Top 25 Favourite Films: #16 Repo! The Genetic Opera (Dir. Darren Lynn Bousman, 2008)
#16.Repo! The Genetic Opera. Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman 2008
I'm not, it may surprise you, a great musicals fan. There are, of course, notable exceptions-the cult Rocky Horror Picture Show, Disney's Second Renaissance, La-La Land, and cinematic adaptions of various rock opera albums (yes, even Pink Floyd's The Wall), but most of the time, things like West Side Story, Oklahoma, etc are too much of a suspension of disbelief for my liking, overstuffed with songs in place of plot, not to mention the overblown sense that the vast majority of musical films, in their aping of Broadway's maximalist style, have. This is not to say i don't actually like musicals themselves in their natural environment, it's more that their translation into cinema is either little more than filmed performance, or too transformed, such as in Tom Hooper's positively baroque adaption of Les Miserables that simultaneously manages to be too under and overstated.
So what the hell is an industrial rock-styled musical about nightmarish future organ transplant and nightmarish debt-collection from the Repo Men of the title , itself an adaption of a small-run stage play, doing in my Top 25? After all, its budget is barely £5 million, its cast is a bunch of b-movie actors, Paris-freaking-Hilton and various industrial rock musicians, most of which were last relevant to the mainstream when Oscar-netting Trent Reznor was still in fishnets, directed by the guy who, of all things, did the first few Saw films and didn't even make box-office. To do that, we have to go back to the salad days of me at university. Enter what was called, simply, "Fucked Up Film Night", a film night put on by that geek trifecta of videogamers, wargamers and sci-fi fans, that put on everything from shlocky but enjoyable gorefest The Machine Girl to the honestly actually rather good, if utterly tongue in cheek Finnish epic, Iron Sky, in which Nazis return from the moon to attack America.
And so it was on one of these nights that I was first exposed-and like one of Repo!'s fictitious illnesses that blight humanity, infected is very much what it does-to this strange beautiful weird film. Telling the story of Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino), the head of GeneCo, the chief organisation in charge of the lucrative and exploitative organ transplant market, and his bickering family, violent Luigi (cult b-movie actor Bill Mosely), narcissistic Pavi (Nivek Ogre of Skinny Puppy), and Amber Sweet (a pitch perfect if utterly left-field Paris Hilton). As Rotti faces his own mortality, so the operatic narrative (and songs, given the impressive pipes on all four of these actors) intersects with one of GeneCo's chief Repo Men, Nathan Wallace (Anthony Head) and his daughter, Shilo (Alex Vega).
Without a doubt, this film belongs to Sorvino and Head-their shared backstory, in which a jealous Rotti eventually lead to the death of Wallace's wife, and the illness that afflicts Shilo, is as operatic as science-fiction ever gets, leading to a positive Grand Guiginol of a finale in which vengences are eked, scores are settled, and both men get, in essence, what they deserve. Wallace, without doubt, is a perfectly cast role, with Head able to swap between a soft croon, and use of his upper vocal register, as Nathan, and a rolling growl, not undisciminlar to German industrial band, Rammstein's Till Lindeman, as the Repo Man, a fearsome cowled figure that simply reclaims the organs on which debts are owing, in bloody fashion. This dualistic sense to Nathan is best seen in Thankless Job, which sounds like it's escaped from a Tom Waits album, as the Repo Man's surprising relish plays nicely against what we know of Nathan as a father so far.
It is certainly to Anthony Head's credit that we never quite lose Nathan in the darkness of his alterego, with several songs shared between Head and Vega a comparative softness compared to the rest of the industral-rock tinged soundtrack. Yet, it is on Tonight We Are Betrayed, coming just before the finale, that these two sides come together, with lines delivered in alternate vocal styles to great effect. At the end of the day, this is a protective parent, who, despite his job, wants the best for his daughter and to protect her from the harsh world that he stalks. Shilo, for her part, as a natural teenager, and perhaps the closest thing that this film has to a heroine, wants freedom, and through several songs, including the racuous Seventeen, in which Joan Jett rocks up on, for no reason other than, quite honestly, it's just awesome, puts that to her father, and eventually butts heads with him, this itself complicated by Rotti's machinations in turning daughter against father.
