i had nightmares all night after satyricon- fellini’s brutal farce in an ancient rome with decadent passions and grotesque mask like faces in a frame of a narrative that follows a young man through a variety of incredible places as he pines over a lover who left him for another man. the places include a tower of babel turned inside out, a still and peaceful mansion, a feast of indescribable gruesomeness, a boat with a slave prison underneath and much more- each of them incredibly detailed and frightening. fascinating though the film was to watch, all night i was haunted by its images but somehow set in a strange contemporary landscape shrouded in darkness. glass buildings set in lawns. in one of them is a ‘thing in itself’- a white box with a small orifice that is sucking everything in. everyone holds on tight to the what is around while they watch parts of their bodies torn away from them get sucked into the black hole. i can still see the girl in the white shirt watching her legs being pulled in.
mephisto was just as dark, but less gruesome.. an actor is caught between the fame he craves and his own conscience as he climbs his way to the top by becoming the blue eyed boy of the brutal nazi regime. klaus maria brandauer is amazing as the actor, and the film is able to raise very complicated questions regarding the collusion of art and politics, power and culture. great film.
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