Made without proper language, just gibberish and grunts, "Themroc" is an absurdist comedy about a man who rejects every facet of normal bourgeois life and turns his apartment into a virtual cave.
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This is mainly noted for having no intelligible dialogue throughout: given its considerable length (105 minutes) and essential plotlessness, though, the series of grunts, growls, groans and other gibberish uttered by all the characters involved does become wearying after a while. Nevertheless, it's a good example of the risks that film-makers were willing to take (and generally manage to pull off) during this most creative era in World Cinema; curiously enough, for being virtually a Silent film with barely established characters, this has one of the longest cast lists I've ever seen! THEMROC revolves around a laborer (Michel Piccoli) who goes berserk after getting the sack from work: he sleeps with his sister and destroys his apartment and, after the initial astonishment, his neighbors get the same anarchic bug. This streak of non-conformism also extends to sex (with plenty of non-graphic nudity on display), as Piccoli contrives to elicit uninhibited behavior from many of the females (be they nubile or frustrated) around him including the secretary, Marilu' Tolo, he had been caught unwittingly peeping on and subsequently seduced. Despite the occasional brutality, police intervention in the matter largely proves ineffectual. Though the point of it all is obscure unless it's that one needs to revert to some form of primeval state in order to survive the exigencies of the modern world a handful of situations which crop up are definitely amusing: Piccoli and policeman Patrick Dewaere engaging in a tit-for-tat routine while the latter is rebuilding the façade of his apartment; feeling liberated, a victimized wife tries to assert herself and finally escapes her husband's tyranny through the window when he's not looking; a man spends practically the entire film lovingly washing his car but, then, at the very end he joins in the chaos by nonchalantly taking a sledge-hammer to it. Still, when all is said and done, the best thing about the film is its extraordinary fragmented editing.
It is obvious that words, wonderful photography, direction and profound lessons are not needed in a film in order for it to pass its messages across to its viewers. Themroc is a movie with no dialogue so that it can be seen by any human around the world and still understand how authority has separated us and divided us in order to use us. Themroc is an ode to symbolism, a prime example of how you can do political commentary and show to people that freedom is easy to attain and that half measures is the mean authority uses to control us. More than that, Themroc examines human sexuality, sexism, exploitation and the limitations modern society has set for us thus limiting our life experience and happiness.I absolutely recommend watching it if you manage to fin this film. 10/10
That's what John Lennon once said.Themroc is would be avant-garde,but only for these who have a short memory.Take the beginning of the movie:these herds going to work ,the hero's tiny and seedy flat,they already were in King Vidor's "the crowd" (1928).Actually Claude Faraldo contents himself with recycling the most dated clichés of the post May 68 era:down with the bosses,power to the people,kill (and eat) the cops,this is a brand new life ,opportunity knocks,make love not war,we are the good guys,the others are the villains,please get out of the new road if you can't lend a hand,and so on.Spitting on the cops was so à la mode that Faraldo could not be wrong while speaking to the intellectual post 68 elite :humble people are actually demeaned in his film.How to attract people's attention?Which form should he use? That's Faraldo's lucky break!No form at all, a formless product.So it seems that he has filmed haphazardly,then asked his editor to work in a "surrealistic " way(He was not aware that Luis Bunuel had already done that ,as far as editing is concerned- un chien andalou (1928) l'âge d'or (1930);his movies were as subversive as Faraldo's ,and at a time when it was not that much trendy.Bunuel wasn't born to follow).People who like this -and they seem to be quite a lot- should catch Jacques Doillon 's "l'an 01",which deals with the same clichés,but which is less pretentious :it could be,relatively speaking,a seventies update of Jean Renoir's "la vie est à nous" (1936).
I saw this movie back in the seventies and I can't forget it.This movie rules. I must be the best film I have ever seen. We are all animals, even if we chose to think of ourselves as something more divine than a common ape. Watch this movie and open your eyes.