Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

You ever watch a movie that just sends chills up and down your body from beginning to end? You ever watch a movie that cements itself in your subconscious and pulverizes you with its magnetism over and over, until you just cannot take it any more? You ever watch a movie that is so rich and so disturbingly authentic that you feel compelled to laud it above all others?

This is that movie.

From the opening credits until the closing ones, `Marat/Sade' is one of the most engaging and utterly phenomenal pieces of art I have ever witnessed. It is mind shattering in its delivery, coupling some of the most intriguing and utterly brilliant performances with one of the most compelling concepts ever put to film. This is a masterclass film, one that gets everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) right.

The film tells of the Marquis de Sade, a man imprisoned at Charenton Asylum in 1808. He writes and directs a play starring his fellow inmates, a play that tells of the French Revolution, and he puts it on for the asylum director Coulmier and his family. The film, taking place within the small confines of a prison cell and never leaving that one particular room, is so visually expansive that it is beyond me how director Peter Brook was able to accomplish this. The film feels so much bigger than it is. It's hard to really explain well how this movie works, but just know that despite the fact that it never leaves the one room it takes you to places much further than the confines of a cell would suggest.

The film is based on the stage play by Peter Weiss and is shot much like a theatrical production, but it never feels stiff as some `stage to screen' films can feel. This film moves with such fluidity, it's insanely impressive.

Brook's decision to focus quite frequently on facial expressions of the cast was a brilliant way of making the film feel much more intimate than a mere stage production. What is so important about this decision was that it allows the audience to see the insanity that lurks behind the inmates eyes, because the real story being told is not that of the play being put on but that of the character development of these lost souls, each of them playing their part in this intense and very controversial production. These inmates become these characters and they absorb their weaknesses and their strengths and they embellish them with reckless abandon. Watching their own humanity fester behind their sockets is chilling to say the least.

There are two performers here that are beyond mesmerizing and that truly deserve all our recognition; and they are Glenda Jackson and Patrick Magee. Patrick Magee delivers such a powerful and moving performance as the Marquis de Sade, his control so consistent and absorbing. He takes a much different approach to the character than the one presented by Geoffrey Rush in `Quills', both spectacular but Magee is leagues better. There are scenes where the camera is focused on his face and he is delivering a lengthy monologue that just sinks right into our flesh and becomes a part of us. He is matched every step of the way by Glenda Jackson, who embodies Charlotte Corday from head to toe. Just watch the way she connects to the dagger as if it were her long lost friend. The scene is so symbolic of the actual revolt that is dominating the minds of the inmates as the carry on this play.

And then there is that hair-whipping scene between Sade and Corday that just blew my mind.

This is not a film for everyone, for the concept and delivery is far from commercial, and so if you are not a fan of the `arthouse' type films then this is one you may not want to entertain yourself with; but if you do enjoy a film rich with substance, some of which you may have to really uncover personally, then this is a film for you and one I urge you to find and watch. The performances, the direction, the script and lighting; the editing and costumes and makeup and just everything are utter perfection. There is not one sour note here, honestly.

An excellent movie, which is no more or less than stunning, stark and bleak filmed version of Peter Weiss' haunting, diturbing and magnificent play. It is very well cast, with the same actors who first perfromed the play in London under Peter Brook's direction.
Great perfomances all round by some very great actors, some of whom are well known, some of whom are not.
Among the well known names: Glenda Jackson MP, who is a memorabla Corday, although one bitten by a Tse-Tse fly, the late Ian Richardson, yes the snide and sneaky Francis Urquhart, who is a brooding and glowering Marat, he even looks like the real Jean-Paul Marat and Richardson is spot on as Marat, who was a raving idealist, his body and mind hollowed out by illness and paranoia, excactly as depicted in the play.

Among the not so well-known: Freddie Jones, good as ever, as one of the four man musical troupe, and Patrick Magee as the marquis de Sade.
Patrick Magee should of course not be confused with the debonnaire, brolly-wielding John Steed, Patrick MacNee, who later often co-starred in the vomitingly godawful "Murder She ****ing Wrote", no that 's a different bloke altogether. Magee was also in "Clockwork Organge" and in lots of other proper artie movies, not al that camp telly crap which John Steed was in.

My only trouble with this is: why can't we get this on DVD in Europe?
I've been to the play several times, and have several times seen the movie in retro-season in my friendly neighbourhood indie cinema, but I want a copy of me own!!! Please bring it out on DVD for region 2 as well, amazon!