The Book of Revelation (2006) Reviews

• Not as shocking as you might be led to believe

  asphodelfilms2006-07-30

  I went into this film with some bizarre expectations. I had been told it was completely shocking and devastating. I had also been told it was terrible and embarrassing. I didn't think it was either. I didn't get angry - shocked - embarrassed. I was just bored. Ana Kokkinos is undoubtedly a great director with a strong vision and that really shines through in this film with bold visuals and a very confident approach to the story. Unfortunately there's not a great deal of story to take a confident approach to. The first few scenes are gripping and the tension builds really beautifully so you're wondering what has happened to The Dancer. What did he experience? Why? How will it change him? It evokes the feeling of films such as Death In Venice, Don't Look Now and The Comfort of Strangers (hmm.. all Venetian..). I was hooked. But when it is finally revealed, I found it fairly anti-climactic and rather pointless. Those expecting to be shocked by graphic sex or violence probably won't be. This isn't Romance, Irreversible or even Head On for that matter. There are moments of powerplay in the rape/ abduction scenes that are truly great - when he is forced to masturbate and mentions what goes through a man's mind when he closes his eyes being one clear example - but the problem is, they leave you wanting more which the film just doesn't deliver. It doesn't quite reach the role reversal thrills that film such as Hard Candy or Death & The Maiden deliver. There are endless possibilities raised by the idea of 3 women abducting a man for their pleasure. This may be part of the problem. Swamped with endless possibilities, it seems like they chose not to go with any of them. Once we know what happened to The Dancer, the film stumbles. It falls into that great Australian trend of minimalism and subtlety that just leaves audiences wondering what the **** is going on and why anybody should care. You can call it an "exploration" or a "meditation" (and I imagine the same people who used those words positively in their reviews of Japanese Story and Somersault will probably dredge them up again for this film... and I expect the words "emotional truth" will be thrown around at the same time) or whatever you want but frankly, I think it's just poor storytelling. It seems to shy away from the real drama within the story. If you're going to make a film about emotional truth, don't claim to be a story. Call it Japanese Emotional Truth. Or Emotional Truth of Revelation. Or Girl Gets Laid In Jindabyne. Let's call a spade a spade. It doesn't really explore the consequences of what happens for The Dancer. There's about 10 minutes of plot spread out over an hour and by the time something actually happens, I for one was completely disengaged and beyond caring. The film also stops just when it looks like it's actually going to explore the issues it's raised. It's bitterly disappointing because I thought Head On was definitely one of the greatest Australian films of the last 10 years and I thought the subject matter of this film could have gone in so many different exciting directions. I never expected it to be boring.

• Strong stuff, but a weak finish

  Philby-32006-09-19

  This is not your typical Australian movie, despite its government funding. It could have come from a European art-house director and its location in Melbourne seems incidental (I think the original book by Rupert Thomson was set in Amsterdam). It is also not a movie for the nervous – at times it is very tense indeed and the cutting and soundtrack seem designed to keep the audience on edge. As Daniel the male dancer abducted and sexually abused by three hooded women, Tom Long gives an intense, if slightly monolithic, performance. Daniel's lines give him little scope for expressing his feelings, it is only in dance that he can do that, and the rest of the time he acts rather than thinks. On the other hand his physical appearance dominates the film – we are seeing essentially his view of things. The abuse scenes were not as bad as I had feared, and were relatively short. They were pornographic, I think, only to people like the hooded women. And here's the problem. A handsome heterosexual man captured by three young women and forced to have sex with them? No wonder the cops laugh when Daniel tries to tell them what happened. What is it about Daniel that moves them to do this? He was not chosen at random. He's a fit accomplished young male dancer, someone of physical beauty and grace. Why do these women need to humiliate and degrade him? No doubt the director Ana Kokkinos wants us to ask this question but we are not provided with many clues towards an answer. All we are told by the hooded ones is that "it is for our pleasure". Well, if they are sadists, I suppose it makes sense but I don't think it tells us anything about relationships between men and women generally. Even so, the whole thing is pretty well done, and we do get a very clear picture of the devastating impact abuse of this nature can have on a person. The revelation, I suppose, is Daniel's loss of both innocence and self-regard. Ana Kokkinos proved in "Head On" that she can mix atmosphere and action though this film is quieter overall. Tom Long gets good support from Greta Scacchi, never better, as his dancing mistress, and Colin Friels gives a quiet and convincing portrait of an understanding policeman ( a very rare beast). As Daniel's girlfriend, Anna Torv's performance is curiously flat – her character is underwritten and her impassive good looks convey little but emptiness. Deborah Mailman also puts in a good performance in a small role as the girl who helps Daniel recover from his ordeal. But the portentous (or is it pretentious) atmosphere dissolves to a banal ending, almost on the same level as a "Twisted Tale" (a Channel 9 TV series of mordant but slight stories) – the motivation for a routine assault is explained. The screening I saw was sparsely attended and I don't think this film will do well, which is a pity. Ana Kokkinos is a talented filmmaker and it would be interesting to see what she could do with more mainstream material. Art-house Street can be a bit of a cul-de-sac.

