- A Field in England
Starting this Friday Facets Multimedia will host a weeklong run of Nothing Bad Can Happen, an unsettling German docudrama written and directed by Katrin Gebbe. This is Gebbe’s first film, though it feels highly familiar, in part because the novice filmmaker wears her influences (Michael Haneke, Harmony Korine) on her sleeve, and in part because it has much in common with other recent titles released by Drafthouse Films, a young distribution company that aims to “destroy the barriers between grindhouse and art-house.” I have to give credit where credit is due—nearly every Drafthouse release I’ve seen features a potentially exploitative premise and a striking visual style. The selections have ranged from masterful (The Act of Killing, the re-releases Wake in Fright and Ms. 45) to imperfect but compelling (Borgman, Cheap Thrills, I Declare War) to gross and unedifying (The ABCs of Death, Pieta); but they all advance the conviction that cinema can transform even the most lurid subject matter into art.
Wheatley has cited two 60s cult films as major inspirations on Field: Michael Reeves’s period horror tale The Conqueror Worm (1968) and Peter Watkins’s experimental featurette The Battle of Culloden (1964), the latter of which presented England’s conquest of the Scots in the fashion of a contemporary TV news broadcast. That’s a fascinating set of allusions—far more provocative than the narrow range of art house shockers whom Gebbe cites as models—since the two are significantly different enough to produce something novel in combination. Ironically Field feels at once more artful than Nothing Bad and more satisfying as pulp entertainment. Jump’s wicked sense of humor and Wheatley’s psychedelic visuals advance a distinctive worldview, making a wild ride of the characters’ descent into madness.
