Martyrs - Page 2

Cigars. Lots of cigars. This is not a euphemism: he really smokes lots and lots of cigars. I don't think I ever saw an interview with him throughout the last 15 years or so that didn't have him chomping a massive stoogie like a fabulously fetishy Ridley Scott.

Man, I read Martyrs a completely different way. In fact, I don't think the whole "what Anna saw" part was even important.

For me, it was about our society, where the ultra-rich have nothing at all to fear or worry about...except what happens after they die. In order to find out this answer, they are willing to viciously and systematically torture innocents (all young girls) just to know.

I think that's a pretty scathing attack on the selfish nature of modern society and the pursuit of wealth and power above all else, including basic empathy for other human beings. I've also had friends who were abused say that the film's depiction of abuse - something that NEVER goes away and always lurks in the back of your mind - was really affecting.

So the end with Mademoiselle finding out what Anna saw is not meant to be the point of it, it's just to show the Bad Guys don't win. In this game, in this society, playing by these rules - everyone loses.

To me, that depth put Martyrs above Haute Tension, Inside and Frontiere(s) (all of which I enjoyed), which were three films that offered great thrills...but only very superficial thrills.

He had 25+ Non-Cancerous throat polyps removed which is why he sounds like that now.

It made him quit the Cigars as well

That's really reading into this an overt personal viewpoint that's nowhere present in film. There's nothing that leads you to believe wealth has anything to do with the events that unfold, other than that the society has the necessary financial means to fund their experiments. And the victims are never expressed in terms of being poor, as Ana came from a financially secure family running the asylum that Lucie was interred. This film is concerned with the human condition and the afterlife, not any form of social commentary from a Left wing viewpoint.

I felt it was present - that the 'sect' were wealthy. When they all come rolling up in their flash cars and sip wine waiting for Mademoiselle's announcement.

Actually, I just watched some of the DVD extras and Laugier said it was a reaction to the society he saw around him - he mentioned reality TV shows as something where we get something out of the suffering of others.

This is the number one foofiest torture porn I have ever seen. The tragedy is that the first hour or so had me on the edge of my seat. I thought a film dealing with the aftermath of the torture rather that another Hostel was a fucking brilliant idea.

And then the grandma shows up and starts babbling nonsense. I get the idea, but it doesn't hold water for one moment. Yes, the people in those pictures are looking up like they're on morphine or something. Isn't that amazing?

Strax was on the money when he said that if the film really gave a shit about any of the metaphysical stuff, we wouldn't have to endure 30 minutes of a girl being punched in the face.

EDIT: was anyone else really confused by their use of the word "martyr"?

I'm not a horror expert whatsoever, so I'll keep this short.

I don't think a film has hit me, emotionally, as hard as the last thirty minutes of this film. There's something just horrifying about the mundanity of the brutality, the drabbness of the violence, even when they're skinning the girl alive that it genuinely struck a chord with me.

I dislike the last moment, just because it seems a little too neat. But there's something overall horrific and nihilistic about the idea of a group subjecting a person to that level of torture with no clear emotional investment.

Martyr is an odd word to use, but I think it's a subversion of the current use of the word. Where people are being tricked or coerced into martyrdom by others. Ana is forced to become this spiritual conduit against her will, but suicide bombers are essentially coerced into believing in the fundemental rightness of their position. They're both essentially disposable and they're given titles by the ones disposing of them to help their conscience.

The use of the word martyr would have been more interesting if the film had something interesting to say. I think someone else used the word pretentious just because it acts as if its really deep, but in actually it isn't. It seems sorta unforgivable that a film that tries to run with such a brutally high-concept can't really mine it thematically once everything is all out in the open.

I know you're all sick of hearing it (but it has relevance this time) but I'm autistic, and as such I'm always taken by surprise when I have a viscerally emotional reaction to a movie. As such my emotional reaction to the movie, and those last thirty minutes, is clouding my judgement potentially, but I not sure how the film fumbled it's thematics.

