Funeral Parade of Roses
At a glance...
- Directed by
- Released in 1969
- Runtime 105 minutes
- Watched at The Grand Illusion Cinema
- Final feelings: a hot and sweaty masterpiece
Hurriedly typing this out before bed. The theater was hot. It was too crowded to easily see the subtitles. The girls were out in force and I'm pretty sure there was a hot date happening in the row right in front of me. And after the credits started everyone dashed out of the theater to get some cool, fresh air. With all that being said, Funeral Parade of Roses is a masterpiece. Even as I craned my neck to read the subtitles at various points in the film, I could feel myself being pulled into the hedonistic magnetism of the imagery of this movie. By the end I was stunned and, if I could have, I would have screamed with a cheer.
I don't think I can actually write anything about this movie that the movie itself doesn't already tell you within its own text. I will say two things that I loved. First, the editing in this is mind-blowing. I was reading Eddie through the first half of the film as like, an interdimensional being, with the way that scenes would end with hazy looping camera movements and Eddie spinning, falling, turning, and then magically it would transition into another scene in another point in time. I did not know where things were going at that point and was just kinda experiencing the vibe and thought it was so visually interesting. I love the interviews interspersed through the film which offer like, a mid-movie spoiler that didn't make sense until the very end and that was insane to me. The editing in this thing is genius. One of my friends was watching with me and it was his second viewing and you could hear him going, "ohhhh" all through the beginning of the film.
Second, I really latched on to the monologue that is happening in the background of the art museum and how it relates to the final quote at the end of the film, of individualism as an act of pure negation. When we get to the art museum for the first time you see Eddie look at disturbing and grotesque art of people's faces while a voice tells you that everyone has an infinite layer of masks that make it impossible to objectively say when the mask ends and the person begins. And I kept thinking about this line as all the weird like, movie jokes and shenanigans happened through some very serious parts of this movie. This movie has complete clown energy through so many sequences, particularly violent ones, where the footage is sped up and goofy music is playing atop the visuals of people fighting with exaggerated movements. In those moments I thought, "oh this isn't a movie that's showing me what's really happening, I'm seeing a 'mask' of it, a layer of abstraction on top that is the thing called a 'movie'". I have no idea if I am articulating in a way that makes sense, I guess I just was really moved by that part in the art museum and kept thinking about it.
When the closing moments of the film revealed the mid-movie spoiler to me I was blown away. I feel like you could write a whole book on the ways transness elevates the source material of this film and the cultural and political commentary that it sits upon. This movie is magic. It expanded my whole worldview and understanding of what a movie could be. It's so damn ambitious. The blunt rotation in this is immaculate. Everything is about the mask. An insane movie to watch on the same day I applied to an intensive outpatient therapy program. I cannot wait to watch this again, but next time I will turn on my air conditioning.