Better Call Saul: Wine and Roses

"Sounds like the day from Hell."

"It was one of the best days of my life."

And so begins the final season. It seems, at the start of episode one of thirteen, that we're a long way from the events of Breaking Bad. But there can't be far to go. And the pre-toitles is a slow, lingering scene with Saul Goodman's opulent and disgustingly tateless office being examined by the Feds. In the present day, with Saul in Nebraska, the net is closing in. And the episode really lingers on that fact.

And we move directly to the contrast with Nacho, also hunted, desperate, and possibly doomed, with a price from Don Eladio on his head. All the scenes with him are impossibly tense, with us feeling fear on his behalf. Yet he's a pawn. Lalo, wanting everyone to think him dead (although Gus suspects) is out to get him, and plotting with Hector. Mike tries to speak up to Gus about him, but Gus is playing his own inscrutable game. And Lalo has seldom been scarier.

Meanwhile, Kim and Jimmy are the usual contrast- Kim doing good work for the vulnerable and loving it while Jimmy remains a "friend of the cartel". Yet they're both tainted, and Kim is the driving force in their fascinating plot to do over Howard. We're not privy to the details, so it's fun to see the early stages of the scheme play out, reminding us of the scams from earlier seasons... but the stakes are higher. The golf club scene is fascinatingly layered. The golf club stands for the snobbery againstwhich Jimmy has alwayds genuinely struggled... yet Kevin is right to blackball him for being the bounder and the cad that he is. And to play the antisemitism card ("only following orders", ouch!) when he's about as Jewish as my cat... wow.

And plot threads abound. Is Jimmy going to get rumbled in court for the stints he played to get Lalo bail? Is Mike suddenly now not the person on the phone to Nacho? What is Lalo planning? What are Jimmy and Kim planning? And what of that sphinx, Gus? This is a superb start.

Better Call Saul: Wiedersehen

 "We should only use our powers for good..."

This is a fascinating penultimate episode. An awful lot happens, and there's so much character development... but it's still not clear how the finale is going to shape up. Well, aside from Werner escaping and trying to go home because he misses his wife. This is nicely done, and logically follows on from subtle hints that have been recently dropped. The lab is progressing, and starting to look like the lab we know from Breaking Bad.  Morale with the other Germans is high. There's a cool sequence with the demolition.

But then there's new guy, Lalo Salamanca, who we (and Nacho) first saw last episode. Suddenly he's in charge, using a clearly annoyed Nacho as an underling and throwing his weight around. He visits his "Uncle Hector, now disabled as we knew him in Breaking Bad... and, in a bizarre little mini-origin story, gives him the bell. This is a symbolic changing of the guard from one Salamanca to another. He's smarter than Hector, confident, and I love his comment that his uncle is  "Same old Hector... just wants to kill everybody".

He's going to annoy a lot of people, of course. His confrontation with Gus, two intelligent alpha males sizing each other up, is fascinating. But I rather fancy Gus' chances. Lalo isn't long, I suspect, for this world.

We start the episode with Kim and Jimmy on another scam, Kim by now absolutely a natural at the lying and all that comes with it. The two of them are on exactly the same page. Jimmy confidently expects to be reinstated as a lawyer... and he now has a new potential clientele, who know him as Saul Goodman. It looks like the future is being set up...

But he fails his reinstatement hearing.

And Jimmy doesn't take it well. The mask slips. Jimmy, a selfish, malevolent, entitled *** behind the surface charm, lashes out at Kim, who in turn tells him some home truths: she always comes running to him.

They seem to reconcile, but... what now? I don't know, but this is extraotrdinary television.

Better Call Saul: Something Stupid

 "Dude, I don't need to be a lawyer, all right? I'm a magic man."

It's a nice little trick, to allow at least four months to pass between episodes. It gives us the nice little split screen montage at the start with Kim and Jimmy. Both go through their everyday lives, their very different jobs, Kim's arm slowly heals (it's a nice touch later on when we see her nervously driving), and the two of them slowly drift apart, failing to communicate as their relationship deteriorates. In bed, they lie in opposite directions. They don't talk at mrealtimes. (Incidentally, why is it that every single evening meal on an American television show inclides a bottle of wine, even if it's just a random Tuesday?).

