It's been many, many, many years now since I first heard about the legendary Cannibal Holocaust. I must've been no more than twelve when I was introduced to enthusiastic reviews praising it as one of the most shocking, but also one of the most important horror films of all times. For long, it was inscribed on my wish list in golden, cursive letters and all of its nastier bits were imprinted in my mind like the hypothetical Christmas gifts of an over-imaginative child. Inspired only by vague descriptions, I had imagined the turtle scene and the emasculation scene in vivid details, making them an almost tangible part of my global film culture.
If it's been years since I've first heard about Cannibal Holocaust, it's been only days since I first saw it. Other than the film's relative rarity, the main reason why I had steered clear until now was Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal ferox (1981), which was (wrongfully) heralded as "the most violent movie ever made" and often considered a companion piece to Deodato's film (with which it shares a similar premise). Before I saw it, I was exalted with anticipation. I had even convinced a friend to watch it along, applauding myself for what I thought would gross him out of his mind. But soon after the film started, boredom was our only companion in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. This left a very bitter taste in my mouth, one that would grow into unjustified disdain for all Italian cannibal films.
This just goes to show that every film is in island, or an isolated entity. Even when bound by genre, one film can always surpass its kin by either creativity, intelligence or sheer passion. The truth of the matter is, Cannibal Holocaust not only surpasses ferox by a great margin, it also surpasses the majority of horror films from the 80s. It is a true classic. It grips your balls and it grips your mind while boasting a very relevant message about the nature of televisual images and the monstrosity of colonialism, a message not limited to the "pie-faced attempts at morality" contained in the dialogue but nestling rather in the brilliantly layered storytelling structure.
But despite all of these qualities, the most simple explanation for the film's success is the most visceral one, namely its showcasing of grippingly realistic images depicting extreme acts of cruelty, most notable of which is the live slaughter of a turtle whose head is severed, than all of its limbs and majestic shell. These are images that you will hardly be able to shake off from your feverish mind, let alone see again in a contemporary film. Here, and only here is where cinema shows you its raw, unmitigated power.
This here is real turtle flesh, folks. And believe me,
you've never seen it so raw...
Although many fans and naysayers alike tend to focus on the film's nastiness and its shock value, I found with great surprise that its relevance lied somewhere else entirely. I knew everything about the turtle scene and the re-cut version of the film wherein all animal cruelty has been excised (which is absurd considering the exploitative nature of the film and its intrinsic critique of the extremes of documentary cinema). I knew about the emasculation scene, the rape scene and even the un-filmed piranha scene, which are considered by many international observers to be the main staples of the film. Yet, I had never heard about the very worst scenes of the film, the ones containing extreme images of colonialist violence. You see, the film is an explicit critique of the sensationalist nature of contemporary media, but it is an even more potent critique of colonialism. Let us simply consider the synopsis of the film and its central opposition between the scholarly protagonist and the young documentarists whose work he is trying to reclaim from the jungle.
We are first introduced to the work of Alan Yates via a TV report informing us of his disappearance. It seems that Yates and his crew of fairly respected documentarists were attempting what no man has ever achieved with success, namely documenting the lives of "primitive" cannibals from the Amazonian region know as the Green Inferno, when they all disappeared without a trace. The TV report then proceeds to inform us that a new expedition is now being put together in order to find out what happened to Yates and crew. This expedition is to be led by New York anthropologist Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman), whom we are told has already been involved in the field study of many "primitive" races around the world.
The first half of the film chronicles the journey of Professor Monroe into the heart of the Green Inferno using an invisible cinematic apparatus. Although this section contains plenty of suspenseful moments pertaining to the uneasy relationship between Monroe, his two guides (a savvy, gun-totting, coke-snorting though guy and a Native youth) and the indigenous populations of cannibals, it constitutes the most conventional portion of the film. Eventually, Monroe finds a gruesome bone sculpture made with the remnants of Yates and crew. Not much later, he also finds their film canisters, neatly hung on a vine in the camp of the "tree people".
