Eat, For This Is My Body

I haven't seen a lot of art school output, but from this film I feel reasonably certain that some teachers at the New York Film Institute like slow walking nudes and phrasal repetition just a bit too much.

Eat is surrealist to the extreme, featuring little or no coherence between scenes, and no meaningful dialog for the bulk of the movie. Some cinematography was certainly striking and beautiful, and the acting was quite good, what there was of it. Personally I'm going to blame the writer/director for indulging a bit too much in basic art film gotchas, but whatever the reason this movie dragged.

Now, while I really disliked the pacing and overuse of slow walking, it's obvious that the film contains nearly critical levels of symbolism, and did a decent job of getting people to try to think, provided they could stay awake to see the imagery. Sadly, it may have overshot its goal there; you can only get so abstract before watchers stop thinking about the target of your symbolism and start thinking about the symbolism itself.

Here's what I gleaned from the movie (don't read on if you want to be surprised, but I can't imagine this movie being spoiled by anything you might hear about it): the writer thinks the natives of Haiti are spoiling the island and using up its bounty without giving anything back or protecting renewable resources. He also thinks that white, foreign nations are disingenuous and self-serving in their offers of aide, and that Haitian culture lusts after the first world's lifestyle. Call me a philistine, but I think those points could have been made in less time, and with less self-indulgence, and without any of the many beautiful aspects of this film.