After my review of Michael Bay‘s Pain & Gain (read that here) a reader by the name of Marlon Wallace keyed in on a specific line and wrote in the comments:
I wonder if Brad is saying that if this movie were NOT based on a true story that it would be more enjoyable. If so, I wonder what Brad’s opinion is on ‘Man Bites Dog’ because I had similar thoughts about that movie. Specifically, when Brad wrote, “the attempted comedic beats within those blanks fall flat considering the gruesome nature of the story being told”, he captured my feelings exactly.
I’d actually never seen Man Bites Dog despite having it in my queue for the longest time and recently adding it to my queue at Hulu. So in response to the comment I gave it a watch over the weekend and it’s a film that couldn’t be more apt in today’s television, media and cinematic world.
Written, directed by and starring Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde, Man Bites Dog follows a film crew as they document the life of Ben, a witty and charismatic man who just so happens to be a serial killer. The trio star in the film as themselves with Poelvoorde playing Ben and as the project continues, Remy (serving as the documentary’s director) and Andre (as the cameraman) find themselves running low on funds at which point Ben offers to pay for any additional expenses.
In the US the film has been rated NC-17, in large part probably due to a sadistic scene in which Remy and Andre find themselves fully embroiled in Ben’s lifestyle and take part in raping a woman as her naked husband stands by with a gun against his head. The scene cuts to show the couple mutilated, their guts pouring out of their carcases as their murderers rest on the bloody floor. Separate murders of a young child as well as an elderly woman are also captured among many others, but the key to this film is just as much the murders from which you can’t turn away from as the charisma of their executioner.
To Marlon’s comment I referenced above I can’t say it’s necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison. To say Bay is making any kind of profound commentary I think is to ascribe more weight to the film than is actually there, just as many did to Peter Berg’s Battleship. Of course, the argument can be made — as I did in the final paragraph of my review — but while it’s a matter of opinion with Pain & Gain, it’s quite obvious the whole of Man Bites Dog is a commentary on audience consumption of media violence, and today I think it easily extends to today’s rampant obsession with reality television.
Ask anyone that watches shows like “Real Housewives” and the “Kardashians” and while they may not want to admit it, they take pleasure in watching the ugliness of others and they’ll just as quickly find themselves favoring one housewife over another, but their level of favoritism is fleeting, just as it is with Ben’s charm in Man Bites Dog.
Seeing Ben with his family or joking around over a drink is inviting (just watch the clip to the right), but seconds later he’s fired his gun or bashing a mailman’s head in and doing so with glee or no real emotion at all such as when he smothers a young boy while casually discussing his distaste for murdering children.
The presentation, like all reality television, keeps its audience at an arm’s length, allowing them to judge but not feel as if they should be judged for watching, though I’m pretty sure there is some level of shame in all of us for the junk food TV we consume and the judgment we pass while watching.
If I were to compare this film to Bay’s Pain & Gain I would actually say Bay is the serial killer and the audience his intellectual victims. It’s the same with Man Bites Dog. The film reaches a turning point once Ben becomes increasingly in charge of what’s being filmed. He becomes just as much the subject of the documentary and as he is the director.
Bay has produced the kind of product Man Bites Dog is satirizing, albeit a dramatized version but yet this is exactly the kind of thing audiences are lapping up with gusto on the likes of Bravo, A&E and MTV.
Fortunately (or is it hopefully?), I think we can count on society never reaching a point where mass murder is looked at as acceptable entertainment, but I think the metaphor remains. There are plenty of ways to corrupt an audience and we are seeing that in full effect both at the box office and on our televisions at home and as the saying goes, “man bites dog”, because that’s what the audience wants, and I just hope it doesn’t all come back to bite us.
You can find Man Bites Dog on Hulu right here and if you don’t have a Hulu account you can get two free weeks here.
