We Are What We Are (2013) is an intelligent,
compelling, atmospheric, and likely controversial horror film.
Director Jim Mickle -- who made the extraordinary Stake
Land (2010) -- suffuses his latest film with an elegiac feel, and the
visuals are all muted and subdued.
In terms of its color canvas, We Are What We Are appears faded or washed
out, and that’s an appropriate look given that the film concerns a landscape
constantly besieged by flooding. Every
image looks like it is in danger of being washed away, and that’s a pretty good
metaphor for human life itself.
In terms of theme, We Are What We Are serves, primarily,
as an indictment of religion. On those grounds it may offend some viewers.
Specifically, the movie gazes at the way that religious belief can
be utilized to justify almost any behavior, and also make draconian demands on
its practitioners that, in this day and age, are not strictly necessary.
The central family in We Are What We Are, in particular,
celebrates a “tradition” called Lamb’s Day that has been practiced, without
deviation, without thought, and without question since 1741.
Once upon a time -- and
under a very specific set of circumstances -- the practicing of this
tradition made sense, and was even necessary for survival.
In the present, however, the (brutal and monstrous…) practice of
Lamb’s Day reveals the inertia and lassitude that dogmatic belief systems often
rely upon.
In other words, acts are undertaken by adherents simply because
they have always been undertaken, not
because they are morally right, spiritually valuable, or even functional.
Tradition, then, substitutes for individual morality and
responsibility in a very negative fashion.
At the same time that We Are What We Are exposes some
aspects of religious belief as bankrupt, it serves simultaneously as a weird
coming-of-age story.
Responsibility for Lamb’s Day preparations falls on a teenage
girl, Rose (Julie Garner) who wants nothing to do with it, but feels pressure
to conform to established practices.
Notably, the patriarch of the family does not sully his hands with
this particular tradition, and so the film also involves (and derides) the
patriarchal aspects of some religious practice. At the end of the film, the
father finally evidences some sense of his own corruption, noting that Rose was
once a “good girl” and that “it was me that made her bad.”
If you parse that too-little-too-late statement a bit, what the patriarch,
Mr. Parker expresses, primarily, is his vanity; his arrogant belief that he
knew what God wanted and that – miraculously -- God’s wants dovetailed precisely with his own.
A slow-build, slow-burn kind of horror film, but one that is
punctuated by a gruesome and visceral pay-off, We Are What We Are makes
its intellectual arguments with real verve and total commitment.
Even if you disagree with this horror film’s conclusions about
elements of religion and religious tradition, you can admire We
Are What We Are for its coherence, consistency, and finally, the film’s
humanity.
“It’s the first day of abstinence.”
In a small rural town where flooding is an on-going concern, the
Parker family struggles to make its way in the world.
On a routine trip to the general store, however, the matriarch of
the family, Alyce (Rush) dies unexpectedly, and her two daughters, Iris (Ambyr
Childers) and Rose (Julia Garner) are asked by the local coroner, Doc Barrow
(Michael Parks) to identify her corpse. They do so, and begin a period of
mourning.
Iris and Rose’s father, Frank (Bill Sage), meanwhile, is suffering
from tremors of unknown origin, and demands that -- in her mother’s absence -- Rose accept responsibility for the
Parker tradition of “Lamb’s Day.”
This feast is celebrated once every year, after a spell of fasting
(or what the family calls “abstinence.”)
At the same time, a high-school girl, Valerie Kimball, disappears
without a trace.
Back at the Parker house, Rose is reluctant to adopt her mother’s holiday
chore, as it involves a “monster” in the basement, but she undertakes her task with
seriousness and purpose, even though she knows it is wrong. Rose reads from the
Parker family’s diary -- going back to 1741 -- to gather her strength.
Soon, Doc Barrow discovers bones near a river that crosses Parker’s
property. He suspects they are human bones, and their discovery re-awakens his
own sense of loss.
Some time ago, Barrow’s daughter also disappeared without a trace.
Barrow begins to believe that his child’s disappearance has
something to do with the Parkers, who seem very strange and unfriendly.
Doc Barrow attempts to confirm his suspicion, but finds the Parkers
celebrating their Lambs Day meal…
“God chose us to be this way.”
As you’ve probably figured out if you’ve read this far, Lamb’s Day
in
We Are What We involves cannibalism, and more.
This holiday involves the process of killing, skinning, and then
preparing for the consumption of living human beings. We learn the origin of
the Parkers’ cannibalism from the family journal.
Back in 1741, the Parkers were settlers in wild, untamed territory
when they ran out of food. The days and weeks went by, and desperation
increased exponentially. Even as the family starved, the patriarch knew that
his children had not yet seen “the whole
of nature’s cruelty.” He couldn’t let them die.
As a last resort, the father and one another man went on a trip in
search of supplies. The father returned to the family sometime later with a
surplus of food…but without his
traveling companion.
You can guess the rest.
The patriarch had killed his fellow-traveler for the “fresh meat.” But perhaps more
importantly, the patriarch excused his own murderous behavior, believing that “all is forgiven in the eyes of the Lord,”
and that he and his family had been chosen by God “to be this way.”
