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Translated as The Prince of Heavens, Le Prince Des
Cieux is a very intense experience if you go in without
prior warning. It is described as a journey into an unhinged
mind, an unstable mind, etcetera. What is obvious is we are
observing a very lonely broken mind and the whole film feels
like a moving piece of art.
Opening with a chair shrouded by possible holy objects, whilst
other things such as an animal skull lays nearby. What you have
to understand is the film is relatively speechless, instead it
relies on the viewer building a story around the central figure
whom we meet readying himself facing a camera. Cut to a very
lengthy segment of panning fields and rivers filmed from
possibly a train. His face floats around, is he thinking of
this?
Like the cover to Machine Head's second album, hands dig around
in dirt and random hallucinatory images invade your eyes. With
chants and a military sounding drum machine beat, most people
would probably switch off by now, or worst case scenario for
them, flick scene selections deeper within and have their heads
totally fucked up!! You've got reversed voices crying out, our
hero loads a projector and shows slides which are a montage of
violence and still death photographs. There's a fire in the
distance across the river and he watches wearing a bull's head.
Did he cause the fire?
“Why is the music so bloody irritating?” my Horror Soulmate
enquired like I would know the answer. It sounds sometimes like
Tricky slapping foreheads with Goldie. Our man blows up and
frames four graphic images of the dead. Relatives? A thoughtful
statement on black men? Let me say, there is an epilepsy alert
in this review so be ready as flashing shapes crash around a
scene of him walking in slow motion down a street. There, Jay
Creepy is thoughtful of others, see.
Are we witnessing the inner mind of a man who has become an
outcast from so-called reality? Is he an experimental artist who
is lost in his own world? “What the fuck is that?” gasped my
Horror Soulmate as some kind of cat face thing flashed on the
screen. “What's with the shapes again? It's pissing me off!” she
began to lose her cool. Meanwhile, our friend takes his top off
by a dark river and masturbates.
Onwards we go and he studies diseased or dead tissue, whilst
humming throbbing music rumbled our TV set. Industrial kind of
noise takes over as he visits a church, then he cooks up some
naughty drugs -- but wait, he's building a sculpture filled with
a hundred hypodermic needles. Ah, but later on he shoots up
anyway.
To me, the most powerful scene is a simple one, as he stands
motionless in the rain, eyes shut, as busy crowds pass him by.
He listens. Great stuff. Yes, you do find messages and a story.
I wondered if he was alive at all as I watched the conclusion. I
could be way off the mark, or correct. Maybe there is no wrong
or right story.
Le Prince Des Cieux
is a pop video flashy edited affair, similar to
Shaye St. John's
Triggers
videos (see my review
here) but unfortunately, to me, the music kills a lot of the
atmosphere. It's bordering on the ridiculous when at one point,
a deep belch has been looped. There's so many awesome ideas and
images (the cliff top bullhead scene should be an album
cover!) and there's a graveyard scene which reminded us of a
Jean Rollin film.
Arty? Experimental? Pure bollocks? Well, what I can say is this:
if you can survive the whole 48-minutes like I did (my Horror
Soulmate made her exit after 30 minutes or so) it is rewarding.
Death, drugs, paranoia, loneliness, depression, it's all
covered. As are painted faces, bleeding things, industry shots,
which make you see a spreading like disease over Mother Nature,
it fits, a corridor maybe representing his memories, and our
hero wrestling with his coat over his head! I seemed to think of
Jorg Buttgereit's Der Todesking more than once, along
with some late night arthouse films which used to show in the UK
on Channel 4 back in the 1990s.
Abdou M'Bodji works very hard in this film. He carries you along
with his character and does not play comical or morbidly
downbeat at any time, just an average outcast who happens to
have a lot on his mind. Top marks to David Thouroude for this
madness and thanks to Asso SantaRita, the producer for sending
me this to watch (perhaps one and the same man. Who knows?) I do
look forwards to another one from this team.
As for the DVD, it's a bare bones release. Menu, Photos, that
sort of thing.
By the way, to ready you a little bit, if
you wish to walk this dark path, here's the trailer:
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Severed Cinema 
Horror Reviews 
