A shadowy figure reviews Long Pigs

[ Shortly after seeing Long Pigs while attending Fan Expo with rgbFilter, I found this transcript, JPEG-and-all, on my server’s HD. Hacking a server to randomly express an opinion about a movie seems unlikely, but since I pretty much agree with it, here it is. —PLQ. ]

A shadowy figure says, “A painted grid of some kind. Quite large. Big enough to fill this whole pit. And again I see there is a three-jewelled sigil, on the far side. Always on the far side. More runes below the grid seem to indicate degrees of movement — appropriate, given that the grid appears to be animated.”

   A hollow voice says, “Who are you talking to?”

   The figure says, “You, numbnuts.”
   The voice says, “So, are you gonna watch it, or what?”

   The shadowy figure watches Long Pigs.

   The figure says, “Satirical documentary about a killer. He offers helpful tips and tricks to his interviewers as he goes about the horrible business of murdering and eating his victims. In all other respects he appears to be fairly normal and well-adjusted. Where I have seen this before?”
   The voice says, “Another pit?”
   The figure says, “Most likely…”

   The figure snaps.

   The figure says, “Man Bites Dog!”
   The voice says, “Yes! That was a good one.”
   The figure says, “It was a good one. Only, this one is in full colour, and the killer is a cannibal. An incredibly creepy cannibal who provides angle after angle of cooking and preparation advice. I have to say, it’s very believably portrayed by this fellow, if it is a portrayal — did I miss his name?”
   The voice says, “Anthony Alviano. And it’s totally a portrayal.”
   The figure says, “You’ve seen this one before, haven’t you?”
   The voice says, “I’m here all day.”
   The figure says, “Sounds like a slog. This is a grisly story. Way more of the process of slaughtering and cooking a human is shown here than I really needed to see. But it’s really in the scenes of everyday life where the satire is at its sharpest, with Alviano moving so plausibly from playing a monster to a level-headed employee, even talking his hapless co-worker out of indulging in self-destructive violence.”
   The voice says, “Indeed.”
   The figure says, “Alviano is so good that those scenes may even be sharper than in Man Bites Dog.”
   The voice says, “I dunno… I’m not sure anything can top Benoit Poelvoorde singing a drunken ode to cinema as he dines with his own documentarians.”
   The figure says, “Before passing out on his plate.”

   The hollow voice laughs.

   Something moves in the dark.

   The figure says, “That’s the thing about this Alviano. He’s not that extreme, which makes him more insidious. But, I fear the makers of this yarn may have overplayed their hand.”
   The voice says, “How so?”
   The figure says, “I picked up on where Long Pigs was going well before the secondary interviews, conducted with some sort of law enforcement officer, and… was it a psychic?”
   The voice says, “A psychologist.”
   The figure says, “Ah. While those two added some amusing perspective early on, toward the end they really started to become mouthpieces for different moral positions. Boring moral positions.”
   The voice says, “Too heavyhanded?”
   The figure says, “Well, yeah, and it also serves to narrow one’s interpretive options at the end, for no good reason. Particularly if the mouthpiece opinions are pretty shallow, which they were. Even if you don’t accept either of them, they’ll tend to dominate the interpretive space. Anyway, none of that should be necessary if one has done one’s satirical homework, and I think they mostly have.”

   The figure adds, “I mean… when we’ve been shown the entire dismemberment and packing of a human corpse in this amazing, choreographed fast-motion sequence, and then we see the man who did the dismembering participate in some common sporting activity with his friends, I don’t think we need additional interviewees to mark out for us where normal ends and frightening begins. At best, it’s wasted time. At worst, it sours the irony on the tongue, as I think it did here — especially at the conclusion.”

   The voice says, “I agree that it probably would have been better at the end without those interviews.”
   The figure says, “And that’s not the only place the safe route was taken. Alviano is made more sympathetic by being given a rage-filled friend to serve as a foil, making the cannibal seem all the more ordinary by comparison.”
   The voice says, “What’s wrong with that? It worked, didn’t it? And I liked the friend. His bits were the funniest.”
   The figure says, “They were. But his participation in Alviano’s gruesome hobby made it less believable. And giving the killer a buddy who’s even more out-of-control made it too easy for us to know exactly what we were meant to be thinking about the killer, like it was handed to us. Same problem, really, as with the pile-on of moral-inducing interviews at the end. The makers of this satire seem to have been a little too preoccupied with the possibility that viewers would not understand the point of Alviano’s performance on its own. But, they needn’t have been.”
   The voice says, “Yeah, overcaution and satire don’t really mix well. Man Bites Dog was a braver piece of art, and ended stronger.”
   The figure says, “Man Bites Dog was focused less on the ethics of terrible behaviour — which are rather obvious — and more on the ethics of documenting terrible behaviour. The results were both funnier and more worthwhile, since serial killers are less likely to change their ways than the ones reporting on them.”
   The voice says, “Actually, both are vanishingly unlikely.”
   The figure says, “Good point.”
   The voice says, “We should just watch Man Bites Dog as well. It would be an interesting comparison.”
   The figure says, “From your lips to the pit’s ears! You do have lips. Don’t you?”

   The voice says nothing.

   The figure waves.

[ Submitted by The Laroquod Experiment. ]