Her Private Hell is Nicolas Winding Refn doing a parody of his own films. There’s even a few direct callbacks to Only God Forgives.
Only God Forgives / Her Private Hell
Only God Forgives / Her Private Hell
If you don’t like post-Drive Refn, this movie is not for you. It’s almost as if Refn used every negative critique of his work over the years as an inspiration for his latest project. This is his slowest movie to date. There’s tons of neon lighting and homages to his favorite filmmakers.
And the thing is...I’m not even mad at it. I will not recommend this movie to anyone. I barely know what it’s even about but I enjoyed this in a guilty pleasure kind of way. In a dystopian future, a young actress trying to find her father crosses paths with a violent soldier trying to find his daughter. Beyond that, this is kind of a feature length perfume commercial where the pretty imagery trumps the plot (the city that the story takes place in is plagued with a mysterious gas that fogs the city 24/7 along with a leather-clad serial killer).
Instead of the typical reference points like Michael Mann, Williams Friedkin, Dario Argento and others - Refn references the likes of Kenneth Anger, Mario Bava, Kubrick and his mentor Jodorowsky. To be fair, Anger has always been a reference point for Refn but, outside of Ryan Gosling posing in the Scorpion Jacket in Drive, no one ever seems to highlight that except me (click here to read more)…
I’m not a film analyst but most of the things we do nowadays, also in advertising, lead back to Kenneth Anger’s work - Nicolas Winding Refn, Indiewire
Fireworks / Her Private Hell
Scorpio Rising / Her Private Hell
Scorpio Rising / Her Private Hell
Planet Of The Vampires / Her Private Hell
Planet Of The Vampires / Her Private Hell
Planet Of The Vampires / Her Private Hell
Vampyr has always reminded me of a mysterious dream I once had when I was very little. The film has always stayed with me. I watch it before I make every film - Nicolas Winding Refn, Criterion
Vampyr / Her Private Hell
Unique, brilliant, fantastic! I love this movie! - Nicolas Winding Refn on Tokyo Drifter, Criterion
Tokyo Drifter / Her Private Hell
A Trip To The Moon / Her Private Hell
Seeing The Shining is like watching a painting of pure terror. It has no purpose, sexuality or function other than to completely terrorize you - Nicolas Winding Refn, Moviemaker Magazine
The Shining / Her Private Hell
2001... / Her Private Hell
I offered to read the tarot for him [REFN] and from then on he had me read his tarot every time he made a new movie - Alejandro Jodorowsky, Vulture
The Holy Mountain / Her Private Hell
Refn does kind of reference Michael Mann but instead of typical stuff like Manhunter and Thief, he pulls from The Keep.
The Keep / Her Private Hell
This could also be seen as a reference to everything from Demons to The Fog
The Fog / Her Private Hell
The Fog / Her Private Hell
Demons / Her Private Hell
I'm hesitant to compare anything even slightly weird to David Lynch, but Refn is a fan and there are some very specific Lynch-isms in Her Private Hell
film is such an early medium in a way. You know what I mean? If you go through the history of painters, you can always say that somebody was inspired by someone to do that or to do this, and of course, it's the same thing with film. Every art form is an exchange to someone else, whether it's generational, whether it's of an experience, of an opportunity - Nicolas Winding Refn on influence of David Lynch, nrftsjournal
Inland Empire / Her Private Hell
Wild At Heart / Her Private Hell
This indiewire article from a few years ago serves as a nice companion to Her Private Hell (click here).
If anything, this was just an excuse for Nicolas Refn to make a movie collage of his inspirations (which gives me an excuse to make a bunch of side-by-side comparisons to share).
People have been comparing Bassam Tariq’s latest film to Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog just off of the trailer. After watching Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother last night, I can confirm that the comparisons are more than understandable. Tariq himself admits to drawing inspiration from Ghost Dog.
