I had a bit of trouble watching this film, and unfortunately, my only reason was technical. My internet sputtered and died about twenty minutes from the end of it, following the film's main motif of sputtering death. I have a problem with the Netflix classification of all genres of film made outside the country as "Foreign." When I think "Foreign," I think artsy, cultural, and tragic. In many ways, Man Bites Dog (or more appropriately, C'est Arrivé a Chez Vous) has elements of art, culture, and tragedy, considering it's shot documentary-style long before that became the hip thing to do for action movies. The premise is that a documentary film crew, having decided to film the life of a serial killer, gradually gets pulled into the murders themselves, but I would argue, they were more than willing participants from the beginning.
After watching this film, I'm reminded of a story my television instructor told the class during Sophomore year of high school, how when she worked at a local news station, there was an incident of a child drowning in the river. She recounted that the cameras arrived on scene and began thrusting their microphones into the face of the mother who was weeping over the body of her child. It was too much for her, and she recalled her crew. The crew featured in Man Bites Dog takes this kind of inhumanity a whole step further. They smile and congratulate the killer, Benoit, for his kills, and when one of their own goes down, they pick up his gear and keep filming. There is no love here. There is no humanity. That which is seen on the camera, even if it's happening inches away, is unreal and therefore entertaining.
I came into this film with a bias toward a very different serial killer, Dexter, who has a code of punishing much worse offenders who have slipped through the clutches of the law. I could attempt to understand a film crew being sympathetic toward someone with a code like that, but Benoit Patard is no Dexter Morgan. He kills for the pleasure of it and for the money. He is creative in his killings, rewatching them like a football coach reviews plays to see how he could improve it. What's especially shocking is how careless he is, murdering in public places in broad daylight, yelling, shooting, and making a scene. Yet, because he has a television crew following him everywhere, all the people he meets and murders trust him completely, letting him into their homes, letting him lead them away. He kills lots of people, elderly and children included, but the crew just keeps on following him, no matter how much he insults or berates them, doing everything he asks with big, goofy grins on their faces. It is the effect of stardom, of losing oneself in one's craft.
While I did wonder about the pervasive lack of suspicion or police presence, even the idea that a serial killer would want the kind of liability a film crew would present, my greater wonder came from what Man Bites Dog had to say about the rest of us. Do the horrible murders we witness affect us? Maybe, maybe not. Would they affect us more if we were there filming? Is life slowly becoming indistinguishable from the lens, or is there hope that if we should find ourselves witnessing real atrocity, that we would feel, question, resist? At what point do we go from being apathetic to condoning the actions we see on the tube, if not externally, then internally? Do we need violence to hold our attention anymore?
In terms of watchability, this was not as gruesome as I half expected, considering the last French crime film I started to watch (and did not get past five minutes) was Irreversible. Benoit started as a charming, humorous person, then decayed very quickly, really bringing the viewer's awareness to the ugliness that is now so ubiquitously entertaining. I have to give it four stars for innovation, entertainment, and the provocation of thought. It's worth a look.
After watching this film, I'm reminded of a story my television instructor told the class during Sophomore year of high school, how when she worked at a local news station, there was an incident of a child drowning in the river. She recounted that the cameras arrived on scene and began thrusting their microphones into the face of the mother who was weeping over the body of her child. It was too much for her, and she recalled her crew. The crew featured in Man Bites Dog takes this kind of inhumanity a whole step further. They smile and congratulate the killer, Benoit, for his kills, and when one of their own goes down, they pick up his gear and keep filming. There is no love here. There is no humanity. That which is seen on the camera, even if it's happening inches away, is unreal and therefore entertaining.
I came into this film with a bias toward a very different serial killer, Dexter, who has a code of punishing much worse offenders who have slipped through the clutches of the law. I could attempt to understand a film crew being sympathetic toward someone with a code like that, but Benoit Patard is no Dexter Morgan. He kills for the pleasure of it and for the money. He is creative in his killings, rewatching them like a football coach reviews plays to see how he could improve it. What's especially shocking is how careless he is, murdering in public places in broad daylight, yelling, shooting, and making a scene. Yet, because he has a television crew following him everywhere, all the people he meets and murders trust him completely, letting him into their homes, letting him lead them away. He kills lots of people, elderly and children included, but the crew just keeps on following him, no matter how much he insults or berates them, doing everything he asks with big, goofy grins on their faces. It is the effect of stardom, of losing oneself in one's craft.
While I did wonder about the pervasive lack of suspicion or police presence, even the idea that a serial killer would want the kind of liability a film crew would present, my greater wonder came from what Man Bites Dog had to say about the rest of us. Do the horrible murders we witness affect us? Maybe, maybe not. Would they affect us more if we were there filming? Is life slowly becoming indistinguishable from the lens, or is there hope that if we should find ourselves witnessing real atrocity, that we would feel, question, resist? At what point do we go from being apathetic to condoning the actions we see on the tube, if not externally, then internally? Do we need violence to hold our attention anymore?
In terms of watchability, this was not as gruesome as I half expected, considering the last French crime film I started to watch (and did not get past five minutes) was Irreversible. Benoit started as a charming, humorous person, then decayed very quickly, really bringing the viewer's awareness to the ugliness that is now so ubiquitously entertaining. I have to give it four stars for innovation, entertainment, and the provocation of thought. It's worth a look.
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