Iguana 1988 Directed by Monte Hellman
A grotesquely disfigured harpooner called Iguana is severely mistreated by his fellow sailors on a whaling ship in the 19th century. One night he escapes and takes up residence on a remote island. He makes himself ruler of the island and declares war on mankind. Anyone unfortunate enough to wind up on the island with Iguana is subjected to his cruel tyranny.
Everett McGill Fabio Testi Michael Madsen Jack Taylor Michael J. Bradford Roger Kendall Robert Case Maru Valdivielso Pierangelo Pozzato Alessandro Tasca Fernando Cebrián Charly Husey Guillermo Antón Ricardo Navarrete Amaia Merino Joseph Culp Timothy C. Ryan Agustín Guevara Fernando de Juan Yousaf Bokhari Carmelo Reyes José Álvarez Juan Manuel Marquez Ian Sera
A masterpiece about the creation of a civilization, and that a civilization by nature is barbaric. Oberlus is stranded alone on an island, creates his own kingdom and enslaves all those who cross his path, all in revolt of the pain and torture that the world has fermented in him. His lair is in the caves, like the earliest of humans. And in these caves, lit like a Vermeer painting, through all the torture and the killing and humiliation, it feels as though we see the origin of humanity.
Even though he was actually trained as an actor first, Hellman began his career as an editor, and while this isn't quite as direct or show-offy as something like The Shooting…
This is a film about monstrosity. The external mirroring the internal. Oberlus is both a product of abuse but also a self-created monster. There's something very calming about the film despite being deeply saturated in torment. The sound of the ocean, the textural sameness of Oberlus' face and the rocky terrain. The film shows a lot of restraint and is a true testament to the talent of Monte Hellman and Everett McGill.
Unspools as a beautifully didactic and ancient text uncovered by Mellville and illustrated by Caravaggio. Cements Hellman's status as my favorite American director of the past 50 years.
myth and realism married with unparalleled ease: it's as timeless a film as I've ever seen, yet remains steadfastly tied to place, the sea, its ceaseless waves, rocks and rocks, the weight of chains, fire on the beach at night. Hellman recounts an elusive fable with spare, precise mise en scene, forays into Baroque chiaroscuro and elliptical editing. stigmatized masculinity unleashed reveals itself to be in fact traumatized beyond mere understanding. Iguana is an incredible, haunting treasure.
Randomness and universality are the two opposed notes which introduce the narrative (...), suggesting once again those contradictions which define Hellman's cinema: he is a classicist and an anti-traditionalist, a working director and a self-conscious artist, his stories both meaningless and suffused with meaning. (...) By working what would normally be extra-diegetic elements (...) into his fictional world, Hellman subtly disturbs (but, crucially, does not deny) our investment in the narrative. Habitual patterns of the audience identification are not erased, but rather made part of something else. We will be emotionally involved in the ensuing events, but with a heightened sense of critical awareness which can de described as Brechtian. - Brad Stevens sobre China 9, Liberty 37
não sei... meio complicado poder falar qualquer coisa. tudo que consigo pensar é como cada cena parece mais difícil ao mesmo tempo em que tudo se torna mais compreensível, talvez a aceitação da realidade seja realmente em torno de muita, muita sofrência. curiosamente, e me perdoem a bobagem, a humanidade de cada decisão do filme é intangível por mais que o protagonista declare guerra a isso logo no início.
também: o rosto do everett mcgill é único. poucos atores conseguem ser constantemente fascinantes como ele é aqui.
Hellman reaches a Bressonian level of precision that often feels painterly in his use of dramatic composition and lighting. It rivals The Shooting for his most radically edited film: so much of the first quarter is devoted to linking the stories of Oberlus and Carmen, two people metaphysically brought together by fate. One bound to the earth, one bound to the world of man. It is a film structured primarily through snapshots of life on the island, short scenes with minimal context. If each shot in Two-Lane Blacktop had a beginning, middle, and end, than this is a film in which Hellman only shows us the middle: a true economy of form.
All of this comes together to form one…
Poucas vezes assisti a um filme tão cru e amargo. Não surpreende que a carreira de Hellman tenha caído no limbo pouco após.
Em um filme tão sucinto e seco, dentro da limitação da paisagem rochosa, Hellman consegue criar um poderoso retrato do tormento de um pária sem escorregar em alegorias ou sentimentalismos. A própria relação do protagonista com sua escrava é lapidar. Seu encontro se dá menos através de sentimentalismo que por identificação entre suas monstruosidades. A progressiva mudança de eixo nos estupros são exemplares.
Cumpre e ao mesmo tempo quebra expectativas indo além de uma história de mares, piratas, ilhas perdidas, colonialismo, escravidão, sexo, aventura e terror. Todo ressentido pode se converter em um tirano, e por trás de um monstro, existir um homem. A caracterização de Everett McGill é à prova de fogo: cativa e inevitavelmente nos leva da repulsa à compaixão. Não deixa de ser uma variação inventiva de A Bela e a Fera, mas tratando desde cedo em transgredir esse ponto de partida. Há citações literárias (o livro do qual se originou saiu no Brasil pela L&PM) sem que a consciência visual e cinematográfica de Hellman permita que se reduza a mera transposição de um romance. O realizador também compreendia o que era ser um guerreiro desgarrado de seu meio e a lutar e lidar com rejeições desde suas origens no cinema.
