The Green Inferno is Eli Roth’s
long-awaited first original feature in roughly a decade; (I’m not counting Hostel II, which everyone knows he
shouldn’t have bothered with). Though
shown at festivals in 2013, the film was stuck in distribution limbo for two
years, due to legal disputes, not its controversial content. It took so long to come out that it was in
theaters simultaneously with Roth’s subsequent feature; Knock Knock. Roth is
definitely an auteur, though that doesn’t necessarily mean he is a great
director too. Even on the basis of his
first two films, it was evident that he had a certain sensibility that he was interested
in portraying on film, and that he was adept at infusing his own personality into
his films by cramming them with things that he happens to love, sometimes
regardless of logic or consistency of tone.
I admire several things about him and his style; starting with the fact
that he is resolutely fixed on telling concise genre stories with minimal apologetics
or artistic flamboyance. While the
treatment of themes is often heavy-handed – both in the films and by Roth
himself in interviews – it’s so much so that it almost becomes part of the satirical
posture of the films. This one is a homage
to the cycle of gory Italian cannibal films of the 70s and 80s, particularly
the Citizen Kane of that genre,
Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Homages aren’t that novel
in horror, of course, but I suppose Roth deserves points for expressing
admiration for the cannibal genre, mainly because no one else seems as
interested. The film doesn’t appear to
have sparked a resurgence in demand for movies about snotty white people getting
taken captive, tortured and eaten by savages.
Roth is at a slight disadvantage – despite the benefit of latter-day
special effects – because the 70s films were truly outlaw, so outrageous and
vile that a genuine simulation could never happen in our sensitive times. (For any who may not know, one of the common –
and most reprehensible – elements in those films was the actual killing of
animals on camera.) Continuing his
treatise on the arrogance of frivolous Americans treating the world like their
personal playground – as in Cabin Fever (2003)
and Hostel (2005) – Roth takes aim at
trendy environmental activism this time around, and it’s a well-earned target
in my opinion. In case anyone is in danger
of missing the point, a character announces within the first five minutes that most
crusaders care much more about the glamour of appearing heroic than in actually
figuring out how to change anything. A
group of spoiled college kids head to the Amazon to rescue an indigenous tribe
from the bulldozers of an evil development corporation. Needless to say, things don’t go so good. Maybe ‘restraint’ isn’t the best word to
describe Roth’s style, but – despite his fondness for scenes of people dying
horribly – he tends to milk more from the threat of mutilation than the actual
sight of it. (This is borne out by the
interesting fact that when The Green
Inferno was censored in the Philippines to make it equivalent to our PG-13
rating, it was only shortened by five minutes!)
Certainly other films have been far more gratuitously violent than Roth’s,
but his agenda is unabashedly to entertain, not to simply nauseate and
certainly not to depress his audience; (Lars von Trier and his ilk can be left
to specialize in that). Roth has a dual
passion for visceral horror and bawdy
comedy. (I won’t pretend to have
discerned that on my own; I heard him say so in one of his DVD
commentaries.) Therefore, amid all the
splatter and carnage, there is also a disarmingly incongruous weakness for
cheap gags, to a degree that many critics and audiences find unacceptable. Most movie-goers tend to crave violence or
laughter, but rarely both so close together.
Roth’s dorky sense of humor tends to be taken as a sign that he is
either amateurish or, at best, unconcerned about the wild mood swings his films
seem to bear. I don’t know that the two
moods work well or often, but – for better or worse – their combination is Roth’s
own honest worldview. They can at least
be seen as commensurate extremes that stretch so far that they eventually meet.
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