Bruce says: “FAT
SHAKER is a film that will have you scratching your head both during
and after the screening. Trying to make sense of it is a
mistake. One could categorize it somewhere in the area of home
movies you stumbled upon without the benefit of any explanation from
any person involved in the exercise. Certainly from a
quality-of-filmmaking perspective that analogy is not a stretch.
Anyone who sits through FAT SHAKER has no hope of resolution other than
to make something up. Is that a bad thing? In general, I
think not.
“Winner of a big prize at the Rotterdam Film Festival, FAT SHAKER has
received dreadful reviews from critics. That did not seem to
deter those at Film Comment from screening FAT SHAKER at their showcase
event. In ways FAT SHAKER reminds me of Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal’s
IT
LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE; both films are ever so intriguing and
ever so enigmatic, to the point of being indecipherable some might add.
“FAT SHAKER is a film of imagery. If there is a plot, it centers
around a father and son con artist team who prey on young women who are
out and about without a male escort. The father is a morbidly
obese alcoholic and the son is a devastatingly handsome deaf mute, a
Persian god walking among mortals. To rid the father of his
demons the son frequently applies cupping glasses on his back to draw
the blood to the surface. The cupping glasses are then replaced
by leeches that suck the blood. Given the tenacity of the
leeches, the only means of prying them off is to sprinkle them
generously with salt. They die and slither down the man’s back,
leaving trails of blood.
“A woman photographer somehow hooks up with the duo, most likely to use
them as fodder for a photographic essay. The three end up at a
rented cottage near the beach. The authorities and landlord show
up to ask for IDs just after the son places the cupping glasses on his
father’s back. A big tom turkey also wanders around the cottage
as the cupping glasses fall and break while the father follows the
intruders around, trying to get them out the door – a scene without
rhyme nor reason yet one I’ll not likely forget. Many other
inexplicable things happen; for example, each of characters is
handcuffed at some point. The father loses his bushy beard
(hello, Vincent Lindon, just like your moustache) partway through the
film, and then it appears again only to disappear again later.
“Mohammed Shirvani has a great eye, a remarkable sense of composition
and the ability to make an audience sit up and take notice. There
is no way of knowing whether FAT SHAKER is a result of furtive
filmmaking, but its home movie nature (some shots are jerky) would lead
one to believe that is the case. We do know the filmmaker was not
allowed out of Iran to attend any foreign screenings. I hope
Mohammed Shirvani gets another opportunity to reveal exactly what’s
going on inside his head. 4 cats
“(FAT SHAKER screened as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s
2014 ‘Film Comment Selects’ series.)” |
