The Witness of the Martyrs (Spoilers Ahead)

Even the most jaded of horror aficionados may find Pascal Laughier's "Martyrs" difficult to endure. Many critics have jumped on the bandwagon, lauding the film as a truly revolutionary piece of work that transcends the genre. It's true, this one cannot be relegated to the same torture trash-heap as such notable shockers as "Saw," or Eli Roth's alarminginly brainless "Hostel" films. If anything, these features prove that you can make a franchise out of other people's misery. But we already knew that. Ever watch an episode of Survivor or Mtv's the Real World (which is about as in touch with reality as "Puppet Master")?
"Martyrs" opens with a young girl escaping from captivity and follows her subsequent recovery. While at an orphanage she bonds deeply with another young girl, whose love stretches somewhat beyond the merely platonic. Hell-bent on revenge, the former-captive locates the perpetrators of the crimes from which she has been recovering her whole life. After she systematically slaughters an entire family, their house turns out to be an intricate maze of torture. The film is a slow and harrowing experience to watch. There's not a shred of humor to soften any of the atrocities that fill each frame, and if you're anything like me, you'll find yourself hitting the fast-forward button more than once. . .
But what makes "Martyrs" compelling is the conclusion, which I'm guessing, you will not see coming. You see, the organization responsible for the systematic torture of women is not seeking titillation of any kind. The torture runs the gamut of the cruelty spectrum, incorporating nearly every feasible assault on the nerves, excepting rape or any form of sexual torture. This organization is harvesting women for systematic torture in order to conclude whether there is an after-life. According to the head of this sect, women are more likely to give themselves up to martyrdom.
Amid the nihilism of the film, this striving for the transcendent is both tragic and perverse. On the one hand, the film seems to be a pastiche of the world's moral bankruptcy. But this reaching for heaven through brutal torture seems to hit on a number of existential themes that have recently become all too real. In the wake of atrocities carried out in the name of religion, and of acts of voluntary martyrdom, Laughier's bleak vision carries more weight than I'm comfortable with.
Moreover, violence takes on a sacramental role here. Grace seems to be imparted in the ever-reddening episodes of the film, transporting the characters beyond their dire circumstances to something that just might save them. One wonders if the executioner's of the past ever caught a glimpse of something heavenly in the eyes of those that have died for a cause they deem to be sacred. The character's suffering becomes a right of passage, making them superior according to their tormentors.
Finally, they are seen as witnesses of the after-life. This agency is hungry for whatever vision has given them solace in the midst of such suffering. In stages, all shelter is torn from the victim, even their skin.
Consider yourself warned. By the end of the film, the character's face is the only skin remaining on her body, and though I find the ideas of the film compelling, they are not enough to outweigh the intense cruelty therein.

A Modest Plea to Publishers

Steven Millhauser's first novel, "Portrait of a Romantic," is now out of print; a fact that should have literary scholars hammering their fists against the doors of publishers nation-wide. I can't illustrate with enough gravity what a tragedy this is.
Set in Millhauser's native Connecticut, we follow the life of Arthur Grumm, a self-professed, disenchanted romantic. For Arthur, the world is a perpetual bore, rarely yielding more than a passing, or mysterious glimpse of the ecstasy and exaltation he so fervently craves. He is not a particularly compelling character. In fact, he does very little throughout the course of the book. Yearning seems to constitute his sole enterprise. But what drives the novel is a mysterious sense of nostalgia and the inevitable promise of tragedy. Nostalgia because Arthur vividly evokes the immense desires of childhood and the disproportionately small world that he inhabits. The theme of suicide emerges immediately, and the entire novel is pervaded by a sepulchral sense of death and decay.
The few friends that Arthur manages to make throughout the narrative are as strange as the story itself. All three share a peculiar morbidity and Arthur never manages to escape the shadow that this casts over his life.
The prose is filled with Millhauser's trademark precision and acute attention to detail. The scenes of the book are so vivid that they come across as vignettes rather than paragraphs, images on a screen, rather than a collection of words assembled for the laborious task of reading from left to right . Some now-familiar themes emerge in the story: uncanny, life-like toys, board games, the enchanting night and the spell of the moon.
Again, not too much happens throughout the story. "Portrait of a Romantic" is not so much about events as it is about the passage of youth itself. Moreover, moments become more important than events. Millhauser seems to truly relish all of the smallest details that would commonly be consigned to the mundane by most. But like the stories of the late John Updike, one of the unspoken themes of this little gem seems to be that there is no such thing as the mundane. Personally, I found myself rushing home after work every night to return to Millhauser's sad and delicate world, turning the pages rapidly, always awaiting some revelation that would fix this sad Werther of the 1970s.
That said, we need to see this in print again. It is one of those few books that occupies a position of unquestionable importance, without providing an immediate answer as to why.