Starring: Hans Joachim-Klein, Mark Pierpont, Joe Loya, Mark Salzman Directed By: Jessica Yu Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Alive Mind Number of Items: 1 Release Date: June 10, 2008 Running Time: 90 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Description: Academy-Award winner Jessica Yu explores human obsession and extremism in this riveting and provocative documentary. Yu interviews four men with seemingly disparate backgrounds, and then mirrors their experiences to what happens in a Greek tragedy by Euripides, THE BACCHAE. While each man's story is vastly different, they each travel the same path, wherein they find that their extreme methods of dealing with their issues ultimately lead them straight into a new kind of madness and pain.
Like Errol Morris..with spooky puppets! I was a very big fan of Jessica Yu's Henry Darger biopic "In The Realms Of The Unreal", where I thought her lyrical animation of Darger's outsider art world fit the subject matter perfectly. Here, I just found the puppetry and moody music irritating. The stories of the four men are intriguing, but they're crammed into an awkward "art house" assembly. I would have preferred the film without the pretentiousness.
Protagonist I just finished watching this film, and it was absolutely fascinating. The men speak so eloquently about their lives, and the editing is superb. Most of all, I was intrigued by my reaction to the "protagonists'" stories. I felt both extremely different from them (the intense need to fulfill a preconceived notion of masculinity or religiosity and push that identity to its absolute boundary is something I have never experienced) but also very similar to them. The men in the film all seemed to be motivated by a need for control over their lives that we are all told we should be able to achieve but that, ultimately, does not exist. I, too, have gone through the sorts of struggles that the men in the film describe-although on a less dramatic scale-and am still coming to terms with my lack of power over both certain aspects of my personality and certain aspects of society. This film is one that every viewer will probably identify with on some level, and yet is still "exotic" enough that it will captivate from beginning to end. Five stars.
A Pleasure to experience Protagonist is by far one of the most interesting and well made documentaries that I have seen in a long time. Director Jessica Yu truly shows audiences her exquisite skills as a director and filmmaker alike. This documentary takes the viewer on an exciting journey into the psyches of four men who search to rectify themselves from their pasts by following extreme ambitions and paying little regard to themselves and others around them until it is almost too late. Protagonist's subjects are both darkly seducing as well as spiritually enlightening. I highly recommend this movie to anyone. Its characters are not only intellectually stimulating, and sincere but also very funny and humored. This is truly a great documentary.
Revisiting Euripides I'll admit I was a little skeptical about watching a documentary about Euripides featuring puppets, but after some initial skepticism, I was won over by the stories of the four men. To some, the puppets may be jarring (this might be the only movie I've ever seen featuring puppet violence), but they do play an integral role in tying together four very different, but similar stories.
The four protagonists- Mark Salzman, a martial arts enthusiast yearning for dignity, Mark Pierpont, a Christian evangelist struggling with his homosexuality, Hans-Joachim Klein, a left-wing German terrorist, and Joe Loya, a serial bank robber- each have a fascinating story to tell, and Yu interweaves their narratives with quotes from Euripides' The Bacchae in a way that provides a cohesive structure to the movie.
What struck me about the stories is how much these men grow up in the shadow of their families, in particular their fathers. The expectations and demands of masculinity haunt and shape their lives in a way that inevitably leads to agony for them and those around them, and this is where I think their tales most closely mirror Greek tragedy. Inevitably, each man experiences a painful 'catharsis' that dramatically reshapes their lives.
What I find truly unique about this documentary is its focus on the masculine experience, how our parents and our backgrounds can set our lives in seemingly irreversible directions, and how the sometimes crushing demands of manhood can overwhelm any other motivation. Intending to do a documentary on Euripides, Jessica Yu reminds us that Greek tragedy, too often relegated to required reading for disinterested high schoolers, is still incredibly relevant to contemporary life.
Euripides in Exile on Main Street The four protagonists are:
* a martial arts student (Mark Salzman) * a German terrorist (Hans Klein) * an ex-gay evangelist (Mark Pierpont) * a bank robber (Joe Loya)
The premise for this documentary is to attempt to make connections between Euripidean tragedy & modern life. Whether the documentarian achieves this goal is debatable; nevertheless, the four subjects chosen for study have fascinating stories to tell.
Why Euripides? Euripides was known for his strong female characters (Medea), his intelligent slaves, and his willingness to mock the conventional heroes & hero worship of ancient & classical Greece. Euripides also strikes many modern scholars as being the most modern of all of the Greek tragedians as he was the one most concerned with the inner life & what truly motivates each man or woman's actions.
I think the film is extremely strong, but would have been stronger had there been at least one female protagonist in the mix. In one of the bonus features on this DVD director Jessica Yu (whose In the Realms of the Unreal, 2004, is also a terrific documentary) discusses how she chose her four subjects. The intention was not to choose four men, however, four men were indeed chosen out of 200 candidates because they each had strong narrative arcs & strong narrative voices. Also according to Yu, these four men were chosen because each had a moment in their lives when they "crashed" while the women candidates that pursued equally obsessive life courses did not crash but "crumbled". This difference strikes me as possibly the most fascinating observation in this documentary and had Yu chosen at least one female protagonist this difference could have been explored. Since Euripides was so sensitive to female psychology this would have been appropriate.
Still, the four narratives that Yu so artfully weaves together are each each extremely compelling. I found German terrorist Hans Klein (who fought next to Carlos the Jackal on a number of occasions, including the 1975 kidnapping of twelve OPEC ministers) to be the most fascinating, and Salzman to be the least interesting (though most humorous), but each narrative complements the others so well that one doesn't want any individual piece of this elaborate psychological puzzle to be removed. The high drama of Klein's terrorist lifestyle would not strike one in the same way were it not juxtaposed with Salzman's manic retelling of his Kung Fu master's psychotic hijinks. There is also just the right balance of personal and political issues as well as an aknowledgement of the link between the two.
That these four men's lives could be linked narratively amazes and sheds much light on the seemingly singular courses our lives take. The Euripides connection is not forced, just suggested really, it lingers in the background virtually forgotten until its time for a new classical Greece-inspired animated graphic (like the one on the DVD cover) to provide us with a new chapter heading. The other thing that provides the "glue" between the four protagonists and Euripidean drama are the puppets. In the bonus feature, Yu explains her rationale for using puppets and the fact that the idea first came to her when researching how the Greek tragedians used large masks onstage. Her explanation is interesting, but more than anything the little Euripidean puppet vignettes show better than anyone can rationally explain the constancy of human nature throughout time. This, as well as an invitation to be more understanding & compassionate about our fellows' narratives, is the main point of this memorable film.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
