It's TEA TIME with THOMAS ZACHARY TOLES, The Film Corner's All New Columnist: Draw up thine comfy chairs for some High Tea at Oxford University, as Rhodes Scholar, young Master Thomas Zachary Toles gives BREAKING BAD a jolly good thrashing.

If you require a better view of Thomas and his illustrious credentials, please click on the friendly masthead just above.

Walter White Privilege: Facile Empathy in Breaking Bad

By Film Corner Tea Time Columnist THOMAS ZACHARY TOLES

Given that Better Call Saul, the spin-off of Vince Gilligan’s universally acclaimed Breaking Bad has placed its first record-breaking season six-feet-under (in slavering anticipation of the second season, ordered by AMC before Season One even aired), it’s high time for a critical reexamination of the series that started it all, a show that pretends to test the limits of our empathy while rewarding its viewers for lazily aligning with a singular, dominant perspective.

Let us examine what is broken and bad with Breaking Bad.

"Let's just blow EVERYBODY the fuck away!"

Walter White (Bryan Cranston), an overqualified chemistry teacher with an ego, is driven to meth dealing and murder by the onset of lung cancer. He hopes to earn enough to cover his exorbitant treatment costs and posthumously bequeath a large sum for his family. The apparent premise of the show is: to what extent can this ordinary man justify his increasingly immoral behaviour with ostensibly compassionate motives? How long will the viewer’s allegiance to Walt last before siding with him becomes impossible?

Breaking Bad’s great fault, however, is that it creates a warped world in which there is effectively no human alternative to Walt. He is the cleverest, coolest, most compelling person in the show, unquestionably a better meth cook than any Hispanic cartel member who preceded him. The genius middle-class white man with crazed ambition (the American dream!) is glorified in his corruption while the devastating effects of meth addiction on impoverished communities are only shown once or twice in the entire series. Walter White is “Whiteman,” America’s presiding figure--a superhero of narcissistic greed.

The emotional consequences of Walt’s actions on his family and other major characters are deceptively insubstantial. The wronged family includes his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn), a character so unsympathetic to most fans that desperately cheating on her lying drug-dealer husband was widely deemed unforgivable. Then there are his children: Walt Jr. (RJ MItte), whose primary arc consists of driving lessons and breakfast consumption, and Holly (Elanor Anne Wenrich), a baby forgotten as frequently by the show’s writers as Maggie is by Homer Simpson.

Skyler is a controversial case because, as Erin Gloria Ryan (writer and managing editor of JEZEBEL) argued, fan hatred for her was due to misogyny, despite the show’s loud assertions of her blamelessness. I counter that her blamelessness reflects Gilligan’s inability to imagine a rich inner life for the character. Skyler’s existence separate from Walt’s endeavours, and her pain, become increasingly vague as the show takes Walt’s continuing survival as its central concern. Walt also causes anguish for Jesse (Aaron Paul), his partner-in-crime, but Walt’s final sacrifice for Jesse allows the older man’s manipulations to be overshadowed by the real villains of the show.

Breaking Bad ends by establishing a ludicrous dichotomy between Walt (a human with flaws--like us) and the fantasy of truly evil people (neo-Nazis) who, unlike Walt, don’t have their reasons. Walt confesses his selfishness (self-awareness achieved!) and redeems himself by vanquishing actual, uncomplicated evil and rescuing Jesse.

Walter White and Edward Hyde: Happy Bedfellows!

For the show’s legions of viewers, Walt has been a surrogate Mr. Hyde, allowing us to tacitly revel in his immorality from the safety of our couches. Breaking Bad relies on the seductive illusion that our dark sides can be outsourced to Walt, vicariously embraced, and then neutralized with Walt’s death and his accompanying self-awareness (that we are invited to share).

Gilligan expresses his desire to redeem Walt and provide a satisfying, palatable ending in his comments on a possible alternate ending in which Walt shoots up a jail to free Jesse:

“[W]e kept asking ourselves, ‘Well, how bad is Walt going to be at the end here? Is he going to kill a bunch of upstanding, law-abiding jail guards? What the hell kind of ending is that?’”

Gilligan wants closure and gratification for his audience; he does not want to leave them frustrated or confused. Walt’s redemption purges the viewer’s guilt for fetishizing him, tying up the show’s loose ends on a chilling note of admiration.

Fiction has the power to vividly portray disorder and ambiguity, in ways that may help us reach a wider, more empathetic outlook. Yet Breaking Bad rewards its viewers for lionizing its slick, troubled protagonist, not challenging us to peer at the peripheral figures beyond him.

Countless Americans are indifferent to the commonplace killings of unarmed people of colour by police officers—proclaiming that Mike Brown, Miriam Carey, Eric Garner, and many others just shouldn’t have broken the law. Undoubtedly, many of these same Americans readily accepted Walt’s violent criminality.

Breaking Bad dangerously inhibits empathy for real-life abuses of power because it predominantly asks its viewers to identify with the one character with both authority and explicit motives. Walt is a complex figure surrounded by stereotypes like Tuco’s homicidal cousins, whose non-existent personalities are only justified by their brutish foreignness.

Breaking Bad encourages empathy for yet another white authority figure (who kills, like Darren Wilson or George Zimmerman, when he “fears for his life”), while disregarding the humanity of those less powerful than he.

A narrow vision, indeed.

Breaking Bad is available in Canada by clicking HEREand in the United States of America by clicking HEREand in the Jolly Old United Kingdom by clicking HERE The first 10 episodes of Season One of Better Call Saul premiered on AMC on February 8, 2015.

All photo collages by GJK

THE VATICAN EXORCISMS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - MockDoc a Smelly Crock o' Poo

The Vatican Exorcisms (2013)
Dir. Joe Marino
Starring: Joe Marino, Piero Maggio

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is a mock-doc that really wants us to think it's a doc and not a mock-doc, but as either, it's so unmitigatedly awful, that it really doesn't matter what the purported filmmakers want us to believe because the only thing that keeps us watching is to see just how awful a movie can get.

I'll admit the title hooked me. Hell, I'm always happy to watch anything involving exorcism at least once and the notion of Vatican exorcisms had me chomping at the bit. I'll also admit I never judge a DVD by its cover, but when I got the screening copy, my eyes bugged out with anticipation when I saw the deliciously disgusting image of an albino-like demon with shrivelled skin, sores and other viscous details.

Anchor Bay will, no doubt, sell a crapload of DVDs at Wal-Mart based on the cover alone. I'm hoping that "People of Walmart.com" will have some choice shots of some real toothless doozies showing too much ass-crack from their pants falling down as they gaze intently at the cover artwork. Kudos to the Anchor Bay marketing team, but Jesus, this movie stinks.

Joe, a "filmmaker" informs us he's making a documentary about exorcism. In fact, he informs us about everything. He tells us he's going to meet his crew. A few seconds later, he does. Standing in front of a church, he informs us he will be going inside and, guess what? He does. He tells us he's going to be interviewing a real live exorcist from the Vatican. Wouldn't you know it, he does.

At one point during the aforementioned interview, the priest asks Joe what he wants of him. (It appears the priest isn't too smart.) Joe replies that he wants to meet the Devil.

"And so you shall," answers the priest.