We also have the future meth lab develop, albeit problems. And, of course, we have Hector regain consciousness to the point at which we know him in Breaking Bad. And then we get the scene, in Gus' lovely kitchen, where bhe and the doctor discuss Hector... and he makes it clear, with a subtle sadistic grin, that he wants treatment to end here, and we know why: Hector's body is a prison, he's fully conscious, and his life is a living Hell.

It's a dark episode. Jimmy has an unfortuate run-in with a pretty damn reasonable and upstanding cop, with Huell ending up assaulting a police officer. Jimmy is not yet reinstated... although we get to see him picking a location for, surely, the premises we know from Breaking Bad, with an office which Jimmy works out will be smaller than Kim's. Ouch.

Awkwardly, it falls to Kim, in denial about the fact she's channeling her inner Jimmy, who needs to wheel and deal and help Huell. We end on an intriguing bit of uncertainty. This is a fascinating dark episode. But not a happy one.

Better Call Saul: Lantern

 "In the end, you're going to hurt everyone around you. You can't help it. So stop apologising and accept it."

The above quote is, of course, from the key scene of the episode, the last conversation Jimmy and Chuck will ever have, in which Chuck tells little brother some hard truths. And we know he's right. And this conversation will go on to shape one Saul Goodman.

t's not that Jimmy doesn't care. He's genuinely caring with Kim, looking after her,and he is willing to humiliate himself- and presumably end all future hope of working in elder law ever again- to un-ruin Irene's life. He's not evil. But he's self-centred and, crucially, totally lacking in integrity. And we see it in his relations with those around him. He made Kim work too hard, and nearly die, for him, because he does that to people. Yet Kim, unlike Jimmy, has integrity, as we see in this episode. She insists on taking responsibility for her actions, and cares about her clients even at a time when she shouldn't even be thinking about work. Such thoughts, to Jimmy, are alien.

Chuck is self-centred, too: the brothers are not completely unalike. See what he does to the firm he helps to build, from nothing but pride... and how Howard saves the firm by paying Chuck out of his own pocket. True integrity. Howard may often come across as arrogant, but underneath he's a decent sort. Chuck? Well, he's neither a Jimmy nor a Howard. Self-centred? Oh yes. But he believes in values other than himself, not least the law.

Or, at least, used to beieve. Because I'm in no doubt as to what that last scene means. To bookend the episode with this scene and the opening teaser, the only flashback we ever get of the two brothers as kids, both with the motif of a lantern, is very nicely done.

No Mike this episode but, in a scene where we can absolutely see the tension for Nacho, Don Hector finally succumbs to the doctored pill... and Gus twice gives Nacho a look. He knows.

I'm running out of ways to say that a given episode of Better Call Saul is as good as television gets. But it is.

Better Call Saul: Sabrosito

 "Sabrosisto tells me Gustavo's is bigger than yours."

Even by Better Call Saul standards, this is a bloody good episode. And Jimmy doesn't even appear until twenty-six minutes in.

More than most, this episode gices a fair amount of screen time and development to the whole ensemble cast while several plot lines move forwards. Yet it doesn't feel in any way functional, or like set-up.

We begin in Don Eladio's Mexican mansion that we remember so well from Breaking Bad, with the opening and closing shots both from the distorted view of the pool, in itself a stylish nod to the other programme. The entire scene has a yellowish tint, giving it an air of unreality. Yet Don Eladio emanates constant menace, as though the slightest misstep could mean random death, the ultimate stressful working environment.

And the direction of things, cartel-wise, is clear: Gus is performing much better than the humiliated Hector. And so Hector attempts to intimidate Gus, a serious mistake. He has violated Los Pollos Hermanos, Gus' legitimate business, with his legitimate employees. It's fascinating to see how he cares for his legitimate employees, and their genuine respect for him. He similarly shows respect for Mike and his integrity. Gus is cold, ruthless, a killer, yet he has his principles. He and Mike are two of a kind. Both ruthless, but both men of integrity, in their way. Both actors, too, are exquisitely good. Yet Giancarlo Esposito's subtle facial acting is, as ever, extraordinary.

We know how Hector will end up in a few short years, doubtless a consequence of crossing Gus. At last we have scope for Mike working for Gus, the two of them bonding over their shared intense hatred for Hector. And we know, in the long run, that Gus is going to continue to make Hector suffer.