When I watched it [Ghost Dog] a long time ago there was this feeling where I was like, 'Oh there's this man that lives in an urban environment that wants to follow some kind of ancient code - Bassam Tariq, Huffington Post
Ghost Dog / Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
Both movies are about proud stoic Black hitmen that live by a conflicting and somewhat vague spiritual code. In Ghost Dog it’s Samurai-ism and in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother it’s Islam with a mixture of various eastern philosophies sprinkled in. Both films also find our hitmen with targets on their backs after a job goes wrong (classic hitman movie trope). Both films also have interestingly misplaced moments of awkward/dry humor. At the start of Ghost Dog we get a quick peek in to what might have been a lost loved one while Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother opens with our main character’s wife passing away.
Ghost Dog / Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
Ghost Dog / Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
Both films are rooted in hip-hop. Rza did the score for Ghost Dog and was a huge part of the promotion of it. This time around, Mahershala Ali credited Ka’s Honor Killed The Samurai album as an influence on his portrayal of Latif (I imagine an alternate world where Ka was alive to score this film).
Both movies even have similar opening scenes!
Ghost Dog / Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
The major difference between the two films is that Ghost Dog is a loner. In Your Mother, Latif has to juggle his violent occupation with single fatherhood.
It should be noted that while Ghost Dog is an excellent film, it is a loose remake of Jean Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai. But what’s incredibly fascinating is that outside of the mysterious hitman living his life by a cool-sounding spiritual code, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother takes from all the elements that Ghost Dogdidn’t lift/borrow/redo from Le Samourai. There are social and racial elements to Ghost Dog and Your Mother that aren’t in Le Samourai. Bassam Tariq's movie is sort of a looser remake of an already loose remake.
Le Samourai / Ghost Dog
It also wouldn't be right to not make the obvious comparison to Lonewolf and Cub. There's an action sequence involving Ali's Latif fighting his way out of a strip club/church with a baby strapped to his chest.
Lone Wolf and Cub / Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
On paper, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is very cartoonish and unbelievable. This story is set in a sort of underground world within Houston, Texas made up of Mormons, Muslim hitmen, gun-toting religious cult leaders with gold fronts and lactating ex-porn stars. Bassam Tariq somehow makes these cartoonish elements seem somewhat believable. Had another director worked with the same source material this would have been a mess. Even though this movie is filled with spiritualism and grief that is meant to be taken to heart, you have to view it on the same level as something like Hard To Kill or Commando. This is a slow-burn action movie at the end of the day.
Now...I’m still grappling with the finale. I don’t know if it fully works but I appreciate what I think Tariq tried to do. Sensical people will write it off as silly whereas folks that like open endings will be dissecting this for quite some time. I also think there was an opportunity to go full-on John Woo in the end but it only goes half way.
At the end of the day this is a collage of Ghost Dog, Lonewolf and Cub and the residue of the failed Blade movie (both Tariq and Ali were attached to the Blade reboot before it was scrapped). I’m hardly the first person to note this but Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is the positive result of another failed project. I would have loved to see what Mahershala Ali would have done with the Blade character but I’ll settle with this.
The Testament Of Ann Lee certainly passes the look test. It’s what some might call visually stunning but it kind of lacks in the typical substance that one might expect from a biopic. Now…I don’t think director Mona Fastvold was trying to make a typical biopic so perhaps this criticism doesn’t concern her. As flawed as this movie is, I find it interesting (interesting can be a good thing). It's part biopic, part dance/performance piece and part musical. In my personal opinion, this is the perfect response to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. Both movies exist on some kind of a feminist spectrum, but Ann Lee is able to do so without all the surface-level “girl power”/“men are dumb simple creatures” messaging that the Barbie does. Another big similarity between the two films is that both movies are centered around female characters that have no interest in sex or romance. Ann Lee preached heavily about celibacy and Gerwig’s Barbie rebelled against the idea of the title character being the romantic interest of Ken.
