Midnight Madness 92 Intro

Toronto International Film Festival Program Guide
1992

“Bow down before the one you serve / You’re going to get what you deserve.”—nine inch nails

Midnight Madness ’92 is about submission. How very appropriate.

This reeking decade—with its fin-de-siècle angst on display like a tawdry negligé in a boutique window—revels in its grand-standing authority figures and the pathetic cult of the outlaw saviour. Autonomy and personal choice are out of fashion. Willful brainwashing is now a universal smart drug.

Against this backdrop are nine extraordinary films, ranging in tone and content, which subvert, deny, and empower our submissive condition. Some confront a withering State, the corrupt agents of which seek only personal gains and extensions of their personal power. Some address vacuous pleasure, when over-directed appetite leaves us helpless and parasitic consumers. Some re-imagine the crowd, in an age when even a race riot can be co-opted by CNN. Others think about fear, the most effective tool of subjugation ever invented.

Cinematically, we expect comeuppance for those who force us to submit: Bad cops? Go to jail! Bad politicians? Kick the bums out! Bad sex? Death! The filmmaker has a duty to expose the evil of the dominator. We, the audience, vicariously share the joy of liberation; in throwing off the shackles of obedience, we are heady with the thrill of rebellion.

But these rules no longer apply. Rebellion is impossible. Choice is inexorable. Escape is illusory. The cult of personality is king.

In Tetsuo I: Body Hammer, the salariman cannot liberate himself from his urban nightmare; the emotions of rebellion (anger, hope) only serve to transform him into a machine. In Man Bites Dog, a mesmerized documentary crew has no choice but to enter the hedonistic world of mass murder and sex crimes advocated by the iconic Ben. For the heroine of Tokyo Decadence, escape from a world of S&M prostitution and hard drug abuse only leads her to a suburban landscape inhabited by insane people. And so, that “escape” is no escape at all.

One could say that it isn’t a pretty world. Films like Saviour of the Soul, Candyman and Romper Stomper make that very clear. Inspired by Wong Kar-wai’s nightmare vision of a technologically soaked and emotionally moribund urban environment, Saviour is about a couple’s desperate attempt to leave their violent world, a struggle which continues beyond the grave. Candyman makes explicit our reliance on myth and superstition—particularly as it is advanced by American conservatives—and exposes the evil that this crutch engenders. But it is Romper Stomper that holds out the least hope of all. A brutal, morally neutral portrait of a rampaging gang of skinheads, the film is at once a damnation of our social order and a claustrophobic portrait of doomed, trapped individuals.

Even Midnight’s lighter side is bleak. Peter Jackson, in a tour-de-force modern zombie comedy, makes it clear that the horror his hero faces—reintegrating into fifties New Zealand—may be far more terrifying than the undead he so recently smote. All Jet Li wants in Swordsman II, is to withdraw from his debased medieval society. But when both his former Master and the power-hungry Fong begin their epic battle, he must even fight for the privilege to disappear.

No one is free. From the incessant splatter of Braindead to the dispassionate fury of Romper Stomper to the cyber-soaked Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, there are no compromises on Midnight screens this year. We too must submit—to the visions of these artists, to the compulsive, only partially self-willed behaviour of dangerous movie-watching.

This seems like a heavy load for any programme to bear. But it isn’t really. These filmmakers, with the precision and love of a crystal ball manufacturer, have created intense and powerful rides. So just relax, sit back, and enjoy your fate. It’s not like you have any choice in the matter, anyway.
—Noah Cowan