The bloody commission

For the third time in the past two years Ukraine has banned the screening of a movie. The film is entitled Hostel. The history behind this otherwise quite ordinary thriller is extraordinary. Made on a small budget, it earned four million dollars at the box office in the first week after its release, beating out a few top-heavy blockbusters.

It probably didn’t hurt that Quentin Tarantino is the film’s executive producer. After all, the director of Pulp Fiction has a magic touch and a keen nose for successful projects. The director of Hostel, Eli Roth, was also involved in Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 2.

The job of the Commission of the Film and Video Screening Department is to determine age restrictions imposed on films scheduled for release. In other words, the commission says what age groups are allowed to watch this movie or that. Yet its actual objective — a responsible and complicated one, to be sure — is to do battle with audiences and filmmakers.

This is the latest victory to be entered on the commission’s service record. Earlier, audiences were barred from seeing the remake of the famous horror movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre and later, the George Romero horror classic Land of the Dead.

True, the commission boasts even more important achievements. A few years ago it banned Audition, a film by the well-known Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike (who had a bit part in Hostel; he has bad luck in Ukraine) and Brother, one of the best works of another Japanese filmmaker, the brilliant Takeshi Kitano, who knows more about filmmaking than our cabinet with all its commissions and departments.

The members of the commission are mumbling something about not banning these films outright, saying that they can be released on licensed CDs. Their permission is for the birds because both Petrivka and other street markets and stands all over Ukraine are packed with pirated copies. And it takes a perfect ignoramus to seriously compare one screening of a film with large-screen Dolby surround sound to an ordinary video screening.

Another interesting aspect is that Hostel is being screened in the United States, all over Europe, and even in countries that are not overly liberal, like Russia, the Philippines, Turkey, and Egypt. The strict purism of Islamic culture is generally known. So what did the commission members detect in Hostel that even the censors in authoritarian Egypt failed to notice?

There can be all sorts of explanations, but all of them are inadequate. Whatever the reasons for the commission’s attitude, they are far from rational.

I remember The Evil Dead. Toward the end of the film the heroine finally realizes where the deadly zombies are coming from, but when she tries to talk about it, the zombies gouge out her tongue so she will keep her mouth shut.

Now I understand that this is actually our commission. They want to gouge out our eyes as potential viewers and cut off our ears, to prevent us from seeing and hearing what we shouldn’t. There is more to this. You know the moment in the sci-fi thriller when the monster seems to be overpowered, shot, or burned together with his numerous offspring. Suddenly one of the heroes starts killing his buddies, and then his body bursts open and from it emerges the monster that has invaded the poor guy’s body.

The commission is not content with gouging out our eyes and cutting off our ears. They want to find a way inside our heads, gain control of our brains, and plant their seed to produce people like them. The situation is far more serious than meets the eye. The monster is nearby and with his tentacles is reaching toward our common screen. He can be destroyed only by concerted action, using all possible means ranging from lawsuits to picketing to aspen stakes to holy water.

Beware: the enemy is after a new victim and you may be next!