The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2
by Kenneth Anger
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Kenneth AngerDirector: Kenneth Anger
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-02
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fantoma
Movie Reviews of The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2
Movie Review: Myth and Magic, Rite and Ritual: The Trance Films of Kenneth Anger
Summary: 5 Stars
I took an Avant-Garde Film class at UCSB in the early 1980's and it was there that I first saw many of these films. Anger was by far the most compelling of the American avant-garde filmmakers that I was exposed to in that class and seeing his films again on DVD I am reminded why that was so.
I have little patience for the generic characters and narratives that Hollywood manufactures and even less patience for the self-consciously artsy films produced by directors that are supposedly independent of the Hollywood system. Hollywood loves formulas and cliches and independent filmmakers also love formulas and cliches (just a different set of them). Because they are motivated by identical ambitions (riches and reputation) neither Hollywood nor the independents produce anything that I would call art. Its all commercial product.
For me the most fascinating thing about the American avant-garde is its acknowledgment that film is an inherently sensationalist and (sometimes) trashy medium and that it generates the interest that it does not because it is "the democratic art" but because it is all about decadence, excess, and spectacle. Anger was the first to really exploit Hollywood trashiness and he was followed by Warhol and Lynch. These directors do not reject Hollywood trashiness in fact these directors make Hollywood trashiness their focus. Anger and Warhol and Lynch craft trashy characters and storylines but what elevates what they do to the status of "art" is that they are winking at you as they do it. Some call what Anger and Warhol did "camp" but its not camp in the way Sontag describes it (according to Sontag true camp is never intentional). These directors strategically employ "camp" but when they do so they are making a comment on the artificial nature of Hollywood "styles" and "realities" and that places what they do in the category of art (as opposed to commodity).
The avant-garde is by its very nature subversive. However, the avant-garde does not really seek to explode Hollywood styles but to extend the ways in which we view and relate to them. Hollywood films were very much a part of Anger's education and they provide him with a rich vocabulary from which to draw. Hollywood artistry (costumes, sets) as well as Hollywood gaudiness (scandalous behavior) fascinate and excite him and he appropriates these for his own purposes. He is inspired by and draws from old and new Hollywood; his films look back to Hollywood's silent era (when the medium had a magic fetishistic quality) and forward to new ways film can be used to explore man's inherent need for ritual (Anger's pet theme). His own films can be viewed as elaborate rites and rituals but they are also deeply insightful as psychological portraits of society's discontents. Anger was influenced by those that came before him and Anger's influence can be detected in some mainstream filmmakers works. Like Anger's characters Martin Scorsese's characters reject normalizing rituals in favor of their own often anti-social (and sometimes sociopathic) rituals. The punk movement was also influenced by the avant-garde's examination of self-formation through rite and ritual.
Granted, many American avant-garde films acquire their reputation by showing what mainstream films will not or cannot show and so some dismiss them as being just as sensationalistic as mainstream film. But the American avant-garde does not exist merely to subvert or exploit Hollywood tastes and standards (Hollywood itself is constantly challenging its own tastes and standards and testing its own boundaries of what you can and cannot show). Rather the American avant-garde exists in order to make us aware of the untapped potential of film and of film as a medium with its own special knowledge.
Even if the content of Anger's films does not appeal to you there is an undeniable power to them that exists nowhere else (except perhaps in silent film and in some music). Few artists have more to teach us about the power of cinema, the ritual of art making and of imbuing objects and acts with magical properties/significance, and the way art both mediates old and produces new realities and rituals than Kenneth Anger.
Also recommended: Jean Cocteau, Pier Pasolini, James Broughton, Stan Brakhage, Donald Cammell, Derek Jarman, David Lynch.
Summary of The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2
Pleasure and terror commingle in this next collection of Kenneth Anger films gathered in Volume 2. Like those in The Films of Kenneth Anger: Volume 1, these shorts illustrate Anger's occult concepts with adept, fetishized poeticism manifested formally through Anger's luscious color experiments, avant-garde soundtracks, and radically inventive editing. Volume 2 boasts Anger's later, darker films that were allegedly magick incarnate: "Scorpio Rising," "Invocation of My Demon Brother," and "Lucifer Rising." "Scorpio Rising," about a biker gang as a symbol of savage ritualism, contains truly scary footage of an actual death-by-motorcycle, and is the most brilliant example of proto-metal culture that has by now infiltrated America's mainstream. "Invocation of My Demon Brother" stars the infamous Bobby Beausoleil, and is a gorgeous psychedelic recap of a theatrical black magick ceremony performed on stage during Anger's Haight Ashbury days. It features a stunning noise piece played on a Moog by Mick Jagger. "Lucifer Rising," too, is an infamous film, as it was made as a tribute to Lucifer's rejuvenating forces. Each film turns the concept of evil inside out, leaving one with a more complex notion of why Anger considered the camera a "magical weapon." Volume 2 also contains the slick "Kustom Kar Kommandos," about car club culture mirroring sexual fetish, a shortened version of "Rabbit Moon," and the not-as-exciting 2002 film "The Man We Want to Hang," about Aleister Crowley's paintings. The commentaries on each film offer indispensable, eloquent insights into the visionary motifs inherent to each piece. Notably, the booklet in Volume 2 contains essays by Guy Maddin, Gus Van Sant, and Bobby Beausoleil, who recalls his association with Anger, and how he managed to finish the "Lucifer Rising" soundtrack in his prison cell. For Kenneth Wilbur Anglemeyer fans, these DVDs sets contain welcome blessings, or curses, or both. ?Trinie DaltonSimilar DVD Movies
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