A big difference between the two films is The Testament Of Ann Lee doesn’t really think about men in comparison to Barbie. One could argue that Barbie accidentally centers the male characters at certain points.Think about it - Ryan Gosling's performance as Ken is just as synonymous with the Barbie movie as Margot Robbie. Amanda Seyfried completely carries this Ann Lee biopic. There are male co-stars but none are as memorable or as important as her. I appreciate that approach. Barbie tries to provoke and lightly troll a particular type of male at times ("film bros", misogynists, women-haters, loudmouths, jerks, etc). Ann Lee doesn't really concern itself with men. There’s nothing more silly and pointless than putting in a lot of effort to troll a group of people that already can't stand you or don't care what you do. We've reached a point where changing the gender or the race of a character in a story is done mostly now to annoying and poke at people rather than to make a genuine piece of art. There's nothing worse than grown adults like Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh crying over updated iterations of things like The Little Mermaid or Harry Potter using female, trans or Black actors. But at the same time, I can't stand people who can only approach art from the standpoint of just bothering or annoying someone. How old are we??
The Testament Of Ann Lee certainly shows the evil that men do while still making women the center of the story. It should also be noted that the different religious sects that the movie focuses on are all based in the belief that the second coming of Christ will be a woman.
I don’t have a "fragile male ego" either. If you think men are big dumb children - fine. Just stand ten toes down on your opinion. Don't dip your toes in and out. Don’t pander to septum nose ring twitter and instagram moms that lie about their life being hard when it isn’t if you only half-heartedly feel that way. It’s phony and disingenuous.
Barbie / The Testament Of Ann Lee
I don't think any of this was intentional but even the moment where we are introduced to Ann Lee's husband is right out of the scene in Barbie where Ken first tries to dance with her...
Barbie / The Testament Of Ann Lee
To Be Clear - I enjoyed Barbie overall but a big portion of that movie plays out like it was made for people that like to mindlessly retweet and reshare lighthearted surface-level “men are dumb” posts all while adoring their husbands and wearing “boy mom” shirts. Hating men and/or thinking they’re trash is perfectly fine I guess. Just be genuine about it. I respect folks that claim to dislike men as long as they really live that life. If it’s just your online persona or something you like to profess only when you’re around other women, then you’re just corny and pandering for nothing.
The Passion Of Joan Of Arc / The Testament Of Ann Lee
If I had to compare Ann Lee to something else - I’d say it’s very "Robert Eggers-coded". Eggers is a heavily influenced director himself and he hasn’t done or created anything new in cinema, but I don’t know if there would be a lane for this movie to exist right now without semi-recent stuff like The Witch or The Northman. And, similar to Eggers' films, Ann Lee has some light Dreyer imagery. While they aren’t identical in any way, the funeral scenes at the end of both films are kind of similar to me (minus the resurrection in Ordet).
Ordet / The Testament Of Ann Lee
A big flaw with this movie is the weird run time and all the history that is skipped over. This is a highly speculative retelling of the life of Ann Lee - an influential figure in the evangelical movement during the mid-late 1700s. The film starts at her birth and ends with her death which was brought on from complications of a physical attack. In between, we follow her religious journey from joining the Quakers to branching off to the Shaking Quakers to forming her own religious sect; The Shakers. There’s a lot of religious and world history to cover in her story. I wouldn’t have been mad if this was a mini-series or a show on a streaming service for the story to flesh out more (the movie also has voiceover narration that feels like it was tacked on after the fact in order to make it easier to follow).
You should never expect a biopic to capture and address everything, but this movie has the time to drag out elements that aren’t all that necessary while speeding through entire periods of Ann Lee’s life that are incredibly important (her various times in jail, the loss of all her children, her travels outside of just New England, etc). The Testament Of Ann Lee has a runtime of 2 hours and 17 minutes which is such an odd length for a movie. I’ve been saying this since the start of this blog but a biopic needs to be an 85 minute film focused on a specific isolated period of time or it needs to be a minimum of three hours if we’re going to cover someone’s entire life like this movie does. The same core team behind this movie was also behind the almost four hour Brutalist. I wonder why Ann Lee wasn’t fleshed out the same way The Brutalist was. I would have loved to see this movie take the same approach as Peter Watkin's Edvard Munch.
I don’t really like this movie but I'm glad that it exists because it can’t be digested or critiqued by simple-minded disingenuous folks like Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh. Male and male-centered critics that want to preemptively tear apart a movie for having feminist ideals or not making men the centerpiece can’t really process something like The Testament Of Ann Lee because it doesn’t have an evil central male character to represent all men. Again - this movie is very flawed to me but I'm glad it exists.
