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My Degeneration
The plot follows an all-girl rock band and their rise to fame in the major music industry, or at least, that's the vague idea. However, My Degeneration is extremely critical of said music industry, and perhaps society in general. The girls are told that "art is meat" and "you are fetish", while industrial slaughterhouse films and weird educational videos saying "Meat is Life!" play. The only problem is that these kinds of critical stances -- anti-government, anti-establishment, anti-exploitation -- are easily expressed in a short period of time. My Degeneration apparently only runs 70 minutes, but I was tired of hearing about it before even 20 had passed.
The film is extremely experimental. Shots of the city are done with crude paper dioramas. Transition and major plot points are explained through voice-over. The slaughterhouse video plays uninterrupted for minutes at a time, as well as old commercials, and other non-original video sources. The majority of the film seems to be cobbled together from these clips, and during the 17 minutes I saw, only about half of it appeared to be brand new footage, although it's hard to tell when it comes to the musicians. Most of that footage consists of Moritsugu zooming in on a rotting cow head, which is the character that tells the girls to go to the big city in the first place. Uh-huh.
Maybe My Degeneration has meaning. Maybe it's conventional and "safe" for me to want traditional filmmaking with narratives rather than a hyperactive, grungy, alternative slideshow of extreme visual metaphors about how "the man" sucks, or whatever else Moritsugu is trying to convey. I'm particularly sorry that I couldn't watch the entire film, which is admittedly a really illegitimate way to review a movie. However, regardless of what Moritsugu tries to or even successfully accomplishes during My Degeneration's remaining 53 minutes, I just plain didn't want to see it. Hopefully, at the very least, what I've written will indicate whether or not you want to see it either, and if you do, will be enough for you to either seek out the film, or a more complete, informed response from someone who did enjoy it.
The DVD
My Degeneration comes with a colorful, pop-art-style cover, haphazardly covered in photos and text proclaiming the film a "cult masterwork", clips from several positive reviews, and promoting music by "Vomit Launch" and others. The case is transparent plastic with another pop-art photo on the inside, and no insert.
The Video, and Audio
Shot on 16mm, My Degeneration is distinctly muddy, grainy, and covered in scratches and dirt. There's even a bit of wobble to the picture, in case staying focused on the image isn't hard enough. The packaging doesn't say whether or not the film was remastered for this release, and it's really hard to discern how much of the film's rough look is intentional, given the numerous animation effects and color changes, but I have a hard time thinking it will ever look significantly better on home video, so I guess fans will be pleased.
Dolby Digital 2.0 is a little muffled and completely un-directional, not to mention there's a consistent, distracting hiss to the recording throughout the entire movie. Unlike the video, I'm guessing the hiss is not intentional, and it's extremely irritating. No captions or subtitles are provided.
The Extras
The one extra is an audio commentary by Jon Moritsugu and actress Amy Davis. Right off the bat, they're more interesting than the movie, both excited and enthusiastic, reminiscing about the shoot. It sounds like Davis is having a true flashback to the '80s, while Moritsugu still seems excited about his ideas (although both jab at the movie just a little bit). I feel it would be profoundly unfair to review the whole commentary track when I couldn't sit through the entire movie, so I only listened to few minutes worth, but I wish the movie was good enough to justify sitting through the rest of the track.
Conclusion
Since I didn't watch the whole film, and my hatred of it was based almost entirely on the style of the filmmaking more than the quality of the filmmaking (which may or may not improved as the film went on), coupled with the enthusiasm of the commentary track, it only seems fair to lighten my personal "skip it" to a rent it, with the extremely emphasized warning that any potential viewers should really find a trailer or consider what they're getting into before they give this one a spin.
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