Films That Witness Madness

review

MARTYRS

MARTYRS is the best of the so-called torture porn films. Admittedly, that's not saying much and MARTYRS is most definitely not without its flaws. Take the structure of the film itself. After a tremendously unsettling first 15 minutes, the film slows to a crawl. The same events happen again and again for what seems like an eternity. But just when it looks like MARTYRS is a one-trick pony, this initial story line comes to an abrupt close with a self-inflicted slit throat. That cues up the second half of the narrative, a much darker - and that IS saying much - excursion into the deepest depths of cinematic sadism. This is a film whose reputation can never do complete justice to its contents. Like Pasolini's immortal masterpiece, SALO, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM, MARTYRS possesses that dark talent to show you things you never wanted to see and burn them so severely into your subconscious that you'll never be rid of them completely, time be damned.

I'll take the time now to issue a MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING for those who have not seen the film. I WILL be discussing virtually everything.

15 years ago, Lucie suffered extreme abuse at the hands of a few unknown assailants. After an unlikely escape, she is placed into an orphanage. Deeply traumatized, she is slowly brought out of her shell by a new friend, a girl her age named Anna. But even though Lucie is making progress, she still can't shake the memories of her abuse or the haunting specter of a nude, disfigured woman - a specter that seems to be causing her bodily harm. The police don't know what to make of her case - Lucie remembers little in the way of details - even as her doctors view her progress with a mixture of pleasure and extreme caution.

When we see Lucie next it is in the present day, gunning down an entire family at their home one Sunday afternoon - this bloody and unexpected plot development is one of MARTYRS' most memorable sequences. Lucie believes the parents were the ones responsible for her past abuse. This rampant bloodshed is not enough to appease the angry specter, however, and Lucie undergoes attack after attack. The arrival of Anna at the crime scene offers some relief, but not enough. Lucie cannot stand the abuse any longer, slitting her own throat and ending her misery. The next day, Anna discovers a secret passageway in the house. It leads her into an underground laboratory of sorts, pictures of mutilated individuals lining the walls, single rooms outfitted with nothing more than a chair. Anna finds a badly mutilated woman, her wrists bound in chains, a metal headdress covering her eyes. Taking the woman upstairs, Anna draws her a bath and pries off the metal blindfold. When the woman suddenly turns violent, Anna tries to get her under control. Before she can manage to do so, the woman is silenced by a bullet through her brain.

A group has arrived, mostly men. They drag off the bodies and take Anna back down into the lab. She is confronted by an old woman. The old woman tells her of their "experiments" with martyrs. They slowly torture an individual, both physically and emotionally, until they come to a place close to death. They do this to receive a glimpse of divinity through the victim's death. And, Anna is told, young women make the best martyrs.

The torture elements of films like HOSTEL and SAW never strayed from the realm of cinema. That is, they are presented in such a fashion that they deny the audience credibility. They look and feel false because they are being presented in a patently false way, slickly shot, slickly edited, punctuated with needless soundtrack. They look like they hurt, sure, but they don't carry any impact beyond the ick factor. The tortures presented in MARTYRS are, by contrast, presented in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way. Most of the torture elements are rather mundane. Isolation, forced feedings and beatings comprise the majority of the action. Far from roaring chainsaws and face-smashing beartrap contraptions, the abuse poor Anna undergoes is unbearable simply because it is so plain. It's only in the final stage of the torture that we approach the HOSTEL variety of cinematic atrocity.

The final torture - I won't reveal what it is, that would be ruining the greatest shock the film has to offer - is what finally brings Anna to her martyrdom. On the brink of death, she is able to see what no one else can, something beyond our reality. What this revelation actually is is never really explained. It's obtusely hinted at - we see something, that much is sure, but what it is remains as tantalizingly vague as Dave's trip into the Monolith in 2001. By the films end, we are still very much in the dark about Anna's vision and whether or not her death was in vain. The film also provides a rather obvious final twist that is either one of the most humanistic or nihilistic final scenes in recent memory. Whichever you choose, there's no doubting the ultimate impact of the last half hour of this film.

But the film as a whole doesn't succeed. Don't get me wrong, MARTYRS is a very good film but that is because its strongest moments far outweigh its moments - sometimes whole sequences - of tedium. This is also one of those "scream at the screen" films where you find yourself allied with an incredibly naive, gullible and, oftentimes, downright stupid lead character. Anna is martyrdom personified. Lucie is certifiable and dangerous, but Anna refuses to leave her - or apparently, get her any kind of help. Instead, she passively enables her madness. When she discovers Lucie has shotgunned an entire family, she decides to clean up the mess instead of doing what would come naturally to anyone rational or responsible - call the cops. After discovering the poor tortured woman in the laboratory, Anna draws her a bath, yet again never bothering to call the police or, even better, an ambulance. Instead of turning tail and running away, a perfectly natural reaction, she remains by her dead friend's body, still unwilling to leave her friend. Now, I can take a certain amount of this kind of self-sacrifice, but at some point, it stops being virtuous and becomes, as I pointed out not to long ago, naive, gullible and, oftentimes, downright stupid behavior.

Maybe I'm just a bit too cynical. Who knows? But I found myself getting a little impatient waiting for Anna to actually do something other than mope around and mourn. In this way, the whole first half of the film is rather repetitive and dull, too obviously concerned with jump scares and mutilation to arouse much interest. But that all goes away once the film descends below ground.

From that point on, MARTYRS attains the qualities of a true horror masterpiece, an unflinching look into the darkest recesses of the horror film. And because of it, MARTYRS transcends its shock horror roots and becomes something truly special.

Highly recommended.

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