Man Bites Dog & Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

    There should be more fake documentaries. By "fake documentaries," I don't mean propaganda or just plain bullshit. I mean fiction told through documentary techniques for artistic (as opposed to purely deceptive/political) purposes. There's just something diabolical about using the aesthetics associated with "reality" to build a fiction, particularly in that it exposes the illusion that recordings could ever truly capture an objective, unbiased reality. It's a style that's gotten pretty popular in horror and comedy, from The Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity to This is Spinal Tap and The Office. Where it gets fun though is when things are a bit less constrained genre-wise. The two films for this double feature just happen to blend horror and comedy while telling practically the same story in wildly different fashions.

    Man Bites Dog (1992) is a Belgian dark comedy about a documentary crew following a charismatic serial killer and getting in way over their head. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) is an American dark comedy about a documentary crew following a charismatic serial killer and getting in way over their head. Both films manage to cover extremely divergent material in spite of so many parallels.

    A quick aside: One of my favorite examples of the fake documentary is a short film that I would completely spoil by revealing in this context. Suffice it to say that it pretty much straight up lies to you through its aesthetics until the end credits and through this form it creates a layered meaning that's extremely affecting. (I hope by random chance you end up seeing it without knowing what it is. Go take some film classes I guess.) Free of the constraints of any particular genre, fake documentaries can catch you on several different levels in both subtle and extreme ways.

    Man Bites Dog is slightly more on the subtle side than Behind the Mask even though it does kick off with the protagonist murdering a fella cinéma vérité style. Man Bites Dog is stylistically flawless and detectable as fiction only through the sheer audacity of its subject matter. There's a dry, lunatic wit to the film as the increasingly needy and unhinged serial killer goes about his business with hardly a care in the world for the consequences or moral considerations of his actions. Of course there's the obvious messages about journalistic responsibility and media and celebrity and all that good stuff. The mood swings in the film and the increasingly dark and desperate plot are what elevates this beyond other films with similar messages but less nerve with which to seriously and honestly deliver them.

    This is definitely the movie you want to put on first when everybody's still alert. It's black and white with subtitles so you almost feel inclined to be drinking coffee while watching it anyway. It ends as harsh as it damn well ought to so you wouldn't want to end the night with it. "Behind the Mask" makes for a fun chaser that stays on topic.

    This one takes the serial killer documentary in a very different direction by setting it in the reality of pop slasher films. The protagonist idolizes folks likes Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger (whose originating actor, Robert Englund, appears in this film as a spot-on riff on Dr. Loomis from Halloween) and breaks down for the crew exactly how much preparation goes into a gig like that. At the same time it shifts back-and-forth from the "documentary footage" (which doesn't seem to be trying extremely hard to be serious) to genuine slasher flick mode to hilarious (and economical) effect.

    When the movie began I immediately thought about Man Bites Dog and was half-expecting a re-tread of the same scenarios, same plot. Fortunately there's nearly no similarity between any scenes in the movies as Behind the Mask is able to mine exclusively from the surprisingly rich slasher film genre. You'd kind of figure that three Scream movies would've tapped that vein dry but surprise, surprise, the analysis of the proliferation of yonic imagery in slasher scenarios (plus the definition of "yonic") scores Behind the Mask some bonus points for edu-tainment. Further bonus points for it evolving into as good a slasher film as it is a movie about slasher films. Extra credit to Nathan Baesel who carries the film and effectively sells both extremes of his likable lunatic (no simple feat, something that Benoît Poelvoorde also nails in Man Bites Dog). Best of all, the end credit sequence pairs an awesomely obvious song choice with an equally awesomely obvious epilogue.

    It just occurred to me this kind of fits with that whole Halloween jazz coming up. Hey, well, there you go. There's your excuse. Besides, it's easier to laugh at the horrors of fake reality than the horrors of real reality. Figure we could all use the practice.

Labels: film/tv