Otto

Bruce La Bruce

Beyond Entertainment

R4 DVD

Web: http://www.forceentertainment.com.au

Being a Zombie is “the only sane and logical response to a dead and sterile world”

Bruce La Bruce makes very confronting and edgy entertainment, he always works to push the boundaries and explore new territories. His earliest films explored the assumptions we make about sex, while Raspberry Reich was part comedy part adult movie about modern leftist Germans adopting the culture and politics of the extreme left wing movements of the 1970s. It was amusing, sarcastic, sexually charged and surprisingly intelligent. Otto moves into new territory, while La Bruce in the past has focused on sex and politics, here sex, politics, relationships and cultural decay are mixed together with horror and death. This is not your average film and includes wallops of sex and violence so be prepared for an unusual journey.

The film opens with a poetic introduction, filmed in black and white, showing the awakening of Otto from the grave and with a “cool” voice over discussing the state of the modern zombie. It seems zombies have slowly evolved the ability to speak and reason and are now more accepted in society. The voice over has a semi documentary feel and also discusses the philosophical nature of the zombie while suggesting it could also be read as a metaphor.

Throughout the film various cinematic techniques are used to create a distance between the viewer and the subject, including black and white, colour, spot colour, even 1930’s silent film. The aim of these seems to be to emphasize the alienated and estranged character of Otto and indeed of the zombies in general. La Bruce also mixes a logical plot with surreal elements and a challenging mix of sex and death, poetry and philosophical ramblings offered in both voiceover and by various characters

There is also a interesting sub plot about Medea Yarn, an art house filmmaker who is making a film about Zombies called “up with dead people”. This film within a film is a very effective and communicative motif. Yarn wants to use the zombie image to make a point about the nature of society and in conjunction with her brother Adolf and her lover Hella Bent, she is at last creating her “epic political-porno-zombie movie” . This sub plot is poignant, cynical and vindictive. It offers an ongoing critique of the pretentious baby boomer capitalist who while sprouting left wing rhetoric is actually simply just another consumer. She sprouts meaningless clichés, wears goth clothing and “plays” at being unique and different and yet comes across as totally artificial. As she attempts to show her actors what she expects in her work, she plays her other earlier “underground films” (an amazing cinematic touch, a series of films shown by a filmmaker making a zombie film inside a film about zombies !), they are the epitome of empty style and vacuity.

Throughout the plot we have these juxtapositions between the real zombie and the fakes, the outsider (Otto) and the “would be” (Medea Yarn and her crowd), between fantasy and self delusion and reality, between authentic difference and pretension and so on. This is further emphasized by the fact that every time Hella Bent is shown she is either shown as within a silent film or in a black and white silent film haze. She is shown as being totally “unreal” – locked in her own pretension and delusions as are Medea Yarn and her film crew.

Bruce La Bruce has also encoded an exploration of homophobia into the film which is powerful and at times confronting. While the zombies are now “somewhat more accepted” and seen as have developed “speech” (we now have a “voice”) and reason (i.e. we are not “disordered”), they are still treated as pariahs and objects of fear. Probably the most moving (and serious) episode in the film is when Otto is bashed. Up until this scene Otto has been having flashbacks of Rudolf his love, these are beautifully and romantically photographed and shown. However, when he meets his ex, Rudolf reminds him that Rudolf dumped him as Rudolf just can’t cope with any sort of illness and couldn’t deal with Otto being sick.

As Otto wanders in confusion, he is followed by a gang of mindless young men and brutally bashed. The music to this scene is by Antony and the Johnsons and creates a poignant scene, the message of which is that even when you are dead you are still not safe.

La Bruce, however, is also a nuanced filmmaker and he also explores the way in which sex can over love and affection and the way society and, at times, the gay community reduces love to sex alone. “ The world is meat. We are meat.” This is shown as a re-occurring motif ranging from Otto’s lover rejecting him due the fact that Otto became ill to Otto to relationship between sex, meat and consumption. We are what we eat becomes more literal in Otto with all manner of sex and consumption.

There is also an interesting question of whether Otto is really a zombie. When he meets his ex-lover he realizes he had depression and was once in an institution and this is followed later in the film with a love film in which he doesn’t look physically dead. Yet after he has had sex his partner’s left eye has turned red ? So is Otto a zombie, is he simply an isolated outsider ? We never really know. This ambiguity is the basis for the whole film where the gay zombie is the ultimate outsider, indeed; perhaps the undead Otto is the only really alive person in the whole film.

“The living have no respect for the dead”

This is a stunning film mixing horror, eroticism and social commentary in a work which is beautifully filmed and scored with a superb soundtrack. It will haunt you for quite a while and give you a lot of food for thought as well as being a damn good zombie film ! Quite an achievement really...