“you are attracted to that nymphomaniac!”
grass labyrinth is barely a movie at all. from the second i hit play, i was almost in this subconscious state where i really couldn’t tell if it was apart of the film, or me simply dreaming. it’s probably the most abstract and nonsensical thing i’ve seen… like ever, (ignoring inland empire of course lmao) and that’s probably why i loved it as much as i do. this was just a movie that ticks every box of what i would personally look for in a movie i like, and visual storytelling is extremely important to me. and this movie is visually immaculate, super aesthetically pleasing. even taking the dialogue away, the cinematography alone is enough to portray it’s extremely powerful story. it uses bold use of colour to really replicate that idea of a memory or a dream, its an art house fans wet-dream and my biggest sin within film is that i’d enjoy any film that looked as beautiful as ‘grass labyrinth’ did. well besides the obvious fact that this movie is gorgeous to look at, i really considered on why else i’d consider this in a high regard, besides its style. i made a massive mistake on logging this like three weeks after my original viewing of this movie, to the point where i kinda just forgot a lot of it, mainly due to it kinda clouding into my state of subconscious. but luckily, this movie was still weirdly memorable in the same way. the plot is rather simplistic, which is understandable due to its short runtime, but it’s basically a man who goes through his past memories and dreams to figure out a missing lyric to a song his mother used to sing to him. it’s basically a ‘labyrinth’ in this characters mind. the reason it’s so fragmented is because it’s not a linear act of events, rather than the protagonist trying to go back to his unreliable mentality to try and discover past information and experiences. sequences from adulthood and childhood seem to sync together, most likely being more absurd than what actually happens, as he rewrites information, rather than recalling it. throughout the film, we see some major things that are clearly highly important to the protagonist. most importantly, his domineering mother: he seems to have a maternal connection to, despite her acts of violence against him as she ties him to a tree to avoid sexual advances. it explores childhood trauma and sexual repression and awakening through the ‘nymphomaniac girl’ or ‘the witch’, who allure him into graphic sexual acts. besides this, the latter half of the film begins to get even more absurd with its sequences and symbolism - featuring a ritualistic climax as the character fights the similarity of disgust and admiration, with pregnancy stones or multicoloured balls in his wild collection of memory. it’s such an unhinged watch from start to end, its graphic in its approach but it just so unearthly. its blur between reality and memory with haunting melancholia and is a heightened tense surreal fever-dream which is an amazing exploration of psychosexual relationships in such a brief amount of time. it’s definitely not a crowd-pleaser, but is just so hypnotising through sound and also imagery.
“you are attracted to that nymphomaniac!”
grass labyrinth is barely a movie at all. from the second i hit play, i was almost in this subconscious state where i really couldn’t tell if it was apart of the film, or me simply dreaming. it’s probably the most abstract and nonsensical thing i’ve seen… like ever, (ignoring inland empire of course lmao) and that’s probably why i loved it as much as i do. this was just a movie that ticks every box of what i would personally look for in a movie i like, and visual storytelling is extremely important to me. and this movie is visually immaculate, super aesthetically pleasing. even taking the dialogue away, the cinematography alone is enough to portray it’s extremely powerful story. it uses bold use of colour to really replicate that idea of a memory or a dream, its an art house fans wet-dream and my biggest sin within film is that i’d enjoy any film that looked as beautiful as ‘grass labyrinth’ did. well besides the obvious fact that this movie is gorgeous to look at, i really considered on why else i’d consider this in a high regard, besides its style. i made a massive mistake on logging this like three weeks after my original viewing of this movie, to the point where i kinda just forgot a lot of it, mainly due to it kinda clouding into my state of subconscious. but luckily, this movie was still weirdly memorable in the same way. the plot is rather simplistic, which is understandable due to its short runtime, but it’s basically a man who goes through his past memories and dreams to figure out a missing lyric to a song his mother used to sing to him. it’s basically a ‘labyrinth’ in this characters mind. the reason it’s so fragmented is because it’s not a linear act of events, rather than the protagonist trying to go back to his unreliable mentality to try and discover past information and experiences. sequences from adulthood and childhood seem to sync together, most likely being more absurd than what actually happens, as he rewrites information, rather than recalling it. throughout the film, we see some major things that are clearly highly important to the protagonist. most importantly, his domineering mother: he seems to have a maternal connection to, despite her acts of violence against him as she ties him to a tree to avoid sexual advances. it explores childhood trauma and sexual repression and awakening through the ‘nymphomaniac girl’ or ‘the witch’, who allure him into graphic sexual acts. besides this, the latter half of the film begins to get even more absurd with its sequences and symbolism - featuring a ritualistic climax as the character fights the similarity of disgust and admiration, with pregnancy stones or multicoloured balls in his wild collection of memory. it’s such an unhinged watch from start to end, its graphic in its approach but it just so unearthly. its blur between reality and memory with haunting melancholia and is a heightened tense surreal fever-dream which is an amazing exploration of psychosexual relationships in such a brief amount of time. it’s definitely not a crowd-pleaser, but is just so hypnotising through sound and also imagery.
