Wild Tales REVIEW
“Before you embark on a journey of revenge,” Confucius tells us, “dig two graves.” The Argentinian film, Wild Tales is a brilliant though black-humored reflection on one of humanity’s most dangerous of emotional feedback loops. In six startling twenty-minute vignettes, we get to watch six different revenge dramas play out before our eyes. Somehow, every ending is a surprise and a thought provoking morality play. Part Ambrose Bierce (Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge); part Edgar Allen Poe (Cask of Amontillado); part Mark Twain (The Man Who Corrupted Hadlyburg or Tennessee Journalism), part Herman Melville (Moby Dick), Wild Tales provides the viewer with an exquisite (though at times crude) look into the inner workings of human vengeance reflexes. Think of the various times in your life when you have been tempted to take karma into your own hands and you will no doubt find one of the six story lines resonating with your experience.
Ever wanted to assemble all the various people who have betrayed you, dumped you, undermined you, or used you for one grand recompense? You will appreciate story one. Ever been given a chance to exact revenge but been too timid to put the dagger in? The difference between the waitress and the cook in story three will mortify and stun you. Ever been the recipient of a class-based insult or found yourself taking someone else’s driving decisions personally? You will find yourself shaking your head in astonishment at what happens to the two men in story three. Ever been on the receiving end of bureaucratic injustice and abuse? Story four’s dénouement is bound to put an evil smile on your face. Ever felt entitled to take revenge into your own hands, believing that intensity of emotion is synonymous with accuracy of perception? Story five is a cautionary tale about how wrong we can be about who deserves what. Heard the truism, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?” Story six pulls no punches.
I am going to save myself some writing and let Roger Ebert summarize the plot lines as he does a relatively decent job of sparing the reader plot spoiling conclusions to the stories.
The first, pre-credits story, “Pasternak,” gets things off to a high-flying start. An attractive young woman–a model, we soon learn–checks in for a flight and hears she won’t get frequent flier miles because someone else has paid her ticket. On board the plane, she begins chatting with another passenger and learns they both knew a guy named Pasternak, a boyfriend she dumped years ago. Then another passenger says he was the professor who failed the same guy. Could it be--? Sure enough, the plane is full of people who’ve shafted Mr. P. And who’s that locked in the cockpit?
In “The Rats,” revenge is a dish best served with ketchup. When a grumpy man enters an empty roadside restaurant one night, the young waitress recognizes him as a corrupt official who drove her father to suicide. Sure, she’d like to see the world rid of him, but she’s not inclined to do anything about it until the diner’s gruff, elderly woman cook urges that it would be as simple as loading the guy’s fries and eggs with rat poison. The waitress is morally torn, but there’s also a practical question: Once rat poison is past its expiration date, does it become more or less potent?
The element of class conflict grows more pronounced in “Road to Hell,” which plays like a more macabre version of Spielberg’s “Duel.” Riding down a remote highway in his snazzy new sports car, a sleek corporate type passes a slow pickup truck and shouts insults at its grizzled, back-country driver. Naturally, the city slicker has a flat just a few miles down the road, and the first vehicle to appear in his rear-view is the scorned pickup. What ensues is apocalyptic . . .
The film’s last three stories are more expansive, complex and sharply edged in social satire. In “Bombita,” a demolitions engineer stops to pick up his daughter’s birthday cake and comes out to find his car towed – though the space wasn’t marked a tow-away zone. In the coming weeks, as his marriage begins to collapse, the enraged citizen seeks justice for his parking woes, and finds himself surrounded by fellow Argentines furious at “fascist” bureaucratic stonewallers. Is it possible his skills with dynamite might turn the engineer into a combination of Frank Capra hero and Che Guevara? In this land, it seems, anything but bureaucratic responsiveness is possible.
. . . “The Deal” starts out with a rich couple learning their teenage son has run down a pregnant woman the night before. Frantic, the father and his lawyer come up with a scheme to pay his poor gardener a half mil to take the rap. But then the lawyer, who demands a half mil for his services, brings the prosecutor into it, which will cost another mil, plus payoffs for the police… No wonder poor dad tells them all to go to hell, then realizes that his only real out involves something he’s in fact very skilled at: negotiation.
It might seem at this point the film couldn’t top what’s come before, but not to fear: “Till Death Us Do Part” is a corker. While previous tales hinge on enmity or distress, this one starts out with celebration and love. At a fancy wedding reception, the guests are giddy, the bride and groom enveloped in bliss. Until, that is, she discovers he’s cheated on her with a woman in the room. At first, she flees to the roof, weeping and suicidal. Then the prospect of vengeance hardens her, and soon he’s the one who’s groveling and sobbing. The reversals of emotional fortune continue until it seems we’ve just seen a decade of marital turmoil play out in one convulsive evening.
Any of these tales separated from the whole could surely win prizes at short-film competitions. Together, their collective impact proves the synergistic effect of true artistic vision. . . .
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wild-tales-2015
“To take revenge halfheartedly is to court disaster,” Pierre Corneille has written, “Either condemn or crown your hatred.” The characters in these six stories all go to the far reaches of their spite. Some return from the precipice, some leap well beyond into the dark canyon beyond. All speak to the irrefutable logic and inherent insanity of the spirit of revenge. The film has just a few too many offending indiscretions to recommend to any of my friends unfortunately. Its humor is palpable, dark, and wicked. But for those who understand the danger of pursuing revenge in their real lives, it is the sort of film that captures and distills oceans of real life rage-angst into a few nectar drops of pure but far more harmless revenge fantasy. But for the grace of God, we could all probably find ourselves starring in these plot lines.
Question for Comment: How do you moderate your revenge instinct? Or do you have one? OR has it just not yet been tested?
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