Poison (1991)

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Movie
German title Poison
Original title Poison
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1991
length 85 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Todd Haynes
script Todd Haynes
production Christine Vachon
music James Bennett
camera Maryse Alberti
cut Todd Haynes,
James Lyons
occupation

Hero

horror

homo

Poison is an American episode film directed by Todd Haynes in 1991 , which made the director's feature film debut. It consists of three stories about social outsiders, inspired by the works of the French writer Jean Genet . The film premiered on January 26, 1991 at the Sundance Film Festival , where it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize.

action

Poison consists of three episodes that take place in different decades of the 20th century and are shown alternately rather than one after the other.

  • Hero : In 1985, seven-year-old high school student Richie Beacon shot his father Fred and then, reports his mother Felicia, flew out the window and has not been seen since. People from Richie's environment have their say and report on their experiences with the outsider who was annoyed at school. It also becomes clear that there was violence in Richie's seemingly harmonious suburban family, with the father regularly beating his wife. Finally, Richie shot his father when he hit his mother again one night.
    This part is shot in the style of a tabloid-esque documentary. For the most part, the documentation consists of the statements of people from Richie's circle of acquaintances, but he never gets to speak.
  • Horror : The scientist Dr. Tom Graves has been trying to get to the bottom of human sexuality for years and finally manages to isolate sexuality in an elixir . After a meeting with his adoring colleague Dr. Nancy Olsen is so distracted that he fatally mistakes the elixir for his coffee cup and drinks it. An increasingly worsening leprosy can be seen on Tom's face, which can be transmitted through touch. When he infects a prostitute and she screams, he kills her - soon he is wanted as a serial killer, while the leprosy continues to spread through the city. Meanwhile, Tom and Nancy discover their love for each other and she tries to help him, but falls ill herself and dies before him. Asked by the police, Tom explains to the people standing around on his balcony that they are all the same and that one can only face the misery of the world with pride. He then jumps and later dies in the hospital.
    The episode is in black and white in the style of science fiction - B-movies staged in the 1950s and 1960s. The story is also historically set in this period. Communicable, body-damaging leprosy has been perceived by reviewers as an allegory for AIDS .
  • Homo : 30-year-old thief John Broom is incarcerated in an American prison in the 1940s. Here he falls in love with another prisoner, Jack Bolton, whom he knows from his youth. Both were once inmates at a state reformatory where Jack was humiliated by the other youths for being homosexual while John watched. In the presence of the prison, John sends him signs of affection, which Jack is reluctant to accept for fear of the other prisoners. A fight between the two develops into sex. But only a few days later, Jack is shot when he tries to break out with the prisoner Rass.
    The scenes in the prison are sparsely lit and focus on the characters' faces and bodies, in contrast to the flashbacks to the reformatory, which are brightly lit and appear in an almost romanticizing light.

Production background

After Todd Haynes made his first name in 1987 with the highly acclaimed short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story , various Hollywood greats such as Jonathan Demme and Stuart Cornfeld were interested in working with him. He could have signed up for a larger film project, but decided to be able to choose his own subject for his first feature-length film. On Poison you wanted in Hollywood but not participate, what Haynes called the homoeroticism of the movie and a Mitgrund. As a result, he ended up with a budget of only $ 190,000. For completing the film, Haynes received $ 25,000 from the state institution of the National Endowment for the Arts , which drew the displeasure of Republican Senator Jesse Helms . Without having seen the film, Helms criticized it for being hideous and a waste of taxpayers' money.

According to Haynes, Poison is “about the structures society uses to keep outsiders out. This is shown in three ways, in three different locations and in three different styles. ”In the opening credits of the film, he mentions the name of Jean Genet , as he saw his film as being inspired by and linked to the French writer. This influence is probably most evident in the homo episode, in which several scenes are taken from Genet's 1946 novel Miracle de la Rose (German: Wunder der Rose ). Genet's short film A Love Song ( Un chant d'amour ; 1950) about the love of two prison inmates was also the inspiration.

reception

In the early 1990s, Poison was one of a series of successful films by homosexual directors for which the film critic B. Ruby Rich developed the term " New Queer Cinema ". In 2010 Dennis Lim wrote in retrospect in the New York Times that Poison did not make a polite request for tolerance, but reflected queer identity and illustrated the need for AIDS activism. The film was therefore novel at the time and had a great influence as a “cinematic antidote ”.

On the US film critic portal Rotten Tomatoes , Poison , based on 21 reviews, received an approval rate of 76%. David Ansen wrote for Newsweek that the film is self-confident and that the changes between the "three channels", which are stylistically different but have similar themes, develop a "cumulative, claustrophobic force". Jonathan Rosenbaum saw the “designer prison” as relatively superfluous, but otherwise most of Haynes' concettos would ignite. Hal Hinson in the Washington Post on April 19, 1991 criticized the overly strong orientation to Genet: Haynes' film had a "strangely distant tone, as if Haynes worked more than Genet as he did himself; it's someone else's demons he's fighting with, not his own. ”The episodic narrative may have worked for Griffith's intolerance , but here it becomes a disaster, as none of the stories can really captivate the viewer through the interruptions. However, some elements of the dark visions are worth considering, overall the film is like a “particularly toxic infection”.

The film service writes that the three stories in Poison would "reduce the complexity of the problems through their special point of view, but still make a worthwhile statement about the state of the world". Cinema concluded : “You really can't say that Todd Haynes makes it particularly easy to follow his film. To do this, he tries out different styles and creates a unique film. "

Awards

Poison was awarded the Jury Grand Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1991 . At the Berlinale in February 1991 Poison won the Teddy Award for Best Film . The film also took part in the Locarno Festival , where it was nominated for the Golden Leopard . At the Catalan film festival Sitges Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya 1991 and the Portuguese film festival Fantasporto 1992, the film was also awarded with critical awards. At the 1992 Independent Spirit Awards , Poison received nominations for Best Debut Film and Best Director .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reviewed in the Washington Post, April 19, 1991 , by Hal Hinson
  2. ^ Poison (1991). Retrieved October 31, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Information sheet of the "21st International Forum", Arsenal Berlin
  4. ↑ Ulla Wischermann, Tanja Thomas: Media - Diversity - Inequality: On the media construction of social difference . Springer-Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-15385-8 ( google.de [accessed on November 1, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Dennis Lim: Todd Haynes's 'Poison' and the Film World It Made . ( nytimes.com [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Poison. Retrieved November 1, 2018 .
  7. ↑ 'Poison' Doesn't Go Down Easy . In: Newsweek . April 28, 1991 ( newsweek.com [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  8. ↑ Poison. Retrieved November 1, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Reviewed in the Washington Post, April 19, 1991 , by Hal Hinson
  10. ↑ Poison . ( filmdienst.de [accessed October 31, 2018]).
  11. ↑ CINEMA online: Cinema at CINEMA: program, films, DVDs, stars, trailers and more | cinema.de. Retrieved November 1, 2018 .