Ravenous (1999).

Review #2619: Ravenous.

Cast: 

Guy Pearce (Captain John Boyd), Robert Carlyle (F.W. Colqhoun / Colonel Ives), David Arquette (Private Cleaves), Jeremy Davies (Private Toffler), Jeffrey Jones (Colonel Hart), John Spencer (General Slauson), Stephen Spinella (Major Knox), Neal McDonough (Private Reich), Joseph Runningfox (George), Sheila Tousey (Martha), and Bill Brochtrup (Lindus) Directed by Antonia Bird.

Review: 

"Ravenous’ is more about social misfits than the whole seductive nature of power. I would like to think that someone who enjoyed it only as gallows humor would start to think. The metaphor of power and a society where we’re encouraged to be competitive is, to me, not a great society. As a European, observing early Californian history and making a film about that — I kind of believe Europeans were responsible for a lot of stuff that happened here. Robert Carlyle’s character represents that. The Europeans practiced genocide. I think the good things about America — we’re (Europeans) not responsible for.”

A long time ago, in a frontier not too far far away, there were people in this world that came out of a travelling party with survival coming by the one thing you could not expect, at least if you believe what survives in historical fact. Alfred Packer claimed that he survived a number of days on roots within a brutal wilderness of what was not quite the state of Colorado in the winter of 1874. Aside from being a petty thief, Packer was not exactly a consistent man with his stories of survival, so it perhaps came as the tiniest bit of surprise that it wasn't so much a man making a tall tale of survival to cover a robbery but instead a claim that he survived on the bones of his party members (to say nothing of the Donner Party from three decades prior, where a group of pioneers saw 30+ people perish and a few bones missing along the way). Anyway, Ted Griffin was a first-time screenwriter that had graduated Colgate University. All of a sudden, Ravenous was one of three screenplays that got sold to a studio in a week, with Fox 2000 slating a director with Milcho Manchevski (director of Before the Rain [1994]) by 1997. Shooting was done in Mexico alongside Slovakia that saw production squabbles between its producer and Machevski to the point where an attempted replacing with Raja Gosnell went nowhere. Antonia Bird was brought in to direct because of the recommendation of her business partner, Robert Carlyle. Bird was involved in theatre from the age of 17 with Coventry Rep and directed a total of four films (Priest [1994], Mad Love [1995], Face [1997]) alongside the various TV and theatre involved as both producer and director. She did not get everything she wanted for the finished film, as post-production saw a voiceover included alongside the quotes you see in the introduction (i.e: "He who fights the monster must make sure not to become a monster."- Friedrich Nietzsche is then followed with "Eat me!"- Anonymous) that she felt was "superfluous". Even with a budget of $12 million and an initial release in over a thousand theaters, Ravenous was not a hit at the time of release. 

This ended up being Bird's last feature film as a director, as she spent the rest of her time as a TV director until her death in 2013 at the age of 62. Such a pity for a movie with interest in the intensities of competitiveness. What Bird saw the movie as was the perils of consumption and all that comes with a focus on two people that happen be the embodiment of drug pusher and junkie (in a sea of folktale movies, going with a version of the Wendigo myth from native Algonquian folklore is pretty interesting). It isn't exactly a fight for survival in the woods type of movie, it isn't exactly a fight for revenge, it isn't exactly the kind of movie for everyone...and it is still pretty damn fun. It's the type of movie to absorb in all the absurdities and pleasures that come with its atmosphere and tremendously game cast that remind you as many times as possible that one really should eat to live as opposed to living to eat when it comes to horror and pitch-black humor (did I mention the off-kilter playing of music in banjos, violins and more from Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman?). This is the kind of movie that does wonder about people who maybe see others as mere meat slabs. Pearce is given a pretty thankless task if you want to play devil's advocate: a weary junkie with nowhere to actually run. It isn't a road to seeing him becone a hero, it is a road of actually knowing what one is beyond a string of meat and desires, where one must see if they can actually atone with all that they did. Undeniably, Carlyle runs away with the show with his devilish qualities worth seeing as basically a vampire, one that believes it is more courageous to walk with him than to walk against him. He plays around with who he is to others around him with a type of confidence that could only come from someone who really has lived the tricks of the trade and decided he liked the taste too much to let it go. The body count actually is a bit considerable despite the careful pace (in fact, you might be more squeamish about seeing meat than blood, save for one scene), and Jones* manages to play off the general absurdity of his situation in wayward elegance for a few chuckles (McDonough is not in it much, hut his intensity is worth a look). It is a movie filled ominous delight over what happens when power truly does seep into the flesh and the inevitable crash of junkie and dealer in lyrical darkness that is actually pretty fun. It takes plenty of time to get there among flesh, blood, and the stark terror of the frontier, but the ride is worth it at least once, I believe. 

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Happy Halloween. Hell of a time for a triple header, we will see you later for Halloween -The Week After: Crazy Eights.

*I would be remiss not to mention that Jones would later be charged in 2002 for crimes involving a minor involving posing for photographs that saw him sentenced to probation and become registered as a sex offender for life.