Monte Hellman is arguably the most overlooked of the New Hollywood era iconoclasts and his most provocative and didactic assault on masculinity is a movie where a disfigured man treats everyone he comes into contact with like shit - it's sort of like Cabin Boy meets Fight Club and just as impossible to classify as either
Insubmissão como força motriz anti-civilizadora ("I declare war on mankind").
Se em algum sentido o filme soa muito mais como um estudo assumido sobre a natureza humana em si, Hellman, como em seus outros filmes, não deixa de agregar elementos tanto de uma alegoria implícita (a própria figura de Oberlus lida com essa monstruosidade mítica do pária atormentado e desfigurado.), como de um realismo muito cru em sua encenação (elipses brutas, abordagens de cena ultra frontais).
Mesmo o niilismo presente nos filmes anteriores, basicamente subentendido em uma lógica beckettiana que se move na surdina da cena (ainda que absolutamente frontal ao abraçar essa natureza), aqui ganha ares muito mais explícitos e até épicos. É basicamente um filme de extremos nesse sentido, um filme que faz questão que toda a crueza do seu tema contamine a sua própria forma fílmica: a experiência primária do tormento em seu estado mais elementar.
Disfigured guy has vendetta against the world. You know, it’s just boring when someone’s out to watch the world burn. You really want to see this guy die at the end. I mean, we could have been partially sympathetic to his plight, but no, that’s definitely not how it goes. Turgid and hackneyed. One star for a very lovely looking Fabio Testi.
Blown away by how elliptical this is. Almost Bressonian with it's bare bones narrative.
Part of 100 Years, 100 Movies, Pt. 4
for being such a central part of the film you’d think that the makeup on Mr. Iguana himself would look better— I get that it’s a hard job but every time it’s in direct sunlight it looks honestly awful
I don’t think this is very good but it is at least bad in the kind of pompous, self-important way that makes it intermittently extremely hilarious (with bonus points for the final scene, which is either very stupid or very good and I cannot be bothered to tell which)
Also there were a total of like one and a half good performances in this— most of the cast at least had the excuse…
Small brain: Iguana is the bad guy cause he does bad stuff
Also small brain: Iguana isn’t the bad guy cause society made him like this
Me, the biggest of brains: Iguana IS the bad guy cause he goes way over the line, no amount of societal suffering can excuse his actions
Imagine your passion project being Everett McGill acting repulsive on an island for 90 minutes. Hellman's got a knack for getting the most of his locations, no matter the budget (there are some good shots of rocky terrain and seascapes), but his awkward editing and the script's tendency to verbalize every theme make this more monotonous than monstrous, and a final attempt to reach for the mythological feels too much, too late. Enough people seem to admire this thing that I guess I'll just count myself out of the Hellman club, although I still like Two-Lane Blacktop.
“It’s a crime.”
“It’s the law. My law.”
tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme.
an ingenious dissection of how new worlds are formed, why survival distorts the perceptipn of authority, and what sins we’re willing to succumb to in order to begin again. None of the cruelty needs to happen, yet it’s unavoidable. cold blooded end to end. Iguana is a perfect distillation of human nature, good and evil, warts and all. self hatred and cyclical violence. what a beautiful, sad discovery.
but here’s the thing about Everett McGill. . . . .
you cannot make him ugly to me❤️
Too much “from the producer of Cannibal Holocaust” not enough “from the director of Two Lane Blacktop”
a truly bizarre, brutal and constantly surprising pirate exploitation epic. I had no idea what would happen moment to moment. production mostly felt competent and at times extraordinary. just a raw feeling narrative, really.. I don't know.. inappropriate occasionally(?). great opening credits sequence.
wow.
Is it denial of mankind or is it humanity itself? If "misanthropy" can be a fair word to describe Iguana's tale, it is only because Hellman comprehends it as desperate need/call for acknowledgment. Oberlus tells Carmen he wishes to be respected, she corrects him and says that what others feel towards him is called fear, but in a way what it is doesn't matter. Neither respect nor fear are as pleasing feelings as love, or admiration, but what matters is that they are, they validate presence, recognize the existence of their subjects. Oberlus escapes to Hood Island and in it he finds dwelling. Hellman sees it too. He lingers on the island's reefs and skerries, formations of rocks and erosion…
Even for Hellman this one's obscure, but damned if the man doesn't know how to do a memorable last shot.
tarrdigrade 1,841 films
If you're feeling overwhelmed, but still want to squeeze a film into your daily routine, this list is made for…
Rose 23,292 films
A list that is trying to contain every horror film made that is not lost and is found on the…
Hershey 20,433 films
I’m sick of sorting through concerts, series, and other non-movies. Anything with more than 1,000 views on Letterboxd that’s longer…
Orestes 14,669 films
A few notes:
1) Films missing are mainly hardcore porn and TV shows (Hitchcock mysteries namely). There's a number of…
Darren Carver-Balsiger 250 films
An accompaniment to the Letterboxd Top 250, which sadly contains very few horror films.
Extracted from here.
No shorts, no…
Jayce Fryman 18,680 films
This list collects every film from the Starting List that became They Shoot Pictures Don't They's 1000 Greatest Films. This…
Rocky LaForge 18,753 films
As it reads on the tin.
Justin LaLiberty 354 films
List title inspired by Joan Hawkins' book Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde (but does not correspond to her…
João Monteiro 1,329 films
smiskfisk 8,318 films
updated: 2019-05-21
some films are not on tmdb, some may have been mismatched or simply not found when importing into…
Waiching Liu 1,466 films
The nuttiest, craziest and most obscene movies to have ever existed