If I'd been in a charitable mood, that moment would at least have elicited a few unintentional guffaws on my part, but by then, the picture had been so rank, I was compelled to do little but stare slack-jawed at my TV set. (Apologies for not thinking to take a selfie of that moment for your edification.)

The rest of the film includes endless scenes of Joe talking to the camera in his hotel room, always telling us what we just saw, in case, uh, I guess, we didn't see it, in spite of the fact that we did. (Sometimes, when he's in his hotel room, he makes a point of telling us that's precisely where he is.)

He also talks into the camera about what he's going to do the next day or in the next shot. Lo and behold, it happens and then he can talk to the camera again to describe what we just saw.

And what do we see? Not much - just several tediously lame exorcisms which supposedly increase in intensity (but don't) and, no surprise, Joe gets possessed by Satan. And yes, he tells us all about it.

Then he disappears.

His wife helpfully tells us he has, in fact, disappeared, though we already know this. Then the movie ends and we wonder who actually finished the film. His wife? Or Satan?

I'd normally put my money on Satan, but chances are, he's a pretty sharp dude and would never make a movie so utterly godawful. If you've already bought the movie, you will, at least, have a nice coaster to place drink-poos upon. If you haven't made the purchase, don't bother, unless you're desperate for a new coaster.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL AND DINING LOUNGE - For a full explanation and history of this rating, click HERE.

The Vatican Exorcisms is available on Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada DVD. The film is so poorly shot, the transfer can't help. The only extras are a trailer and a laughable Photo Gallery which appears to be comprised of 4 screen captures from the digital tape source.

CHEATIN' - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Noir Meets Opera Meets Pulp Meets Melodrama

Cheatin' (2013)
Dir. Bill Plympton

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A new animated feature film by Bill Plympton is always cause for celebration because nobody, but no-body makes movies like he does. His perverse sense of humour blended with an innate (if not submerged, but always present) sweetness and most of all, his unique visual style, add up to cooler than cool.

Cheatin' might be my favourite Plymptoon yet. It's a deceptively simple romantic comedy: girl meets boy, they fall madly in love, they marry, boy thinks girl is cheating even though she's as loyal as loyal can be, boy doesn't let on that he thinks girl is cheating, boy considers suicide but chooses revolving door infidelity, girl is devastated and doesn't know how to get his love back until she meets a mad circus magician who can transfer her spirit into the myriad of bodies whom the boy is dallying with. Reconciliation seems inevitable. Or is it? Is this mad plan fraught with danger? Yeah, probably.

What Plympton has wrought with this basic (on paper) love story, which then adds an unexpected, but very welcome fantastical twist, is layered with sheer mad inspiration. He blends several shades of genre and storytelling style to render one of the most original films I've seen in many a year. Juxtaposing the seedier elements of middle America like carnivals, roadside gas stations and sleazy motels, with the sun-dappled heaven of green lawns, cozy suburban bungalows, beauty parlours and fancy dress shoppes, Plympton manages to out-Blue-Velvet Blue Velvet by wallowing greedily and happily in the muck of both darkness and light.

Plympton begins his tale with the beautiful, stylish Ella, gorgeously attired in a bright yellow dress and wide-brimmed hat with a long red ribbon wafting across the drooling, enchanted faces of boner-induced men, her face buried deep in a book as she strides forward through the streets and eventually a carnival replete with rides and sideshows. Torso forward, her eyes glued to words on the page seem to naturally propel her. She doesn't at all notice every single man ogling her with eyes popped and fixed upon her with such distraction that they cause all manner of mishaps amongst each other (and raising the ire of their frumpy wives and girlfriends). Barkers try to distract her to partake of their wares and it's only until she is literally hooked and yanked into a bumper car ride does she take her nose out of her book.

Hell, this looks like fun.

She jumps into a vehicle and the bumper madness begins. And here is where love blossoms. Plympton hands us a stereotypical "meet-cute" of such absurd proportions that one wishes every "meet-cute" in every movie could be this insane. Let's not give too much away save for describing the physical elements it involves: a bumper car on its side, a dazed Ella in a pool of water, a snapped electrical cable whipping around and sparking up a storm and Jake, a dreamy hunk who's been unable to keep his eyes off Ella (and she to him) and risks his life to save hers.

It's a meet-cute that yields love gone mad.

This leads to one of the most demented love montages I've ever seen with Jake and Ella crooning the joyous Libiamo Ne' Lieti Calici from "La Traviata" to each other as their bodies whirl about, split apart into various pieces, meld in and out of each other, with gondola rides across massive bathtubs, soaring high in flying roadsters, an entire suburban household coming to life and singing the chorus - items in the refrigerator, slabs of butter, carrots - anything and everything that can morph into a dizzying surrealist melange of cartoon images that leaves both the Fleischer Brothers and Disney's Silly Symphonies way behind like so much dust in the wind.

Seeing Ella spread-eagled and popping out one baby after another into Jake's arms is a fantasy image I suspect I'll take with me to my grave.

Disaster strikes when a jealous dress shop owner snaps an incriminating photo of the innocent Ella and places it in Jake's hands as a means to drive him into her arms. It works. He's so devastated, so heartbroken, that he begins balling Madame Dress-Shoppe and virtually every woman who wants him (and it is a ludicrous number). At one point, a devastated Ella secures the services of a hired killer, but when that goes wrong and the couple's life as lovebirds is doomed to a purgatorial wasteland, she secures the assistance of the grand impresario of magician-ship, El Mertos.

You want unhinged, unbridled, completely preposterous forays into the fantastical? Never fear. Plympton delivers big time since El Mertos has the aforementioned mysterious, dangerous and magical machine that can transport Ella's soul into the bodies of ALL the women Jake is boning in Room 4 of the ultra-sleazy E-Z Motel.

Plympton not only pulls off a miracle of mad romanticism, he does so by blending opera, pulp fiction, film noir and almost Douglas Sirkian-high-melodrama. Not only that, but the entire movie has NO dialogue. It's pure visual storytelling with a knockout soundtrack that includes an astounding original score by Nicole Renaud blended with the previously mentioned piece from "La Traviata" in addition to the heartbreaking Leoncavallo's Vesti la Giubba (sung by Caruso, no less), Ravel's Bolero and King Bennie Nawahi singing the immortal south seas exotica of Muana Keana.

Cheatin' is sheer madness and as joyous an experience as you're likely to have at the movies in these dark days of imagination-bereft cinema. If you live in Toronto, you have just one night, one chance to see it on the big screen.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Cheatin' plays for one night at The Royal Cinema in Toronto on May 20, 2015. It deserves a longer run than that. Hopefully other independent Canadian Exhibitors will play the film. In the meantime, I highly recommend you buy the DVD from E.D. Distribution in France. They not only released the film properly/theatrically, but now have it on their very distinctive label. Cheatin' is known in France as Les Amants électriques. Order directly from their website. While you're visiting it, you'll notice they have a shitload of Bill Plympton titles. They're gorgeous packages/transfers. I know. I've got 'em all. Browse the site. They have the coolest, most eclectic catalogue of titles one could ever imagine. They're not only the best distributor of wacko art in France, but one of the best in the world. I know. They distribute a bunch of my crazy-ass film productions. Visit the website by clicking HERE.

