MARTYRS

France, 2008, 99 minutes, Colour.
Morjana Alaoui, Mylene Jampanoi, Catherine Begin.
Directed by Pascal Laugier.

A difficult film to watch – and many would not want to watch it – and a difficult film to review.

Some controversy arose about Martyrs when it was first released. Because of the prevalence of American 'torture porn' (a name given to such films as Saw, Captivity, Hostel I and 2, Frontieres), any film which featured graphic torture scenes received that label. However, Martyrs is different from these films which are designed for entertainment. Martyrs, whether one likes it or not, has a more serious intent.

Martyrs is the story of Lucie who escaped from her tormentors when a child. She is a very disturbed girl and mutilates herself. She also battles with a spectral girl who slashes her. However, the doctors think she is mentally ill, imagining creatures, and enlist the help of Anna who has befriended her.

15 years later, Lucie says she has discovered her torturers and goes to seek revenge by killing them. The film takes an unexpected turn here and takes further unexpected turns as the film goes on.

The key to the film is the introduction of a strange sect who want to investigate how much a person can suffer – and transcend the suffering. This is the difference between a victim and a martyr. Most people collapse under suffering and can withdraw into mental collapse. It is the martyrs who go beyond the pain, who go beyond fear and glimpse something of another world. This is the theory that the sect members express and the film, with some horrendous sequences of torture and pain, visualises this through the torture of Anna.

Clearly, this is not a crowd pleaser. Its plot of internment and exploitation, especially of women and children reminds us of shocking actual cases in Belgium and Austria. Martyrs merits serious attention for its themes, always raising the difficulties of sensibilities of how much detail of suffering audiences are willing to see or how much they can take.

These themes are not all that far from those of Lars Von Trier in Breaking the Waves, Dogville, Manderlay and The Antichrist.

1.The controversy about the film? Torture films? Similarities to American entertainments? More philosophical?

2.An endurance for the audience – but with a purpose?

3.The visual style, film stock, video stock? The atmosphere of realism? The staging, the stunt work, the effects? Editing? Musical score?

4.The use of horror techniques, the look, blood, torture, deaths?

5.The introduction in 1971: the film of Lucie, the information, the doctors’ reactions, Anna’s reaction?

6.Anna as Lucie’s friend, as children, watching the film and giving information to the doctors? The doctors’ attitudes towards Lucie, as regards her imagination, the torture, the spectre and her appearances, fights, physical, mental?

7.Fifteen years passing? Lucie and Anna as adults? Lucie and the institution, remembering the past, seeing the photo, decision to have vengeance, confronting the family? The surprise in her killing the parents? The mother and father, the children? Anna’s shock? The mother surviving, Anna helping her, Lucie bludgeoning her?

8.The phone call to Anna, Anna’s arrival, the shock at what had happened, caring for Lucie, Lucie and the cuts, her sewing them? Disposing of the bodies? Finding the mother, helping her, Lucie’s reaction? Locking Lucie in the room? Lucie’s response, killing herself?

9.Lucie and the imagination, the spectre, the fights, the cuts, an alter-ego?

10.The arrival of the personnel, audience puzzle about their identity, their cleaning up, reporting to Mademoiselle? The questioning of Anna? Imprisoning her?

11.Mademoiselle, her personality, appearance, the leader of the sect? The variety of members, the family and their torturing their victims? The cruelty? The meagre food, the bashings and beatings, the victims and submissiveness, the cutting of the hair, being bound to the chair, the masks? Anna and her discovering the other girl, with the mask, helping her, the girl’s fear, her imagination, the cockroaches, her death?

12.The nature of the sect, their desire to know more about torture, pain, suffering, transcending suffering? Mademoiselle calling the meeting, the people assembling, the man helping her, discussion, the fact that she had listened to Anna, the audience watching this? Mademoiselle shooting herself without revealing anything?

13.Issues of pain, the photos in the corridor, Mademoiselle and the history lecture to Anna, not victims but sufferers who transcended pain, martyrs, the dictionary meaning, witness, life after death, vision? Seeing this vision in the eyes of the sufferers? Finally in Anna’s eyes? The final torture for Anna, the blood, the wheel? The vision of light?

14.The dictionary, the tradition of martyrs, the human condition, human cruelty, endurance and transcending it?

15.A horror film with a focus on meanings?