Essential Killing (2010)
Jerzy Skolimowski
English/Polish/Arabic
Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing (2010) opens with helicopter shots of a nearly otherworldly desert with dizzyingly abstract contours – more of a psychoscape than a landscape – through which Taliban (?) soldier and protagonist Mohammed (Vincent Gallo) maneuvers unsuccessfully. Maneuvering is what Mohammed does throughout the film, as he sneaks out of an American (?) facility and traverses the frozen geography of what seems like Russia (?), while his memories, fantasies, visions and reality coalesce to form an amorphous psychic force that drives him. (For a film that’s so keen on ‘observing without judgment, this sort of alternate psychoanalysis is threatening if not fatal). The irony here is that Mohammed, supposedly a brainwashed killing machine for whom death translates to martyrdom, is exhibiting the highest forms of survival instinct. And an assortment of this kind of contradictions – behaviour as a negation of ideology – is what Essential Killing aims for. While his ‘mission’ might propel unwaveringly him towards death, Mohammed – now that his imminent death is not entirely of his making as he might have liked it to be – is continuously moving towards a rebirth of sorts, as is suggested by behavioral details such as his inability to speak, walk properly and, well, his drinking of milk from a woman’s breast. While his mission dictates that America is his enemy, he tries virtually to make it his home, blending in with his landscape (as he did in his country in the opening segment), apparently moving ever close to a promised land. Skolimowski might have wanted to counterpoint the dominant image of the Taliban terrorist – like Laura Poitras – with a sober opposite which portrays him as a weakling clinging on to life, but his interminable bout of decontexualization, coupled with his tendency to reduce cinema to a denotative art form, removes any sting from his political stance.
March 27, 2011 at 10:56 pm
Skolimowski’s most rightly famous film of course is DEEP END, but he’s been a tireless director (and actor) for decades, recently relocating from Los Angeles to Warsaw. As I recall he appeared in the cast of Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES. I must say I shudder to think of Vincent Gallo (THE BROWN BUNNY is a candidate for one of the worst films on record) but you seen to have made a reasonably persuasive case for this newest work, and for the director’s (mostly) realized aspirations. I’ll be keeping my eye out for it my friend.
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March 27, 2011 at 11:00 pm
David Thomson:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/24/jerzy-skolimowski-david-thomson
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March 27, 2011 at 11:21 pm
And here is our good friend in Dublin, Longman Oz, with his newest post:
http://smiledyawnednodded.com/2011/03/25/essentialkilling/
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March 27, 2011 at 11:32 pm
Sam,
You are putting up some great links here, enriching the discussion. Gallo’s pretty good here.
I haven’t seen any other film of Skolimowski’s. Will surely keep an eye open for DEEP END.
Thanks a ton.
Cheers!
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March 27, 2011 at 11:47 pm
Srikanth: I also linked your own review to Longman’s, but my comment went into moderation over there. I’m sure it will be cleared as soon as Longman sees it.
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March 27, 2011 at 11:48 pm
Ah, that’s very kind of you, Sam. I did read Longman’s superb capsule. Concise and insightful.
Thanks again.
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March 29, 2011 at 3:36 am
JAFB, just a thought, but is it fair to see a conflict between a desire to live and someone prepared to die as a martyr? If anything, it is the willingness to die for a cause when one craves life that makes the former such a sacrifice.
On the other hand, this idea of re-birth is quite an interesting one. I had not considered this until now. Perhaps also a sense here of how women gradually civilise the behaviour of men?
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March 29, 2011 at 11:00 pm
Agreed, Longman. That’s actually the kind of humanistic approach that the film wants to present in contrast to the stereotyping tendencies of the right.
Women transforming men? Possible, but that’s a territory dangerously close to stereotyping as well.
Thanks and cheers!
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March 30, 2011 at 1:46 am
Perhaps it is stereotyping. However, the question to answer there then is it on my part or that of the director? It is just interesting that the last two characters are female when they have been (virtually) all men to that point. The one exception that I hazily recall is the recurring dream that he has.
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March 30, 2011 at 9:28 am
Longman, I’d meant that the stereotyping is part of the director’s schema, in which he seperates the “good people” (a woman, probably coincidentally), from the corrupt military and political ones at Guantanamo (?). But whatever his intentions were, it all comes across as rather reactionary.
Cheers!
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April 4, 2011 at 9:34 am
[…] At The Seventh Art Srikanth Srinivasan has penned a superlative capsule review of Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing: https://theseventhart.info/2011/03/26/ellipsis-36/ […]
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