Anyone who watches it is suddenly transformed into a Natural Born Killer, baby. After all, anyone who watches this isn't as clever as the people who want to ban it. Because the people who want to ban this "evil video filth" are somehow different, special, stronger than the rest of us.

I don't know about you. I don't remember seeing hordes of demented killers roaming the streets when it was shown on Channel 5. Despite the fact that it couldn't be released on video. Being withdrawn by the cowardly Warner Brothers after some irresponsible idiots went on a killing spree and decided to say "Oliver Stone Made Me Do It" in court. 

Unfairly lambasted upon its release, and seemingly ever since, 'Natural Born Killers' is Oliver Stone's masterwork. From here on, Stone almost certainly realised it was all downhill and he hasn't made a good film since. Despite being based loosely on Tarantino's original concepts, (motifs which are recycled throughout Tarantino's work - 'True Romance' sees two odd lovers on the run across the country, 'From Dusk Till Dawn' sees a man looking through a gunshot wound in his own hand) - NBK is a definitely neither one mans vision, or even one coherent vision.

Instead it is a series of fragmented perspectives upon the world. Where ultimately our struggle to make sense of reality can only be seen as a failed attempt to reconcile the contradictions within ourselves. That is, you cannot make sense out of that which is senseless. There is no exceptional narrative, no over-riding plot arch, no happy ending in our own lives, and 'Natural Born Killers' recognises this, and offers no answers.

If you've been living under a rock since the dawn of time, 'Natural Born Killers' is the tale of two lovers, products of dysfunctional families, trying desperately to carve a better life for themselves from the corrupt and oppressive world that they were brought up in.

Seen mainly in glimpsed flashback, they are both products of violence and abuse, and have been taught by example that that is the only way that life should lead. Considerations such as ethics, morality, and so on are irrelevant when compared to the issue of power and its (ab)uses. This is the hangover from a golden age of repression, where the parents were always right, even if what they did was wrong. It is that the generation that follows will lose respect for the structures around them, because that structure only ever treated them as objects to be used, controlled, and manipulated. You get what you give.

In order to escape this, they must become what they wish to leave behind: in a world where the violent prosper, to prosper, you too must be violent.

Oliver Stone's filmmaking craft is beyond reproach at this point. The inventive, violent use of imagery, film stocks, inter-textual cutting and montages create a far deeper film than many have thought. In effect it is a painting with film, that mixes film stocks and styles to show action happening simultaneously on several levels (internal and external as well as metaphorical) through cutting between 35mm, Super8, b&w, video, and Scarfesque animation.

The body count and violence, although there are some 100 or so deaths referred to in the film, is somewhat less than that, inferred largely though violent, sudden editing, 'made-for-television' reconstructions, and glimpsed briefly on distant video screens. The violent assault is on our senses, not the bodies of the actors. This film has more editing and shots in it than any other film in celluloids dim history. So therefore, it's not just a story, but some kind of exploration into the medium of film and how it can be manipulated.

Manipulation is a theme of the film; the third main character is that of a generally repugnant TV interviewer, Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr), a personification of all that is shallow, false, and ambitious in the ugliest way possible. The way that television, the press, the media (and in later days the Internet) distort, distend, and abuse the facts and the truth in order to present the world the way that the rich see it. Sit down, shut up, be happy, and drink Coca-Cola.

In a world where human desires are debased to commodities in the most simplistic fashion (anyone whose been to yahoo.com recently will note that an amazing "XCam10" implicitly offers gorgeous women and huge country boathouses as added extras). 'NBK' takes this concept of appealing to base desires even further - instead of sex, love, and a big house, it implies that really all advertising is based upon exploiting the fear of survival.

The subtext then in the film deals with, as made clear in the interview/confessional sequence that climaxes the films second act, with the brutality of human nature, on both a social, personal, and political scale. On one hand, Mickey and Mallory Knox are deranged amoral psychopaths laying waste to all in their path. On the other hand, they are mere metaphors for the unaccounted rape of nature by corporate mankind. Or avenging angels sent to rectify the sins we all keep hidden. (A theme that suddenly turns the films into a morality play and is explicitly realised in the alternate ending on the DVD that is shocking, unexpected, and provides a happy ending that Hollywood demands).

This brutality is explored through both the actions of the films, the motives of all its lead characters who are at least, partially repugnant, from Tommy Lee Jones' massively underrated prison governor - one of the best performances of redneck scum ever committed to film - to Woody Harrelson's charming, but offcentre Mickey Knox, and Juliette Lewis' faux-innocent performance as a girl who is drawn into a world of violence under the influence of young, first love. One wonders quite what film it would have been had Oliver Stone cast Henry Rollins in the role, a regret Stone has been heard to utter frequently since.

As a motion picture, 'Natural Born Killers' is, and probably will be a generally underrated film which is oddly prophetic. It is years ahead of its time, and yet timeless. It hasn't aged in the past eight years. When one thinks of shots of collapsing towers repeated every few seconds on a September night last year, when one thinks of thousands of soldiers going into foreign countries to ensure that Chevron gain control of the oil supplies out of Osamaland and guarantee US economic dominance for the next few decades, one realises the evil that lies in the heart of man, and the heart of man is exposed here in a deeply moral film that is often misread by those who choose to be blind to that they do not wish to see.

Comments

NBK Written by Guest on 2005-03-05 02:47:40 it's just a movie, it's not like it ever happened in real life, it's just entertainment if they ban this movie they would have to ban the movies I spit on your grave, And texas chainsaw massacre. and while they are at it ban every tv show in the process.

Written by Guest on 2005-04-02 19:50:56

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