Martyrs (2008)

WARNING: This is an extraordinarily violent film. I review it here because it is also an outstanding film, but I do not recommend it for anyone other than those with extremely high tolerances for on-screen violence. So, for the overwhelming majority of you, DO NOT see this movie. You would find it very distressing, to put it very mildly.

There are violent movies. There are ultraviolent movies. And then there is Martyrs, a French film with few peers in that category, but also an overarching journey that transcends mere gore and even good cinematic horror.

The film opens with a jarring image: an adolescent girl, bloodied and obviously horribly neglected and mistreated, running from a dilapidated slaughterhouse in utter terror. It sets the tone perfectly.

Rescued from her plight, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) leads police back to the place of her long torment. The investigation continues as Lucie is placed in a home for troubled youth, where, over time, she befriends Anna (Morjana Alaoui), another very troubled girl who is nonetheless able to draw Lucie out of her silence and psychic shock. One evening Lucie is attacked by a shadowy figure who slashes the poor girl repeatedly. Anna is shocked, but Lucie swears her to secrecy.

Flash forward a few years, and a well-to-do family is gathering around the breakfast table. In moments, Lucie enters their life ... and from there, the first part of our story enters phases of violence, retribution, and revelation that are at times perplexing, at times horrific.

As that first story arc winds down, we discover the bigger picture as the second story arc soars upward, and Anna learns firsthand the secrets that Lucie has fought hard to conceal. At this point, the violence of the film's first half pales as Anna is forcefully neglected and utterly abused ... but we now know why, as the person responsible for all of this explains the purpose of this horrifying quest.

To say more would be to spoil, and I'm torn about that: While I would not recommend Martyrs to most people I know -- in fact, I'd discourage them from seeing it -- I can think of one or two who fall outside that category. It is an endurance test, make no mistake about it. But what Lucie and Anna go through is what many real martyrs, for all sorts of causes (religious, political, and otherwise), have in fact endured. Writer-director Pascal Laugier does not let his cameras turn away, except for one crucial (and utterly excruciating, perhaps all the more so for being unseen) scene in the finale.

Both female leads give astonishing performances. We cannot help but sympathize with them, given all they've endured and will endure, even as we may have to turn away at times from the magnitude of the violence.

Laugier's intent behind the ending has been a subject of some speculation among fans, and I'll leave that, too, to future fans of the film, few though they may be. Honestly, it's hard to call a viewer who was impressed by Martyrs a fan; I can't conceive of that. This film operates on a visceral level, but it also has the reach to look toward spiritual truths, as elusive as they are.

I must confess that I found Martyrs to be a strangely redemptive film, but others disagree profoundly. Laugier, to his credit, doesn't nail it down for us, even as he utterly decimates the conceits that led to this awful experiment in the first place. For every tower raised in Babel must fall, and in falling, great suffering must come.

In recent years, a new category has been established for movies that push the edge of onscreen violence out further still: Torture porn. For some films, that's a fair label. Martyrs gets lumped into that category often, too, and that's not entirely fair.

It is indeed brutal. It's hard to watch. And yet, it is a profoundly moving film about the endless horror that real violence visits upon the human body and soul, regardless of its justification; about suffering and spiritual transcendence; and about how its victims find ways to continue living, no matter how horrible.

Before my next review is up, a few thoughts on horror movies

Admittedly, I am a passionate fan of horror movies. I realize they're not for everyone. But they are for me, and I have no problem squaring that with my faith.

Why? Because horror movies, in their manifold incarnations, do not shy away from the depths of human depravity. Most movies do. In fact, most Hollywood movies present some bland flavor of addle-brained humanism that simply flies in the face of reality and human history. There are very noteworthy exceptions, but they prove the rule.

Horror films in recent years have recovered an element from the 1970s era of horror and exploitation that is both welcome and, in some cases, regrettable: extreme violence. It's regrettable when that violence is meant to titillate or provoke only. It's welcome when it's meant to draw a larger point for us, and yes, some horror films do just that. At their best, they should do that.

I view the world through blood-colored glasses, admittedly. We humans are incredibly brutal. One need only read in passing about some of the horrific violence visited upon people for absolutely no good reason, whether here in the U.S. or elsewhere, to realize that all sorts of people -- indeed, all people -- are capable of administering horrific pain, absolutely stunning cruelty, and unmitigated brutality to other people. The reasons for doing so, however they're given, have always been, are, and always will be reflections of nothing other than the will toward self-justification. We all know the Holocaust was utter evil on a mass scale; how many of us have considered the de facto genocide visited upon the Germans by their Allied conquerors after the fall of Berlin? It's well documented, but it flies in the face of our mythology of the U.S., British, and Russians as virtuous defenders of freedom and goodness.

Why bring this up? Because it reminds us that the best of us are every bit as capable of evil on a mass (or individual) scale as the worst of us. It's in all of us.

It's certainly in me. And that's one of the reasons I turn to Christ, look to the cross, pray to Almighty God that He might continue the work of salvation and sanctification within my withered soul. (Withered not by horror movies, to bring this full circle, but by the very real violence I grew up with, witnessed at home, survived at home, and gradually learned was everywhere, everywhere.)

I am not exclusively a horror fan, not by any means. I love screwball comedies and silent dramas, for two examples. I love Ozu and Bresson, Lang and Dreyer, Murnau and Tarkovsky, and so many more directors, actors, producers, and movies.

But among what I love are some very good (and also, some very bad, very dumb, very silly) horror movies. Horror movies don't necessarily reflect reality; in many cases, they can only hint at the real horror of being human in this world. One current word should suffice: Congo. But horror movies can convey, with sometimes convincing force, the evil behind such inhumane barbarity.

Why do I need to see that, one might wonder? Because, for me at least, it's easy to fall into a dismissive attitude that focuses only on death tolls and numbers. As Joseph Stalin is attributed with saying, "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."

Horror movies typically focus on the death of humans, one by one. They don't turn away. And therein lies their value, to me and perhaps others, as well.

For me, ultimately, they point me to the absolute necessity of worshiping and following Jesus Christ. What He paid on the cross can come as no surprise to anyone with even a vague familiarity with human history. The reason He paid it? The depravity that lies at the heart of the humans who made, and make, that history. Us. All of us.

Revival, of a sort

I've been out of commission for a while. Chalk it up to the effects of chemotherapy, which continue to provoke terrible spates of depression within me. Along the way, though, I have been watching movies, and I endeavor to get back to posting thoughts and reviews here so that those thoughts can go live somewhere, so I don't have to keep carrying them.