Meanwhile, we have a fun little scene of Kim and Jimmy plotting- Kim gets a phone call montage!- to exchange Chuck's door repairer for, inevitably, Mike. A burglary, I suspect, is planned. They both know Chuck will have another copy of the tape. Jimmy is humiliated in accepting guilt, with restitution and humi8liation. The next step is to somehow avoid being disbarred, but plans are afoot; Kim has an admission from Chuck that the tape exists. Yet isn't she, a professional, sinkind to his level and slowly ruining herself...?

First class telly. Again.

Better Call Saul: Bali Ha'i

 "The price is fifty thousand dollars..."

This is another episode of set-up... yet the tension is nicely set simmering. Indeed, it's inherent in the very structure of the episode. The pre-titles sequence shows Jimmy, unable to sleep, symbolically unsettled and disaffected, an obvious metaphor for the fact he doesn't belong at the firm, and his days there are numbered. To drive the point home, he sees the advert for Sandpiper, with his ideas ignored. The episode ends similarly, with the same old cupholder metaphor we saw before. But this time he acts forcefully. Perhaps this harbingers his quitting?

There is, quite deliberately, no trying to hide anything here. It's all foreshadowing. Similarly with Kim. Howard hates her, even if the worst of her disgrace may be over, courtesy of Chuck. She's headhunted for a better job... but won't take it, out of her self-defeating love for Jimmy. She's clearly doomed, and it's tragic. She's a good, loving, loyal persaon whose faith in Jimmy, despite even Chuck's warning from last episode, is going to ruin her. It's quite clear, a slow motion car crash.

Completing the triptych of doom is Mike, a decent man forced to make moral compromises through necessity while remaining decent- he behaves with extraordinary honour towards Nacho. On the face of it, he's forced to an arrangement, although he shows guts in a successful attempt to save face. But they threatened his grandaughter. He isn't going to let that slide...

They're all doomed. But the pacing, the nuances, the acting... this is sublime stuff.

Better Call Saul: Rebecca

 "My brother is not a bad person. He has a good heart. It's just he can't help himself..."

I find myself saying variations of this exact same sentence in relation to many serialised television dramas, but let's say it here... this isn't a landmark episode. It contains no set pieces or big moments. It exists for arc plot reasons, moving the pieces around the board so that future episodes can have those moments. It's a self-abnegating but necessary task. This episode is, at its root, functional.

Yet it's bloody brilliant.

Episodes like this, in the greatest television shows, transcend their functionality. An episode like this can still be well shot, can have writing that exposes character subtly and beautifully, and said exttraordinary writing can be riffed upon by extraordinary performances.

So we see how Jimmy is a con man compatred to Chuck as the rigorous professional... yet he has charm that Chuck doesn't. We hear, from Chuck, the family backstory of hoew Jimmy's inability to resist temptation can hurt those he loves to the ultimate extent... a warning to Kim of what, I'm sure, certainly awaits her. Jimmy may be in the doghouse right now, but Kim's love for him will be her downfall. I say this unspoiled, but I have zero doubt of this. She's doomed. Which is awful, Her realism, patience and professionalism are a huge contrast with Jimmy- con man, salesman, whose tricks work until one day, inevitably, they don't, like Wile E Coyoye running for a few feet after the edge of a cliff.

There's a highbrow cultural reference for you.

Then we have Mike, approached in that diner by Tuco's dad, at this point still walking and talking. He's given a proposition to testify and reduce Tuco's sentence. And, yeah, this is Mike. Proud, principled, a good man morphing into a criminal for the berst of reasons.

He's going to say no. There's no tension intended here.

Oh, and we're introduced, in flashback, to Chuck's eponymous wife. The questiuon of what happened to her hangs in the air.

This is as good as television gets.

Breaking Bad: Face Off

 "All I can say is... if I ever get anal polyps, I'll know what to name them."

Wow. That's how you do a finale. This is the perfect showdown- tense, clever, beautifully shot (with Vince Gilligan himself writing and directing)- and with a magnificent climax.

This whole season has been Walt vs Gus, life or death. Here we reach resolution, helped my absolutely superlative performances from Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Giancarlo Esposito and Mark Margolis, who utters not a word, as ever, but conveys so much.

The various twists and turns of the plot are a delight, but ultimately Walt succeeds in having Gus killed... and the scene of his calm, collected, horrific death is extraordinary. So, of course, is the final revelation that little Brock was poisoned, not with ricin, but by Walt. Like Gus, Walt is now not above risking the life of a child. How far he has fallen.

