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DANTE'S INFERNO IN ESTONIA

Today's movie was the Estonian filmmaker Veiko Ounpuu's

Püha Tõnu kiusamine / The Temptation of Saint Tony (2009)

A NYTimes Critics' Pick.

This is one of those films that is more or less impossible to figure out what is going on but yet, inside your intuition or other brain, you get what is going it. Well, I think I did.

Part satire, part nightmare, Tony traverses the circles of hell in his well pressed trench coat over black suit.

He is the "company man", the middle manager, the stooge. And he wants out. But he seems to have to walk through a nightmare to escape.

There are small vignettes which at first do not seem to connect but then, in the end, they all come together somehow.

In black and white, there is a somber, cloudy sky, mud everywhere sensibility going on here.

I enjoyed some of it, laughed, maybe inappropriately, at some stuff. The films owes a lot to Fellini and the guys who put together Cabaret.

I didn't much like what they did to and with a dog. I hope that it was PETA approved but I suppose not, it being Estonia.

I turned aside.

I am glad that I saw it but I wouldn't want to endure it again. Some parts are stretched to the last nerve end.

So, let's give it a 3 out of Netfix5. I think that every devoted cineast should see a bit of way out there film every so often. This is mine.

Labels: films