Wild Tales

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Perhaps the best omnibus dark comedy ever made. This movie is funny, it explores some of the darker parts of humanity but it does so with so much wit and intelligence. It was a great hit in South America, and understandably so. Despite dark and cynical take on the human condition, the movie is lighthearted and highly watchable, and uncompromisingly original.

I had an idea from the opening credits that Damian Szifron's WILD TALES, was going to be fun. Images of animals with the actors' names as counterpart, preparing the audience for the animalistic behavior about to come. The film is comprised of six separate vignettes, short stories, if you will. These vignettes all begin innocently enough, passengers boarding a plane, a man driving through the desert, a restaurant on a stormy night, a wedding, everyday slices of modern day life. Something occurs to break the routine, the main character responds, then the scene escalates, and escalates, and when you think you've reached the peak, it escalates even more, and finally in the end reaches a perfect balance of comedy and tragedy. The tales are all perfectly relatable and escalate logically and realistically, nothing comes out from left field. All the characters, each flawed in so many ways, remind us so much of ourselves, both at our best and at our worst... and make us laugh and feel in recognition. Great Movie.

The Spanish title is more apt: Savage Tales. Six short stories show various ways in which savagery persists in the highest levels of civilization. The titles appear against a montage of wild animals. The twist is that here the savagery is celebrated not rued. Where civilization was supposed to free us from savagery, as in the American Western, here the savagery liberates the characters from their civilization. As director Damian Szifron told the Palm Springs festival audience, "The theme is the pleasure of losing control. Releasing the beast." In each story a modern frustration wells up until the character erupts. All the stories involve a furious revenge, with a broadening range of characters. To convey the tensions in modern life, ordinary sounds are amplified, like the luggage wheels in the opening shot. In the pre-credit tale, the pilot turns out to be a lifelong failure who has collected the various teachers, friends, psychiatrist, who have thwarted him, on a flight he will crash into his parents. In a diner the waitress recognizes a customer as the smalltown gangster who drove her father into bankruptcy and suicide. Now running for mayor, he is rude and abusive. As her anger and conscience struggle the cook takes over and kills him. She's content to return to the security and comfort of jail. An Audi driver rages at a redneck who blocks his way. When the rich guy stops to fix a flat tire his nemesis stops and assaults him. The road rage turns into class warfare. Ironically, when they're found burned alive their clutch suggests it was a crime passionel. When an explosives expert gets his car towed for an unjustified parking ticket his angry campaign for justice blows up his marriage, job, career and even shared custody of his daughter. When he blows up the tower's yard he becomes a local hero, Mr Dynamite. In jail his wife and daughter bring him a birthday cake and all the inmates and guards celebrate his day. His last act is blowing out the candles. Terrorism works. A spoiled teenager's fatal hit and run accident leads to a steadily expanding chain of corruption as his wealthy father tries to get the family groundskeeper to take the rap for him. As the bribery balloons no-one is innocent. Even the humble groundskeeper raises his demands. When the father decides not to pay to save his spoiled son, his lawyer says it would be dishonourable for him to renege on his bribery of the the public prosecutor. When the boy decides to confess the greedy renegotiate their scheme. As the fall guy is led away an angry citizen kills him. Amid all the bribes and false honour the poor worker pays the price. In the climax, a rich Jewish family's wedding, the bride explodes after the groom admits he had sex with a colleague who's a guest. The demure bride turns into a vengeful virago wreaking massive destruction, reducing the groom to tears, the ceremony to chaos, and her rival to a bloodied mess. When the newlyweds reconnect — making passionate love amid the ruins of the cake — their union feels more honest than the initial smiles and formality. Now their union expresses more passion than manners. The chaotic wedding is more honest than the ceremonial ritual was. The anthology structure hearkens back to Italian neorealism, where separate short stories provided a wide-ranging survey of social issues. Apt for a celebration of the unruly, the film is exuberantly comic but with a black undercurrent. As its initial frustrations are so common, the film provides its audience with a greater catharsis than most comedies or tragedies. We're left calm of mind, frustrations spent.

This film isn't deserving of the excess of praise it has been lauded with. It's entertaining, thought provoking at times, but not by a long mile, a master piece. The third short is the most exciting. I would have much preferred this story to have been a main feature length road movie. It captures beautifully the lush landscapes of Argentina, underscored by an 80s Giorgio Moroder music soundtrack. Leonardo Sbraglia is excellent in the lead and so is the insane brute, hot on his heels. By the end of this third short however, the film has climaxed. And there's still more than 1,5 hours to follow. How is that time going to be filled? More shorts follow where the corruption of humans is exposed and offset against pitch black humour. They are criticisms against sick modern day over-bureaucratic societies, in this case Argentina (but it could be transposed to most other parts of the world). It shows how people create hell for each other; and how some puncture that infernal catch 22 to cathartic effect. It does a decent enough job at it. The 6th and last short film is a relentless frenzy of noise and visual chaos, and fittingly so, the story is also a convoluted mess. Unfortunately this short is the longest of them all. It makes the entire film end on a bum note for me. Annihilating all the goodwill, the director had garnered from me up until then. It made me realise that at no single point during any of the shorts, had I been emotionally touched, nor did I have a moment of intellectual revelation. The film is made up of smoke and mirrors, hiding the fact that there's no heart in the film. Nor is it a product of a great mind; just some half-finished ideas strung together to add up to the duration of one long feature. It's simply one of those movies that a certain public must see and talk highly of, because it's a case of the Emperor's new clothes, really.