Film review - Man Bites Dog (C'est arrivé près de chez vous)

Rating: 9/10
Summary: A work of evil genius

Your reaction to this film, I can promise you, will be one of two:
1. I find it completely unwatchable
2. It is darkly-funniest movie ever made

Another promise I can make without hesitation is that you won't be able to watch this movie without cringing. This film makes Reservoir Dogs look like Bambi. Sure, there are more cringeworthy movies (Audition, Ai No Corrida), but these set out to merely shock, not entertain. And Man Bites Dog almost dares you not to laugh. In this way, it is very much like a Bill Hicks sketch: take an uncomfortable premise like abortion (or, in the film, rape, robbery and murder) and see if you can get the audience to laugh at it, then turn up the violence a notch, and make you feel uncomfortable and guilty for having laughed in the first place. The story is of a low-ranking, no-good-for-anyone, semi-intelligent self-taught philosopher, whom we join somewhere along his killing spree. We, the viewers, do this by looking through the lens of a camera crew, who are following the killer's every move. The killer has a dubious moral conscious: he sees himself as a modern-day Robin Hood, except that his justifications for his acts ring hollow and arbitrary, and he is not exactly kind to those to whom he redistributes his ill-gain wealth (which, hilariously, includes the film crew, who have run out of money to buy more film stock; the killer thus becomes the financier of the movie). As the film crew become more and more involved, they intricate themself, and you start asking yourself how it is that this movie is ever going to be released (which it must have been, since we are watching it). It draws on the same kind of paranoia as, say, Dostoevky or Kafka. As the whole project comes off the rails, we witness a brutal rape scene, and even I found myself thinking - was this really necessary? Then I realize that I have been caught out by the film: I am editorializing, and have become the fourth member of the film crew, thereby giving up any last semblance of distance from the events, and becoming more than a voyeur - a participant in the acts the film portrays. And herein lies the film's true genius: it is exactly what it is, nothing more, nothing less. It looks shaky and grainy, because it was made by a bunch of film students with no money. The sound is crappy because of the same reason. You feel you are following a murderer, because you are (oh, no, of course not, he is an actor, I have to keep reminding myself). In a way, it is reminiscent of the Blair With Project, but whereas there was no point to that film, there is to this one. Namely, it questions our voyeuristic nature, in the process blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, good and bad, complicity and responsibility, and does this by getting under your skin, reaming some gashes, and then dare you not to pick at the scabs.