The Book of Revelation

In 1984 in Auckland, New Zealand, a university lecturer, actor and playwright ... was chained to a tree by a group of women.  The word 'rapist' was spray-painted on his car, and posters around Auckland University campus also denounced him for rape.  The group of women was never identified and no one ever went to court.  Whether Thompson was as guilty as charged and deserving of the attack was hotly debated...*

I recalled this story on seeing Ana Kokkinos's The Book of Revelation, a film dealing with a similar theme, the relatively unusual phenomenon of female-on-male violence.  There are some parallels.  As in the description of the case above, the motivations for the violence at the heart of Revelation are not clear but appear to be strongly ideological. The female perpetrators are never unmasked or tried. The film ultimately becomes an exploration of male vulnerability and trauma.  It is not comfortable viewing.

As I watched this film, the only audience member in an afternoon session (which gave it a suitably 'blue' ambience), I toyed with the question of what was actually the source of my discomfort.  I was definitely uncomfortable because I don't, as a rule, enjoy violent films. But was I all the more uncomfortable, as I suspected was intended, because Revelation upended both some traditional and feminist convictions about men being aggressors and women being their victims?  Or was I merely uncomfortable because the film's treatment of its subject matter did not measure up to its rather stylised aspirations? 

Revelation is an adaptation of Rupert Thomson's novel of the same name, which was set in Amsterdam rather than Melbourne.  Daniel (Tom Long), the principal dancer of an experimental dance company, leaves a rehearsal to buy his girlfriend some smokes.  En route from Southbank, he's abducted in dark alleyways near Flinders Lane by three masked women (it seems a pity he didn't think to buy a pack at Flinders St Station instead). Twelve days later, he's dumped unceremoniously in a middle of some paddocks. He returns to civilisation but with 'typical maleness' is unable to communicate any details of his ordeal to his girlfriend, the rather brittle and self-absorbed Bridget (Anna Torv), who leaves him. Daniel also finds he's lost his creative mo-jo and quits the dance company. He descends into a PTSD-type world of obsession, hypervigilance, and alienation, and through a series of flashbacks, we learn that he has been raped and tortured by the women. After a chance meeting on a tram, Daniel looks set to find 'healing' in the arms of Deborah Mailman (indeed, what better antidote could there be).  But the reprieve is short-lived, as he's driven by his internal demons to commit a crime that reflects his own abuse. Ultimately, he finds solace in an Oedipal clinch with an old cop (Colin Friels), who has a history of dealing with unpalatable, unsolved crimes.

In keeping with the theme of reversed gender expectations, none of the women in this film are particularly warmly-drawn, with the exception of Deborah Mailman. On Daniel's return, both his girlfriend and his boss, the company choreographer, are relatively harsh and unsympathetic in the face of his inability to communicate his absence (tho the choreographer mellows towards the film's end). For me, what was most difficult about this film was the lack of motivation or internal psychology given to the three masked women.  The rationale for their crimes, as given to Daniel, runs something like this: men objectify women and are violent towards them. It's not fair; we wanted some of the pie, too, so we decided to rape you because you're beautiful and to get our jollies. 

One reason why their motivations are so undeveloped is because the film is presented from Daniel's point-of-view, purposely, as the male victim -- and the women don't give away too much to him as captors.  The other seems to be that the film seeks to emulate European arthouse cinema classics such as Last Tango in Paris, in which rather arbitrary and stylised things can happen after all. Part of my problem with the lack of convincing motivation given to the perpetrators may well have been due to my feminist expectations that there must be some deep, dark, psychological reasons as to why women would commit such a crime. But upended feminist expectations aside, I think the film would have been strengthened by more insight into the women's psychology, given the subject matter's relative novelty. After all, characters like Hannibal Lector are afforded opportunities to provide well-developed rationales for their crimes.

In using a highly stylised approach in its portrayal of female-on-male abuse, Revelation seeks to highlight the potential for violence and vulnerability in all of us. The film opens with a portentous scene in which Daniel and his girlfriend are rehearsing a dance sequence with erotically violent overtones, and are instructed by the choregrapher to show less emotion. This sequence is later incorporated into the torture ritual, and there are plenty of stark, bondage-mistress type scenes in which the mighty phallus is shown merely to be a fragile organ, and so on. The difficulty with all this is that 'highly stylised' can quickly tip over into 'heavy-handed' and 'parody'. It's hard to not get the giggles after a while during the scenes with Tom Long lying around with his schlong, and some of the torture scenes seem like left-overs from 70s agit-prop drama. Rather than European cinema classics, the film that Revelation brought to mind unfortunately was that stinker, Eyes Wide Shut (which also has weak motivations and a seriously stupid story at its core): strange people in masks at undisclosed locations is always a tough ask.

In summary, Revelation presents a rather harsh and forbidding vision of reversed gender expectations about masculinity and violence. In one interview about the film, Kokkonis stated: 'There is so much male fantasy about being a women's sex object. We subvert that.' They certainly do, but I was left wondering why it had to be, in a sense, such a straight inversion, such an unequivocally brutal response.

See Revelation if you're curious or if you like erotic slam-dancing.

* C. Atmore, '"Branded": Lesbian representation and a New Zealand cultural controversy', Antithesis, vol 6, no 2, 1993, p11.

Comments

[Kate]

A friend of mine has read the book. She said her major problem with it was that she found it a bit boring -- over-stylised, as you suggested. I'm going to wait for the DVD.

[Kate]

Read the book and seen the movie, I mean. Gah. I am a commenting FOOL today.

[elsewhere]

The portentousness of it is probably reflected in the overearnestness of this review!

[susoz]

A friend gave me a free double pass to this today. I don't think I'll go.

[elsewhere]

Don't let me put you off!

[foodkitty]

Regard it as modern ballet, not sexual politics. Then it works. Maybe..

[ampersand duck]

I saw it as part of the recent AFI member screenings, and I'm glad I had that chance, because from its reviews it's not something I would ordinarily see. I enjoyed it, but it was a harrowing experience. I thought the transition from gorgeous-young-thing-open-to-everything-with-every-fibre-of-his-body to closed, surly, unshaven, wolfish-looking man was a bit unsubtle, but I guess that's the effect they wanted. There were other clunky moments, and your review is a good one, but I don't regret seeing the movie. They used the sets and surroundings well, and I really enjoyed Deborah Mailman. She's a national treasure.