The second half of the film begins with the return of these canisters to New York, and from there begins the complex exposition of Alan Yates' crimes and those of media concerns wishing to use his footage to secure the spectatorship of thrill-seeking North Americans. Not unlike Michael Moore, Yates is more of a showman than a true documentarist. He is one to create the reality which he films instead of merely documenting it, or commenting on it. This is made explicit early in the second part when one of his producers shows Monroe footage of African army men shooting at blindfolded civilians, telling him that this was a set-up arranged by Yates. Obviously, the footage shot within the Green Inferno is likewise dishonest. More than dishonest, it is actually horrific. It shows the documentarists indulging in repulsive acts of colonialist violence, setting the huts of natives afire, killing their livestock, raping their women... What we find out from this material is not the barbarity of primitives, but the barbarity of contemporary men. We also find out that the deaths of Yates and crew is mere retribution for the heinous acts of which they are guilty. The unveiling of these acts is made under the gaze of Monroe and the TV producers who wish to broadcast the footage for mass entertainment and this leads to a heated debate about the irresponsible sensationalism of contemporary media.
Far from simply justifying the first act (wherein the goal is to bring home Yates' footage), the second act also manages to successfully superpose many levels of storytelling (the traditional exposition of Professor Monroe's actions shot with an invisible camera, the documentary-like interviews of the deceased's relatives shot with a TV camera and the the found footage from Yates' expedition, shot with two different hand-held cameras who constantly complement each other's work), creating in the process a supremely relevant, self-reflexive meditation on the nature of truth when crystalized by the camera. That said, the onscreen slaughter of a beautiful turtle is crucial in creating the affect necessary to make you question the boundaries of documentary filmmaking. As for the human deaths, the cinéma vérité style makes them more than carefully-staged events, closely likening them to snuff, which has furthered helped Cannibal Holocaust garner international attention and shake the belief systems of many serious critics, which is quite an achievement considering that this was originally intended as merely a grindhouse film.
When in Rome...
At the heart of the film lies a clash of ideologies regarding the etiquette of world exploration. Whereas Monroe advocates quiet observation, then respectful emulation of his Amazonian hosts, acting like a deferent guest, the young documentarists rather see themselves as the masters in occupied land. The colonialist violence they thus perpetrate is what I consider to be the film's most horrific aspect.
Here are Cortezian conquerors irrupting into a village within the Green Inferno, the very same village wherein Monroe and his two guides first made contact with the locals, and scaring away the villagers with their rifles, kicking and shooting a small pig tethered to a pole, setting huts afire, forcing people inside at gunpoint and finally, fucking triumphantly on the charred remains. For one, I believe that the sex scene involving Alan and Faye was the most disturbing bit in the entire film for it perfectly exemplifies the unfathomable perversity of the conquering spirit. Fucking on the floor of a hut you have just torched in front of the natives you just made homeless: you can hardly do worse than that. Well... you can gang-rape a native girl and then laugh when you see her entire body impaled on a post.
While their awfulness fluctuates, all of these crimes are inscribed within the colonialist mindset warranted by the presupposition of superiority deriving from technological advancement. When Alan boasts that it is the law of the jungle that compels him and his crew to do violence on the "weaker" natives, he is merely drawing on the flawed logic of conquistadores to justify his genocidal rights. The film's critique of sensationalism in the media may be more explicit, but its critique of colonialism is much more poignant. The documentarists depicted here have not merely taken what they wanted out of the Amazonian people, they have ridiculed their culture and humiliated them in the process by displaying utterly excessive force. So when Professor Monroe utters the closing line of the film to the effect that we are the real cannibals, I took that as a condemnation of the colonialist spirit at work in Alan Yates' films, that is the strongly-held belief that civilized Whites are necessarily superior to other "races". As if tagging someone as primitive instantly gave you a right over his life. As if carrying weapons and technology that made you god-like in appearance actually gave you the rights of gods. We are the cannibals for colonialism is the ultimate act of savagery and we are all guilty of it, everyday. We may not have sinked machetes into their skulls and eaten their guts, but we have cannibalized many foreigners nonetheless. First and foremost, we did so by manipulating their image, making them out to be somewhat "lesser" than us, as exemplified here. Then, we have subsequently imposed our economic and cultural hegemony on the basis of that conclusion, validating our actions through an illusory superiority.