There's something so horrifically intense about the 1st half hour - the perfect combination of atmosphere, jump scares and disturbing imagery - that Martyrs can't help but to connect on some visceral human level. My wife was so disturbed by just the sound (I'm fluent in French; she's not) that she had to leave the house while I watched it.

The greatness of that 1st half hour only makes the catastrophic nose dive of the movies final 2/3s all the more painful. I've never gone from scared to bored so fast in my life.

I think most people had the same reaction. I know my friends and I did. Though the first half is just so fucking amazing that down the road that's really the part of the film I remember. So that's nice.

That last 30 minutes just feels like an excuse to have the torturiest torture imagery possible. It's really a shame they decided to go in that direction.

I'll still defend this movie. Look up my earlier posts. I still like where it went.

Nose-dive? No, that would be the Lost finale. You may not have liked where it went, but there's virtually no difference between Hostel and this, torture-wise.

Like others, I found the first half far more affecting, especially in its depiction of a home invasion. Domestic horror is far more immediate than abduction and torture by a secret organization. And I think it's underscored by the fact that Lucie's is crazy and her only proof is a newspaper clipping.

As far as the second half and ending, I think it falls apart under scrutiny. Mademoiselle and her organization don't really have any motivation for their actions, aside from wanting an answer to what happens after death. But why they want to answer that question is never explicit--they don't have any religious affiliation, and they're basing their hypothesis off of photographs.

The one interesting aspect of the second half is that the organization is basing everything on images (and when Lucie first goes underground, she is confronted with the images). Mademoiselle and her organization are desperately searching for meaning in a series of horrific images, but ultimately find nothing. This is reflective of the movie and the audience.

For me the big difference between the two films is that Hostel had some variety to the torture. It seemed, until the flaying, that it was just some dude beating her over and over again. Had they thrown in more variety, I could possibly have gotten on board.

Oh, and I don't want to quibble but it seems the Lost finale was more of a belly flop than a nose dive.

Except in Hostel, they ascribe a very familiar motivation to the bad guys-- a sadistic compulsion to want to hurt people and profit. In Martyrs its all wrapped up in some quasi-religious, pseudo-philosophy that doesn't make a lot of sense. Granted, Hostel is not the deepest movie nor is it a particularly great film but you can see something recognizably human in the villains. The bad guys in Martyrs seem to exist only to make some pedantic comment on extreme violence at best.

You guys can't see how similar both movies are, bad guy-wise? Only the reason to torture differs. That's it. And the philosophy in Martyrs in pretty simple. Maybe it got lost in the subtitles, but it's clear as water in French.

That the torture is more varied in Hostel, well that's up to someone's preference, and it also applies to the motivations of the torturers. That someone liked it better as uber-sadistic capitalists, fine, but I'm pretty sure some people had problems with that as well. There's probably as many religious freaks willing to kill and maim as there's crazy sadistic capitalists bent on murder, if not more.

That someone approves one more than the other, that's entirely personal.

The villains just seems too vague and tacked on in Martyrs. They suddenly appear midway, and after about ten minutes it becomes fairly apparent how the film will end, and killing any sense of dread or suspense.

Also, I don't understand what they would accomplish by obtaining the information they were seeking. They seemed to want an afterlife, but I imagine their transgressions would bar them from admittance.

It isn't that I felt the motivations were unclear. I understood what they were trying to accomplish with their treachery. It just wasn't very well thought out. If they really wanted a peak into the afterlife, there are better ways to do it. All the other pseudo-philosophy is window dressing since it bears no real impact on our protagonist. That's not describing a personal preference, its a failure of the filmmakers to create a realistic, or at least fully-realized (according to the film's own world) villain.

And because the meaning of each of these films (Martyrs and Hostel) is derived from the motivation of the villains, I think why they do what they do is one of the most important things about the film. Without it, all the violence and conflict is completely meaningless. And that's why i'm dwelling on that aspect of the film.

Is her torture worth it to enter a transcendent state of euphoria and experience true visions of the afterlife?

Worth it to her? Or to the organisation that tortures her?

Either way, the answer is no.

Its obviously worth it to the organization or they wouldn't invest so much time and money trying to answer the question. Veritable proof of an afterlife would change the course of human history.