h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I watched the is film earlier...god I wished I hadn't. It's a British film from last year.

I think it's probably one of the most unpleasant films I've ever seen. Right from the start the most full on vicious violence. The main character kicks his dog to death at the start. There is violence and the F word and C word being used at very regular intervals.

The woman character is subjected to the most appalling violence, culminating in a most horendous rape scene. She is quite a fragile woman and behaves mostly passively in the film.

But it is the unrelenting nature of the violence *all* the way through the film...to me that is even crap as art...no variety of tone...from beginning to end.

I feel haunted by it...I kept watching because I hoped the tone would change...and I didn't want to be left with all that if something more optimistic was going to happen. It didn't.

And I can report I was physically sick afterwards. I don't remeber a film ever literally causing that before. That helped a bit. I'm hoping writing this will also help a bit.

Absolutely horrible.

***WARNING YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO READ MY DESCRIPTION OF THE FILM. I"M NOT HOLDING BACK IN DESCRIBING THE REALITY OF IT.***

I'll be deleting it shortly in any case.

I'm doing it to help myself get over it even more. Unsubbing might be a plan.

The memory of that hideous film is now fading thank god.

But I've been thinking that in a way the guy making that film is inflicting a kind of rape on people who are sensitive to this stuff. And since stopping medication I am.

I'm damned if I'm writing 'spoilers' here..

The film was full of stereotypes. The main character a rough working class Glaswegian, a drinker, and prone to extreme violence...there are peripheral working class people living near him who are also violent and own a Pit bull. Even his mate who isn't violent looks a dishevelled mess. They are all on benefits.

The woman who he first meets in a charity shop is a christian and seems gullible in her attempts to befriend him...even after he is verbally very unpleasant to her, she carries on with her 'caring'.

Then it turns out her husband is this vile thing...apparently with an aura of respectibility...how cliched is that. We first meet him when he comes home late one night, and she pretends to be asleep on the sofa. He urinates on her..and she does nothing..except the next day cleans it all up. That's almost more horrifying than the physical violence that we later see. She makes little attempts to rebel..but never once thinks of going to the police...just starts hanging around the violent Glaswegian...he's vaguely nice to her

Then the rape scene...She has already been beaten to a pulp...but she that was coming after her husband had seen her with the Glaswegian. Any vaguely normal woman would have gone to the police..but she doesn't disguise that she is in a state of terror...and she hates him..

The film maker has represented the woman as the most abject creature. That disgusts me.

And we get to see the husband rape her in all its lurid glory..we also get to hear about the glass he pushes into her....but it finally turns out that she stabs him to death afterwards.

We see his corpse a few days later, and a fly flying around his head. BUT we don't see HER stabbing him after all he's done to her...finally asserting herself in the absolute way.

She goes to prison...and the Glaswegian guy goes to visit her...how sweet and she smiles sweetly at him.

Everything in that film is unrelenting horror to do with people. Even the Glaswegian's friend is dying of cancer...that's shown as a stereotype sunken eyed person with an oxygen mask on. We're told his wife is dead. She died of side effects from diabetus..presumably she didn't manage properly..as she's a thick female I suppose. She dies blind, with her legs amputated.

I'm astounded this film was nominated in one category for the British film awards. As far I'm concerned the maker of this film is a sicko...and he's clearly happy to put as many negative sterotypes as he can into one film. I'd happily spit in his eye.

I'd never heard of it before you mentioned it here and I googled it saw that it was nominated (won?) awards and thought .


It sounds like exactly the sort of film I would *never* want to watch.


~Perha`ps it got its `praise due to some `perce`ption of it being an accurate de`piction of "co-dependence". But where is the artistry in graphic depiction?

I seem to remember Roger Moore, after someone suggested that there was nothing wrong with gra`phic sex being de`picted on the screen as it was "a natural `process", remarking "so is urination, but I don't want to look at that in a film."


I rarely bother with cinema anymore.

Well I thought there were a lot of excellent films last year.

This thing was utterly literalist..there was no real sense of contradiction, complexity...It was so stereotyped...but but not self reflecting on that. It was almost as if the film maker was indulging himself in some kind of adolescent simplistic fantasy.

It must have been dead easy to act. There was no sense of inner space of the characters. No development..just a bit pretend when he visits her at the prison...that was all very lame.

And I got so angry that he made the woman so abject and childlike.

Unlike you I love good cinema. I recently watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy...and that was just so complex and psychological and convoluted. The acting was superb. But it shows what some people are like...It was said that some people kept asking the star, Gary Oldman, what on earth is it all about?

Tyranasaur might be more their cup of tea then...

And funny you should mention graphic sex.

Another thing that I'm getting more and more tired of is when a man and a woman finally get it on...there's this near hysteria of ripping clothes off...or not so actually of late. Just the man ripping her panties down, pushing her up against the wall...unzipping his fly...a few seconds later..getting his release...and she looks so delighted cos she came to.....or slight variations of that scenario.

Yes ocassionally its hysterical. But it doesn't do anything for me if you really fancy someone and feel in love with them. I've done the hysterical thing with a man only when blind drunk with someone I didn't really find that attractive...and in any case just because a man clearly comes...that doesn't equal female satifaction.

I think the portrayal of heterosexual sex on film is going back to the dark ages...oh and going down is very fashionable.

And of course when do we ever see it done properly on mainstream between 2 women. Anything involving them is designed with men in mind IMO.

The meaning of slow appears to be airbrushed out of sexual portrayal...and fully focussed on the usual areas only.

Women make the best lovers...in my experience.