Delicatessen

     A mind boggling attempt at understanding it. While at first sight it would seem as if this movie is a hysterical and abstract piece of work that I will never grasp, I was proven wrong by the time the credits played. The movie is revolves around a group of tenants living in an apartment together in a post apocalyptic France. Led by a butcher named Clapet, it is made to seem that the movie is about a group of tenants with a butcher as a leader trying desperately in a bid to survive the harsh world of a torn and worn France. The time line is never mentioned but the vehicles and architecture of the buildings implied an apocalyptic world set in the 1960's.

     Louison, an out of job circus clown discovers an ad for a job opportunity on the Hard Times newspaper that was posted by Clapet, the butcher. Enthusiastically, he sets out to the address shown on the ad in hopes of finding a new and stable job. Louison, however, eventually realizes that all is not what it seems.

     Throughout the playing of the movie I was straining my eyes and sending my brain into overdrive mode trying to decipher a hidden meaning behind the scenes. Was it all a metaphor or analogy for something? I did my utter best to try to garner the ultimate meaning behind it all, the absurdity of a butcher who butchers unknowing hopeful job applicants in the aim of selling cheap meat to his tenants. Perhaps the movie never really was a complicated one. In terms of what it's about at least. As far as I could tell, the idiosyncrasies and odd doings of the tenants like the suicidal schizophrenic lady and the spring creaking scene all served as a jolt to our senses. No doubt the elements in the movie were complex but the story in my opinion was no Inception. Either the plot of the movie really is that simple, or I have some serious revising on my critical thinking skills. This is not to say that simple is bad. Nay, in fact it was simplistically a splendid and enjoyable experience for a change as compared to regular traditional Hollywood made movies.

     The diverse characters in the movie along with the interesting post-apocalyptic setting in France made it quite a watch. To put it simply, I found it to be a bizarre, nonsensical yet intriguing piece of work. Certainly not the movie for a vegetarian however.