Tuesday August 11
7pm
Men Cry Bullet
Tamara Hernandez
Feature, 106 min.
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When you watch an underground feature, there's
one element you can almost always expect. What
is that element you ask? It's drag queens. In
fact, here's a way to have fun while viewing
underground movies, try to count the amount of
drag queens you see in the films featured at
this, or any, underground film festival, and
compare that number to the amount of films
without drag queens. I guarantee the deck will
be heavily stacked in the direction of the drag
queen. I don't know why but the underground film
community seems to be obsessed with this, and
don't get me wrong, I like drag queens as much
as the next guy/girl, I'm just intrigued as to
why this has become such a defining trait of an
underground film. In fact, in many ways it seems
like it's becoming a necessity. Now what's the
point of all this pointless banter I'm writing?
Well hopefully, I'm about to make an argument as
to why the use of drag queens in Tamara
Hernandez's wonderful feature film, Men Cry
Bullets, exceeds the standards of underground
film expectancy by making a definitive point and
having an all to real purpose behind the use of
the drag queen character.
With this film, Tamara
Hernandez certainly, if there's any justice in
this world, has established herself as an
important voice in the art of film making.
especially in the art of conveying emotion,
sneaking in subtle symbolism, breaking taboos
and giving the viewer solid narrative direction.
Men Cry Bullets blends the trashy elegance of
John Waters with the overflowing emotional
guilt, psychosis and violence in much of Jim
Thompson's best work. It combines the personal
and self indulgent beauty in the ugliness of
Pasolini with the nihilistic and confrontational
deconstruction of the ugliness that exists in
the
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most inventive
displays of the intense hatred that comes from
love and the desolate nature of
need. Men Cry Bullets is one of the most mature and well made
'underground'
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| beauty of David
Lynch. Now these may be rather bold statements
but keep in mind this is an incredibly bold
film. It's the story of Billy, a young man
troubled by a wealth of unearthed guilt from his
suppressed and cloudy past. He seeks happiness
through performing on stage as a woman. This, in
many ways, exorcises his personal ghosts and
frees him from the worldly trappings that keep
him unhappy. This concept is a dense and
challenging idea that Hernandez handles with
unmatched maturity, understanding and concern.
Soon we discover that Billy's past is only the
begging of his problems. He meets a woman named
Gloria. a striking. sadistic and sexual figure
composed of Billy's unrealized guilt, confusion,
suppressed lust and angry needs. Naturally, they
fall in love and obviously, its some what
dysfunctional, but so is everything else that
surrounds them (and consumes them). Gloria has a
cousin named Lydia who represents the complete
opposite of Gloria. Lydia is a glowingly
beautiful and clean image of care and concern.
In many ways, she's a beacon of purity
representing Billy's need for his dead mother.
But at the same time. Lydia is greatly flawed as
well, looking at life as a free ride thanks to
her God given beauty. The three form an unusual
(to say the least) relationship that leads to a
climax composed of attempted murder, incest and
finally an extremely challenging 'self' suicide
involving gender reversal and one of the
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films I have seen
sense Funeral Procession Of Roses (a brilliant
Japanese underground art film made in 1969,
directed by Toshio Matsumoto, and an absolute
must see) which, ironically, is the film that
Men Cry Bullets reminds me of the most in many
ways. They both revolve around transvestites
battling with suppressed memory by performing
the part of their dead mother, and both film's
main characters seek solaced in the arms of the
worst possible people, a choice that undoubtedly
ends in tragedy, thanks to the full instillation
of their ghostly pasts at the worst possible
moment in the present. But while Eddie, in Funeral Procession
Of Roses, is obviously gay, Billy is straight,
giving his character a more oddly askew take on
life and a more realistically noted obsession
with the violent loss of his mother, resulting
in the total justification of his transvestitism
and socially maladjusted stance. Men Cry Bullets
is a film that works on many different levels,
ranging from the artistically exploitive films
of the great Marco Ferreri to the personally
insulated work of the already mentioned David
Lynch. This is a movie you must see, you may
like and you may hate it, but you must see it if
you give a fuck about underground film. And hey,
it's got the line 'I'm a drag queen not a
murderer', so what have you got to lose?- SM
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