Calvaire (The Ordeal)

Calvaire (The Ordeal)
2004

Directed by Fabrice Du Welz
Written by Fabrice Du Welz & Romain Protat

First off, let me begin by saying that I’ve been watching/re-watching a lot of “extreme” films lately; perhaps it’s my current state of mind or a young fount that hasn’t yet run itself dry, either way, this eventually led me to Calvaire (The Ordeal).

And, as a warning, there will be SPOILERS, so watch it before you read the rest of this if you want to experience it all firsthand.

Apparently it is director, Fabrice Du Welz’s, first film. Now, let me prelude this (once again) with my overall appraisal of the film which is one of confusion and neutrality. It felt like a “compatiblist” film to me, in that it took two approaches to cinema that have never wholly been merged and almost succeeded. More specifically, in the first half of the film there’s almost an Herzog quality in the surreality that is gradually constructed in the creation of this strange town and its inhabitants, and the second half of the film where there’s present the crudeness of signature “torture porn” films (a flaw, in my mind). It occasionally showed hints of what it could’ve been if there was, perhaps, more discipline engaged behind the camera, and for this reason I think it’s necessary to discuss it.

I liked the odd protagonist (Marc) who’s this kind of detached arrogant singer/musician (do they come any other way?) that plays these gigs for geriatrics and is regarded as this universal object of lust apparently only by the “older” generation (men and women). It just made me wonder (I haven’t researched the film, so perhaps someone more educated in it could shed light on it) where the hell in Belgium are they and why would anyone ever go there after having seen this film? It truly paints a grim and hopeless portrait of the gravity of this singer’s situation, and in this regard it succeeds completely from the beginning where the singer is bombarded by repulsion in a “normal” setting, to the middle where the townsfolk congregationally begin to dance arhythmically to a ridiculous tune, to the end where the singer finds himself in the middle of a wilderness surrounded by pools of quicksand.

I loved the Mr. Bartel character which is played with a wonderful kind of realism that is usually overplayed – though, near the end the character becomes much more unreal unfortunately. The whole back story about his ex-wife who was a musician who seemed to be (or rather it seemed to be implied) more successful than Mr. Bartel’s “comedic” career, and the very strange aspect of him personifying Marc as his ex-wife – that just really confused me and in a small way, found it terrifying if it ever happened in real life. Anyway, this is all taking this film too literally.

The “heart” of the film lay in its symbolic link to the Biblical account of Christ. In that, Marc the singer is underappreciated, loved for the wrong/empty reasons, and in the end, undergoes an impossibly painful “ordeal” by those who think they are doing him good. I really liked that idea and what brought that idea home was where Marc realizes that Mr. Bartel is up to no good when he finds the nude photos of a fan (which were originally in an envelope in Marc’s van, stolen by Mr. Bartel) in Bartel’s workshop, and he doesn’t confront him about it.

Also, the scene where Marc sings in a very feminine kind of way to Bartel and Bartel is both speechless and envious. There’s a lot of little scenes that really add up in the end, unfortunately there are some problems perhaps some editing could have resolved.

I had a problem with the Boris character who seemed more like a plot device than an actual character. Perhaps he was a kind of “Judas”? Where he humbly leads Christ to man where he will in the end be tortured. Still though, I thought the film could’ve done fine without this character, but that’s just me.

Now, the biggest problem I had with the film was the shootout at the end. After the truly strange (and frankly, I felt out-of-place and Hollywood-esque) laughing sequence, there’s a ridiculous hillbilly shootout. This doesn’t, in any way, follow the underlying meaning it once had up to this point, and just seems like a “quick resolution” to get Marc away from his captivity and to the final important scene at the end.

And this “important scene at the end” is really the most surreal and “obvious” connection to the Christ story, in that one of the townsfolk (the leader it seems) follows Marc and stumbles into quicksand and begins begging Marc to say that he always loved him. Marc crouches over him watching him drown and finally says he always loved him. I liked the juxtaposition of “forgiveness” and “punishment” accomplished in the same gesture (or lack of gesture).

Overall Rating: * * * * * (Five stars out of six)