AVENGED - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Redsploitation Payback Thriller with Babe n' arrows

Avenged - aka Savaged - (2013)
Dir. Michael S. Ojeda
Starring: Amanda Adrienne, Tom Ardavany, Rodney Rowland

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Avenged (previously known on the film festival circuits and some foreign markets as Savaged) is an all-new entry in the cinematic lexicon known amongst genre geeks as "Redsploitation".

Compared to the 70s onslaught of "Blaxsploitation" (Shaft, Hell Up In Harlem, Slaughter, the list goes on and on and on), "Redsploitation" is a relatively tiny sub-genre of contemporary B-pictures. They differ from the urban African-American sex-and/or-violence-ridden fantasies in that their scope was limited to the stereotype of noble savages, often in rural (albeit mostly contemporary) locales and always involving the exacting of revenge upon Whitey for his callous treatment of Native Americans.

"Redploitation" always lacked variation in terms of character and plot. African-American characters could certainly have any number of stereotypical roles like gangsters, pimps and dealers, but they could also be cops, rights activists, just plain folk (though facing extraordinary hurdles requiring acts of violence) and in the case of star Pam Grier, she got to be a nurse in Coffy (albeit one who prowled dark corners blowing away pimps and dealers). In fact, women in Blaxploitation could, more often than not, hold their own with the men and not just be victims (the latter being the solitary roles for Native women in Redsploitation).

The grandaddy of the Native American action pictures were Tom Laughlin's hugely popular Billy Jack extravaganzas, but even these male fantasies, initially aimed at drive-ins, grind houses (and now in the days of waning public exhibition venues, DVD and VOD), developed huge mainstream acceptance whereas hardcore "Redsploitation" was linked to independent and/or much smaller distribution/exhibition outlets.

One of the "best" 70s forays into the sub-genre was Johnny Firecloud by William Allen Castleman. Generally better written than most of this fare, it also featured taut direction and a decent, mostly Native American cast. Starring Mexican actor Victor Mohica in the title role, the indignities perpetrated upon Johnny and his people are horrendous, but they pale in comparison to the genuinely satisfying revenge he exacts upon the dimwitted racist White losers: tomahawks, scalping, burying in the ground save for the head exposed to ants and the elements, plus other grim payback delights. Going a few steps further than most films of this ilk like Savege Harvest, Ransom, Thunder Warrior, Scalps and Cry For Me, Billy, Johnny Firecloud doesn't end in an orgy of total mind-numbing violence, but actually veers into the territory of ambiguity and, hence, a bit more reality than the aforementioned.

Avenged, co-produced by the visionary Canadian company Raven Banner with the American auteur Michael S. Ojeda is distinctive for being the most recent entry in "Redsploitation". Its cool blend of kick-ass revenge action with the supernatural and a nice combination of first-rate production values and some genuinely rigorous moviemaking craft, manages to put a whole whack of huger budgeted studio pictures to shame. Director Ojeda seldom favours the ludicrous ADHD-like shooting and cutting which plagues most super-hero and other recent wham-bam effects-laden extravaganzas. His shot selections are smartly considered, efficient and feature a nice variation in focal lengths and point of view choices (as opposed to the reliance upon too many close-ups and few mediums and wides that we see in $200-$300million indulgences). This allows his cuts to be rooted in dramatic action rather than spurred on by empty kinetics.

Narratively, Avenged is fairly straightforward, but with a few oddball deviations which allow us to feel like we're not watching something that's completely run-of-the-mill. Zoe (Amanda Adrienne) is a lithe, babe-o-licious, long-blonde-tressed beauty who decides to drive cross-country to meet up with her African-American boyfriend with the plan of moving in with him. Sounds simple enough, but the cool element Ojeda adds to this mix is that Zoe is challenged with being deaf and partially mute (she can form words, sentences, etc. but they're not always intelligible to those who don't know her). Though her Mother expresses trepidation, her sensitive beau realizes that her trip, as well as the decision to leave home and move into common-law bliss with him, is an important part of her continued journey of empowerment.

As these tales often go, she finds herself in the middle of nowhere (topography similar to John Ford's use of Monument Valley in his westerns) when she's witness to a horrific hit and run murder twixt a truck full of Good Old Boy Whitey Rednecks and a young Native man. Before she can hightail it out of there, she's boxed in and approached by the slavering, inbred White fellas. She's kidnapped and taken to the family's remote "estate" of White Trash decrepitude wherein she's grotesquely tied and affixed to a bed in an old shed with - yuck! - barbed wire.

It should be immediately noted that Ojeda does not sexualize nor salaciously dwell upon Zoe's inevitable gang rape by these scumbags. Thank Heaven for tender mercies. However, plenty of Hell is to follow. She manages to get away, but wrenching oneself from barbed wire bindings is not a pain-free, nor is it a pretty sight. Unfortunately, as she flees into the night, Zoe is mortally wounded with a scatter of buckshot from one of the rednecks and is left for dead in the rocky, sandy hills.

So, you're wondering: Where's the "Redsploitation?"

Oh, ye of little faith, here's the rub. The family of inbreds are descendants of a vicious cavalry commander who wiped out most of the Apaches in the area. Our villains are so proud of this, they worship their great-great-grandpappy's memory with slavish devotion - so much so that they continue butchering Native people whenever they can. Ojeda's narrative then adds the following tasty frisson: Legend has it, that the Chief of the local First Nations people swore eternal revenge upon his killer and all those who followed his family lineage. When a lone medicine man in the middle of the wilderness finds Zoe's battered, bloodied body, he attempts to revive her with some ancient ritual, but in so doing, he revives the spirit of the Apache Chief who melds his soul with Zoe and soon, you've got two spirits in one body that both need to extract revenge.

And believe you me, the vengeance is as sweet as it is stomach churning.

Okay, I've seen a lot of movies in my day and as moronic as the aforementioned spirit-melding may be, I have to admit it's pretty original as far as genre pictures go (though it has a few nods of homage in the direction of The Crow). And, you know, there's also something to be said for the pleasing (albeit ludicrous) image of a hot blonde adorned in feathers and war paint as she hunts down the vicious inbreds one-by-one. This (dubiously authentic) appropriation of Native culture is exploitative, but even as you see the nuts and bolts of this construct, it's perversely entertaining. Still, by using the tragic history of the local Natives is not without more than a few dollops of ethnocentrism if not outright racism, BUT, and this is a BIG "but", the film does go out of its way to utilize and address the stereotypical trappings of civilization and savagery that have been so-long married to Euro-centric notions of superiority as they relate to the inherent "lower order" of Indigenous Peoples. There is a clear awareness on the part of the filmmaker that he's playing with these elements, but in a contemporary context, he's allowing his imagination to run as rampant as all get out, which is certainly a far cry from the naiveté of filmmakers from earlier ages.

In her great book "When the Other is Me", Emma LaRocque provides a detailed analysis of "the dichotomy of civilization versus savagery [which] is the long-held belief that humankind evolved from the primitive to the most advanced, from the savage to the civilized." LaRocque notes that:

"racialized evolutionism has not entirely disappeared from the Western intellectual tradition. In disciplines of anthropology, history, political science, psychology, sociology, religion, and even in earlier Marxist thought, theories on human development were and still are largely premised on patriarchal, Eurocentric and evolutionary ideas about so-called primitive peoples."

