FILM GUTTER REVIEWS: THE SHORT FILMS OF MARIAN DORA – PART 1

So, having finally succumbed to the lure of the World of Marion Dora boxset, I wanted to check out some of the director's short films. Having in the last decade built a reputation as one of the most challenging, experimental and reclusive directors around – famous (or infamous) for transgressive movies such as Melancholie Der Engel and Cannibal – I was fascinated to see what his shorter work would bring compared to his feature films. It also interested me that of the whole bundle, there wasn't a single world of dialogue. So how would each of them fare? The below are effectively 'mini-reviews' of each short in the order the feature on Disc 3 of the boxset, and we'll be looking at the full set over the next couple of weeks.

CARIBBEAN SUNRISE (3 mins)

As you would expect from Dora, this one is beautifully shot, and starts with some lovely shots of a beach during the day and towards sunset. But of course, the beauty is married with horror, and as the camera veers slightly away from the beach itself, we find a dead, brutalised body open to the elements not far from the shore. The music and sound effects take a more sinister call along with it, although the sound of distant seagulls never leaves. We close with a final stunning short of the beach. Only about three minutes, so hard to rate, but it certainly has many of the facets of Dora that his fans has grown to love.
RATING: 6/10.

DIE TOTEN VON SAN ANGELO (6 mins)
 
This piece immediately looks a little older than the previous somehow, and was shot in Mexico City. The short film splices together shots of dead and decaying bodies in some kind of crypt or vault – presumable beneath the church that holds them – alongside some crisp shots of the church as as well as life in Mexico City itself. You could take numerous things out of it – the idea that religion has been dead for a long time, that the poor beggars of Mexico City are as good as corpses, that the city is somehow born out of death – but ultimately that is down to individual interpretation. Again this one runs barely six minutes and remains more of a concept piece than anything particular coherent.
RATING: 5/10.

CADAVERICON (12 mins)

Aside from sounding like the kind of convention no-one would want to go to, this short film begins with a disturbing soundscape over what would appear to be pretty everyday scenes of a man driving a car and a clock ticking. We then have our title card – with Jesus on a cross in silhouette – before we are transported to a funeral home and a body bag being unloaded from a van and brought in. I suppose the clue was in the title here... The background noise (I can't really dub it music) continues in a discordant vein as the elderly man's body is brought in and undressed. Watching this in the grainy, rough sort of quality we see here genuinely had me wondering if this was a real piece of footage I was watching or not. There doesn't seem to be any concession to camera angles or indeed consideration for the viewer here. The body is then smartly redressed ready for a funeral before the coffin is neatly constructed, the body placed within and then loaded back into the van. We follow the scene all the way to the funeral, where we see the body laid in the casket with organ music playing over it. It's interesting in a sense of seeing what happens prior to a funeral, and the way the sound plays throughout is pretty effective, but it's more of a visual spectacle than anything with a true story thread to latch on to. A watchable enough arty piece nonetheless.
RATING: 7/10.
 
DER PUPPERSCHANDER 2 (7 mins)
 
Well, this one eschews the beautiful and is straight into the bizarre, with a man with a doll in the process of drilling a hole into a slightly delicate area with a corkscrew. Then we have a ring at the doorbell and none other than Dora favourite Carsten Frank at the door. He doesn't seem in the least bothered our protagonist is only wearing a leather jacket and pants, oddly. Anyway, our unnamed protagonist soon overpowers Frank and has him on the floor, attempting to beat him into submission. Soon enough he has his shirt, trousers and underwear off and has him laid down flat on his stomach. He then proceeds to lay his strangely hollowed-out doll on top of his victims' back and masturbate – pretty graphically – into the face of the doll. Certainly no messing about with artistry or glorious landscapes here – this thing is downright depraved and flat out pornographic, and not in a way you would want. However it still has a sort of grim fascination to it that's hard to ignore.
RATING: 7/10.

We'll be back with more Marian Dora short movies next week!