This is not a Skyler episode, but her hands, too, are dipped inexorably in the blood. At the end, on hearing of Gus' death, she asks "Was it you?" and is told that "I won". She gets the rather obvious subtext loud and clear.

Ultimately, though, this is a big step, but one that makes sense, in the extraordinary evolution of Walt from mild-mannered, dorky chemistry teacher to a kind of drug Corleone. Simply sublime.

And the title? Nice pun, but my God, that's dark.

Breaking Bad: Crawl Space

 "This man needs help!"

"This man pays my salary..."

The walls are closing in. Walt has alienated both Gus and Jesse, he's in an awkward position with Hank, and Gus is now recovered from his poisoning, getting all avuncular with Jesse and in quietly vindictive mood as we see with his cruel goading of Tio Salamanca, whose children and grandchildren are now all dead. That's what happens when you mess with Gus. Jesse may be brave in insisting Walt not be killed, and he actually has some leverage, but it's all looking pretty ominous.

Skyler has her own problems, although of a much less immediate nature: Ted still won't pay off the IRS, he's in full denial mode, and Skyler is desperate in parallel with Walt, conspiring with Saul to get Ted roughed up. She's stepping, incrementally, further and further into criminality, just as her husband did. And this time, with grim comedy, she has blood on her hands as Ted is accidentally killed. Ouch.

Walt may manage to deter Hank through increasing desperation, and is lucky to arouse suspicion. But it's only a matter of time until Hank checks out the laundry. 

So finally we come to a denouement: a hooded Walt kidnapped and sent to face a visibly angry Gus in the desert. He's offered freedom and a clean break at the cost of giving up meth for good, and he could take it; with the car wash, his family is probably secure. Yet his defiant pride makes him refuse the offer, and so his family is doomed. The intricate plotting reaches a moment of true sublimity when a desperate Walt, hoping to give his family a new life, can't do so because Skyler used the money for Ted. Bryan Cranston gives a performance here which is absolutely top tier. The man is one of the greats.

The walls are closing in. Two episodes to go. This is televisual perfection.

Breaking Bad: Hermanos

 "You're not in Chile any more...."

Breaking Bad doesn't have bad episodes. It doesn't really have good episodes either; just variations on excellent. This is one of the better variations, ans something new, something we've been waiting to see: a character study focusing on Gus. 

That's not to say it's all Gus, of course. We get to see a tenacious and rejuvenated Hank and a fascinatingly jittery and stressed out Walt who must surely be close to a breakdown with the need tourgently off Gus while Hank is prowling around... all while Jesse, under similar pressures, is as calm as a cucumber. We also learn that Jesse is giving money to his ex and her son but refusing to do the emotional labour of seeing them as that would mean having actual feelings.

Just as fascinatingly, Walt's panicking is preceded by a scene of him talking to another cancer patient and warning him against passive fatalism and letting go: Walt knows very well that he's mortal, but his life is bleeding well his for as long as he has it.

But, yes, Gus. Giancarlo Esposito owns this episode, with the slight variation of a blank facial expression being the key moment in several gripping scenes here. We get to see him handle a police interview with rehearsed aplomb, and how he can make Walt squirm with a look. And then, through a brief dreamlike shot of some water, we move towards an incredibly filmed, red and yellow tinted, glimpse into the past of the enigmatic Chilean. He's a compelling character, compellingly acted. And it's quite clear how, and why, he hates old Hector.

This is, yet again, extraordinary television.

Breaking Bad: One Minute

 "Stop a bullet like a soft wang against a Quaker girl..."

Ok, that was bloody clever, bloody good, and I suspect once the shape of the season is all known this episode will end up looking pretty damn pivotal. It begins with a rash act from Hank and ends with, well, the events that give rise to the title. But it's so very much more.

Both Hank and Jesse reach rock bottom here. Hank's momentary act of anger seems about to costy him his career and perhaps even his liberty. The alpha male has gone; instead we have a Hank- played sublimely by Dean Norris, who shows us sides of Hank never previously seen but believably so-who finally admits in an extraordinary momologue that he's not been the same since his brush with mortality in El Paso. In parallel, Jesse gets two angry and despairing monologues of his own. The common thread is that both these men have potentoially had their lives utterly ruined by Walt.

