The Book of Revelation

dir: Ana Kokkinos

2006

The Book of Revelation is a complex and deeply unpleasant movie, which nonetheless deserves to be watched at least once. Based on a novel of the same name, and having nothing to do with the actual Book of Revelation at the tail end of the Bible, it is an intellectually interesting but flatly unenjoyable experience. I imagine it is like having sex with a kitchen appliance.

I haven’t tried it, so maybe I shouldn’t comment. Our protagonist, Daniel (Tom Long), is an incredibly toned dancer who is kidnapped by three women and sexually abused over the course of 12 days.

The gender difference means the film is approached by the makers and the audience in a very different way. If it had been a flick about three men raping a woman, it is about one thing. Reverse the gender, and you (in the filmmaker's opinion) open an intellectual can full of worms the size of pythons.

Because the film has dancers and dancing in it, and interpretive dance at that (which makes me shudder with horror inside), and because the flick is a complicated intellectual exercise / experiment more than an actual drama, nothing seems or feels real in the story. Dialogue, scenes, actions all have an air of unreality to them. It is not much like but reminded me all the same of films like Campion’s In the Cut and the horrible films of Catherine Breillat (Romance, Anatomy of Hell).

In that sense it is an analytical exploration of what it means when such a violation is perpetrated upon a man. What impact would it have on him, on his life, on the people around him? It is not, as would be the case with the genders reversed yet again, about justice or revenge.

Part of our mentality on the topic is that, for all the billions of women such sexual violence has been perpetrated upon by men throughout history, the number of times the reverse has occurred is tiny. There are very few times armies of women have conquered a place and violated all the men to within an inch of their lives that I know of, yet the standard model has occurred and is occurring right now across the battlefields, in the homes, alleyways and parks of the world.

He asks his female captors why they are doing this to him. One tells him it is because he is beautiful. You see, it’s his fault for being beautiful.

Lest one think the flick’s impetus is some kind of male fantasy, where rape can turn out all right in the end (like in early Pedro Almodovar films), the sex the women have with him becomes progressively nastier and less ambiguous. It’s one thing to have masked women blow you to the point of (in his case, rapid) orgasm. It’s a whole different kettle of fish when one of them walks in packing a very large strap on dildo, as he lies chained and helpless on the ground.

We are meant to ask ourselves how we feel about it. Not as in what our opinion is of sexual assault, but to ask ourselves why it is not the same with the genders reversed.

Clearly, it’s not all beer and skittles for Daniel. Upon release from his tormentors, he struggles to piece together his life. Because of the masks worn by the women, he has no clear signs of who they might be. But he has glimpses of details: a lock of auburn hair, a tattoo, a birthmark, which gives him details he thinks can help him track them down.

What do you say to a guy that had this happen to him? He can’t tell anybody, but tries to tell the cops what happened. When he describes his hypothetical friend who had this happen to him, the cops laugh and say something along the lines of “half his luck”.

Sure, cops aren’t exactly prized for their empathy and sensitivity, but Daniel isn’t surprised. He gets progressively more unhinged the further away he gets from the event, with little but the search for the bitches what did him wrong.

He quits dancing for a while (thank gods), and works as a barman. Three women, a redhead, a mousy brunette and a brassy blonde, seeming to match the descriptions of the evil Women, try to pick him up to unsatisfying effect. He is convinced it is them (as I was initially), until it isn’t. He devises strategies and plots to track them down, to no avail.

But these glimpses keep coming to him: a laugh here, a redhead there; his attackers could be anywhere. They could be any woman, and it’s driving him mad.

Whilst rambling on the tram, he comes to the attention of someone who he knows straight away could not be any of his attackers; the dark skinned Julie (Deborah Mailman). They tentatively move towards each other in a way that gives us and Daniel hope that things will be okay.

What are you, simple? Of COURSE it’s not going to go that way.

Daniel is shadowed by a policeman friend of his former dance instructor (Colin Friels), who seems to know what might have happened to him, but is biding his time for the right moment to pounce. Daniel’s never going to be ready until it’s too late, we think.

All of this occurs within this prickly, unpleasant aura that surrounds everything. Daniel’s not really relatable, we’re not in his head adequately, nor does he live enough as a character, but I guess we feel bad for him. His descent is believable and harrowing, which I guess makes this more of a psychological mess than a straight drama.

Director Kokkinos has previously made an absolute tour-de-force in the form of Head-On with Alex Dimitriades, but the films are nothing alike. Still, they're linked by a clear directorial vision and a steady hand. Although one of the problems with the film was, for me, the choice of locations. Knowing Melbourne as I do, when a character walks up the stairs at the Arts Centre, and is immediately in the alleyway at Yamato's, which is over near Chinatown, or is talking at the steps of Parliament and then instantly at the RMIT buildings where the Journalism department is, it takes me out of the moment and reminds me I’m watching a flick. But I'm sure non-Melbournites wouldn't necessarily have the same problem :)

You’re not going to like it, you’re not supposed to, I don’t think, but you might be disturbed and provoked by it. Not provoked into revolutionary action or sexual counterrevolution, but provoked by thought, at least.

It is impossible for me to recommend something like this to anyone except people, like me, who like challenging if unpleasant films sometimes, and who don’t mind watching films that are more experiment than entertainment.

7 times no sane person would swap places with Daniel at any stage of his experience out of 10

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“Dance for us” – The Book of Revelation.