IHAO on ... Septien - READER REQUEST

Requested by Jason Schmidt

After watching The Stuff, and asking for requests like I have been, I finally got one I could do something about because of the glory of Netflix.  I have all the others written down for the future, but I can very easily talk about movies that are on Netflix and I can immediately watch.  And that's how Septien became a part of my life.  A part of my life that will never go away.

Septien is a film "about" becoming a family and accepting other people's "flaws."  I use quotation marks because what the movie is REALLY about is Christ imagery, homosexual themes for one character, and wasting everyone's time.  But the film wouldn't come out and say that.  This movie isn't good, by the way.  If you couldn't tell.

If I can trail off for a second, film as a medium has one goal: to stimulate the audience.  Whether it be by entertainment, deep thought, interesting conceits, or just vivid imagery, the goal is to give the audience something.  A lot of independent films that I've been seeing I find tend to instead of focusing on stimulating the audience focus on getting the filmmaker's thoughts across.  It is a very selfish endeavor, to share your own thoughts and not care about the people who are taking those thoughts in.  It is the reason I try to be informative and entertaining, because if I just told you what I thought that would be me just blowing wind that no one would care about.

Out of context gifs help with the entertainment.

Septien had a whole bunch of things the filmmaker wanted us to SEE.  He wanted us to see these characters, to see his filmmaking skills, to see these crazy pictures, to see this sorta-kinda revenge story in the last twenty minutes.  But in the end, we as an audience aren't really stimulated.  Or at least, I was not.

The movie isn't a complete failure.  A lot of the shots are pretty well done, especially the storm (don't worry, it doesn't feature at all and is more than likely happenstance that just turned out well).  The character the writer/director portrayed, Cornelius, when by himself, was intriguing and I enjoyed watching him hustle athletes out of money because he was just so good at sports, all while wearing his unibomber outfit.  The problem is, it doesn't go anywhere.  There's a sequence where they all sing the subtitle-song, and it doesn't lead to anything or go anywhere.  A girl character shows up ... and that's about it.  The antagonist is the antagonist because he might be a pedophile, but we are never told or shown.

The movie is a whole lot of style and very very little substance.  It is a little worse than most indy art films I see because it failed in telling much of anything.  But it isn't a complete failure.  Close, but not a complete failure.

Grade: D--