Appropriating a tragic history and doing so within the "obviously doctrinaire and self-serving" civ/sav perspective which permeates Avenged, seems somewhat less egregious within the context of a sheer contemporary "entertainment". After all, this is not scholarship, but a piece of pure fiction that is so clearly fantasy, one would hope that even the lowest sub-strata of movie-fandom would assume that the use, or rather, misuse of stereotypical images of Native People is, in fact, ridiculously lacking in veracity.

Then again, our modern world continues to be sadly fraught with ignorance of the lowest order. Given that, even a film like Avenged falls into a strange never-never land of (mis)appropriation. LaRocque's own scholarship presents the interesting findings that "White writers often portrayed 'Indians' as savage creatures who tortured and mutilated White bodies", though clearly, Ojeda's film presents the exact opposite (at least initially). The Whites in his film are the slavering, savage, psychotic violators - not just of a physically challenged woman, but contemporary Native people as an extension of the violent historical genocide of Natives. In this context I'm especially interested in how LaRocque also points out a reversal of "the violation" since "contemporary Native writers also turn the tables on the colonizer to point out White cruelty and contradictions; in effect, to point to White savagery."

I'm not 100% sure of filmmaker Ojeda's heritage, though his surname is certainly rooted in Spanish origin, one which in the South Western (or "Tex-Mex") states can often include Native DNA and cultural roots. Whatever the case may be, he is clearly having his cake and eating it too.

LaRocque admits that prior to being in "any position to critically examine the history and sociology of racism, [she] experienced a sense of shame and alienation from teachers, textbooks, comics, and movies that portrayed Indians as savages." Not surprisingly, her eventual pursuit of 'higher' education revealed how "many university professors and most textbooks presented Native peoples in as distorted and insulting ways" as the aforementioned mediums so that the "racist theme of Western civilization/Indian savagery was ever-present."

Given that Avenged, along with the Redsploitation sub-genre and the litany of literature and cinema over the past century (and then some) have wallowed shamelessly in lies and stereotypes, it's the scholarship which has yielded the most abominable violations of truth. The literature and popular culture of deception has been predominantly American and appallingly buttressed by American academics who support and defend (whilst denying) their racist scholarship within the sickening "star-spangled" flag-waving of "the American expansionist doctrine of Manifest Destiny."

Is it any wonder these stereotypes persist? "The notion" LaRocque argues "of 'civilization' and its antithesis 'savagery' are invariably defined and measured by Euro-White North American standards. It should be needless to point out that such an un-scientific belief is racist because it sets up Whites as superior and non-Whites as inferior."

So how then is (an admittedly) entertaining (albeit blood-spattered) trifle like Avenged dangerous? LaRocque points out that Aboriginal peoples "are still being hounded and haunted by White North America’s image machine, which has persistently portrayed them in extremes as either the grotesque ignoble or noble savage."

Avenged does double duty on this front.

When the "noble savage" medicine man accidentally conjures up the spirit of a revenge-crazed Apache warrior and allows it to morph with the equally violated and angry character of Zoe, she essentially becomes a zombie-like member of the living dead who exacts vengeance that's perhaps even more "savage" than the indignities perpetrated by the White inbred racist rednecks.

The again, I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't admit to gaining a fair degree of satisfaction seeing the White Trash get their comeuppance via bows and arrows, blades and in one pretty spectacular set piece (in terms of filmmaker Ojeda's directorial skill and sheer aplomb), wherein the Apache-warrior-possessed Zoe rips the intestines out of one of the "bad guys" with her own hands, pulling his guts out like a viscous rope that seems to have no end and causing the villain the most horrific (and equally endless) pain.

Thinking upon my own visceral response to this picture in relation to what I acknowledge is "wrong", I still can't help but applaud Ojeda's audacity. He takes us into some very dangerous territory and I'll take that over the commonplace, the fake vibes elicited from "feel-good" entertainments. Avenged dazzles because it yanks us, roller coaster-ride-like, back and forth, this way and that from extreme political, historical and cultural dichotomies.

It's an appalling film, but there is value in its terrible, terrible beauty.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Avenged (previously known as Savaged) is a Raven Banner production and world-wide release available on home video formats via Anchor Bay Canada. The extra features focusing upon the development and making of the film are especially interesting as they place solid emphasis upon director Michael S. Ojeda's considerable craft in terms of placing a visual emphasis upon his storytelling, but also how he works within the exigencies of modest financial resources to create a piece that feels far more imbued with production value than would normally be ascribed to such exploitation items.

THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN FullyLoadedDVDreviewedByGregKlymkiwAsBruntonPapputsPunkDocSlavetosMyDick

In anticipation of the upcoming 2015 Toronto Hot Docs International Festival of Documentary Cinema, The Film Corner continues its thrill-packed countdown to said event with a DVD review of a kick-ass documentary, that, to my knowledge, never played at Hot Docs, but most definitely should have played there since every screening would have been sold right the fuck out.

Of course, the cherry on the punk puke sundae would have been the experience of every theatre unspooling the picture being trashed to shit by happy old Punks, responding with glee to the barrage of sound and image designed to activate voltage-gated calcium conduits via their few remaining synaptic neurotransmissions.

Well, we can, at least dream, can't we? They do, after all, shoot horses, don't they? Indeed they do and such are the stuff nightmares are indeed made of.

THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN by Colin Brunton and Kire Papputs is a thrilling epic journey into Toronto's legendary punk rock scene. The MEGA-2-DISC-DVD not only looks and sounds fucking great (especially the sound cuz it's been mixed by the best fucking sound mixer in Canada, Daniel Pellerin), but is a first-rate home entertainment sausage sack stuffed to overflowing; FULLY LOADED with MIND-FUCKING EXTRA FEATURES, a handsome cardboard case with tons o' vomitously beautiful colours, drawings and designs, including a GEEK'S DELIGHT COLLECTIBLE BOOKLET with all manner of KOOL RETRO SHIT dappling each and every page.

And the movie?

It's a Joseph-Conrad-like tugboat ride into some kind of Living Fucking Hell that always feels like a Heaven as imagined by Anton LaVey or, as the testicle-cheeked Lady in the Eraserhead Radiator crooned, "In Heaven, Everything is Fine."

As such, directors Colin Brunton and Kire Papputs are the two halves of Capt. ("Exterminate with extreme prejudice") Willard on a blood-and-piss-soaked mission that has an ambiguous opening and no real end.

If there is a heart of darkness on display, a Kurtz, if you will, it's like every goddamned Status Quo fuck-wad that ignored this exciting cultural scene when it happened in the 70s.

I have two minor quibbles with this DVD, though.

Here's the first: The movie that's included here is the final release cut and don't get me wrong, it's fucking great, but I had the glorious opportunity to see a totally fucking nutzoid 4-HOUR version in a real movie theatre in the East End of Toronto that was packed with old punks giving each other contact highs from decades of collectively ingesting hard-line hallucinogens and guzzling cheap hootch.