We see Walt showing a certain superficial conscience here, yet it's Heisenberg who resolves the situation. Jesse, despite the advice of an alarmed Saul, plans to Sue Hank and use him as a "get out of jail free" card, selling out Jesse if he's caught. Heusenberg cannot allow this, yet his solution is cold, calculating and utterly ruthless- he throws his talented new lab mate overboard to be replaced with Jesse, something which makes absolutely no sense except, of course, to remove this danger. Jesse eventually accepts, but the relationshop between them has surely changed.

There's so much else, from the flashback opening scene with the twins and their uncle to the notormouth gunseller, but it's all about Jesse and Hank, all superbly scripted, shot and performed. And those last few minutes of tension as Hank is attacked by the brothers are simply amazing. This is a standout episode of a standout series. Extraordinary.

Breaking Bad: I.F.T.

 "This spice feels like it's been through a couple of guys already..."

This episode, for the first time, feels a little transitional, not so much an event in its own right but setting up all the pieces for future moves to be played. It's all brilliantly shot, and remains quality drama, but for the first time in an episode of Breaking Bad you can perhaps see the artifice of the plotting a little more.

It's an episode where Walt and Skyler dance around each other in a battle of wills, as Walt/Heisenberg pushes again Skyler's edict that he's to leave the house and have no contact with the kids, both using the baby as weapon disgracefully but with Walt/Heisenberg essentially calling Skyler's bluff and gaining what seems to be the upper hand, for now. And poor, innocent, Walt Jr is an important catalyst here. These scenes are full of extraordinary subtlety from the script and, espdcially, both Bryan Cranston and Anna Gunn.

Meanwhile a depressed Jesse, living in his unfurnished house, rings Jane's phone again and agaknjust to hear her voice on the answerphone... until he no longer can. This a rather nice little microcosm for going through the stages of grief so, with Saul acting as the devil on his shoulder, it's back to cooking for him.

We also have Hank being sent back to El Paso which, much as he tries to pretend otherwise, terrifies him utterly. The events of the episode have me fearing for him; it's a brutal world out there, as we see in the opening film, shot like a Western and tinted in yellow to appear like a different world as Danny Trejo's Tortuga meets his comeuppance in scenes full of tension and reminiscent of something by Tarantino and Rodriguez. It's in this context that the plot to kill Walt is paused for a while as Gus vetoes any revenge while he and Heisenberg have "business"... but this pause has its limits, and is dependent on more cooking...

You can see the joins a bit here. But there's also real excellence here, as always in Breaking Bad.

Breaking Bad: Bit By a Dead Bee

 "It wasn't Whole Foods, was it?"

Now that was impressive. I mean, Breaking Bad literally always is, but they'd written themselves into a corner. And got themselves out of it... to the extent they wanted to.

It was inevitablt going to stretch credibility with Hank getting dangerously close to what Walt is up to, however dramatically effective. They had to bring it to a head, and it's to their credit that it all worked out with plausibility. 

It's plausible because the whole amnesia schtick is just Walt being clever, as well as coaching Jesse on what to say to the DEA- athough it turns out Jesse is genuinely lucky in his choice of girlfriend: Wendy has something on Hank, sort of. Yet Walt stage-manages everything to perfection, with superb acting- including "acting" acting- from the magnificent Bryan Cranston. For a while it seems as though Walt may have a problem in not being released from hospital and thus unable to cook... but the way he plays the psychiatrist (the mayor from Buffy!) is masterful indeed.

There are two loose ends, though, as life isn't that neat. Is Jesse getting cold feet? Oh, and Skyler still wants to know about that second cell phone. Ouch. She thinks he's having an affair. Is this going to push them apart? After all, Walt can hardly maintain both of hs lives forever. Is thisperhaps how his family life ends?

I'm REALLY enjoying this.

Breaking Bad: Grilled

 "Hey, you got the C bomb, man. All right?"

Every single episode of Breaking Bad so far has been a superlatively good bit of telly. For an episode to be excellent is, so far, the norm. Yet this episode manages to stand out. It's extraordinary.

There's a lot of story arc stuff here, obviously. Life goes on for the whole supporting cast, even if everything is centred around Tujo's kidnapping of Walt and Jesse. We see Hank, first of all in a hilarious opening scene at work and as he moves in and out of his comfort zone (acting all macho, chasing criminals even if he always fails to realise Walt's involvement), a shootout in the desert, even skilfully questioning Jesse's mother) and areas there he is much less assured (talking to Skyler, anything involving emotional intelligence). We see the devastating effect on Walt's family of his disappearance. And we're left to wonder just how the hell he's going to explain all this.

