WILD TALES
Directed by Damian Szifron
2014
Ms. Hen didn’t know what to expect from this film, and she
forgot the reason she wanted to see it was because it was the foreign film
nomination from Argentina for the Oscars this year. Ms. Hen tries to see most
of the foreign film Oscar nods because she thinks they are usually the best
movies of the year.
This film is like a collection of short stories. Six films
make a whole, and each one is connected to the other. The characters aren’t the
same in each piece, but the situations are all similar: revenge. These are
characters that want to inflict their revenge on another person or several people.
On a airplane flight, everyone realizes that they are all
acquainted with the same man and that the situations they all had with him all ended badly. The
next film is about a waitress in a restaurant caught in the problem of trying
to decide to poison the man who ruined her life. Another film is about a man
and a car and another man and another car and violence.
One short is about a man whose car is towed and wants to get
back at the towing company and the government. Another film is about a hit and run accident, and the
wealthy man who tries to get his gardener to take the blame for the wayward
son. The last film is about a wedding at which a bride discovers her groom has
cheated on her.
All these shorts have a negative ending except the last one
about the wedding. These films show the darker side of human nature. Ms. Hen
loves that. She wondered if some of these situations would actually take place
in the United States. The films brim with machismo, especially the
one about the men and the cars. Ms. Hen couldn’t help but think this film was unnecessarily violent.
Even though she did think a number of the films were
violent, some of them reminded her of her favorite writers. The film about the
men and the cars reminded Ms. Hen so much of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is
Hard to Find,” that she couldn’t help but like it. It is about driving down
the highway, thinking that everything is fine, and it turns out that everything
is not fine and the character’s life is ruined.
The film about the man and the towing company reminded
her of Kafka’s THE TRIAL, because it was about a man trying to cope with the
complex system of bureaucracy. Ms. Hen thinks that Kafka would like the ending
of this film much better than the ending of THE TRIAL because the little person
sticks it to the man in charge.
WILD TALES is a dark film that might not be for everyone. But
it is dark in a way that is real, and it shows us that we live in a
screwed up world. But the last film, about the wedding, portrays life as it is,
the people think everything is over, but they deal with it
and keep going. That is what we should learn from this film, that we should
keep moving ahead. Ms. Hen gives this film an enthusiastic five feathers up.
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