I loved that version so much, I was hoping directors Brunton and Papputs would have included a third disc called "The Totally Fucked Version That Only One Sicko Preferred To Our Much Better Final Release Version." And yeah, you get the better version here, BUT, I will always have a soft-spot in my BRAIN for the really long version and believe me, it was REALLY fucking long - longer than Rejean the Lumberjack's dick (and it lasted a lot longer than Rejean can last when he crams his smoked Montreal steamer-wiener through a glory hole).

So, uh, don't mind me.

The version you get here is already 205 minutes long. So buy the movie so that Brunton and Papputs can make so much dough they'll double-dip (in home entertainment parlance) and release a limited numbered edition steel box that has everything this version has, PLUS the 250 minute version, PLUS more outtakes (don't get me wrong, there are 90 minutes of EXTRAS on this sucker, but I KNOW there's gotta be more) and maybe, just maybe, some limited edition vinyl EPs from the soundtrack.

My second quibble is the fact that the handsome folder's covers include quotes from the esteemed critics Geoff Pevere and Norman Wilner, but where the fuck are MY quotes? Fuck you Brunton and Paputts! What am I? A piece of rotting fruit? I see quotes from people I've never fucking heard of, so where the fuck is one from me?

As I said, the quibbles are indeed minor.

So, whaddya get on this super-deluxe DVD? Plenty! Lots of added interviews that didn't make the final cut, Marv Newland's cartoon Bambi Meets Godzilla, a shitload of B-Movie trailers, more interviews, some cool shit about the long-gone 99-cent Roxy Theatre and my personal favourite, tons and tons of Nash the Slash! Yup, I'm not kidding. You get more of the late genius musician in the form of added interview footage, performance footage and a beautiful rendition of "Oh Canada" on Nash's electric violin.

Okay, so that's my spiel on the DVD. Just buy the fucking thing even if you have to hold up a convenience store. (Just make sure you don't blow someone away by accident or you'll be watching this movie on an endless loop in stir.)

But first, you need to read my review below. It's a slightly tweaked and rewritten version of what I first vomited into cyberspace after I saw the movie for the first time. You'll find out about WHY this movie is special to old punks all over the world with the added bonus of a lovely preamble discussing the time period, similar punk scenes in other cities (mostly Winnipeg) and then, yeah, the review of the movie proper.

So read on and on and on. The fuck else you doing this week anyway? Jerking off? Thumbing your asshole? Or sticking your dick through a glory hole to get some chump to slaveto the fuck out of it? Just read the fuckin' review, which, by the way, is a hallowed attempt to be firmly lodged in the spirit of the movie's asshole and like the movie, the review is full of good shit - so good, that by the end of this tome, I will provide some info on how you can buy this movie and make money for these clowns to put out the aforementioned double dip.

And then you can watch the fuckin' movie, already!

The Last Pogo Jumps Again (2012) ****
Dir. Colin Brunton, Kire Papputs

Review By Greg Klymkiw

PREAMBLE - Winnipeg's Punk Scene

So, like, some dude who works on the docks, his name is Réjean, corners you in a stall at Jilly's and says: "Suck my dick". We've all been there before. Right? Both parties are too skint to hit the V.I.P. room for some private dancing and before you can say, "Gimme summa dat luvvin, eh", you're greedily gobbling the knob of this bearded, seven-footer with a plaid shirt and hoping for a nice reach-around.

We've all been there.

Right?

So, okay, what if the same dude traps you in the shitter and growls, "Slaveto my dick!" - you're going to be, like, "The fuck, Réjean? You want me to WHAT?"

You see, from the late 70s until I-can't-remember-when, the aforementioned conversation played out in my mind whenever I drove by an old Winnipeg Garment District building in the Market Square area that featured this spray-painted graffiti prominently displayed on its grey cement wall:

 SLAVETO

 MY DICK

Moments after I first read those words (in double-take, mind you) I knew the graffiti was that great song "SLAVE TO MY DICK" by Vancouver punk band, The Subhumans. Some moron with a can of spray paint was shit-facedly inspired to splooge the words via aerosol in a prominent location. The bonehead placed the words "slave" and "to" too fucking close together. The graffiti managed to remained for decades after it first appeared - a beacon at the entranceway to this 7-or-8 square blocks in downtown Winnipeg that had become the stomping grounds of artists, actors, filmmakers, junkies, drunks, hookers and, of course, punks.

It was a scene, know what I mean?

And for about four years, the punk scene fuelled the crazy alternative filmmaking scene at the Winnipeg Film Group. I can't think of a single person in their mid-40s-to-50s from the 'Peg who makes movies and WASN'T part of that scene.

Great 'Peg punk and new wave bands - and I mean GREAT bands - belted out the coolest sounds imaginable. Bars like the Royal Albert or, my favourite, the "Chuckles" (or to malcontent veterans, the St. Charles Hotel) featured gig upon gig with local Winnipeg Punk/NewWavers like the Popular Mechanix, Personality Crisis, Dub Rifles, Lowlife, The Stretch Marks, Discharge, The Psychiatrists, The Bristow Hoppers - the list goes on and on - and bookers (often Winnipeg band members themselves) peppered the local acts with whatever punks from Toronto, Vancouver or the USA who could get their shit together enough to play the 'Peg.

I was running a West-End movie theatre that played mostly cult films, sometimes sprinkled with live acts ("Nash the Slash VS. Eraserhead" read one of the immortal handbills). The "Scene" would come see a movie or two, blast down to the garment district, catch a punk band, then head to Walter and Megan's Lithium Cafe to belt back joe with tired hookers and their hopped-up pimps.

This happened pretty much every night for many moons.

It's funny now, how many film or media people frolicked about the punk scene. John Paizs directed the quaintly perverse cinematic equivalent to 'Peg Punk with his brilliant short film The Obsession of Billy Botski and, years later he used the great Popular Mechanix song "IceBox City" during a joyous dance sequence in his immortal feature length cult classic Crime Wave. Guy Maddin blew his inheritance from Aunt Lil (her beauty parlour became the studio set for Tales from the Gimli Hospital) on 78 recordings of fruity 20s/30s tenors from this amazing store in Minneapolis, but also collected the most amazing number of punk albums which he purchased from Winnipeg's immortal Pyramid Records.

Guy would gather everyone round to his place, quaintly adorned with his late Aunt Lil's doilies, and spin Richard Crooks singing Stephen Foster's "Old Black Joe", then switching from 78 to 33 RPM, he'd announce something a bit more "challenging" was on its way - code for: this is some good shit I got from Pyramid Records and it's going to blow you the fuck away.

In delicious contrast to "Old Black Joe", the needle gently found its groove and the room swelled with the aural explosion of Feederz crooning "Jesus Entering From The Rear". Radio producer John Copsey (he wears suits now) led a punk band that devoted themselves to worshipping the survivalist movement as preached on Winnipeg's community cable station TV show "Survival" featuring yours truly and Guy Maddin as apocalypse-welcoming rednecks.

Lead singer of several great Winnipeg punk bands was none other than heartthrob Kyle McCulloch who starred in virtually every early John Paizs and Guy Maddin film and eventually became a head writer on TV's "South Park". And lest we forget, Canada's highly esteemed journalist and political pundit in all media, Mr. Andrew Coyne, took to the stage with several other burgeoning writers from the University of Manitoba newspaper and in punk tradition, nary a one of them could actually play, but they gave their all as The Nimrods.

