Welcome to The Left-Hand Path
Thoughtful writing about art, cult, and genre cinema.
Hello all, and welcome to this new cinema-related substack! I invite you into this strange, curious, cinematic world that will mostly cover films about desire, debauchery, and dissent. Most of my previous writing that is publicly available was written for Diabolique Magazine, where I covered such subject matter in the horror, cult, and art house genres. This substack is a place where I can have a singular, focused repository for my work, which will grow over time and possibly lead to more exciting and expansive things.
During 2020, when the pandemic forced us all to slow down, stop, and re-think all aspects of our lives, my writing practice evaporated to a slow trickle. I started writing a number of short pieces, but completed very few if any.
One thing I have noticed about myself by now is that my overall mental health is simply better when I write about cinema. It offers an opportunity to project interior emotions onto artificial scenarios on screen. This process allows me to think about the movies I love and am fascinated by, while also creating a space for discussion that I can pass on to others. I find few things more rewarding than turning people on to wild cinema, and the feeling of meeting another person who has a passion for the same bizarre and ecstatic films that I love. When I am writing consistently, all other aspects of my life are enriched with a unique, individual sense of purpose.
A lot of what I will cover here are old films. This is because I get a lot out of reconsidering movies I had seen years ago in order to find out if they are compatible with my state of mind now. Lately many film writers seem to have a complete disregard for film history, regarding it with a moral condescension in light of contemporary modes of thought. This makes a lot of film criticism feel incredibly shallow, and susceptible to a psychoanalytic return of the repressed. I try to avoid this and consider the full historic sphere all cinema exists in.
Let us consider some examples of films I love, and why. Late one night when I was 12 I found myself watching Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967) on TCM, introduced by Martin Scorsese. At the time I was confused yet hypnotized by the weird sexuality and surreal visual and narrative style. I had never even imagined the possibility of someone living a double life like Séverine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve), a wealthy, frigid housewife who is a high class prostitute at the same time. Although none of the scenes were particularly graphic, it acted as a sort of primal scene both psychosexually and cinematically. When the “fin” title card rolled, I just thought, “You can do that? End a movie with a scene that is just creates more questions and doesn’t make sense??” Since then I have only grown to love the sublime wardrobe, set design, and performers of Belle de Jour even more.
Much like I was so taken with the contradictory nature of Séverine’s double life, I was also attracted to the tension of a film like Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation from 1994. Being a teenager in the 1990s, I was the target audience for this movie. Once again we have characters existing in fringe, liminal spaces--this time gaudily decadent, roadside hotel rooms, experiencing various situations of tension and release. Amy (Rose McGowan), Jordan (James Duval), and X (Jonathon Schaech) are beings who exist to satisfy the basic human functions of eating, sleeping, and fucking, yet they somehow end up finding lots of blood and murder along the way. The dialog is shockingly ridiculous, yet also hilarious and memorable. Despite the movie's apocalyptic tone and depressing ending, I want to live in that rapturous world. Seeing it re-released for new audiences in the past few months has been exciting and rewarding.
A third film that defines my love for cinema is Daisies, Věra Chytilová’s 1966 film. It is unlike anything made before or since then, and succeeds in producing a euphoric, radical experience that is akin to some kind of hallucinatory trip. The two leads, both named Marie (Jitka Cerhova and Ivana Karbanova), attract the audience’s eyes in various compelling environments. Their demeanor fluctuates between complete freedom and existential paralysis. Daisies, The Doom Generation, and Belle de Jour may seem like disparate titles, but they are all similar in displaying their charming performers in places that don’t fully seem like reality. Each film presents a tension between characters or within one character themself. These films present escapes from the world outside the theater or living room, which are also worth thinking about long after in regard to social and political themes. If you like one or all of these films, then you may like the writing found here.
This substack will be made up of weekly posts of 1,000-2,000 words, with a monthly subject or theme tying them together. Some months will continue what I have been writing about for years, like the Italian giallo, the German krimi, kink cinema, the gothic, and psychogeography. There will be other months when I focus on pressing, contemporary issues like abortion, climate change and technology by looking at related films of the past. All of this will be rounded out with spotlights on particular directors or performers who strike my fancy like Louise Brooks, Howard Vernon, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Stephanie Rothman, David Cronenberg, Wong Kar Wai, Steve McQueen, Bertrand Mandico, etc. All of these things will be fused together with a framework of curiosity, unapologetic visual pleasure, basic academic perspectives, and the relationship between film history and our present reality.
In his autobiography Luis Buñuel wrote, “As the honorary president of the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica in Mexico City, I once went to visit the school and was introduced to several professors, including a young man in a suit and tie who blushed a good deal. When I asked him what he taught, he replied, “The Semiology of the Clonic Image.’ I could have murdered him on the spot. By the way, when this jargon (a typically Parisian phenomenon) works its way into the educational system, it wreaks absolute havoc in underdeveloped countries. It’s the clearest sign, in my opinion, of cultural colonialism.”*
Buñuel’s sentiments are basically saying that the over intellectualizing of film, or the world in general, leads to divisions among people of different classes and origins. While I think that pretentious, academic approaches to film do have their place, they also make it inaccessible to people who did not have the time or money for such education. The constantly changing words we use to describe the world around us often act as a form of gatekeeping, intentionally or not. Regardless of the core essence or thesis of a written opinion, many readers tend to pre-judge writing based on what words and phrases are used, rather than the actual point the writer is trying to make. Because of this, I agree with Buñuel’s statement about how education has the ability to divide or unite people based on the approach. While I do have an academic background in cinema, I seek to make my writing accessible to readers of various ages and experience levels--although I’m sure there are some moments when Buñuel would murder me if he was in the room.
The reason I bring up Buñuel--or Uncle Luis, as I like to call him--is because his influence on contemporary cinema is the subject of this substack’s first month. Beginning his career in true experimental form with Salvador Dalí, Uncle Luis made such a huge impact on cinema that uses shocking violence, dark humor, sexual fetishism, working class politics, surreal imagery, etc. With so many recent films that take a satirical approach to class warfare, like Parasite (2019), The Menu (2022), and Triangle of Sadness (2022), it is strange that critics and cultural commentators have not made the connection to Buñuel more frequently and loudly. These new films have a lot to compare to the older director’s output, but perhaps if they leaned into Buñuel’s approach even more, the films would have been better.
Next week I will give a general overview of Buñuel’s work and my favorite examples. The rest of the month, I will review the three recent above-mentioned films. For now I will leave you with a reminder that this substack is essentially about cinephilia. Sometimes it seems like some contemporary film critics don’t even like movies. I stand for an approach to film criticism that has the capacity to love flawed works, and discuss them in a rich, nuanced manner.
*Buñuel, Luis My Last Sigh. New York: Vintage, 2013 (originally translated into English, 1983). p. 222.