Film: Closet Land

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

I picked up this film simply because it was the first one the library aid pulled off the shelf.
My first response is just to say that I really hate indie films and seeing this one has done nothing to change that view. Call me old fashioned and narrow minded but I like my films to have a plot of some kind, and generally end in sort of resolution or conclusion. I get it, I just don't like it.

I also found the film to be incredibly predictable. I don't know, somehow I just knew that Alan Rickman's character was going to do this good cop-bad cop thing the whole time. Somehow I knew there was going to be a "medical torture" style scene. And it was glaringly obvious that, even though the core of the film (arguably) was about torture and coersion, there would be an element of repressed trauma from sexual abuse. The second the "Close Land" was animated, I knew, ah, the little girl is the author, the closet has to do with sexuality, and since this is clearly a film about abuses she was obviously sexually abused, probably raped, almost certainly as a child. The only thing I wasn't certain of was whether the closet was a literal or figurative place - turned out to be both.

Granted the ending was surprising, I didn't think she would make it out (I suppose we could debate whether or not she really did).

Also, Rickman's character is deliberately left inconclusive. I would like to extrapolate on the symbolism there, because there are a number of positions you can put him in. Does he represent government? Is he really a single person pretending to be in different roles, or is Rickman actually meant to be portraying different characters? Was he her assailant when she was a child, or is he just preying on that memory as part of her torture? What is his goal/are his goals?

I think that Rickman's "character" is a single entity with all the conflicting facets he portrays carried within; as such, I think he represents not simply government, but entire nations. The fact that he is both his own torturer and victim, that he both takes sadistic enjoyment in torturing his victim and is harrowed about what he does, all go to show how complicated the relationship between the dominated and the dominating is. If, for example, a government turns to exploitation, torture and intimidation, the governing body itself suffers from the paranoia of surveillance and the guilt of the perpetrator. When people allow their governing bodies power over their very selves, they become complicit in their own suffering.


sex, drugs, nakedness, faking it, frigid whore, psychological torture, interrogation, unwarranted arrest, propoganda, children, sexual abuse


When you abuse people enough they won't scream anymore.
When you subject a person to too much pain they become unable to see the pain of others.
Children are powerless. The powerless become children. Easy victims.

What power do lies have? What power is there to be found in lieing or misrepresentation? In refusing to lie? Can we lie to ourselves about what's happening to us? Can we lie to ourselves about what we are doign to others?

What is your closet? What are you escaping from? Who is the friendly rooster? Who is Mother? Who is the cat with green wings? What is your lie?