I have pretty much given up trying to anticipate anything
that Jon S. Baird does. With each new release, he not only creates something
that stands out wholly from anything else that’s released next to it, but even
from the previous production Baird worked on. He's gone from the psychological
dark comedy of Filth to the vaudeville tragedy of Stan & Ollie… to a Cold
War-era political thriller wearing the skin of a corporate biopic in Tetris.
For about as long as I’ve shown any real interest in film, I’ve always tried to advocate for enjoying films regardless of where that enjoyment comes from. I have sat through way too many bad films that I went into knowing that they’d be bad, of my own free will, to turn my nose up at what anyone else chooses to do for fun in their off-time. And while I can’t say I have all that much first-hand experience with S&M and other such play routines, quite a bit of my understanding of engaging with media, and indeed my championing of Edgelord Optimism (finding positivity in disturbing and weird shit), shares a lot of DNA with BDSM philosophy. Pain can lead to its own form of pleasure, even if it’s the hyperbolic pain of a bad movie.
With how badly things went with director Charlie McDowell’s last film The Discovery, a bloated and undercooked mess of a sci-fi story, seeing him go in the complete opposite direction for his latest certainly inspires some hope. It’s a single-set thriller with a minimal cast and a run time of about 88 minutes without counting the end credits, co-written by one of my favourite screenwriters in Andrew Kevin Walker. Sure, it’s also co-written by Justin Lader, one of the culprits responsible for The Discovery, but maybe this will work out better. Well, to its credit, it does, although I still don’t think it’s making the most of what little it has.
Well, this is going to be a challenge. A film that seems specifically engineered to defy easy descriptions or classifications, made by a Hip Hop artist who has made an entire career out of making such things. Saul Williams is one of the culture’s true original and unique talents, as it’s difficult even fathoming anyone else attempting half the shit he pulls on record. Like fellow slam poet and MC Sage Francis, he doesn’t so much engage in wordplay as he does word-bullying, deconstructing and then reconstructing the English language over the course of a few lines, let alone a verse. On top of that, his choice of production blends old-school Hip Hop, rock, electronica, industrial, and about a skrillion other things to create a sonic whirlwind that is as verbose as it is fascinating to engage with. And now he’s made a movie.
With a title like that, what could this movie possibly be about?
A Disney movie about the Bermuda Triangle dealing with its parents’ deaths?
An adaptation of Dave Gorman’s Important Astrology Experiment?
Emo porn?
No, the title comes from a descriptor for a part of the human face, where furrowed brows meet the top of the bridge of the nose and form a little triangle. It’s a term used a lot by plastic surgeons, who would treat such things with Botox, and it’s an interesting introduction for a film all about people who think money can fix anything and everything.
There’s something about the outright absurd that serves as a
great communicative tool. All the things that people are unwilling or unable to
accept about their society or their reality; just throw in some weird shit, and
suddenly, it becomes easier to swallow. The filmmaking debut of Boots Riley,
renowned figurehead of the weirder side of West Coast hip-hop, follows this
pattern, a depiction of modern-day race relations in a similar vein to Jordan
Peele’s Get Out. Not that this is as scary as that offering (far from it, this
is an actual comedy, unlike whatever
the hell people thought Get Out was); rather, it uses an absurdist’s eye for
science fiction to make its point. And oddly enough, it’s a fairly similar
point.
