The Forbidden Zone

[Deleted]

Amazing

KM is a true genius and possibly the most visionary director in the world

I have been wowed and amazed by her interpretation of so many plays

Her use of live video was pioneering and at its most effective offers unprecedented insights into what and why things are happening on stage

The story told here is shocking all the more for its basis in true events

The technical skills on show were jaw dropping in terms of camera and backstage work

It meant I missed the first preview of Aladdin but this is only on until Sunday and I am so glad I went

I will be at Aladdin plenty in the week ahead and was impressed by what I have seen to date

Disney is a well oiled machine

If anyone can fit this in (only runs until Sunday) please please go

It's been one of those weeks with Cuttin It and this my faith has been restored

[crabtree]

I'm afraid the more technology invades the stage the more I was theatre to be raw.....just performers in a pool of light. Just my naïve opinion, formed after 45 years of going to the theatre.

[jek]

Thought this was stunning. I went with no expectations and no knowledge of the team involved, I just thought it looked interesting and the Barbican is an easy journey for us. Also I'm a long time Barbican member and so the discount is appealing. The Forbidden Zone looked fantastic and I have already wish listed the Mary Borden book which is part of its source material. We took along our teenage daughter who was dazzled by the technical brilliance and shocked at the content (she held my hand so tightly at key moments that I lost all circulation). My only wish was that I could immediately see it again to take in bits that I surely missed. One of those occasions when I'm really glad that I took a punt on buying tickets.

[Deleted]

Saw it previously in a live relay (which added another layer to it, a play simultaneously filmed being simultaneously broadcast from Germany!). It was one of my highlights of the year and fully deserving of the praise.

[Steve]

Saw this this afternoon, was dazzled by the technology, but felt the anti-war agenda was tainted by sexism.

This is a 70 minute movie, filmed live, with dollies and tilts, long shots and closeups, intercutting multiple stories. It's seamless, it's beautiful and it's incredible! You can sometimes see the actors filming on the sets below the movie screen, but more often than not, you can't, you just catch glimpses of the live action every now and again.

The two main stories are about how chemical weapon inventor, Fritz Haber's wife, Clara (in 1915) and his daughter Claire (in 1949), both committed suicide. The film clearly depicts both suicides being in response to the horrors of war, in particular the use of chemical weapons. A disembodied voice-over blames not only Haber, the creator of chlorine gas, for the horrors of war, but all men, or "your sex," as the voiceover repeatedly snarls.

Playing Claire, Jenny König, so luminous as Ophelia in Ophelia's Zimmer, is even more luminous here, with her face blown up to ten feet tall. Her huge saucer eyes seem to represent the despair of all humanity, and I felt myself close to tears just looking at her.

The conclusion of the film is that chemical weapons are an atrocity, war is an atrocity, men are to blame on account of their uniquely violent nature, and some brave women may resort to suicide to show men how awful they are.

But there is something deeply phony about this:

First, Clara and Claire Haber were not the only relations of Fritz to commit suicide. In 1946, between the two suicides depicted in the live movie, Hermann Haber, the son of Clara and the father of Claire, also committed suicide. There is nary a mention of poor Hermann in this movie, not one, despite the fact that three suicides in a family is more of a pattern, and more shocking than two. Despite the fact that he was the sole living (and dying) bridge between the two protagonists of the movie. Plainly, Hermann's suicide did not suit the agenda of Duncan MacMillan and Katie Mitchell, which was to show women committing suicide, not men;

Second, the reasons given for the two suicides depicted are made up by the filmmakers. They have no idea why Claire and Clara, or even the unmentioned Hermann, committed suicide. Nonetheless, the film asserts that it was in revolt against the horrors of the use of chemicals in war. One wonders what war Claire so objected to could even have been happening in 1949, the year of her suicide. This appropriation of the suicides of two people to serve an agenda borders on shameless;

Third, it is ridiculous to intercut all this horror with voiceovers that repeatedly assert that men, not women, are capable of violence. In the second world war, some of the worst concentration camp guards were women, with Ilsa Koch collecting human lampshades and body parts, Dorothea Binz patrolling with a whip and a German Shepherd, and Irma Grese wearing special boots to torture and kill women more attractive than herself. Both women and men, given power, can abuse it terribly.

Ultimately, it is deeply ironic that a movie that purports to be a critique of the use of astonishing technology to pursue a warped agenda is itself the use of astonishing technology to pursue a warped agenda.

3 stars, for the astonishing technology, and the affecting perfomance of Jenny Honig!

[Nicholas]

May 29, 2016 17:34:59 GMT @cardinalpirelli said:

Saw it previously in a live relay (which added another layer to it, a play simultaneously filmed being simultaneously broadcast from Germany!). It was one of my highlights of the year and fully deserving of the praise.