I’ve been in a real Eyes Wide Shut phase these last couple of weeks. A lot of deep-dive overly analytical videos on the film have been recommended to me on Instagram recently and I have to admit that some of them make some interesting points.
The film also trended on Twitter the other day and it’s being pushed on Tubi (where I ended up watching it). Much like when C-19 shut the world down in March of 2020 and everyone was rushing to post their thoughts/reviews/feelings on Safe, Outbreak, Contagion and other virus-related movies, I think a lot of the recent Epstein and Diddy news has people trying to connect all of that to Eyes Wide Shut and anything EWS-related.
I guess this blog post means I’m participating…
Outside of hardcore Eyes Wide Shut Fans, it seems like folks don’t realize that there are three other film adaptations of the original source material: Traumnovelle. Two films before EWS (Traumnovelle and Il cavaliere, la morte e il diavolod) and one recent adaptation from 2024 (Dream Story). I don’t even think a lot of hardcore Kubrick fans acknowledge this. I didn't even know the most recent adaptation existed until recently. It isn't good but it's also fascinating to me.
You would think someone like me with a blog like PINNLAND would jump at the opportunity to make comparisons and sidebysides, but it’s kind of pointless. Someone also did the work for me (the 1983 Italian version is left out but you get the idea).
There is certainly a nice-sized Venn diagram crossover of Eyes Wide Shut cultists and diehard Kubrick fans, but there are separate groups that don’t always intermingle. Believe it or not - there are online communities of folks that are obsessed with Eyes Wide Shut that don’t necessarily care about all the Easter eggs in The Shining or the historical details of Barry Lyndon.
Personally, I find the diehard Stanley Kubrick fans that are obsessed with combing every detail of every one of his films to be the most interesting people. Sometimes they make outrageous claims and their theories are incredibly forced, but I still find them to be fascinating and sometimes incredibly knowledgeable. The EWS folks have a lot in common with hardcore Boards Of Canada fans. I fall in to the unique Venn Diagram of people that love BoC’s music, Kubrick’s films and Eyes Wide Shut as a standalone entity outside of Kubrick's filmography. About three months ago I joined the Boards Of Canada Reddit group and immediately made the correlation between those people and EWS people.
For those that aren’t familiar with Board of Canada - they’re an electronic music duo from Scotland that relies heavily on Easter eggs, half-truths, occult imagery and anonymity. One could make a fairly easy argument that these elements describe both Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut.
Occult man-made circles, pentagrams, hexagrams, stars and other images are often associated with BoC’s music and Eyes Wide Shut.
Obsessive fandom can sometimes be incredibly informative even if they're base is rooted in batshit crazy theories. I do think it’s important to be overly familiar with Stanley Kubrick’s filmography and style of filmmaking when dissecting Eyes Wide Shut. He’s famous for his attempts at accuracy, OCD-like work-rate and avoiding continuity errors. This makes his work more intriguing in my older age because for someone so supposedly obsessed with “perfection”, there are a lot of possible plot holes and intentional continuity errors in some of his films. I like to think that Kubrick has been messing with his audience on purpose much like how most of the characters surrounding Dr. Harford in the story of Traumnovelle/Eyes Wide Shut have been messing with him (and how Boards of Canada loves to mess with their fans).
The first two adaptions of Traumnovelle are lesser known because they're basiclly B-movies. And on a personal note - they just aren’t very good (the 1983 Italian iteration is quite goofy). The most recent adaptation isn’t good either but it’s kind of fascinating for a variety of reasons.
On one hand, Dream Story is trying to stay true to the source material but with a modern twist. The basic premise is still there. A doctor stumbles upon multiple levels/worlds of sexual perversions after his ego is bruised from learning that his wife has sexual desires for another man (an underground organization of powerful elites may or may not be behind a chunk of the doctor’s discoveries). It’s best to not judge this movie from the trailer. It looks like an SNL skit parodying Eyes Wide Shut. On some level Dream Story does try to take from Kubrick's adaptation but there are some differences. This time around director Florian Frerichs throws in more surreality, elaborate dream sequences and elements of S&M that aren’t in the other movie adaptions. Eyes Wide Shut certainly plays around with reality and throws in a dream sequences/fantasy, but it’s not the same. Dreams Story has total breaks in reality way more frequently. But because Eyes Wide Shut is also a modern retelling of Traumnovelle starring two major movie stars directed by one of the most legendary filmmakers - Dream Story will always be in the shadow of Kubrick.
