Rating: 4/5
The Sonic Catering Institute houses a performance art group for a month-long residency. Like all artists in residency, the group dedicates themselves to food and the generating foley surrounding it.
Stones, a journalist with gastrointestinal problems, documents the group’s day-to-day activities while trying to remain separate. Still, as a writer, he assumes his identity will imprint on the final result — to what degree he cannot imagine.
Stones is the blocked artist who believes he only produces shit. He performs his bowel movements in fearful secrecy. Its pervasiveness is a disease that he cannot understand. And with a doctor provided by the Institute, he can’t seem to get a straight answer.
The film pokes fun at the art world’s pretensions and pseudo-intellectualism. It explores the dishonesty that some artists employ to form a coherent narrative around themselves and their work. People of privilege assume the role of transgressor while never risking the safety net of their upbringing, leaving the real work of making art to the would-be underlings.
But to an audience, what is the difference between the truth and the performance? The abjection lives in the deception. For whatever honesty a movie demands in its making, it is ultimately a fabrication. The shit is fake, but we can believe it’s real in the context of the story. The artificial can still produce the desired nausea and confrontation.
I made an excellent decision by listening to the soundtrack/score before watching the movie. Watching this in my dad’s home theater also enhanced the experience. Like the director’s other movies, sound is essential to the texture and storytelling. The more overwhelming the experience can be, the better.
Gwendolyn Christie is a muse — her otherworldly beauty hovering like an angel of death. The way they mutter “Jan Stevens” whenever she shows up never gets old.
This movie will annoy traditional horror fans and anyone semi-literate in critical theory. Thankfully, I am too dumb to understand how empty it is. (Flanger go brrr, and whatnot)