By ANDREW GUMBEL
LOS ANGELES - In his speech accepting the Democratic vice-presidential nomination last week, Senator Joseph Lieberman made one of his customary swipes at the gratuitous sex and violence coming out of Hollywood.
"In many Americans," he told delegates at the party convention in Los Angeles, "there is a swelling sense that our standards of decency and civility have eroded."
Well, Lieberman's worst nightmare has just come to life. In one of those fortuitous coincidences that are simply too good to have been manufactured, the film now topping the United States box-office is a veritable orgy of grotesque imagery, stomach-churning violence, scenes of torture for torture's sake, rape, child abuse and serial murder.
Called The Cell, it purports to be a phantasmagorical exploration of the mind of a vicious killer, a bit like The Silence of the Lambs.
Instead of the suave, urbane, psychologically terrifying Hannibal Lecter, however, we have Carl Stargher, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, who appears to have no redeeming social skills at all.
Most of the film actually takes place inside Stargher's head, where FBI agents played by Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Lopez are transported by the wonders of modern technology.
The Cell is the debut feature of an Indian commercials director called Tarsem Singh. Incredibly, he doesn't think there is anything particularly violent about his movie. "It's graphic but not violent."
To anyone unimpressed by claims of "arty" production design or modish preoccupation with the bleakness of the human spirit, this film actually looks like the best argument for censorship the anti-Hollywood faction in Washington DC ever had.
Not only is it nasty, it is shamelessly directed at teenagers. Rated R rather than NC17 (which means children can, to all intents and purposes, get in with little trouble), it made most of last weekend's $US17.2 million ($40 million) take from adolescent boys in search of the latest celluloid thrill. But the cultural warriors have been remarkably silent about The Cell.
Film critics have certainly vented their disgust: the Los Angeles Times called it "nauseating" and the sort of film you are sorry you ever saw. But from the politicians, nothing. Just two words explain their reticence: presidential election.
The Republicans have never gained any mileage from Hollywood-bashing on the campaign trail. As for the Democrats, both Lieberman and Vice-President Al Gore may have expressed concern about the entertainment industry, but they have their own constituencies to think of.
Gore raised a record-breaking $US5 million from Hollywood last week, and can hardly bite the hand that fed him. As for Lieberman, he agreed as part of the price of admission to the presidential ticket to drop his more confrontational rhetoric.
And so Hollywood is home free; gore is in vogue once again - and not the Gore the Democrats want.
- INDEPENDENT
Big bickies gag campaign critics of 'nauseating' film
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.