Sweet Movie (1974) review

If it doesn't already have the reputation as being one of the most controversial films ever made, then we are a pretty desensitized nation: Makavejev's incoherent ballad, Sweet Movie, is so frustratingly illogical you feel as if you're watching clips from different movies spliced together randomly and with no real consistent theme, but a heavy emphasis on kitsch and perversion. Roger Ebert has said that it is a film beyond criticism, and he may be right: here is a case where a filmmaker's "product" borders on insanity, and his methods of shocking could be considered by most filmgoers as irresponsible and perhaps reprehensible (child molestation that needs to be seen to be believed, golden showers, oral sex, symbolic "returning to infancy" as defined by adults defecating on each other, a pretty young woman masturbating in a pool of chocolate ... I could go on all day). His cross-cutting/juxtaposition is perhaps most startling of all: he purposely interrupts nude bathing and the aforementioned pleasure-by-chocolate with grainy Holocaust footage of mutilated corpses. I wasn't so much revolted as confused, (uncomfortably) entertained and startled. It's an angry, rambling picture, and daring, but refreshingly so: how can you hate a film that's willfully ignorant of the atrocities it presents and alludes to? My interpretation: Sweet Movie is a song of hate against a world that is equally corrupt politically, socially and (especially) sexually.