Not scenes, not sequences just single, individual shots.
I dont consider myself a movie-violence wimp.
(Call it CPTSS: cinematic post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Maybe Pfizer will invent a pill for it.)
What pushed my buttons and didnt stop pushing them?
Stuff involving injured animals, for some reason.Numero uno: that bloody horse head in the bed inThe Godfather.
(I saw it at age 15 or so.
Couldnt sleep much that night.
It still makes my palms sweat a little to think about it.)
But in motion, up on a big screen?
Woefully huge mistake to have watched it.
This short was banned in Finland on its release.
Years later, I read accounts saying it was actually a dead calfs eye they used.
I also heard that the act of slicing it made Bunuel feel physically nauseated.
These stories did not comfort or inoculate me, the way my Karo-syrup mantra always does.
Theyre cinematically sophisticated put over with great editing, framing, music, all that.
But not so this shot fromDa Vincithat Im about to slice and dice.
A misbegotten, rude, clumsy, artless shot.
And how does director Ron Howard choose to let the audience in on this?
Wheres the ingenuity or suspense in rubbing the audiences face in a repellent moment like this?
Well-done movie violence is like a doctor distracting you from some momentary poking or prodding through misdirection.
This is so four-square and heavy-handed its ineffective.
Quentin Tarantino would never have done it this way.
David Lynch wouldnt, either.
Or they might merely have suggested it.
Ron Howard opts to play the moment in an uninspired, literal-minded way, with a claustrophobically tight close-up.
(How was the injury actually simulated?
Was it CG, or a prosthetic thigh with actual fake blood squished through it?
Theres not much fun in knowing, since the moment has no sense of cinematic playfulness.
Its earnest, obvious, and ugly-looking, like so much of the rest of the film.)
Silas reapplies his torture implement and squeezes it until blood runs out, again, in huge close-up.
Okay, okay I get it already.
Ugh, ugh, ugh.
I wish Id never seen it.
Did you freak when Silas yanked off his heavy-metal Band-Aid?
Was it no big deal for you?
Cmon, weigh in with your own money and so-not-money shots of a violent nature.
We can take it.
