Jim Thompson on Acid

During the '90s, several auteurs emerged through the manipulation of a single genre. Alongside Hip Hop's chopping and sampling of history, we saw a rise in postmodern takes on noir. We went down Lost Highways, we buried suitcases in the snow and we lost ourselves in Pulp Fictions. A popular mistake today is to claim superhero movies have erased independent, arthouse and low budget contributions. There's festivals and government grants in place to support that nonsense year on year out. It would be more accurate to say they wiped out low to mid-budget thrillers off the map. Imagine a time when each week in the cinema you could see famous actors boning, scheming and killing one another, rather than geeks in capes. I'd take even the worst ones over half the MCU. Many of these were disposable trash but let's say you did have enough knowledge of cinema history and a few ideas of how to subvert genre theory with a post-structuralist approach then this stage was yours for the taking. You could be King.

Key to the process was using a familiar form (usually noir) and then finding your voice through experimenting with that pre-existing structure. There were those back then that expressed concern over a lack of creativity and referred to the likes of the Coen Brothers, Lynch and Tarantino as mere technicians mining and replicating cinemas past rather than celebrating them as the unique artists they are. Labelling them re-constructionists rather than deconstructionists. The same people may well make the same mistake with Rose Glass's latest Love Lies Bleeding, which I would declare to be an absolute masterpiece of modern filmmaking and for those who caught an early glimpse of it at the Manchester Film Festival, a real treat that plays well with a big audience.

It is as raw, unmatched and unflinching as anything you'll see on screen this year. In fact, the only thing that's going to stop this from being in my eyes a masterpiece is further films down the line from Rose Glass as she hones her craft in the same way that David Lynch did. After all, Lost Highway is a major improvement on Wild at Heart but it be wrong not have championed the hell out of the explosive and psychedelic Wizard of Oz inspired piece of insanity when it was unleashed in 1990. It's hard to know in the moment when an artist will necessarily drop their magnum opus and often it takes there to be a catalogue in place for us to compare. Sometimes, you just know when you have a winner who towers above the competition in a league of their own and with Rose Glass, I think we have found just that. For every clueless fucker like Emerald Fennell, we have a rare talent like Rose Glass. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

I regret to announce, I was late to the party with Glass's debut Saint Maud For years, it was positioned to me as a careless and misguided post-Gone Girl femcel response to the so called incel classic Taxi Driver. Hence, my persistent avoidance. Yet, this was a foolish considering such a stance is a total misinterpretation. Likewise, Taxi Driver is also misread today by naïve younger audiences. It's a film about (and even wrongly championed by) incels but the film itself is far more nuanced than that. The allure and horror of Taxi Driver is that it boldly invites you to feel the anger of societies degradation and to want to do something about it but to be clear it does not present a solution. It's a character study rather than an overtly political piece. Asking questions of its audience without necessarily giving the answers.

Ok, let's get this straight for those who still don't know, Taxi Driver is not strictly a clumsy right wing sicko namsploitation movie or a '70s vigilante revenge movie where puritan, conservative and even fascist views triumph. Not to put down the likes of clumsier efforts such as Combat Shock, First Blood, Dirty Harry, Death Wish and even other sleazy Schrader attempts including Rolling Thunder and Hardcore, which are all at the bare minimum thoroughly entertaining flicks for the grindhouse audience and genuinely more complex than they get for (if they weren't, we wouldn't still be discussing them) but Taxi Driver towers above the lot of them. It manages to be class conscious, aware of its central characters own racism and role of the media where the other films mentioned can fall at times to being clueless.

For example, in Death Wish, he picks his victims by flashing cash needlessly and enticing the desperate poor folks. Thereby failing to understand class in its violent pursuit of punishing sins such as theft. This action eradicates the possibility of Bronson's character being a watchful protector but instead someone a more active participant in causing crime to occur. On the other hand, Travis Bickle is revealed to be a far more deranged character changing his target with the roll of a dice going from political candidate to pimp, unable to choose his legacy and vastly altering how he is remembered by sheer accident. He has far less control in the crimes, allowing Scorsese to make a comedic point about the troubling side to the media in deciding America's heroes and folklore that dates back to the days of the wild west and Scorsese's love of the problematic John Wayne westerns.

Dirty Harry displays a slightly greater intelligence with its whole reaction to bureaucracy and near selling out back handed apology sequel that pits its titular detective against the vigilantes but Death Wish remains fun silliness firmly reserved to gorehounds and trash admirers. Scorsese is America's greatest ever filmmaker as he is masterfully able to reference both high art and low art with a smoothness that is unprecedented.