In other words, the Parker Patriarch cloaked his moral trespass in
holy robes, and turned that very trespass into the basis of a new form of
worship or religion.
The violent act of murder was repeated (so as to canonize it,
essentially and to spread the culpability for it to others as well…), and a
liturgy was written to make murder and cannibalism sacrosanct.
“It is with love that I do
this. God’s will be done.”
Rinse and repeat. It makes the stabbing go over easier…
Lamb’s Day, however, transforms the Parkers into predators. They seek
prey whom they can eat, and don’t treat that prey as fully human, just as in
some religions, the unfaithful are considered less important, less righteous,
and even less human.
The outsiders don’t “have” the true faith, and therefore will not
be saved in the afterlife.
We see precisely the outcome of that kind of thinking in one
stunning montage in We Are What We Are.
Specifically, Rose prepares a girl’s corpse for consumption. She
cleans the body so it will be suitable as food. The images of her giving this
corpse a bath, however, are inter-cut with images of solitary Doc Barrow at
home, bathing his dog.
What’s missing from this
picture?
The comfort of his family, the comfort his (dead) daughter might
provide.
Why is it acceptable (and indeed righteous) that the Parkers took
Barrow’s family away from him, and left him to this damnation of not-knowing
her fate. The cross-cutting montage reveals
that for every Lamb’s Day valediction, there is also a human victim, and a
victim’s family.
In the case of the Parkers’ religion is the thing that permits them
to commit murder and still believe themselves righteous, and God’s chosen. To the very end, Mr. Parker insists this is
so. He would rather die with his
tradition intact than live life without it.
“We have kept our tradition and
its purity,” he notes – whitewashing generations of murder – “and seek our reward in Heaven.”
One can make all kinds of rationalizations or arguments about what
occurred in 1741. If I had been there, faced with the same situation, I might
have done the same thing to save my wife and son. But today, such a crime is archaic and
unnecessary, and the practice of it is not just barbaric, but
self-indulgent. It is done by the
Parkers because a “legend” has grown up suggesting that it is right to do
it.
And it is often easier to believe a legend than to determine your
own new truth.
We Are What We Are’s conclusion offers both a victory and a loss for Mr. Parker. He
teaches his girls too well, ironically, about the demands of his religion, and
let’s just state that their application of Lambs Day protocol is…vigorously
righteous.
The film also says much about sex roles in religion. Mr. Parker
and his ancestors came up with the whole Lambs Day practice, but then they
immediately handed it off to their women to execute the specifics (and the
victims). It is the women who kill, the
women who clean, and the women who cook. The men keep their hands clean.
“Your mom would be proud,”
Mr. Parker tells Rose, suggesting to his daughter that she has fulfilled her
destiny and stepped into her mother’s shoes. If he showers her with enough paternal
praise, she will believe that this is what she is supposed to do, that this is
who she is supposed to be.
But, of course, what Mr. Parker has actually done is introduced
his own child to murder for no good reason.
The flooding in the film -- which
truly reaches Biblical proportions -- is an interesting thing. Given the
film’s religious context, it might be interpreted as God’s punishment. The
disease that the Parkers’ suffer from, though scientific in basis, might also be
interpreted as a “punishment,” from a certain perspective, for their
immorality.
But we ought to be careful about going that far.
We Are What We Are makes no direct
implication of God’s anger, perhaps because the movie understands that if we
take that leap, we are every bit as bad as Mr. Parker is. We would be assuming
that God follows our opinion and idea of morality, and not his or her own. We
would be substituting our wisdom for God’s, and that is the very thing that led
the Parkers to commit murder and become cannibals.
One thing is for certain: this film gives the audience a lot to
think about, even if the final moments might justify as, literally, overkill.
Some aspects of We Are What We Are also feel a bit
warmed-over, it is true. The prion disease and the linkages it creates,
forensically-speaking, come right out of a classic episode X-Files episode called “Our
Town.”
But the performances are nonetheless very good, and the porcelain,
delicate Julie Garner is downright haunting.
Even the title, “We Are What We Are” expresses perfectly
the film’s arguments about the inertia of some religious beliefs, and the
intellectual laziness of some believers.
It doesn’t matter if what you believe is wrong, because you are what you are, and you’re just
going to continue believing it. No matter
what.
But down that path of mindless, rote repetition and dogmatic,
unthinking tradition lies madness, says We Are What We Are, not salvation.
That's funny, I actually just reviewed the original, Somos lo que hay by Jorge Michel Brau, on my blog! I'll be watching this one this weekend so that I can review and compare the two. This one does seem drastically different based on what you've written, however I skimmed large parts due to spoilers. It got rave reviews on the festival circuit, so I've been excited to view it for some time.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to check it out though, thanks for the review.
Hi RG: I have not seen the original film, yet, but I understand they are quite different. I will check out your review!
DeleteThis is a killer horror movie and one of the best movies I've seen in a while.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed seeing another great performance by Julia Garner, whom I enjoyed seeing in another excellent film, Electrick Children.
Hi Troy,
DeleteI agree that the film is quite good...and quite disturbing. The end was freaking and upsetting, for sure, and said something about the cycle of violence being connected to the cycle of tradition/religious worship. Yikes!