Happy times for many. Times that led to even happier times - for some. All were ultimately inspired by Winnipeg's punk scene, but most of all, the brilliant local artists - the musicians who made you soar higher than a kite with kickass punk/new wave music were the big motivators who instilled a more anarchic, freewheeling, devil-may-care spirit in so many of us to push the limits of our own lives and artistic pursuits. 

The music, unlike the arts inspired by it, had NO outlets of support to take the music and musicians to the next natural level. There were a few limited tapes or EPs cut, a handful of extremely indie albums, but this genuinely brilliant period of Winnipeg music - post The Guess Who and pre The Crash Test Dummies - lives in the minds, memories and movies of all those who loved it deeply and were fuelled by seeing it LIVE - night after night after blessedly blasphemous night.

THE MEAT & CORNMEAL OF THE POGO STICK CALLED TORONTO PUNK: YEAH, NOW YOU GET YOUR FUCKING FILM REVIEW OF

THE COLIN BRUNTON & KIRE PAPPUTS EPIC DOC

It took about 30 seconds of screen time for me to feel a surge of the old excitement I used to get in my late teens and early 20s in the aforementioned Winnipeg Scene. Here I was, watching The Last Pogo Jumps Again, the alternately thrilling and depressing but ultimately powerful story of the Toronto Scene de la PUNK and it mattered not that it was Toronto. Hell, I kind of felt like I was back in Winnipeg all over again.

I embraced the crazy, scrappy, downright dangerous insanity of this terrific documentary and fully accepted its body, its blood - like an unholy sacrement drained and scourged from the everlasting soul of Sid Vicious himself who died, NOT for OUR sins, but for his own and for the rest of us who were willing to commit our own - no matter how heinous or benign. This downright wonderful picture by Brunton and Papputs is a sacrament and I accept its fuck-you-filmmaking-moxie as much as I allow its people, places and music into my very soul as if they were my very own.

On the surface - this is a movie that shouldn't work - at least not by the standards of many un-cool fuck-wads who make cultural decisions in this country at both the public and private sectors - propped up comfortably on the nests they feather atop the podiums they take their dumps-a-plenty from as if they were showering the Great Unwashed with gold. It shouldn't work, but it does. Some might say it is solely about a subject only 100 or so people might get into. They'd be wrong. Others will complain (usually without seeing it) that the movie is too long - 3 hours and 20 minutes PLUS an intermission. Again - WRONG. I saw a much longer version and then this shorter version and frankly, I wish the filmmakers stuck to the original length. In fact, they could have made it even longer for some extra-sweet fuck-you cherries on the ice cream sundae.

Some might say the movie is a mess. Yeah, it is - sort of, but brilliantly and subversively it's a documentary equivalent to the punk scene itself and that's one of the many things I admire about it.

Here's the deal, when legendary Canadian film producer Colin Brunton was a teenager, he worked as an usher at the Roxy Theatre in Toronto - a deliciously fucked joint on the East End that combined 99-cent double features of art films and art sleaze with a kick-ass music scene. This temple of all things anti-peace-love-and-prebyterianism-a-la-Toronto was the jumping off point for so many who would contribute to one of the most thrilling music in the country.

Eventually the Scene moved further west in the otherwise Presbyterian pole-up-the-ass city. Pockets of fuck-you exploded at the New Yorker Theatre, along Spadina, in Kensington and, of course, Queen Street West when it wasn't full of fuck-wit rich people pretending to be poor. And the biggest fuck-you explosion in Toronto was the exciting punk rock new wave scene.

Brunton and Papputs focus on a two year window - beginning at the Roxy and New Yorker Theatre gigs and ending with the famous Last Pogo when the Horseshoe Tavern on Queen decided to flush punk off its stages forever and a legendary concert that eventually culminated with a visit from Toronto's Finest Porkers with their night sticks and guns to boot the bands off the stage and patrons out onto the street. In reality, the window of this history is probably a wee bit larger, but what happens within the period the filmmakers choose to focus on is pretty much the trajectory that occurred not only in Toronto, but Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal - anywhere in Canada that had a vibrant punk scene, lots of devoted fans and absolutely no support from most of the mainstream media and a total fucking from the music business (like, what else is new?). The music business - virtually non-existent in Canada anyway - chose to ignore the Scene and for the one or two bands they took a passing fancy to, they basically sucked them RAW and DRY.

Uh, and like, what else is new?

NO REACH-AROUND!!!

Brunton was fully enmeshed in the whole Scene and chose to document the Last Pogo concert at the Horseshoe with a 16mm camera ('natch). This resulted in a scrappy little movie called ... come on, give it a guess ... come on, you can do it - Yesiree-Bob!!! You win the fuckin' Kewpie Doll - it was called The Last Pogo.

That was then - this is now and during the past six years the filmmakers embarked on an odyssey to interview as many members of the Scene as possible and create a document that would serve as an artistic and living testimony to a slice of Canadian popular culture that many would prefer to forget and/or even refuse to acknowledge it even (or ever) existed.

And The Last Pogo Jumps Again is a joy - a real joy. Blending new and archival interviews and footage with all the onstage and behind the scenes players, the movie tells a tale as inspiring as it is sad - but what keeps the whole thing buoyant is the mad genius on view in both the words and performances of the likes of D.O.A., The Viletones, Teenage Head and all the rest of this Scene of gloriously talented purveyors of fuck-you-and-the-horse-you-fucking-rode-in-on. Some of those interviewed keep playing, others have morphed their love of music into other areas of the music business while some have chosen to grow up and get real jobs - and it's a testament to the obsessive qualities of the filmmaking itself that it's simply impossible to NOT like anyone in the picture.

Some of the interview highlights for me were poignant moments with the late Frankie Venom of Teenage Head, the brilliant, erudite Andy Paterson of The Government and without question, the vitriol-and-venom spewing Steve Leckie from the Viletones - a poet, an artist, a gentleman curmudgeon of the highest order.

The Last Pogo Rides Again definitely feels like a Joseph-Conrad-like boat ride into some kind of Hell that always feels like a Heaven as imagined by Anton LaVey. Brunton and Papputs are the two halves of Willard on a mission that seems to have no real end. And if there is a heart of darkness on display, a Kurtz, if you will, it feels like every Status Quo fuck-wad that ignored this exciting scene.

And it's an important film.

So much of Canada's truly vibrant culture has been squashed or ignored. Here's a film that holds up a slice of it that not only created great work in and of itself, but was an inspiration and seed for so much that followed in a variety of artistic mediums.

Never mind the cornucopia of great artists, filmmakers, writers, playwrights, actors and other truly gifted iconoclasts who sprouted from Toronto's Punk Scene - they're out there, doing their thing - they know who they are and so do we. But a word about the visionary Colin Brunton: he might well be the true soul and pulse of indie filmmaking in the Toronto Scene and even to this day, one feels his visionary influence upon the first two great rock pictures directed by Bruce McDonald. Roadkill and Highway 61 feel very much like they're as much Brunton's sensibilities as they are McDonald's. What sets Brunton apart from most film producers in Canada is that he doesn't come from some bullshit rarified place - he's the real thing. He's been there. He's done that. And all his collaborations feel like they're moulded and charged by his love for film, his knowledge of ALL the rules - artistically AND practically - so he can motherfucking break them when necessary and finally, his genuine life experience which he injects into every project he undertakes.

