Sweet Movie (1974)

Even though I don't agree with some Makavejev's opinions and conclusions, I, still, believe that people might need to know the following basic ideas of this movie. Sugar is sweet. But it is harsh and deadly for human body and mind.Chocolate is very sweet, tasty, delicious. But it is deadly for human mind.Makavejev's prediction of the end of cult of sugar 15 years before it happened is very impressive.But what about the chocolate cult?You have been eating chocolate all your life. And you are sure you are OK. But are you really thinking you are ALIVE?

I'm not the ideal audience for this, and you are likely not as well. It is a collage of images where each image in the small has universal connection, but the two great narrative strokes are situated in the time and place. You'll have to not only be aware of the great European repressive disasters of the 20th century, but be personally damaged by them as well.Those two threads are entertaining to report at least. A Russian woman — with an invisible crew — moves a large boat down the Danube, she aloft at the bow as conquering Viking, a huge face of Lenin on the front. It is filled with candy and as she floats downriver Huck Finn- wise, she seduces and kills men and boys, adding the bodies to the cargo. This includes two indelible scenes. One is her seducing the candy-hypnotized boys. A second is wonderfully cinematic. She picks up a revolutionary deserter. In the boat is a deep hold of granular sugar, in which she likely buries her victims. She and the man make love in that sugar, sometimes completely burying them. She controls him completely, then he gets stabbed laughing, sated.The other story has Canada's entry winning the contest for most beautifully formed hymen, winning marriage to the demented son of the world's richest woman. Her adventures are a sort of sexual perils of Pauline, with completely unusual situations. This includes getting publicly stuck in coitus with a movie star and being placed on a table in an active restaurant kitchen a la "Cook Thief, Lover."At the end our virgin has a scene much like the sugar orgasm, but in her case she is nude, drenched in chocolate and drowns in orgasm.Both of these women, communism and capitalism encapsulated in sexual bodies, end up in the same surreal asylum where we are exposed to one of the most negative surveys of societal bonding I have seen. This is the disgusting section you likely have heard about with the group celebrating rituals that seem depraved but that fit well within the political threads we have previously seen. These include historical footage about Nazis that are similar in tone.Its close to the ideal that Greenaway espouses: pure image with no "story;" narrative made in the mind, the way vision is made in radio plays. And there is real effectiveness and some beauty in these lives, sugar in their deaths.And at the very, very end, the children are reborn.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I gave this movie a 6 out of 10. Not because I'm sure that it merits that score but because I'm not sure that it doesn't. Then I decided not to score it at all. I didn't hate it but I didn't love it either. So "no score" wins for now.Be forewarned that there are some very disturbing scenes. This is a movie that would never be made today because of some of the pedophilic imagery. And I admit to having a weak enough stomache that I had to fast-forward through some of the scenes involving feces, urine and vomit.If you can get past that I am quite sure that there is a message in there somewhere. Except when I think it's a piece of crap, that is. The trouble is that I can almost get what it's saying but I can't quite make the leap. Possibly it would have been easier to understand closer to the time it was filmed.I am pretty sure that it is a simultaneous indictment of both the former Eastern Bloc and the West. You can feel the filmmaker's hatred of the Soviet system and his disappointment with the West. Or not. Maybe I have that completely wrong! It comes down to one basic fact. It left me thinking.I didn't really like it and I don't think I entirely respect it either. Nonetheless I came away from this cinematic enigma with something. I just don't know if that something is worth having :) However I don't regret the time I spent watching it.My advice is just to watch it for yourself. The reviewers that call it "brilliant" are probably just poor self-deluded victims of their own pretensions. The ones that call it crap or garbage are probably at least honest about their feelings but they likely didn't even try to understand. Make up your own mind.

What happened in Normandy? What happened in Stalingrad? Was it all an international conspiracy? The kind of film that makes you suspicious if Nazis had actually won the war. Makes you paranoid. There are even excerpts from a Nazi propaganda footage in it of the Katyn massacre. How convenient? How convenient indeed.It is allegorical. It is avant-garde. Its artistic value is relative to taste and my opinion, which is of course inherently subjective, is this is as much artistic as Salvador Dali's bottom.We get the analogy. It is not what you would call subtle. The men and boys lured into the Karl Marx boat full of sweets. The rich defiling the innocent and pure. A man reborn covered in urine and feces (the kind of image that will stay with you for a very long time).Of course you may want to watch it. The way you may want to watch a snuff film. Of course you may like this. The way you may like watching a man shoot himself.