Whoever thinks there aren't any weirdly outrageous places in this world
anymore hasn't yet visited the temple in Kalasin, Thailand, this film was
shot in, a temple that has on display, between quite a bit of touristy
stuff and some skeleton laid out in often fun ways, corpses in various
states of decay, from the relatively freshly deceased to the quite
decomposed, sometimes also mutilated or cut open for scientific purposes
... Now ok, I freely admit, Addio Uomo is not a film to
everybody's liking, the theme is macabre by definition, and it's very
direct in the presentation of its topic. And at times it's even
reminiscent of yesteryear's mondo movies - something the movie doesn't
even try to dispute, instead tagging a thank you note to Italian
mondo-pioneers Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi to it -, with the
difference that this movie doesn't try to sensationalize but presents its
artifacts in pretty much an as-is way ... and here's basically where the
fun starts, as Addio Uomo actually isn't one movie but two based on
the same material, but edited differently: There's the one edit by
director René Wiesner himself, who keeps the material unchanged mostly
(other than the edit), keeping even the live sounds and denying the film a
musical score, and then there's the edit by Magnus Blomdahl, that works
more like a music video, having the material carried by music and using
its fair share of editing tricks. Of course, what works better is
completely up to the viewer, but suffice to say the two versions are
vastly different, but both macabre, disturbing ... but in the rather
peaceful way these corpses are shot, also quite beautiful. So again, not
for everybody for sure, but worth the while of people with a morbid
predilection like myself. One more thing, this twin film also
has a sister film, the narrative short Todessehnsucht,
shot at the same location, that deserves to be watched in tandem with this
one!
|