The harsh New York streets are a concrete jungle where the zombies of Romero's Night of the Living Dead roam and its isolated protagonist gives himself a self-deemed honourable mission that ends in total bloodshed like one of Kurosawa's samurai warriors. As for the incel supporting accusations, I'm pretty sure the scene where he takes a date to see a porno has always been intentionally funny with some today even viewing the film as a darkly satirical rom-com. The ending for me is pure fantasy that intelligently makes light of typically neat noir endings. A joke.

Rounding up all this ranting on Taxi Driver, what makes it arguably a strong contender for the best film of all time and one we must keep returning to is that it represents a period of time when the studio were brave, putting their faith in filmmakers and they allowed the audience to be engaged with the movie and draw their conclusions over who the hero of the story is and how heroic they are. Sadly, not a common experience in today's where the good guys are members of the avengers and the bad guys the destroyers of worlds. As clear as crystal with no audience participation that requires them to think. Even when the bad guy is doing something that starts to touch on being interesting morally or politically that could actually begin to stimulate a thought in your head, they are made unnecessarily evil with unjustified killings that serve no purpose to their goal, merely to avoid confusion. The impact of all this on audiences has been astronomical. We're dealing with an audience who have been told for so long that they are idiots, that they've started to believe it.

This is where I praise Saint Maud in going back to that kind of active and engaging experience. To be clear, both Taxi Driver and Saint Maud are about isolated individuals following what they perceive to be a righteous path but each step takes them further from reality. The filmmaker is always one step ahead and appropriately distanced from their material. They do not endorse their characters but ask you to learn from their flaws.

Not since Carrie has coming of age and religion been so hauntingly combined but what makes Saint Maud such a breath of fresh air is its maturity and superiority in comparison with modern horror. Whilst, there is some aspects of that overdone theme grief present, Saint Maud is actually a story about religion as a means of escape from supressed guilt. Not a particularly common idea being addressed today.

An on-going criticism appears to be that it doesn't spend enough time demonstrating its central characters understanding and practicing of religion. However, this is another misunderstanding off the films intentions. Glass does not waste time allowing the audience to make sense of the protagonist's religion because there's simply no sense to be made. As with Taxi Driver, it's not a film about how to deal with particular issues in society but why the characters are drawn to their chosen solutions which they carry out with strict discipline like a Kurosawa samurai on a mission or a Melville criminal on a job. Never do they highlight the task as a strictly moral crusade to be agreed with but rather a warning. A relatable journey in feeling but never in action.

To have a film so drawn to character in this day and age of excessive jump scares is a real pleasure. It favours the slow brooding and uses its camera in some of the most unexpected ways for a British piece. Casual walks in town are filmed in Dutch angles and drones that even go fully upside down all emphasise the characters withdrawal from the rest of the herd. By the close, you come out the other end: it re-iterates the point often forgotten that our soul saving tool may become as harmful as all our other vices (sex, alcohol, violence) beforehand; a monster of your own making. I see it regularly today, rather fittingly in the case of Love Lies Bleeding, with people who start to obsess over the gym following a tragedy. Be healthy but does it have to be a personality dominating your life until the point you literally can't do anything else and you start to become fascist nutcase Yukio Mishima?

Saint Maud also has the best ending of all time. If you know, you know, if you don't, get to know. My favourite thing about it is just towards the end when you think it's getting carried away with the fantasy elements, like Taxi Driver it has one final abrasive shot that confirms everything you need to know. Taxi Driver has a subtle flick of the rear view mirror revealing the mad man's eyes but Saint Maud's return to reality is unmissable. It's fucking brutal.

Following Saint Maud's outrageous ending, Monsieur Il Est Merde, Mark Kermode, declared it the film of the year, something he always does when there's a half decent British movie going. Despite, usually struggling to back his British bias (Is Mark Jenkin really all that?), I'm fully in support of Saint Maud, which was released at a similar time to that menace Ali Aster's Hereditary and should be discussed in the same breath. Both represent the top level of horror that emerged towards the end of the last decade. Even as purely a British film, it should be viewed as a classic of that period along with Kill List, Shame and Under the Skin. Keep talking about Saint Maud, cement its place in film history.

Now she's back with a hard boiled Jim Thompson influenced story that has a lot more style than the far more commercial and increasingly popular Thelma and Louise. Those who appreciate twists and turns of the crime caper will be shocked and amused by a Pulp Fiction like unexpected head shot mid-way through that caught every audience member off guard. From the outset, Glass establishes this as being in a gorgeous psychedelic and pulp cartoonish world of her own making with night sky stars that hover over the local gym and a synth score from Clint Mansell. Instantly appealing to any fans of Nicolas Winding Refn. There's even these flashback non-linear images that appear later with neon lighting showcasing people holding guns against a black backdrop.