But much of the episode is heavily concentrated on the experiences of Walt and Jesse, completely at the mercy of the utterly fickly and mindlessly violent Tujo, a man who could simply kill them just like that for the slightest of reasons. There are so many moments of intense danger, and the feeling of constant tension is amazing, a testament to the excellence of both the script and the direction- and I suspect the unique mood of the artily shot New Mexico location has a lot to do with it too.

The acting is universally excellent, not least from Mark Margolis as Tujo's seriously ill father, uncle or whatever he is. The ending is surprising, satisfying, relieving and another kind of intense, all at once. How is Walt going to avoid Hank? How is he going to explain himself? How is he going to deal with the inevitable trauma?

This is as good as television gets.

.

Pi (1998)

“As soon as you discard scientific rigour, you're no longer a mathematician; you're a numerologist.”

I’m still a bit dazed from the experience of this film. It is its own, claustrophobic little world, ant that owes as much to the look of the film as anything. The alienating texture of the monochrome footage and the never-ending stream of varying degrees of close-ups- I counted not one long shot in the film- offer us a dreamlike, claustrophobic reality reflecting that of our (possibly) unreliable narrator, Max Cohen.

Max is clearly a genius, highly qualified mathematician, but this has not brought him material wealth (he lives in a grotty little New York apartment building as does, depressingly, his similarly blessed mentor, Sol). He has obvious trouble connecting with people, even his gorgeous neighbour Devi, who is lovely and feeds him up with yummy samosas. Then again, there’s her name- is she supposed to represent material temptation- the devil? I hope not. I really rather fancy her.

I suppose the opening monologue about staring into the sun, evoking Icarus and returned to throughout the film, pretty much foreshadows the whole film. But this film is very poetic for something so centred on mathematical. I ought to mention, by the way, that my education has been all arts and humanities and that everything I know about maths I got from books on popular science. So I may have heard about the Golden Mean, Fibonacci numbers and stuff like that, but I don’t begin to understand the actual maths bit. Thought I’d best mention that. Just in case you started getting crazy ideas about me being vaguely qualified to review this movie or something…

Max’s obsession with mathematically cracking the chaos that is the stock market is much more successful than he realises, but has a much deeper significance which means that both Orthodox Jews and faceless corporate types will stop at very little to discover his secret… if, that is, we consider Max to be a reliable narrator. Darren Aronofsky (who is impressing me hugely as both writer and director) keeps this nicely ambiguous, making it clear that Max subsists on an entire chemists’ worth of pills, showing us weird dream sequences, and keeping the direction uncertain. Certainly, the fact that there are no comebacks for Max at the end seems to hint that it may all be in his head. What do I know, though; there’s so much symbolism that I don’t get. What’s the significance of the man with blood dripping from his hand? And the Coney Island sequence? Is the metal detectorist some kind of metaphor for materialism, or even capitalism? Don’t ask me!

Sol, I think, is supposed to be then voice of sanity and reason, so it’s both significant and worrying that he eventually dies of a stroke, paralleling Max.

I know very little about Kabbalah, except that it connects Alan Moore and Madonna, two very odd bedfellows. I am, of course, aware that numerology of all kinds is not only bollocks but Daily Mail- sanctioned bollocks, but this film pulls it off with so much style and verve, and pulls in so many genuine historical thinkers, that the whole thing works brilliantly. Likewise, I’ve no idea how Rabbi Cohen’s big revelation about the Cohenim and the name of God would be received by a religious Jew, but not being one I have no problem and simply find that it works beautifully as a dramatic plot revelation, and the unveiling of Max’s personal God complex is almost the climax of the film.

Returning to the lovely Devi, she appears to be Max’s only source of food, and is the only person we hear having sex this mean she represents animal urges as opposed to dry, abstract thought? Is there something Manichean going on here? It’s very hard, interpreting the symbols in this film, not to be simultaneously wrong and pretentious. We hear Devi copulating at the same time as we hear drilling, and we see Max having his breakdown. Does this point forward to the rather gruesome and physical climax of Max using a drill to lobotomise himself? Is this the victory of the animal over the cerebral? I’m buggered if I know but I had enormous fun watching the film.