He's all over The Last Pogo Jumps Again, but he clearly has a collaborator in Paputts that shares this crazy-ass vision. They clearly make a great team because they've made a great movie.

See it. Or die, motherfucker!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

"The Last Pogo Jumps Again" is available on DVD and can be purchased HERE

EXPOSED - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Cutting Edge Beth B Delves Into Burlesque World

In anticipation of the upcoming 2015 Toronto Hot Docs International Festival of Documentary Cinema, here's my review of the brand-new Zeitgeist Films DVD release of Exposed, a tremendously insightful and entertaining doc on the world of contemporary burlesque by the legendary cutting edge New York "No Wave" underground filmmaker Beth B.

Exposed (2013)
Dir. Beth B
Starring: World Famous *BOB*, Julie Atlas Muz, Mat Fraser, Rose Wood, Dirty Martini, Bambi the Mermaid, Bunny Love, James Habacker, Tigger!

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I've always loved burlesque. As a healthy, young lad growing up in Winnipeg, I was surrounded by the finest in this magnificent form of entertainment thanks to a crusty old booking agent by the name of Gladys Balsillie who managed a stable of formidable talent on constant view in only the finest gentlemen's clubs of my old winter city.

Known famously as "Gladdie's Girls", these ladies were no mere strippers, but featured performers who put on super-cool shows with props, costumes, jokes, storytelling and even narrative arcs to their dances. The greatest of these ladies was the incomparable June Tracy, a ribald, full-figured octogenarian beauty who spun deliciously dirty tales through her craggy, chain-smoke-charred voice pipes. Not only could she twirl one tassel-adorned breast at a time, she oft-performed her famed bubble bath act in a claw-footed tub and then, always ended every show with a series of vigorous bows and the best exit-line ever: "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she'd belt out and then, after a perfectly-timed pause, "…Thank you, relatives!"

Beth B's wonderful film Exposed, took me back to those halcyon days and reminded me how disgusting many of the clubs have become since the implementation of lap dancing, private dancing and the addition of dark V.I.P. rooms which are little more than whorehouses. In recent years, Canada began to bring back old-fashioned burlesque, but unless you live in Toronto or Vancouver, it's awfully hard to see.

Of course, always ahead of the curve, it makes perfect sense that since the beginning of the 21st Century the creative sluices opened up for a number of New York-based performers to take burlesque into truly transgressive directions and Beth B is clearly the filmmaker for the job of immortalizing it on film. A vital part of the late-70s-early-80s New York "No Wave" of cinema (whose members included Amos Poe, Jim Jarmusch, Sarah Driver and others), she brings her eye for alternative visions as well as her well-honed craft to a film that was shot over a few years.

B's picture is a lovely cinematic alternative to this dazzling, live performance/burlesque art and focuses upon eight spectacular performers who continue to strut their stuff - not in sleazy "gentleman's clubs", but most often in (occasionally sleazy) super-cool venues where the acts are presented with all the bump-and-grind one would expect, plus the addition of genuine performance art of the highest quality. The work is satirical, political and downright cerebral. The performers are first-rate entertainers who continually confound traditional notions of sexuality, gender and body-type.

We're taken backstage, into the homes and hotels, as well as the bedrooms of these eight dancers. B's camera allows them all to present who they are as both artists and people. Then, there are the performances which are gloriously shot and cut, offering humour and food for thought, but most of all, they are just plain sexy as all get out. Not a single man, woman and transgendered performer is bereft of sex appeal and Exposed is easily one of the best showcases for this loin-stirring and noggin-inspiring work.

I loved each and every one of these people and part of this comes from who they are as human beings, but another part comes from B's point of view - she brings humanity and love to every frame of the picture so that it's also deeply and profoundly moving.

It's especially cool to see the brilliant actor/performer Mat Fraser celebrating his sheer sex appeal by "normalizing" his physically challenged thalidomide-affected arms and hands. He does this by using his natural gifts as a performer, but also by infusing his arms with all manner of sex-drenched aplomb and gymnastics. It's also cool to see his deeply loving relationship with his partner Julie Atlas Muz, and why not? He's a major hunk and she's a total babe and they're both brilliant performers in their own right.

What's not to love?

Rose Wood, an astoundingly intense transgendered performer is equally compelling - he's a tower of power in all respects and we eventually even get to see the results of his breast augmentation surgery which adds an amazing element to his act - we're talking hunka-hunka-burning-love here.

Then again, that pretty much describes the entire, glorious experience of Exposed. It's without question one hunka-hunka-burning-love of sheer cinematic joy. It might well be the definitive documentary on contemporary burlesque.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Exposed is available on DVD via Zeitgeist Films.

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STANDSTILL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Identity, redemption and facing the past drive this haunting portrait of a Canadian Mohawk living in the shadow of Colonialism and a Palestinian Refugee living in the shadow of an abusive lover.

Standstill (2013)
Dir. Majdi El-­Omari
Starring: Atwena:Ron David Deerhouse, Meisoon Azzaria, Iohani:Io Curotte, Skawennati Madelaine Montour, Tatum Ieronhienhawi McComber, Jean Pierre Lefebvre

Review By Greg Klymkiw

…Gently she sleeps
With her fingers
in her ears
Gently she dreams
With her palms
on her eyes…
While her Mother sings,
"They Killed the fish
They Killed the bird
and the Little Girl in the house."
-Excerpt from Wedad's poem

Standstill is a powerful and deeply moving first feature film by the Canadian-Palestinian filmmaker Majdi El-­Omari. Set in and around the Quebec town of Oka, the city of Montreal and the Native Reservation of Kanehsatake, it tells the tale of a middle-aged member of the Mohawk Nation. Arihote (Atewena:ron David Deerhouse) is a former war correspondent who used his gifts as a photographer in Sarajevo, but now seeks peace and solace as an anonymous wedding photographer. Juggling the emotional turmoil of an at-risk son, a wife who left him - disappearing as if into thin air - and a father who, in despair, blew his brains out, Arihote shambles through life like a somnambulist.

One night, though, this all changes when he hears a disturbance in the apartment above his basement suite. Upon investigating, he discovers that a murder has been committed by Wedad (Meissoon Azzaria), a Palestinian refugee. The victim is her abusive lover. Arihote is consumed with a need to help the woman, but at the same time, he's equally concerned about personally involving himself in anything that will bring him in contact with the police.

There's a good reason for both of these compelling feelings. They're rooted in the personal, to be sure, but there is also a historical backdrop to his motivations.

Canada's ages-old apartheid, aimed at its First Nations, has been one of the most horrendous, foul and insidious policies of hatred and racism in the history of colonialism in the Americas. The country has also had its fair share of violent genocide, though it's a drop in the bucket, compared to its neighbours to the south (right from the USA and down to the bottom tip of South America). What's been especially infuriating in the Great White North is the "polite" Canadian approach to decimating its Aboriginal Nations through lies, deceit and bureaucracy. The Canadian apartheid has essentially been a cultural genocide; ignoring treaties, swindling land, attempting to smother cultural identity and a grim system of residential schools aimed at "whitening" Native children (and sexually abusing them at the hands of Catholic priests).

