It has been said that satire should be like a very sharp razor blade:
you don't know you've been cut until you see the blood. The same thing
can be said of movies with a social agenda: it's better if you don't
see it coming, which makes it all the more effective when it's over. If
only filmmakers that preach their social or political views had a better
sense of knowing when to stop "preaching", and let the audience draw their
own conclusions, we'd have more movies with positive social messages.
Case in point is the film, "Chaos", by Coline Serreau, who presents a
fairy tail story that celebrates, glorifies and idolizes the strength and
perseverance of women in a male-dominated society. The main plot revolves
around two women: Helene, an upper-middle class French woman, and Malika,
a young prostitute. The two meet when Helene and her husband accidentally
encounter Malika being violently attacked by a group of men. The couple
witness this from inside their car, but the husband doesn't want to help
or have anything to do with the girl, who's been left for dead. Helene,
overwhelmed with guilt, decides to visits Malika in the hospital, against
her husband's strict instructions. As Malika slowly regains consciousness,
and her physical strength returns, the women grow closer, and the story
behind the mysterious heroine unfolds. And, like a blooming flower, so
does the magnitude of the story line, which becomes far too complicated
to summarize here. (It's also far more involved than it needed to be
for the plot or social commentary.)
Suffice to say, the story is all about Malika's and all the female
characters' struggles to find individuality and freedom from under the
thumb of the men in their lives. But the film doesn't stop there - it also
makes observations (and hence, commentary) about French society, Muslim
cultures, and a variety of other aspects of modern life. Attempting to
serve all these objectives, the film tends to meander from one character
to another, and one political statement to another, so it can squeeze
it all in. This ends up overcomplicating things to a minor degree,
but in the end, the movie is really all about women and their plight,
and the movie makes no excuses or apologies about that.
For Helene, it's as simple as her leaving her good-for-nothing,
ego-centric husband. For Malika, though, her first barrier is her
patriarchic Muslim family, who stymied her attempts to educate herself
or make a better life. Then it's her father, who tried to sell her to a
man in Algeria for marriage. When she ran away just before her scheduled
departure, she found herself under the influence of a pimp, who forced her
into prostitution, drugged and raped her, and beat her relentlessly, over
and over. Things get worse and worse for all the women in the film, major
and minor characters alike, until things come to a head, when (surprise)
all women come together and win, and all the men lose in a big, big way.
The film's use of satire is exaggeration and extremes, but you don't
necessarily see that in one character alone, but all the characters as a
collective. All the men are evil, and all the women are glorified. This
use of two-dimensional character portrayal gives away the otherwise
obvious moral agenda of the film; it also draws attention to the
unsophisticated satirical vehicles normally employed by much less
experienced filmmakers. It's almost as though Serreau gets so lost in
her own agenda that she forgets the true nature of cutting satire. When
events develop so transparently and obviously, you can't help but know
that this film is only trying to preach to the converted.
Effective satire is about making acute and keen observations of real
people, subtly leading us to the filmmaker's desired conclusions, all the
while letting us think we got there on our own. We need to see at least
one of the heroines lose because the sad reality is that not all women
leave the men that subjugate them—we need to be reminded of that not
just for the dose of reality for credibility's sake, but it accentuates
the emotional impact of the victories of the women that do overcome their
barriers. Similarly, one of the bad guys should be portrayed as changing
his ways so as to draw more attention to those who don't. Serreau's
problem is that she can't accept a character losing. This, in itself,
compromises credibility. As Shakespeare once said, "thou doest protest
too loudly."
There's no question that "Chaos" will win the hearts and minds of women
who feel victimized, or who seek the camaraderie of seeing strong women
win on screen. But it's almost sad to see them rally around what is
essentially a vacuous film that doesn't carry the more cogent message
it could have been so much more effective at giving. I guess it's my
way of saying, "preaching to the converted isn't hard. Leave that to
the amateurs."
You can find this movie on the internet database here:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0265116.
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