play a prank on her sister, and hides in her room. But she ends up becoming a witness to a supernatural horror, and by extension so does the audience. It’s a well-crafted 6-minute short shown largely from the perspective of a girl frozen in terror, and the point of view works. Shots from inside a bedroom closet through a blind emphasise the hidden viewer; it’s not surprising, maybe, that Chalté’s other short at this year’s festival, “Le otta dita della morte,” is a tribute to the surreal paranoia of the giallo film.)

For the sake of completeness, a bit of background on Detective Dee: Di Renjie was a magistrate and duke in 7th-century China who became the hero of an 18th-century Chinese detective novel by an anonymous author. (The first part of this novel, Four Great Strange Cases of Empress Wu’s reign, or Wu Zetian si da qi an, would be translated into English as Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee by Dutch diplomat Robert van Gulik in 1949; van Gulik would go on to write a series of his own about Dee’s adventures.) The novel shows Dee solving multiple crimes at once, with the help of dreams, a ghost, and a team of constables who skilled in martial arts; detective novels, as invented in China around 1600 (called gong’an fiction, “case records of a public law court”), often included elements of the supernatural as key aspects of the plot. At any rate, Judge Dee, or Detective Dee, has starred as the hero of numerous TV shows and films over the years in both China and the West.

Most relevant here, in 2010 Tsui Hark made Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, written by Chen Kuofu with Andy Lau as Dee. In 2013 Hark made a prequel, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon, with a script he wrote with Chang Chialu. Now comes The Four Heavenly Kings, a second prequel that’s set after the second movie but before the first one. As in the last, Dee’s played by Mark Chao, Shaofeng Feng plays Dee’s foil Yuchi Zhenjin of the Ministry of Justice, and Lin Gengxin is Dee’s friend and ally, doctor Shatuo Zhong. As the movie opens, Dee’s been granted custody of the “Dragon Taming Mace,” a magical item powerful enough to save a country from any threat, or to destroy it. The somewhat sinister Empress Wu (Caria Lau) feels threatened by the mace in Dee’s hands, and plots to regain it, enlisting the aid of Yuchi Zhenjin — and a clan of wizards. But there’s something more going on behind the scenes, involving mind control, secrets of the founding of the Tang dynasty, and the mysterious Faceless Lord.

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For my last movie of 2018 in the Fantasia screening room I selected a Canadian horror movie called Lifechanger. Written and directed by Justin McConnell, it follows an entity named Drew (narrated by Bill Oberst Jr), who, born human, at age 12 developed the ability and need to change bodies with other people (which Drew does repeatedly through the movie, tying the film together with voice-over ruminations; thus the “narrated by” in the previous parenthesis). The process kills the other person, and leaves Drew trapped in a swiftly decaying body. For decades, he’s had to keep changing bodies every few days, the inevitable rot slowed only slightly by doses of cocaine. Lately, though, he’s convinced himself he’s fallen in love with a woman named Julia. Drew wants to be close to her, but how can he do that given what he is?

That the question feels meaningful makes the movie a success. It’s odd as a story, with beats in unusual places. Drew never seems too curious about his own nature. Which makes sense; by the time we meet him, he’s resigned himself to the terms of his existence. Still, the movie occasionally feels convenient; his habit of living a few days as one of his victims, for example, feels as though it’d be unsustainable. The plotting here is not the strongest, I think, and I didn’t feel tension build in a traditional way. But it’s an interesting film nevertheless.

This is a small-scale movie, a kind of neighbourhood supernatural horror story set in a suburb of Toronto. It feels a little like the low-budget horror films that filled video store shelves in the 80s, but viewed from a different and somewhat more sophisticated angle. It’s a kind of revisionist horror movie, taking the genre and taking a new look at its framework and structure, keeping what makes those things work while using a different narrative approach. The aim here is not gore, though there is that, but explication of character through the use of horror. As such it succeeds; Drew feels like somebody who’s responding as a human being in an inhuman situation — and so has become inhuman himself, and now accepts the inhumanity as natural.

Drew’s a monster, then, so it’s not surprising that he doesn’t consider being honest with Julia about his nature. The movie manages a tricky balance here: Oberst’s dry narration and the sharp script keep Drew at least interesting, though he’s fundamentally unsympathetic on a number of levels. Drew’s got a certain amount of self-knowledge but views mass-murder as merely a necessity for his own survival; being that self-obsessed, he stalks Julia, in a number of different bodies, trying to find out where she lives and whatever information he can that will help him get close to her.

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The second film I saw on the last day of Fantasia was a Korean remake of a Spanish original. The Vanished (사라진 밤) was written and directed by Chang-hee Lee, and is based on the 2012 film The Body (El cuerpo), which was written by Oriol Paulo and Lara Sendim and directed by Paulo. Lee’s film begins with a mysterious attack on a morgue security guard who may have seen a supposedly-dead woman (Hie-ae Kim) very much alive. At any rate, the body’s missing now. The police investigate, led by Jung-sik Woo (Sang-kyung Kim), who calls the husband of the deceased Seol-hee, Jin-han Park (Kang-woo Kim), to the morgue and ends up holding him for questioning. Did Jin-han have a hand in Seol-hee’s apparently-natural death? Or is someone seeking vengeance on him? What about his mistress, Hye-jin (Ji-an Han)? Questions and strange incidents multiply, as the police struggle to solve the crime before dawn, when they must let Jin-han go.

This is a movie that challenges the audience to work out what’s happening. Theoretically, even describing what genre it is could be construed as a spoiler; there’s an experimental drug that enters the story, and opens the door to various different possibilities. I can say, though, that there’s a fair-play aspect to the film. It’s quite possible to figure out by at least the half-way mark roughly what’s happening. For better or worse, I can say this because I did figure out what was happening without particularly trying to. I don’t know that it’d be fair to say that the film’s obvious, though; I happened to pick up on a couple of visual clues, and I’m not sure whether that’s chance or whether that’s good directing by Lee. I suspect it’s not intended, as certain scenes played out as though they were still meant to be mysterious. At any rate, I can say that if a certain amount of tension necessarily goes out of the film when you know what’s going on, it continues to be a solid story.

Some of that is just because The Vanished is technically sound. The location where much of it takes place, the morgue that stores Seol-hee’s body, is shot remarkably well. It has a slick, high-tech feel, but also a definite horror sense. There’s something claustrophobic about the building, filled with small rooms and odd nooks. And echoing halls, and an emptiness that can’t be defined. Conversely, the film also uses flashbacks fairly extensively, so the audience doesn’t get bored of the location. The lighting’s moody at every turn, but is on the whole notably brighter in flashback — still cold, still atmospheric, but brighter than the shadow-filled morgue. Tension’s ramped up by the time element: a clock appears every so often on screen, reminding us how little time remains before Jin-han has to be released, and making us question whether we should be rooting for him or against him.

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