Was that the Barbican in 2014? I was there too! I agree, thought it was marvellous too, if not quite up there in contention as one of the highlights for the year. Again, as with People, Places and Things, I want to praise the always brilliant, perennially overlooked Duncan Macmillan for bringing together these disparate strands of texts and ideas and intellectual arguments into something quite resembling or perhaps parodying not just a 70 minute movie but a 70 minute 1940s melodrama: a near black-and-white tale of women pushed to the edge, making a mockery of that melodramatic female trope, which added to the political, feminist reclamation of this history that Mitchell was going for. The plot had moments of contentious high drama as ‘Women’s Films’ of the 40s did, and I thought there was something quite straight-laced in how Mitchell and Macmillan showed strong, smart women overwhelmed by war – in playing it so straight and conventional and old-fashioned, however, and in fleshing out these great women’s biographies, that cliché was challenged completely, at no cost to the dramatic energy. Visually – cinematically and theatrically – it was brilliant, obvs, and the tale of misused science still shocks me thinking back now, but well more than the sum of its parts, a compelling, shocking and revealing tale in and of itself.

I’ve got to say, Steve, much as I’m absolutely willing to concede to your superior knowledge on the subject (as always, damn your breadth of reading/learning/living!), what you read as sexism I read as melodrama, taking a point to its extreme and prioritising emotion over academia; so whilst I agree it’s not particularly kind on our gender and perhaps that’s their agenda, I think that’s for maximum narrative impact over making a broader gender point, and as such I was willing to forgive it that. It would be too easy to focus on simply how important its ideology was, how innovative it was theatrically and how interesting its history was and thus to overlook how damn entertaining it was. If the Schaubühne released this on DVD, I think a lot of young people would find this very entertaining and very inspiring – I actually felt towards this a lot like I felt towards Mark Hayhurt’s quite underrated Taken at Midnight – and if I didn’t love it, I still learnt a lot and I still enjoyed the heck out of it.

[Steve]

Jun 2, 2016 3:18:40 GMT Nicholas said:

I’ve got to say, Steve, much as I’m absolutely willing to concede to your superior knowledge on the subject (as always, damn your breadth of reading/learning/living!), what you read as sexism I read as melodrama, taking a point to its extreme and prioritising emotion over academia; so whilst I agree it’s not particularly kind on our gender and perhaps that’s their agenda, I think that’s for maximum narrative impact over making a broader gender point, and as such I was willing to forgive it that. It would be too easy to focus on simply how important its ideology was, how innovative it was theatrically and how interesting its history was and thus to overlook how damn entertaining it was. If the Schaubühne released this on DVD, I think a lot of young people would find this very entertaining and very inspiring – I actually felt towards this a lot like I felt towards Mark Hayhurt’s quite underrated Taken at Midnight – and if I didn’t love it, I still learnt a lot and I still enjoyed the heck out of it.

Nicholas, I didn't know anything about the Fabers until I saw this production/movie lol. But the movie was so "entertaining," and the characters so interesting, that I had to google them on the train, to find out more. That's when I discovered how these true life tales were misrepresented and propagandised.

This is the second time in a fortnight I have seen a Katie Mitchell work, in which she has presented suicide as the only option/recourse for women in a hellish patriarchal world. Hamlet and Ophelia never existed, so you can do what you like with them. But in this latest piece, it is real suicides that she appropriates, and whose stories she shapes into a whole new history.

I also think the melodramatic (as you describe it) description of men, "[our] sex," being uniquely violent is melodrama, yes, but also harmful. The Forbidden Zone" underestimates women in excluding them from the full humanity of their capacity for cruelty and violence. The reason women have not committed more cruelty and violence in history is not that they are incapable, it is the same reason they have written less books, plays, movies: it is lack of opportunity.

You seem to feel that a twisted message is ok if a work is poetic or melodramatic, and if the work is of high quality. Well, "Triumph of the Will" (which makes Hitler look good) is well-made and poetic and "Birth of a Nation" (which makes the KKK look good) is well-made and melodramatic. Do we overlook the messages contained in those films because they are well-made, poetic, melodramatic?

Surely, it is the brilliant filmmakers, of whom Katie Mitchell is clearly one, that we must parse most closely, because of how effective they are, to discover what messages they are sharing, and draw attention to it, if we think what they are saying is wrong.

Bur yes, it was one heck of a film lol!

[Nicholas]

Steve, greater minds than mine have debated these subjects come to no conclusion since time immemorial, and I saw this two years ago so my memory is quite fuzzy, but sod it I’ll try and give a half decent answer!

Jun 3, 2016 0:29:32 GMT Steve said:

You seem to feel that a twisted message is ok if a work is poetic or melodramatic, and if the work is of high quality. Well, "Triumph of the Will" (which makes Hitler look good) is well-made and poetic and "Birth of a Nation" (which makes the KKK look good) is well-made and melodramatic. Do we overlook the messages contained in those films because they are well-made, poetic, melodramatic?