Other than Monroe's witty commentary, the final shot contains another element of interest to the acute observer: the logo on the great big truck passing behind the Professor is strangely similar to the tribal marking seen earlier on the neck of a native girl. This also goes to show that we too are barbaric in our insistence on graphic markings showing one's standing within society. Only ours our corporate logos with which we dress ourselves, content that we are to own such or such brand of clothing. This pertains also to our cannibalizing hegemony since these symbols of prestige are often generated by the labor of enslaved foreigners against which we do violence on a daily basis, even from the comfort and apparent normality of our homes. What if in turn, as Monroe suggests to a self-satisfied TV exec, the "primitives" would enter our homes and dictate their laws? The question is obvious, but what if the shoe was on the other foot? Could we consider slave drivers to be anything other than barbaric?
Alan Yates (Carl Gabriel Yorke) definitely makes it in my short list of
top film villains. Here, he justifies colonialist violence by alluding to
the law of the jungle
"We are the cannibals" also pertains to our devouring the misery of others as entertainment. This apparently simplistic assertion, which could be understood as a mere critique of macabre news briefs, actually reveals primordial concerns about the ethics of documentary filmmaking. That said, Cannibal Holocaust tackles two crucial questions that have obsessed film commentators since the days of Robert Flaherty: the question of non-intervention and that of "staged truth".
The former question pertains to the inaction of the documentarist who detaches himself from horrific events by hiding behind the camera. In the present film, we see Alan and crew witnessing the burial of a newborn baby and the execution of his mother. Is their inaction a form of complicity in the events depicted? If you won't even consider this question under the present circumstances, consider this: a war journalist catching the wounding of fellow soldiers on tape. Must he drop his camera to lend a hand or must he continue filming, burshing thus a fairer portrait of war? If he continues filming, isn't he cannibalizing his felled comrades, using their individual plights as mere episodes in the drama of war? If you consider that sensationalist footage necessarily involves some sort of live misfortune bestowed on fellow human beings, isn't the very essence of sensationalism questionable? And isn't our wanting to see sensationalist footage akin to a death sentence made in the name of entertainment? If we come back to the example of the war journalist, which is a classic example in the appraisal of documentary ethics, we find that non-intervention can actually benefit truth in the sense that slow, painful death is a truth of war that needs to be captured and exposed for what it is, namely an unspeakable horror that needs never be reproduced. But the problem with the doctrine of sensationalism is that it benefits only the immediate sensibility of viewers in a bid to keep them tuned in. Truth is merely instrumental in the process and this tends to devaluate human life a great deal. If the capture of live deaths does not help prevent further deaths, but rather exists only to give nihilistic North-Americans a kick, then we're in a shitty state of affairs is what the film is trying to say.
As for the question concerning the manipulation of truth, it is also tied to sensationalism insofar as it helps channel the interest and opinions of viewers through shock. The scene wherein we see African militaries executing civilians plainly exposes the unethical nature of documentary filmmaking with an agenda. Québécois filmmakers have coined the term "assumed subjectivity" to describe how documentaries necessary reflect their makers' preferences in terms of framing and editing. That said, every documentary necessarily reflect its maker's outlook on life. But it is one thing to interpret the material at hand. Staging events is quite another. One involves simply a passionate opinion, while the other involves lying. Of course, utilitarians will tell you that lying is acceptable insofar as it benefits a good cause. But such logic is quite dangerous if you consider that the definition of "a good cause" varies tremendously from one individual to the other. After all, even Hitler was fighting for the "good cause"... but it turns out that this good cause was the extermination of Jews.
Crude political analogies aside, documentary filmmaking should be akin to science. Like a scientist, a documentarist should not have a preconceived idea about the material he is about to film. Of course, he is entitled to an opinion, which is what everybody has in regards to every possible topic. What he shouldn't have are inflexible biases and foregone conclusions. If a scientist conducts a study, he should never disregard any results on the basis of personal bias. Likewise, the ideal documentarist is one who forges his opinion as reality slowly reveals its nature in front of his lens. He must approach reality with initial candor, and not force reality to fit his agenda.
Many of the American and Anglo-Canadian representatives of direct cinema believed the ideal of documentary filmmaking to be "fly on the wall"-type observation. No intervention, just observation. The rationale behind this is that truth will reveal itself to all individual viewers in many varied forms. Truth is polymorphous, not unique. Hence, it cannot fit an agenda. This is what these idealistic pioneers believed. And these people here find reflection in the character of Harold Monroe, who, contrarily to Yates, favors observation and quiet awe to boisterous intervention and opportunistic lies. As for Yates, he rather belongs with the showmen, or people using the documentary medium to help sell their own brand of truth. Most famous of them is Michael Moore, the leftist answer to the swarming conservative pundits, the Democratic Rush Limbaugh. Here is a man who makes a mockery of documentary filmmaking, especially in the sense that it was understood by the purists from the 50s and 60s.
