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more info here: http://www.film-philosophy.com/conference/index.php/conf/2011/paper/view/25

The Dead Man 2: Return of the Dead Man
Netherlands
1994
26 Min
Color
Dutch

DIR Aryan Kaganof
SCR Aryan Kaganof
DP Martijn van Beenen
CAST Jaap Hoogstra, Caroline Sabin, Marlon Treep, Jack Wouterse
ED Iris Sikking
MUSIC Merzbow, Masami Akita
SOUND Jeroen Philips

The main character in the film is an old man. He is old enough to have seen, if not everything, certainly a great deal. He is the ‘deadman’. But the ‘deadman’, in spite of the intended kitschy reference to the horror genre, is not a zombie, not an ‘undead’. The old man is the ‘deadman’ because he is able to confront death in life. The subject of the film is not death after, but during one’s life; a phenomenon which is usually perceived as decay. The absolute boundary of our existence, death, can only be experienced in the trembling and shuddering of individuals’ voluntarily crossing of the boundaries of excessive violence in their attempt to achieve union. If Ian Kerkhof’s film is about anything, if it has a subject at all, then it is this liminal experience.
—Henk Oosterling

We see two queers in faecal dirty grainy black and white, one giving the other a blow job. Their clothes are covered with an indescrible substance; it’s probably good that we don’t have TV you can smell. While jerking a certain body part back and forth with his right arm, one repeatedly begs the other: ‘Give me your fucking puke, man!”, and the other immediately sticks his finger down his throat. Apparently the one who’s asking is very thirsty, and he is indeed satisfied….If, upon seeing this scene, the proverbial morsel does not drop out of your mouth back onto your plate, I suppose nothing in the world can shock you anymore. Everyone else clasps his remote control with glassy eyes and prays the rest of the film will be different. And it is. Not like you might expect from a short film, for The Dead Man 2: Return of the Dead Man shatters every conventional film framework.

After the opening scene we find ourselves in a strange bar: an old man who, judging by his hands, should have been in his grave a long time ago, walks in slowly with a totally blank, unseeing expression on his face. This man is looking for something. And he finally finds it, in the form of a fat lady who, at the end of the film, treats him to a forceful ‘golden shower’ he seems to enjoy intensely. In between is a long sequence which is almost entirely gray black, showing only outlines and shapes. The soundtrack is the industrial music of the Japanese composer Merzbow, sounding as if you were standing in the middle of a swarm of one million locusts. The endurance of our vision and hearing are tested ad absurdum; this is either the work of genius or of a madman, in the case of this film there’s nothing in between.

So what is the director trying to tell us here? I don’t know, there has been no international film critic who has been able to reveal the meaning of this film, it remains inaccessible, closed, bizarre, shocking, towering monolithically out of what we normally call film. Is it the poetry of death that we should not wish to return? Or is this an after death bar, where drinks are served wordlessly, soundlessly, while the images of the burning Waco stronghold are still glowing on the viewer’s retina? Is there sex after death?

You really have to see this piece of experimental cinema to believe it! By the way, this is the film with which Ian Kerkhof graduated from the Netherlands Film Academy! Enter at your own risk – here there be tygers.

Alexander Fortsch
DOOM nr 1, sep 1995

Au début du film on aperçoit deux homos se donnant une fellation. Leurs vêtements sont extrêmement sales et pleins de graisse. C’est bien que la télé olfactive n’existe pas encore. Le premier se masturbe avec sa main droite tandis que le deuxième répète sans cesse « Donne-moi ta bite, mec ! ». Le premier passe son index dans sa gorge. Le deuxième semble avoir très soif et paraît à la fin satisfait du résultat….Si vous n’avez pas envie de vomir en regardant cette scène, je pense que rien au monde ne pourra vous choquer plus. Tous les autres spectateurs seraient sortis de la salle ou ils auraient souhaité que le reste du film soit différent. Comme il est en vérité. « Le Mort 2- Le retour de l’Homme Mort » renverse toutes les conventions esthétiques du court-métrage.

