The Tree of Guernica

 1975 war movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: There's a war in Spain.

This was Fernando Arrabal's third movie after Long Live Death and I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse, a pair of movies that I didn't enjoy or understand. So I'm not sure why I bothered with this one because I didn't enjoy or understand it either. The thing's steeped in metaphors, some that I didn't understand and flew by like non sequiturs and some that were so obvious that they seemed juvenile. Also juvenile was a lot of sacrilegious imagery Ok, Arrabal, we get it. You don't like the church very much. I don't need to see any more characters wiping their ejaculate on a statue. There's a lot of war footage and its grotesque imagery mixed into the barrage of often disturbing imagery. There are also a lot of little people, one with a naked guy who later gets a sex scene while other little people towel him off. And there's a bullfight scene with one of the little people tied to a cart with a bull's head on the front, a scene that I swear lasted ninety minutes. And there's a scene with two guys tongue-wrestling that looked like something that could have been in a Will Ferrell movie. Oh, and a giant ear knife on wheels (I have no idea how else I could describe it) with naked children running around it and a lady saving herself from rape by hurling snakes. It's that kind of movie, and I actually started hating myself in the middle of it. A lot of this has the feel of a snuff film, and although I'm sure there's a point being made with the whole, it was well over my head and I really couldn't connect to anything that was happening enough to even care that I was missing out on something. I would not recommend you watch this although it is a little funnier than The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

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