• Interesting idea, poorly written, muddled execution.

  garver_dave2006-09-25

  Many questions arise about the making of this film. The first of which is: Why make a film that plays out as little more than an awkward female fantasy? It's one thing to leave an audience with issues to discuss about a film's intent, it's something entirely different to go into the process of writing a script which fails to adequately address real human issues before they are rendered on the screen. Why the outrageously melodramatic and often comical soundtrack? Why the excessive and frequently clunky dialogue? Why is the lead character's girlfriend one of the hooded abductors? What purpose is there to turning the lead character's freedom from abduction into a joke by having him complete his "mission"? (This is a classic Little Aussie Film moment. Resort to quirky comedy at the most inappropriate moment.) Why so many scenes where absolutely nothing happens? (This accounts for approximately 15 minutes of the film, which is at least 30 minutes too long.) Why, if a man is imprisoned for so many days, does he not endeavor to make a serious attempt at escape? The Director, who co-wrote the script, has failed on many counts to deliver a satisfactory story. Dave Garver, Australia.

• Revelations and Nightmares

  j-thompson4-12006-09-17

  'The Book of Revelation' is an adaptation of Rupert Thomson's 1997 novel about a male dancer who experiences sexual abuse at the hands of three women. The film is directed by Ana Kokkinos, who returns to a key motif of her earlier 'Head On': the wounded male body in a society where men are meant to be un-breakable. Tom Long plays Daniel, the male dancer who experiences the aforementioned attack at the hands of women. The women (all concealed by hoods and masks) hold him prisoner in a rundown building where they subject him to various forms of sexual degradation. After being released by the unseen rapists, Daniel can't admit to what's happened. After all, who'd believe him? A man being abducted and forced to satisfy the sexual demands of three women? So he leaves his girlfriend, quits his dancing career ... and goes in search of the mysterious attackers. Why? To seek revenge? For more torture? The film alternates between excerpts of Daniel trying (or not trying) to come to grips with his experience and flashbacks to the said attacks. This creates a dense, nightmarish atmosphere that still unsettles me almost an hour after this film finished. Also, some haunting use is made of various Melbourne locations (though as a Melbournite, I couldn't help but want to cry out at certain points: "That's the cafe at Melbourne Uni! Why's he walking down that fateful lane when there are so many milk bars on Flinders Street?") The abuse itself is rendered ambiguous. Are they 'real' acts of sexual degradation? Or fantasies of domination and submission? Psychoanalytic film theorists will have a field day with the references to infancy, the womb, the maternal, castration ... Nevertheless, I had to wonder: How would the audience respond if the women weren't wearing such highly stylised garb (and shot in equally stylised surrounds, at one point in slow-mo?) The attack scenes do accurately suggest Daniel's loss of male power and privilege, but (thanks to the manner in which they have been filmed) wouldn't look out of place in your average male-oriented porno. Nothing innovative or politically subversive there, or in the objectification of women that (we are led to believe) is one of Daniel's responses to his degradation. And there's the acting. Greta Scaachi and Deborah Mailman are excellent as women trying to understand Daniel's silent pain, but Tom Long doesn't hit the right note. He seems just too removed from the world around him, even before the attacks. One may argue in his defence that he is trying to represent one model of masculinity - strong and sturdy, tough and unfeeling. Perhaps so. But it's also difficult to empathise with his character, or feel any emotional connection for him whatsoever. But I'm rushing ahead of myself here ... Perhaps (not unlike Daniel) there are many questions and anxieties about 'The Book of Revelation' that I have yet to articulate or come to grips with. The film may not be a completely honest (or subversive) study of sexual violence or gender roles. But it does raise some interesting - and often quite disturbing - questions about these issues. And for that alone, Ana Kokkinos should be commended.

• This film needed more cow bell.

  timkelly19862006-09-06

  Here's a couple of paragraphs out of an essay I wrote for university about TBOR. "The Book of Revelation is an erotic thriller about sex, power and a talented dancer's struggle to regain his sense of self after being unfortunately raped by three cloaked women. The three women that violate him all have distinctive marks on the bodies; one has a giant birth mark on her buttocks, another has a butterfly tattoo on her lower stomach and the ring leader has a small circle on her breast. So he lives his new life in search of these markings, and to find them on these intimate places he does what any sane man does when he needs to see as many naked women as possible to solve a mystery, he has sex with them. An hour and ten minutes into the film and you feel like he has almost had a piece of every woman in Melbourne. The film is a giant chunk of pretentious celluloid; it is like grandiloquence drips from every frame. At only one point towards the films final climax does Kokkinos give a scene the same energy and strength as her debut feature Head On had in droves. As like many films funded by the government bodies the film takes it self way to seriously, the script and its execution appear to be chores rather then gifts and unfortunately for the talented thespians, their brilliant performances (particularly Tom Long as the fractured protagonist) are stuck within the confines of a pompous wan k fest."