Saw Dante 01, a film by Marc Caro, longtime collaborator with Jean Pierre Jeunet. Caro apparently is much less whimsical, more morbid and ominous. This film is set in a prison in deep space in some far-off future where everything and everyone is given a symbolically significant name. The prisoners have names like "Moloch", "Lazare", the wardens have names like "Charon" and "Persephone", the prison itself is shaped like a cross. Into this world come a mysterious man who can raise people from the dead and who sees the world like it's an Alex Grey painting. Along with this man comes a scientist who is tying to change the prisoners' behavior by injecting them with nanobots that just happen to resemble the prison ship itself (sheer coincidence, no doubt.)
It's very stylish and grim and evocative but I can't really decypher it. There's the obvious Christ imagery associated with the new prisoner, and a sense of oppressive control, with the prison-shaped nanobots. There's a heavy dose of weird-ass nonsense however which makes it all feel kind of arbitrary. We're dealing with big ideas in a kind of clumsy, oblique way. I'm being kind of hard but I was disappointed that the film doesn't go anywhere with its symbolism, seemingly content just to be a spectacle.
That said, a spectacle it certainly is. I had a fairly grainy copy of the film to watch but even in this diminished state the ending climax is a sight to behold. The film is full of flashy, music-video-style visuals. The symbolism involved in the names and imagery fails to gell, I feel, but the film is still a fairly wild trip. Good times!
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