Watched two very different portrayals of medieval desperation among the Black Death
The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)
★★★★
A Medieval Odyssey is an apt subtitle. The Navigator truly feels like a harrowing mythic journey, grim and folksy and heightened. Desperate medieval adventurers tunnel to the far end of the world as death approaches upon leathery wings, a grim monochrome escape from the Black Death. Like Dorothy stepping into Oz, they emerge in an otherworldly land of color and metal, towering spires and confounding mechanisms: '1980s Auckland.
What could easily have been comedic out-of-time misadventures is handled with the curiosity and caution of a fantasy epic. A roaring highway is as impassable and deadly as raging rapids. A submarine looms like a nautical terror from the depths. New reports on AIDs and nuclear threat mirror the crier's omens of bubonic pestilence. The Navigator portrays the modern cityscape as a sprawling surreal frontier to overcome, the old world as a rugged land of superstition and dread. Visually striking and fairytale-like in its larger-than-life storytelling, The Navigator is a unique medieval adventure that never sheds its perspective of fantastical nightmare even among the glass and metal of today.
Flesh + Blood (1985)
★★★½
There may be no better showcase of Verhoeven's devilish playful eye for the morbid and grotesque than a scene of classic medieval romanticism - complete with soft melodramatic score - while putrid corpses encroach upon the frame.
Flesh+Blood contains ample amounts of both, but Verhoeven's mixture of exploitation sleaze and commentary isn't as balanced as in his future films. His use of sexual violence and unabashed brigandry certainly is effective in portraying a plague-ridden remorseless medieval landscape; however, the movie feels too crass and indulgent for the themes of power, religion, and masculinity to take root. Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh shine as both play their own games of shrewd manipulation to survive, superstition and sex as their respective avenues of control. But outside of those two, the cast and production has a cheap vibe that mirrors Flesh+Blood's b-movie core.
The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)
★★★★
A Medieval Odyssey is an apt subtitle. The Navigator truly feels like a harrowing mythic journey, grim and folksy and heightened. Desperate medieval adventurers tunnel to the far end of the world as death approaches upon leathery wings, a grim monochrome escape from the Black Death. Like Dorothy stepping into Oz, they emerge in an otherworldly land of color and metal, towering spires and confounding mechanisms: '1980s Auckland.
What could easily have been comedic out-of-time misadventures is handled with the curiosity and caution of a fantasy epic. A roaring highway is as impassable and deadly as raging rapids. A submarine looms like a nautical terror from the depths. New reports on AIDs and nuclear threat mirror the crier's omens of bubonic pestilence. The Navigator portrays the modern cityscape as a sprawling surreal frontier to overcome, the old world as a rugged land of superstition and dread. Visually striking and fairytale-like in its larger-than-life storytelling, The Navigator is a unique medieval adventure that never sheds its perspective of fantastical nightmare even among the glass and metal of today.
Flesh + Blood (1985)
★★★½
There may be no better showcase of Verhoeven's devilish playful eye for the morbid and grotesque than a scene of classic medieval romanticism - complete with soft melodramatic score - while putrid corpses encroach upon the frame.
Flesh+Blood contains ample amounts of both, but Verhoeven's mixture of exploitation sleaze and commentary isn't as balanced as in his future films. His use of sexual violence and unabashed brigandry certainly is effective in portraying a plague-ridden remorseless medieval landscape; however, the movie feels too crass and indulgent for the themes of power, religion, and masculinity to take root. Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh shine as both play their own games of shrewd manipulation to survive, superstition and sex as their respective avenues of control. But outside of those two, the cast and production has a cheap vibe that mirrors Flesh+Blood's b-movie core.
