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Morituri: The Rate Race - Movie Club 2018
Topic Started: Feb 25 2018, 06:20 AM (267 Views)
Lencho of the Apes
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Let's go do some crimes
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Sleepwalk deserves more attention than it has gotten, but it seems to have stalled out, so I'm going to go ahead and set this up for whenever anybody gets around to watching it.

You'll noticing I'm departing from the glossy HD files, time for some lofi stuff... since there's no conceivable way of going to Criterion or Janus for this title.

No preliminary commentary; most of what's good about it is clearly visible on the surface, and you'll enjoy it more if you discover things for yourself. It's not like I have to direct the way y'all approach your filmses.

Morituri, The Rate Race by Philippe Toledano, Venezuela, 1984.
Edited by Lencho of the Apes, Feb 28 2018, 08:53 AM.
"The four cardinal points of the compass? In reality, there are only three: North and South."
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kanafani
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That was fun. I found pretty much no writing on this movie online, and 3 of the 5 people who’ve logged it on letterbox are champs. Does this movie really exist, or is it something Lencho put together quickly for the movie club? But seriously, I wonder if it was seen by lots of people at the time? Did/do folks in venezuela value it and appreciate it, or did it come and go unnoticed? Anyway, I am on board with the movie’s thesis: American imperialism and its agents are a bunch of sick psychopaths, and that guy paradise is the fruit of their labors made flesh to walk among us and fuck us over. Sounds pretty much right to me. Pretty stylish stuff, good portrayal of the sophisticated elegance of the criminal 1%, direct descendants of the rich ghouls in the novels of Sade. Good sense of humor, you could tell the director or the writer or someone knows this crowd pretty well. An inside job. It’s pretty low budget, so the action scenes are rudimentary, though I guess that plays to its advantage. It’s heavy-handed for sure, which is fine by me, because it is by design. Could it have been 20-25 minutes shorter? Sure. But it’s not like I have better things to do with myself than watching movies, so who cares?
Edited by kanafani, Feb 26 2018, 01:48 AM.
letterboxd
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mesnalty
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g legs' flame
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This is just the sort of obscure curiosity that I love discovering through this site - thanks, Lencho! Anything that features a puppet play of Philosophy in the Bedroom is automatically going to be a winner in my book.

I'm interested in the choice to make Ray complicit in the capitalist predations of the rest of the characters. Of course, the movie emphasizes over and over that the main characters are all corrupt in their own ways, but it's still interesting that that's extended to Ray, the victim of their game. Seems like the more obvious approach would have been to clearly label Ray as a subaltern. Is there some sort of "capital will eat itself" left-accelerationism going on here? That's probably a stretch - it's probably just part of the overall pattern in which profoundly amoral characters assert their moral superiority over other equally amoral characters. (Like that dinner table scene with the big speech about the consequences of imperialism.)
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kanafani
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It seemed to me that 'Paradise' is the innocent victim here. Innocent in the sense that he came into the machine as a human being and was spat out as a monster. Like mesnalty, I also found it interesting that the protagonist is an insider. I thought it was doubly interesting that he's black, and ostensibly not a member of the white/Euro-heritage ruling class, a late comer to the party so to speak. Could be it's because the writer/director adheres to a Marxist ideology where social class trumps ethnic background.

I also found it funny that the US ambassador (I think that's what he was supposed to be) is played by a French actor. Were there not enough gringos around?
letterboxd
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Lencho of the Apes
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Let's go do some crimes
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It's been quite a while since I watched it, but my understanding of that point was that the movie was dramatizing the contingent/provisional nature of his position; as a subaltern, non-U player, he was received into the game only at the dominant group's discretion (and then very possibly not for benevolent reasons.)

Mesnalty,that puppet show was absolutely what sold me on the movie, what a delightful, off-the-wall conceit!
"The four cardinal points of the compass? In reality, there are only three: North and South."
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kanafani
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I think he was supposed to be a successful, wealthy architect with business projects on the side, so a person who is thriving in the system, but not a key player, like some of the other folks in his circle (ministers, tycoons, generals, etc)
letterboxd
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