Alienation and Escapism in Modern Cinema - a study of films presented at the 44th International Film Festival Rotterdam

In Stinking Heaven, alienation also in a way walks hand in hand with escapism. This is desperately sought out by the characters in the film through a form of games, or re-enactments of past traumatic experiences.

What could be more traumatic than the end of the world, another element that was quite vocal in Rotterdam’s programmes. Parabellum by Lukas Valenta Rinner shows the theme of escapism via the end of the world gimmick in his satirical deadpan comedic portrayal of members of the middle class going on a holiday camp (or training camp) where they are taught the many skills of survival. The boredom and plainness of everyday life in Parabellum, makes it so that an event so huge and ultimately drastic is represented as a lead-way to  a parallel world where the attendee of such a camp can believe himself to be training for a higher purpose. Yes, it is hard not to laugh at the lack of credibility these people have at being the next Tom Cruises or Arnold Schwarzeneggers. But at its core, the genuineness of the observation is also profoundly ‘depressing’. Is life really so unfulfilling that an apocalypse has become the equivalent of a frustrated person’s Christmas?

But what has represented escapism better in the last years than television? Readily available to the universally bored and the lonely, TV is just the ultimate getaway, and Lisa Takeba with her surrealist cartoon like fantasy adventure has it come to life in her feature Haruko’s Paranormal Laboratory. The story is very clever, and surprisingly credible in revealing a human side to the ‘fantastic’ character of the living TV. However, the most compelling aspect of the film comes from the titular Haruko, a young woman who makes it clear that she has always fantasized about experiencing something ‘out of this world’. And now, after this rightly paranormal event, TV has become the object of her dreams and her fixation, at once her lover and her family. Here, the materialization of escapism is also a metaphor of loneliness, sometimes self-imposed and often restricting chances at true human interactions – even encouraging unexplained snobbish behaviours towards an eccentric neighbor, or alienating loving flesh and blood relations.

But then again, times are changing, and viral videos seem to attend the younger generation’s restricted of attention span more closely. In Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes), it seems modern life has become a series of living viral videos. This is true right down to the multiple personalities that the characters seem to have for all the different people they interact with. Juan Daniel F. Molero’s film is representative of the frenzy of constantly frustrating modern lifestyle, seeking escape from lack of money, lack of sex and a lack of just about any form of morality. And as the characters connect in unhealthy ways, take heavy drugs and take dark and twisted turn of events in the course of their lives, they themselves seem to become always more alienated from their own true selves. 

Then there is the opposite type of alienation, the kind that actually seeks to escape modern life by ways of returning to the innocence of a primitive lifestyle. In Ismael Basbeth’s film Another Trip to the Moon, the leading female character does just this, and flees her household to live like a forest woman in the woods, hunting, fishing and praying to the gods in strange meditative practices that look stunning, but likewise nonsensical. In her costumes, the leading heroine also recalls the Disney incarnation of Pocahontas, and the film ultimately poses the question of whether or not it is really possible to ditch the influence of western consumerism completely.

There are countless other examples that clearly show how cinema is mirroring a concern for a lack of kind of fulfillment and a lack of meaningful relationships within people. Most of the characters in today’s cinema in general are very lonely. A lot of the filmmakers themselves travelled far and wide to settle in a place to pursue their goals and dreams. Crumbs’ Miguel Llansò is a Spaniard living in Ethiopia. Lukas Valenta Rinner is an Austrian in Argentina. The travelling and accessibility of travel seems to have shaped a sensibility in the portrayal of longings of humanity.

In interviews, adventurous filmmakers like Werner Herzog are quoted regularly for a reason. Herzog, with his well-documented audacity essentially worked like a man with nothing to lose. Another filmmaker who is constantly quoted as an influence is Antonioni, who when it comes to bringing stories of alienation to the big screen was and still is the undisputed king. Likewise, even Sergei Eisenstein’s constant need to move – his theories on stasis ecstasies – seems to have spurred on an encouraged many people and is seeing somewhat of a rebirth through constant references in new productions (see Davis Simanis’ documentary Escaping Riga or Peter Greenaway’s Berlinale film Eisenstein in Guanajuto, not to mention Mark Cousins’ travel doc from a couple of years ago What is This Film Called Love?)

But as Impressions of a Drowned Man by Kyros Papavassiliou shows, alienation is not restricted to filmmakers, but artists in general. And as he fancies suicidal Kostas Karyotakis re-born in a modern world, not only does he reveal the figure of the artist as a totally alienated observer, looking at the inside from the outside, but also recalls that alienation is sometimes inevitable and sometimes even leading to a tragedy that cannot be escaped from.