Clearly, Moore is not a man of observation. He is a man of action. While that may be great for those who believe that the Left truly needs an impetuous strongman, it is not for those who cherish documentary cinema for what it is, namely a documentation of reality. Aside from cramming tear-inducing music, flamboyant theatrics and his own personal (and very effective) brand of fake whimsical candor into his films, he also disseminates half-truths and bare-faced lies... as if manipulation alone was not enough.
For one, I was fooled by Bowling for Columbine. But as soon as he crossed the border in Sicko, Moore brazenly entered familiar territory and that's when the mask fell off. I was appalled to see how he depicted health care in Canada. Health care in Canada, especially in Quebec, is hell! The system is grossly underfunded and incredibly understaffed despite the ample participation of every single taxpayer in the country. If you want to wait in the ER for 22 hours just to have three stitches done, then come to Quebec. Of course, this is the way we like it here. We like to know that we won't ruin ourselves if we get sick and we like to know that all of our neighbors share the same coverage. This is what Moore should've focused on. Instead, he decides to make Canada look like health care Heaven, which is a bold-faced lie.
I argued extensively with a friend about this issue but she wouldn't budge. According to her, the end justifies the means and thus lying is okay, as long as it conveys "the right message". Again, "the right message" is whatever anybody wants it to be. It can be mere spectacle, like the TV execs from Cannibal Holocaust wished. "The footage is unedited!", they tell Monroe as if such a consideration could justify the presentation of Yates' footage as documentary truth. What Deodato tells us here is that the news media have no use for the truth unless it is a by-product of agenda-setting and ratings-roofing sensationalism.
He also warns us about the suggestive power of manipulative images by highlighting the difference between Alan Yates as framed by TV cameras and the real Alan Yates revealed by his own footage. According to the opening TV report, he is a nice, friendly guy, which is how all showmen appear to be, given a little help by the studio heads who want to cash in on their power of attraction. But this is not at all the real Alan Yates, it is merely the Alan Yates that the studio heads want us to see, in order to better sell his footage later on. At first, we are all fooled by these images and we immediately suspect foul play from the "primitives", not from Yates. Thus, we too become the victims of TV and its version of truth, which we mechanically believe through years of conditioning.
Whereas Harold Monroe is more akin to D.A. Pennebaker,
Alan Yates would be Michael Moore
Despite its obvious superiority to most films of its ilk, Cannibal Holocaust has garnered a lot of bad press throughout the years, most of it pertaining only to dubious moral appraisals thereof. One of the funny things about mainstream film critique is that while most exploitation films are systematically dismissed, overlooked or discredited for what they are, any successful title whose influence exceeds the third run circuit will get a fairly different treatment. It will immediately come under severe scrutiny by the very same critics who would have dismissed its existence had it been contrived to the grindhouse.
In order to become prey to criticism, the successful exploitation film is instantly interpreted as something more than what it is by nature. And thus, it is reviewed as a serious, A-list film. In the case of Cannibal Holocaust, many of its detractors have pointed out the dubious morality derived from its use of violence to condemn violence and they did so without even considering the inherent contradiction in critiquing the immorality of a film which is immoral in nature. Hence, people have wrongly tagged it as a moralistic film containing exploitative violence whereas it is actually an exploitative film containing a moral, which is completely different. Criticizing Cannibal Holocaust for its exploitative violence is just like criticizing a porno film for its explicit depiction of sexuality.
Cannibal Holocaust is an exploitation film. Plain and simple. It was originally made with the sole purpose of showing graphic violence and sexuality in the tradition of other low-budget Italian cannibal films that have gotten much less publicity despite similar M.O.s. The only thing that seems to distinguish Deodato's classic film is the presence of a moral, which is what has pissed people off the most. According to bourgeois sensibilities, films of this ilk shouldn't even aspire to higher moral ideals since filth is filth is filth. For one, I believe that if an exploitation film contains social criticism, this should be considered a plus. Here, it proves that Deodato went above and beyond the call of duty and into the territory of higher art. I just wish that the snooty reviewers who analyzed his films as they would've Citizen Kane (1941) would simply think about the absurdity of doing so. I mean, haven't the detractors of Cannibal Holocaust ever watched a porno? If so, I wonder if they were angered by the lack of morality therein... and I wonder if this prevented them from jerking off to it.