More often than not, Canadian Aboriginals have attempted to use legal means to address this infinite litany of injustices perpetrated upon them by politicians and bureaucrats feathering their own nests whilst kowtowing to the needs of old money and corporate pigs. Resistance, more often than not, has been peaceful.

In 1990, the resistance had only one way to go. A whack of lily-white-bread-inbreds living in the town of Oka, Quebec near the Kanehsatake reservation, decided willy-nilly to mow down a huge swath of forested traditional lands belonging to the Mohawks of the region. A sacred and ancient burial ground would have been desecrated and the land would have been decimated environmentally. The Canadian government, as per usual, reneged on old agreements and subsequent attempts to rectify the situation legally amounted to a hill of beans.

The reason? The town wanted a golf course.

Yes, you read that right - a fucking golf course!

The Mohawks had only one choice - they set up barbed wire fences, blocked roads and occupied the forest. And they were armed to the teeth. This led to yahoo vigilantes, Quebec Police and eventually the Canadian Army descending upon the Native People. The "Oka Crisis", as it was eventually dubbed by the lily-white-bread-Canadian-media (and many historians who should know better), was indeed one of the most severe, tension-ridden armed conflicts between First Nations and their Colonizers during the history of Canada in the 20th Century. (It eventually took an Aboriginal filmmaker, Alanis Obomsawin, to provide a proper perspective on this injustice with her now-immortal documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, a film which the publicly-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation shamefully refused to broadcast.)

It is within this almost-ghostly social, historical and political backdrop that the character of Arihote is haunted in writer-editor-producer-director El-­Omari's astonishing Standstill, the first feature film presented primarily in the Mohawk language (with a smaller percentage in English, French and Arabic). Shot in stunning black and white (save for the equally arresting colour bookends) by cinematographer Stephanie Weber Biron and underscored by jangling, forbidding, mournful and evocative music by Antoine Bustros, this might be one of the most important films to be made in Canada in some time. El-Omari's mise-en-scene includes a series of neo-realist tableaux and simple, but effective handheld camera movements (floaty-cam-style, not shaky-cam) to tell this story about two people forced by political and social upheaval to confront the past in order to move forward with the future. Arihote is a stranger in his own land whilst Wedad is most definitely a stranger in a strange land.

So much of the film's story unfolds in slow, but richly composed and always fascinating details of real life - the camera at once being a fly on several walls, but also revealing the extremely potent points of view of Arihote. These latter moments are especially extraordinary, because we get a sense of his "camera eye" and when we see what he sees, it's as if we're seeing it through the eyes of one who has spent a lifetime photographing death, destruction, exploitation and despair.

El-Omari places most of the narrative emphasis upon Arihote. He is haunted by his wife's disappearance after he left for Sarajevo as well as trying to raise his motherless son in a world of conflict, but all of it far removed from his own experiences as a war photographer. What's especially moving is when we (and his son) discover that Arihote, was more than an ineffectual husband and partner to his long-gone wife - that he did a lot more than look at the world through a camera lens. She was a major activist in the "Oka Crisis", as well as being a brilliant visual artist. She placed her life on the line in a serious conflict, but also exposed her soul upon canvas. Arihote was not dissimilar. He's described to his son as being a vital participant at Oka "with a camera in one hand and a semi-automatic weapon in the other."

In a sense, we're faced with the tragedy of a couple whose love is effectively torn apart by the weight of colonialism and the crisis of Oka. She sought solace in rebuilding their family and love. Alas, he sought solace in the bitter war of Sarajevo. The broken pieces of this marriage resulted in abandonment on both sides of the equation and in the middle, Arihote's brilliant young son without a mother, his distant suicidal father and a sense of not belonging to either Kanehsatake or Montreal.

Add to this mix the parallel tale of Wedad and Arihote's involvement in her crisis - a strange narrative choice which starts the story off, but fades into the backdrop until the hugely emotional final third of the picture. Doing the math on the whole, we have a colonized aboriginal man, a female refugee from Palestine and a young man who doesn't know where he belongs. As such, El-Omari delivers what might be the ultimate indigenously Canadian story of all, one that recalls the title and even thematic layering of Edward Everett Hale's classic of short American fiction, "The Man Without a Country" (itself an allegory for the American Civil War).

To be without a country seems to be tantamount to being without a soul, not unlike so many aspects of Canadian existence amongst its aboriginal peoples, the diaspora of the poorest European immigrants and their progeny and the myriad of recent immigrants often fleeing political persecution in their countries of origin. In spite of this, though, El-Omari doesn't let us or his characters muddle about for an eternity of identity crises. He provides, like any great storyteller, obstacles that must be overcome and in so doing, he creates a film that is as despair-ridden as it is eventually very moving, powerful and oddly, but genuinely uplifting in a completely un-sentimental fashion.

There are no easy decisions or answers for any of the characters. Like most of us, they are living within an existential quagmire - one brought about by the crashing waves of history. As individuals it is their despair, practically hard-wired into their very beings by external powers which force them to face a new world, fresh horizons and a future in which they can break through the wall of stasis permeating their lives.

El-Omari presents all this in a muted fashion, but by doing so, he actually creates a film which might be one of the few Canadian films to be imbued with the strength and power which we have, for some 20 years turned to the Belgian filmmaking duo, the Dardenne Brothers for. Their intense naturalism and concentration upon the lives of the disenfranchised have been reflected in such masterworks as La promesse, Rosetta, L’Enfant, Le gamin au vélo and their most recent stunner Deux jours, une nuit.

Where Standstill might occasionally veer from a completely naturalistic style are its occasional dream-like visions and flashbacks, though even these extraordinary sequences are imbued with a highly realistic approach within the context of both the narrative and as self contained units of dramatic action. There's no overt flash to these haunting scenes, though in retrospect they are as unforgettable as anything else in the more realism-infused sequences. Like the Dardennes, El-Omari delivers considerable poetry, cinematic magic and flirts briefly, but pointedly with the cerebral.

It seems fitting, of course, that during a critical point in the story, the father of independent Canadian art cinema, director Jean Pierre Lefebvre appears in a pivotal, important role. (Full disclosure: Lefebvre appeared in a not dissimilar role in a film I produced in the late 90s by Bruno Lazaro Pacheco entitled City of Dark.) Here, as a weary French Canadian police detective investigating the murder that sets the whole film in action, he brings a wise, knowing humanity to his role as a man who has suffered similar personal bereavements as those experienced by Arihote. Lefebvre plays his role as more bureaucrat than Sûreté du Québec crime fighter whilst Arihote has all but given up his past as an activist and photographic eye upon the despair of war. It is here where we come face to face with men who both, in their own way, have been victims of British colonization and recognize a common ground in each other's place in the world.

Standstill is a film that gives Canadian Cinema the hope and promise that our truly indigenous stories will be told, stories about those who do far more living and dying in this world than the country's oppressors will ever do. Such stories will indeed be in very good hands with Majdi El­-Omari and the handful of other film artists who bring far more to the table than merely ephemeral expressions of cultural experience. He's made a film that has every potential to withstand the sands of time.

I can hardly wait for his next movie.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Standstill is a Domino Films release playing theatrically in Toronto at The Royal Cinema. Demand your local independent exhibitor bring it to your town.