Eyes Wide Shut aside, Dream Story does itself no favors. The acting is flat, the chemistry between the actors is almost non existent and Florian Frerichs clearly takes from Eyes Wide Shut as if we don't see it. Sometimes word for word! This is fascinating to me. Has there ever been a cinematic remake/adaptation/reinterpretation that tries to stay true to the original literary source material but also lifts/borrows/steals/copies from one of a previous cinematic iteration? Maybe John Carpenter's The Thing?
Dream Story is really only made for people that are Traumnovelle/Eyes Wide Shut completists or folks that stay up late and watch random stuff on tubi when they can't sleep. I guess I’m somewhere in between.
This wasn’t what I was expecting but I still dug it. About a third of the way in to Lurker I knew this wasn’t going to be the queer stalker movie that the trailer made it out to be. If anything this was sort of a combination of Almost Famous and Nightcrawler. I know these influences to be true because director Alex Russell admitted this…
the first 15 minutes of Lurker plays out like a toxic rendition of Almost Famous...
Almost Famous / Lurker
Matthew and Lou (Nightcrawler) have a lot of similarities as well...
Almost Famous / Lurker
I know some folks are getting tired of new movies constantly being collages of other movies but the tone and overall look of Lurker is very different from Almost Famous and Nightcrawler.
I know this is a lazy comparison but the way Lurker handles obsession, voyeurism and one very specific scene in the desert towards the end of the movie - one might be reminded of Lynch's Lost Highway...
Lost Highway / Lurker
Lurker certainly has elements of traditional stalking and hints at queerness between the two main characters but this was really about the toxic relationship between a rising indie pop star and his entourage/hanger-oners. If anything, this is less about the way we obsess over celebrities (there’s plenty off movies that explore this), and more about the dangers of who you let in to your circle at a very pivotal and/or vulnerable time. In the film we follow a popular up & coming indie musician (“Oliver”) who forms a friendship with an amateur photographer (“Matthew”). Almost overnight, the fickle and flighty Oliver asks Matthew to be a part of his entourage as a documentarian/photographer without realizing that Matthew is quite unstable. As you can imagine, Matthew’s instability and Oliver’s flightless clash and their relationship turns psychologically abusive on both sides (I say both sides because while Matthew is certainly the unstable one, we soon learn that Oliver is also kind of jerk and inconsiderate to the people around him).
Lurker shows how easy it can be to infiltrate a rising young celebrity's entourage as long as you calculate each move and say the right things like Matthew. At first, Matthew doesn’t tell Oliver everything he wants to hear. Instead of being a “yes man”, Matthew is honest and offers seemingly honest criticism about Oliver’s music which makes him stand out from the rest of the “yes men” and vultures trying to latch on to his success. It should be noted that Oliver’s pre-existing entourage of yes-men and yes-women are also to blame for the events in the movie. Early on they see how unstable Matthew is and instead of warning Oliver, they say nothing and invite this weirdo in to the group. Eventually Oliver starts to realize how “off” Matthew is but instead of completely cutting him off, they develop this weird on again/off again toxic friendship that continues after the credits role. The last 10-15 minutes might turn some folks off. I’m not completely sold on the ending myself.
In a year of unnecessarily long movies with 2-1/2 hour runtimes, it was nice to finally watch something that sticks the landing in under 100 minutes (I have no issue with long movies when the story calls for it but there’s no reason for movies like The Accountant 2 or Weapons to be over two hours long).
Last year I shared my thoughts on Wim Winders' Perfect Days and it's connection to the work of Ozu (click here to read). Not every cinematic comparison could make it in to the original post. After a while, a lot of Ozu's signature shots can get pretty similar/redundant and I didn't want to repeat myself.
Below are the cinematic parallels that I saved from the cutting room floor...