Après cette scène d’ouverture, on se retrouve dans un bar étrange. Un vieillard qui, en jugeant par ses mains, serait enterré depuis longtemps, se promène lentement sans expression au visage. Il cherche quelqu’un qui est une femme grosse qui l’arrosera d’un « liquide doré » à la fin, qui lui donnera du plaisir. Au milieu, il y a une longue scène noire/grise qui montre seulement de s formes figées. La bande musicale est celle du compositeur japonais Merzbow et elle nous fait croire que nous sommes au milieu d’un groupe d’un million de locustes. L’endurance de notre vision et perception auditive est testée ad absurdum. C’est en même temps le travail d’un réalisateur génial et d’un fou. Il n’y a rien au milieu.

Qu’est-ce qu’il essaie à nous raconter le cinéaste avec ce film ? Je ne sais pas. Aucun critique mondialement n’a jamais été capable de révéler le sens de cette œuvre inaccessible, étrange, choquante, éloignée de ce qu’on appelle banalement film. Est cela la poésie de la mort qu’on ne souhaiterait pas qu’elle revienne ? Ou est cela un bar qui vient après la mort où les boissons sont servies silencieusement pendant que les images du Waco en flammes s’impriment sur notre iris. Y a-t-il du sexe après la mort ?

Vous devez visionner ce film expérimental pour y croire ! A propos, avec ce film Ian Kerkhof est sorti diplômé de la Netherlands Film Academy. Entrez dans votre responsabilité.

alexander fortsch
doom #1, september 1995
translated into french by dionysos andronis
this french translation first appeared on dionysos’ excellent site

the opening sequence, with the two grotesque men, at first seemed superfluous until I realised that in many respects it is the most important as a balance to the rest of the film. At first I thought the two men were animated figures, they seemed so ugly, until they start talking towards the end of the sequence and I realised they were actual actors. What strikes me about this sequence is that after digesting the initial grotesque, “obscene” nature of it, one realises that this is the only sequence where there is actual meaningful communication and interaction between characters.

The dead man is mainly a passive observer, sometimes a passive participant. Yes there is the kiss with the woman on the beach, but this is like a nuclear holocaust setting, a naked dead beach revealing nothing but bones – no life. Also in the dance sequence, the dead man dances with the woman but it seems lifeless, there is no warmth or communication. Even when Madame Edwarda shows him her cunt and says:” I am God” it is one-way communication with no interaction. And when the woman at the end pisses in his mouth there is no (verbal) communication.

In the car, in the car wash, he is again a passive observer. His world is one of emptiness (the beach and the deserted industrial landscape), inaction and observation.

The sequence just after the one with Madame Edwarda, and before that the two men – the footage showing the “seige of Waco” where we hear cries of children trapped in the building – is THE MOST OBSCENE in the film. Viewers might be sickened by the opening sequence of the two men, the vomit, and then Madame Edwarda, BUT we watch such obscenity as Waco almost every night on the news, where it is packaged as “making the world safe for democracy” or “War on Terror”, or some such crap.

THIS IS THE MOST OBSCENE – not the two grotesque men who, despite the apparent obscenity of their actions, are engaged in MEANINGFUL COMMUNICATION AND INTERACTION.

gary cummiskey

jaap hoogstra in the Dead Man II: Return of the Dead Man, dir. Aryan Kaganof.

This is a difficult film, to watch and to review. On the one hand, it’s a beautiful artistic exercise from the always inventive and brilliant Aryan Kaganof. On the other, its a catalog of overly offensive debasement by bodily fluids.

The opening scene is one so revolting I’ve tried my best to block it out of my mind and would really not like to recall it for you, the reader of this review. Maybe that’s a bit unfair of me, but it’s clear Kaganof meant it as an opening punch right to the solar plexus that will divide an audience: Those who will stay and those who will run out in horror. I did stay and, remember, I did say that the film is a beautiful artistic exercise.

The film is gorgeously shot in an old bar full of degenerates. They drink while Waco burns. Into this place, which I took to be the afterlife, an elderly man, presumably the eponymous title character, enters to witness as much ennui as there is obscenity. It’s also a place where a woman urinating off of a bar triggers a horrific memory of an assault back among the living.

The dead man becomes resigned to his fate, much like the viewer must become resigned to the terrible visions thrust upon him. Lots of films tackle the issue of life after death, but this is one of the most wondrous, complicated visions of it. And lots of filmmakers try to take on the title of “provocateur,” but few take it to the level that Kaganof brings it in Dead Man II.

this review first published on badlit.com

you can order the dvd from cinema abattoir

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