Title: Sex Murder Art
Author/Artist: David Kerekes
Publisher: Critical Vision
Media: Book
Reviewer: Pan
Given that Jorg Buttgereit has only made a handful of films, it might seem strange that people want to write books about him and his work. But then for those of us in the UK, suffering the harshest censorship laws in Western Europe, read about his films is about the only thing we can do. So far only one of Buttgereit's film is available on video release in this country - 'Der Todesking' is available from those nice people at Screen Edge, the rest of the films are banned.
Sex Murder Art provides both a detailed analysis of Buttgereit's films, including excellent synopses, but also a wealth of back-ground material. He gets to grips not only with the films but also with the disparate (and occasionally desperate) cast and crew. The book is extremely well-produced and the photographs and graphics serve to give a taste not only of the films but also on the milieu that they traverse.
Why Buttgereit's films - which veer from a haunting 'artiness' to crass splatterama - should attract so much controversy is beyond me. His themes of death, decay and sexuality are the stock products of horror cinema, though they seem to lack the exploitational cheap thrills of much of Hollywood's products. The only one of his film's that I've seen is 'Der Todesking' (being a law-abiding sort) , and I found it intensely moving, lyrical and genuinely disturbing. The film is made up of seven segments - one for each day of the week - in which we are presented with characters who are isolated, alone and apparently ordinary. Each segment ends with a death, and again there are none of the pyrotechnics which we associate with Hollywood. This bleak realism is deliberately thrown back at us on several times, forcing us to acknowledge that this is film, breaking up any incipient complicity between the characters on film and those of us watching.
Perhaps it is this handling of death which is this problem. In a Western world in which youth is everything, a world in which death is sanitised and hidden away, perhaps an honest mediation on the facts of death are unwelcome. 'Der Todesking' opens with a body uncurling from a foetal position until it is flat on its back, dead. The gradual decay and putrification of the body is the motif which links the different segments of the film, and it is as haunting an image as any that you'd see on film today.
Sex Murder Art manages to capture all of this, as well as detailing the reactions that Buttgereit's films have managed to garner. And, despite the grim subject matter, the book is an enjoyable read. Highly recommended.