Maurice's Thesis Pieces

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Climax (2018)

Gaspar Noe’s newest film - Climax, is his most fun film to date and his best film to date. And that’s saying a lot.

Climax is about a group of European dancers in France hanging out in a dancehall, doing their final rehearsal for their last dance performance of the season. Things are great, fun and exciting until they start to realize that someone has spiked their refreshments with huge amounts of LSD. Let the games began!

Gaspar Noe spares no expensive depicting what it is to be unbelievably high, with nightmare logic, violence, sexual gratification, jealousy, distrust, suicidal thoughts, his classic touch of misogyny and coloured lighting. All wrapped in a grounded, supposed true-tale with the best dance choreography caught on film in recent memory, and an infectious beat bumping soundtrack that makes you think everything with be fine until the nightmare kicks in.

Climax has you carefully get to know its characters, and puts certain personality types together for an anticipation of dread when you realize things are going to get worse. Especially when one of its characters is a child. Climax pulls from the familiar human experience of being under the influence; when at a party and witnessing a tiny disagreement between two people and forgetting about it, but only later on in the night realizing it has turned into a physical altercation, due to massive alcohol consumption. The film takes us through a series of one-take familiar drunken party experiences, and dials it up to 1000. Using an Irreversible type logic, Climax eventually shows us the aftermath of something we forgot or were thinking about in a prior scene, and that now we have discovered with a character of the film just discovering the aftermath themselves.

The reason this could be Gaspar Noe’s best film, is because while holding all the classic Gaspar Noe tropes of hell on earth, Climax also provides variety from those tropes, with amazing choreography, great soundtrack, variety in hellish plot points and surprisingly colourful characters, directed in a truly absorbing frightfully striking way. One negative I could say, is that Climax doesn’t paint its black characters in the greatest of portrayals but none the less, Climax is a must, an ACTUAL must. 9/10.

Maurice Jones

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Tyrel (2018) - My Real Favourite Film of 2018

My real favourite film of 2018; Tyrel, is about a black man named Tyler, who joins his white friend for a weekend of hanging out with other white dudes, anticipating a weekend of racist microaggressions and dude bro alcoholism and REM sing a long’s; in which being a fan of REM I wouldn’t mind but I get what Tyler is going through.

Tyrel is a very grounded and true to life take of what would really happen in this situation. If Get Out is the satirical take on people of colour around a group of white people, then Tyrel is the realistic take of people of colour around a group of white people.

Racism that people like myself and other people of colour go through, is sometimes passive and seems passive, but it’s still racism in some way. It negatively builds on our minds and therefore warps our perceptions of the world and ourselves. Tyrel’s subject matter is about how a person of color in a sea of white people couldn’t fully be themselves or talk about race fully, just so they don’t become the person who ruins the fun of a party. It’s about how white people tend to get away with anything and fell they can do anything, as people colour have to watch their steps to avoid persecution. From black checking us to not feeling safe wearing a dorag to sleep to avoid bullying, to people of colour treating other people of colour as a problem in the presents of white people.

Jason Mitchell's performance as Tyler is the best of his career so far, and if there is a god he'll get some sort of an award at some point for his acting; not that awards are important but...

Tyrel director Sebastian Silva is Chilean and gay, and clearly grabs from his own oppressed perspective, and continues his skill of creating a rollercoaster of escalating and deescalating situational dramedies such as his films: The Maid and Nasty Baby. Films that at first just seem like nothings happening within a realistic fly on the wall context, but that seemingly being the point and in which works so well in Tyrel. The movies point is that it appears that nothing bad is happening but to the character Tyler a lot is happening and that’s the perspective of a person of colour. When it comes to white people’s micro aggressions; (like a certain audience watching this film) some white people don’t know something is happening, when in actuality to someone like Tyler a lot is happening, and therefore Tyrel is an extremely eventful and insightful film even if it’s unnoticed to some. 10/10.

- Maurice Jones