What further pisses me off is the double standard at work here. While pie-faced moralism is the norm in many other genres, it is considered de facto to be incompatible with the horror genre. A lot of people seem to believe that you cannot condemn violence by showing violence, which is untrue. Just think about it with calm: if a director tries to repulse you with violence, which is the goal of horror, then he is not advocating violence. He is showing it to be repulsive. What's more is that most of the violence in Cannibal Holocaust is contextualized. The maiming of animals is done either for nutritional purposes or for protection, while the violence exerted by the cannibals is either ritualistic or defensive. As for the repulsive acts perpetrated by Yates and crew, they constitute the centerpiece of narrative construction. They are slowly revealed, with inserted commentaries and debates as to their unethical nature.
If you can't stomach animal "cruelty", then I doubt you're part of the target audience to begin with. But if you want to complain, go right ahead. You might have an argument in saying that entertainment cannot possibly validate the brutal slaughter of animals. Conversely, I believe that the death of those animals actually strengthens the main point of the film concerning human deaths as source of entertainment. Besides, these deaths greatly help consolidate the overall realism of the film, which further helps validate that point. Although I don't agree, I must admit that the doctrine vying for the right to life of animals over the needs of cinema is perfectly sound. And to its advocates, Deodato has made amend, stating in a 2000 interview linked to the release of the Grindhouse DVD, that killing animals was a stupid mistake. Personally, I think this is one of those fortunate mistakes that have enlightened film history, such as the inclusion of the impromptu line, "Here's looking at you, kid" in the final cut of Casablanca. But seeing the intense heat under which the film has come throughout the years, I will paraphrase Leone in order to best explain the situation. After seeing the Italian premiere of the film, the famous director of Once Upon a Time in the West is reputed to have written Deodato a letter containing the following comment: "Dear Ruggero, what a movie! The second part is a masterpiece of cinematographic realism, but everything seems so real that I think you will get in trouble with all the world". As stated by Leone, realism has indeed put Deodato in trouble, but at the same time, it has given him international recognition, proving once more that history is made by the rebels who will not shy away from rattling the foundations of received ideas.
Cannibal Holocaust's Amazonian jungle is not a paper-
mâché construct with brown tap-water running through
No matter what bias you may entertain toward the film, I'm sure you can grant it certain obvious merits. Cannibal Holocaust was shot on location in the Amazonian Rainforest. This alone is a sizable achievement. It was shot using a large cast of natives, which is another sizable achievement. This points to some really dedicated filmmakers who literally braved death (in the many forms it takes near the Amazon) to bring you back the images contained in the film. These are no mere sets that you see around the protagonists. There are no leaves tacked to plywood, nor are there rubber snakes being dragged by wires. What you see is real and there is thus real danger within every shot, which greatly heightens the realism of the ensemble to the point where you can hardly distinguish what is true and what is false, allowing Deodato to hammer his main point home with a swing from the mace. The man has made every conceivable effort in the name of cinema, and for this we should celebrate him, not dismiss him on moral grounds. After all, Griffith's Birth of a Nation is still a classic...
There is no contradiction at the heart of Cannibal Holocaust. It is a simply a superior exploitation film that transcends the stream of Italian cannibal films by reflecting on the nature of filmed images. It is not a critique of violence. I repeat, it is not a critique of violence. It is a critique of sensationalism in the news media and of colonialism, two traits that do not characterize the film. The difference between the violence depicted in the film and the violence depicted in the film-within-a-film is that the latter is real. And only as such is it dangerous. You see, genre cinema is a form of entertainment whereas the news media are a source of information. What you see in genre films are thus not lies, they're stories made to thrill you. You can't accuse them of being dishonest. On the other hand, Yates' footage, for which the media are vying, is. By staging events, not only does he misinform the viewers, but he creates full-fledged myths, such as that of cannibals, which Deodato works to deconstruct, defusing in the process the media's hold on our consciousness.
4/5 An historical document, not only in its realism and self-reflexivity, but in the international resonance of its unique message.