I think the comparison between Griffiths/Reifenstahl and Mitchell is unfair, and I’ll explain that in a sec, but on that issue... Personally, no, I think bad morals contradict good construction. To take a different (and overly simplistic) tack to that question: in Sight and Sound’s Greatest Film poll of filmmakers and critics, Birth of a Nation was chosen by five critics (who deal in subjective analysis) and by zero directors (who deal in emotional creativity).  As one of those five said, “Yes, it is racist, but it is also a masterpiece of mise en scène”. If you’re willing to see something purely on constructive merits, you overlook the message, but even using this simplistic fallacious comparison, only five critics out of hundreds were so unsentimental as to overlook the messages.

But as I say, that’s an issue that’s been debated since, well, The Birth of a Nation, and really my belief is artists can make what they want and, as you say, it’s our job to take them to task when their politics cross the line. I’m proud we live in a world in which those works can exist but the world condemns their existence. Here, though, I don’t think Mitchell does cross the line, and here’s why.

Jun 3, 2016 0:29:32 GMT Steve said:

This is the second time in a fortnight I have seen a Katie Mitchell work, in which she has presented suicide as the only option/recourse for women in a hellish patriarchal world. Hamlet and Ophelia never existed, so you can do what you like with them. But in this latest piece, it is real suicides that she appropriates, and whose stories she shapes into a whole new history.

I also think the melodramatic (as you describe it) description of men, "[our] sex," being uniquely violent is melodrama, yes, but also harmful. The Forbidden Zone" underestimates women in excluding them from the full humanity of their capacity for cruelty and violence. The reason women have not committed more cruelty and violence in history is not that they are incapable, it is the same reason they have written less books, plays, movies: it is lack of opportunity.

Well, I didn’t see Ophelia’s Zimmer, and I do question how this appropriated the suicides for maximum dramatic effect. On that matter I’d agree, and perhaps had I seen that and this so close together I’d feel differently. However, I don’t think that the gender politics are as bad as you think, and here’s why.

I’d compare this to Mitchell’s 10 Billion, strangely enough. In 10 Billion, Stephen Emmott tells us that earth is really dying, and if by 2050 we’ve not moderated the population simultaneously changing our lifestyles we’ve got 33 ½ years left to cry in – and then, unlike Chris Rapley’s sensible but soporific advice, says “I think we’re f***ed”. How immoral, how frankly sinful, it is to have an expert environmentalist tell us there’s nothing we can do, and we just have to accept the extremity of the point – so naturally, we don’t! We rage against the dying of the light and don’t accept his dangerous words, but fight them.

And so to The Forbidden Zone.  I thought it did much the same, by way of its extremer medium, albeit less successfully than 10 Billion – it makes an argument founded in reality, goes to its extreme, and in asking us to rage against its extremity it says something hugely important. As you say, it does two things: it demonises men, and secondly, it underestimates women. Absolutely, it does this. However, it does this because it’s making a point about the one-dimensional gender politics (both ways) of war narratives, criticising both through the intelligent extremity of this narrative. After all, according to theatre, war was fought by the Oppenheimers and Feynmans and Bohrs and Heisenbergs, and it wasn’t until Rosamund Franklin that women got off their arses and did some science. If we take this to its extreme then yes, according to all the theatre I’ve ever seen, our sex is wholly culpable and women can wash their hands of all violence – THIS is the narrative Mitchell tells/parodies, the narrative we’ve been surreptitiously telling for years. You say this portrays men as uniquely violent, but most art about war does without realising it; Mitchell reminds us of this point in such an extreme way it becomes blindingly obvious how poorly men are treated by these narratives of war. It’s not sexist, it’s critical of the surreptitious sexism that says men are warmongering scientists. Then, I think her point about women – great scientists and huge historical figureheads – being condensed into hysterical historical footnotes is made far more clearly. As with 10 Billion, Mitchell uses the facts to reach an absurdly extreme argument to provoke us to have this discussion; we’ve fallen into her trap! I think by following this through so extremely, it’s so ludicrous it’s a reductio ad absurdum, an argument easily disagreeable; by using a genre like the melodrama, it manages to do so whilst being entertaining too.

So to use the only science metaphor I’m qualified to make, if this has a twisted message, it’s twisted like a Moebius strip – follow it through, and one ends up on the other side and forced to disagree with it, as with 10 Billion, and as with this. Griffiths and Reifenstahl were extreme but uncritical; Mitchell is extreme but equal opportunities critical. As I say, its re-appropriation of reality is not unproblematic, but I don’t think its gender politics are as problematic as you do. So it’s a bit iffy and a bit having-your-cake-and-eating-it and I won’t deny there are flaws, but it’s also poetic, melodramatic, forgiveable, and in this case, fun!