The camera swoops down in one take to bring us inside the gym for the first time. Once inside we get a montage of our mighty hunks working hard to Gina X Performance. Allowing us the opportunity for our second body building satire from a Brit from the last few years. Gerard Johnson (Tony and Hyena) did a surprisingly phenomenal job of this with his low budget indie "Muscle", which is essentially a modern British Fight Club taking the piss out of the rise of 'bullshit jobs' and crippling masculinity. Glass presents a feminist spin with the unbelievably solid female beefcake (or is it 'cupcake?') Kathy O'Brian. Not seen such excellent and bizarre use of the female gaze in an action movie since Kathryn Bigelow did Point Break

Our two star crossed, doomed like the titular plant, lesbian lovers meet inside the gym. Where else would they meet in a film like this? Kristen Stewart plays O'Brian's girlfriend, adding another amazing role to her flawless filmography (we are Kristen Stewart stans here). Those wanting further evidence of Kristen's acting abilities see the phone call with her father where he asks whether she's threatening him, great work. Together O'Brian and Stewart hit the steroids like cocaine, using it as a little social ice breaker and then they get hooked quickly. Their initial sex scene is soundtracked by the undisputed King of Disco, Patrick Cowley. Never did I think I'd hear the GOATs music in a packed cinema. So thanks Rose Glass for making this dream come true.

As the intercourse takes place, O'Brian's muscles giddily begin popping out their sockets like something straight from a Hulk comic. This addition places the movie in the realms of body horror, which can never be a bad thing, at least with us anyway. If they hadn't already, things take a turn for the Cronenbergian when O'Brian randomly pukes out Kristen Stewarts entire body from her own mouth. Nothing better than when a director simply can't make a non-horror movie without adding some horror in there somewhere. The sign of a true artist. An unashamed artist.

What makes the scene even better is how moments beforehand it took a dive for the cheesy playing '80s synthpop whilst a bunch of lady beefcakes show off their immaculate bodies going for this lighter Flashdance atmosphere, so when the full body regurgitation happens, the contrast hits hard. Exactly the kind of direction that tends to win us over round here with shocking tonal twists and high to low art shifts.

In an interview prior to the film's release, Glass stated that her main influence was Showgirls and I assumed that was just a signpost of Camp. Considering O'Brian's character goal is to make it big in Vegas, it is clear the comparisons don't just end with style. However, there is definitely camp in abundance here. Stewart and O'Brians over the top argument by the tennis courts is all timer.

Amongst all the camp and artifice though is some genuine characters too. Harris and Stewart are part of a crime family with a whole history there that reeks of patriarchal dominance and misogyny that wouldn't be out of place in a Jim Thompson novel. Some critics have taken issue with the absurd departures that they believe undermine the gritty realism also at play.

Yet, if this is an issue for them they are at stake of completely misunderstanding the difference between auteur and craftsman. They have probably never distinguished between someone like J. Lee Thompson and Stanley Kubrick. This is where me and these people will differ because for me, Glass's departures from realism, such as going all Attack of the 50 Foot Woman creature feature mode at the end are its best points, they are precisely what gives it style and personality, as we welcome this new talent.

If you want strict by the book classical realism and formal purism as has been mapped out before then maybe technical expert Taylor Sheridan is more your man. About the closest he departs from formula to something personal is through the potential for fascist readings. Hence, why an auteur can really do something interesting with his material as is what happened with Sicario and didn't happen with either Wind River or Hell or High Water

Auteurs push film forwards, whereas craftsmen keep the ship steady. Genre purists and recreationists, I admire your unpretentious persistence and ever valuable knowledge but there is a hierarchy and a pecking order to this world which leaves you behind the leaders of the pack: the auteurs. With only 2 films to her name, Rose Glass has proven herself to be just that, an auteur. The fact she's emerged through the postmodern noir net as it was done when I was growing up, before all this uninspired Marvel rubbish, makes me warm to even more. There are still some who know how to play this old game and better yet add something new that wasn't here before. She's adding the femininity and a sense of parody to a fashionably masculine genre. As far as I'm concerned, she should be financially backed for life after Love Lies Bleeding. I'm declaring Rose Glass the future of filmmaking. She may go out with Martin Rev's Whisper here but truthfully, she's gone out with a BANG! Overall Score: 5/5.