My good friend Steve P got hold of this film. It tells the story of Machete, the eponymous hero who, wielding said machete saves the day numerous times while bringing justice to bear against a set of corrupt politicians, police and drug barons all involved in a plan to use anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican sentiment to further their own ends.
The men are macho and either heroic or simply bad. There is copious blood letting and the goodies win. Machete chops off varied body parts in varied ways during his romp as well as romping with various women. All the women are as tough as the men and as forcibly sexy and young as the men are middle aged macho.
I am stumped by such films, they leave me speechless. I enjoyed it. I laughed at various points. I followed the film concerned that it all turned out alright. I admired the women.
I don’t know what to say about it. Until this evening however. After watching Persona by Bergman, again, in the company this time of a group of friends. As I wrote elsewhere on this blog, for me Persona had two parts: the first where the women are coming together and the second where they ‘go all the way’, really meet the other and inevitably disappear. This second half if where Machete lives. He is always already living the collapse of the other. The post ironic self that takes all wounds as if they were so much make up. Always self aware and cynical with it, able to accept vilification as a form of abasement.
As such the film is Tarantino made into Coronation Street. The normalisation that is of a form, its crystalline form, unimportant but sparkling perhaps. Of no consequence, a frame with no active ingredient where what is displayed is little more than the ability to smile, to live in that ironic, self referential world.
That is poorly articulated but as Edgar might say:
Sod you Joe Chip.