And then we have the Largos, and musical cinema has rarely had such a dysfunctional family that are this much fun, with two full songs given over to what, in essence, is high-class musical arguing and pointscoring, as the dynamic between Luigi, face-wearing Pavi, and drug-and-surgery-addicted Amber, whose relationship with Greek Chorus-ing Graverobber, (creator Terrance Zdunich, who moves through the action, stitching together the plot in the few moments when it's necessary, is essentially that of relucant drug-dealer and buyer, as he deals in the addictive substance, Zydrate. Certainly, in this adult-orientated part of the story, we begin to see the more obvious cyberpunk elements, the amoral world that the Largos rule over, and the impact of the Largos and GeneCo upon the poor and unfortunate.
Yet, if one thing makes me love this film, it is how nimbly it passes its 80 minutes in a mix of impressive (especially so, given its tiny budget) cyber and bio-punk visuals, including moments of plot and backstory that neatly slip into drawn comic book visuals, its tight, well cast group of characters who are all impressive vocalists and whose characters play off each other so effortlessly-we believe, for example, that the Largos, despite Mosely and Ogre being nearly double Hilton's age really are a family, despite their numberable flaws, and that their relationship with their patriach, for all its dysfunction, is genuine, not to mention that between Nathan and Shilo, despite their differences.
But most importantly, it rocks. Every single song, whether it be punk, music hall, industrial, electronic or, with Sarah Brightman as a doomed opera singer, full on "op'ra shit", with visual kei godfather, Yoshiki of Japanese metal band, X Japan at the helm on the music side giving every song a dynamism missing from the original stage versions of the songs. Nowhere is this epitomised better than in the beginning of third-act medley "At the Opera Tonight" not only brings practically the entire cast together on one song, but refreshes the audience of their motivations and characters, whilst going through opera, hard rock, industrial and, yes, musical, in a two and a bit minute showstopper. It's brilliantly, almost ruthlessly efficient. Practically every song is this good, telling its part of the story, dropping a couple of neatly hooky moments in, and then disappearing off to stage right as soon as the story needs to move on. This is practically the only musical soundtrack I own, and it's one I own proudly.
Whilst Repo may not have the cult status that its older spiritual brother, the equally weird, equally rocky and equally unashamedly transgressive and B-movie loving The Rocky Horror Picture Show has, it deserves it every bit as much. It's one of cinemas great scrappy underdogs, a beautiful, weird slice of cyberpunk musical cinema, where the creators and cast's love for the project is evident in every single second, and every single song-rarely do musical films give themselves over so completely, utterly, and unabashedly give themselves over to a concept, an aesthetic, as much as this, and Repo! The Genetic Opera is, to put it bluntly, in the best way possible, as these subcultures from which it takes influence from have always been, unashamed, defiant, triumphant.
I'm not, it may surprise you, a great musicals fan. There are, of course, notable exceptions-the cult Rocky Horror Picture Show, Disney's Second Renaissance, La-La Land, and cinematic adaptions of various rock opera albums (yes, even Pink Floyd's The Wall), but most of the time, things like West Side Story, Oklahoma, etc are too much of a suspension of disbelief for my liking, overstuffed with songs in place of plot, not to mention the overblown sense that the vast majority of musical films, in their aping of Broadway's maximalist style, have. This is not to say i don't actually like musicals themselves in their natural environment, it's more that their translation into cinema is either little more than filmed performance, or too transformed, such as in Tom Hooper's positively baroque adaption of Les Miserables that simultaneously manages to be too under and overstated.
So what the hell is an industrial rock-styled musical about nightmarish future organ transplant and nightmarish debt-collection from the Repo Men of the title , itself an adaption of a small-run stage play, doing in my Top 25? After all, its budget is barely £5 million, its cast is a bunch of b-movie actors, Paris-freaking-Hilton and various industrial rock musicians, most of which were last relevant to the mainstream when Oscar-netting Trent Reznor was still in fishnets, directed by the guy who, of all things, did the first few Saw films and didn't even make box-office. To do that, we have to go back to the salad days of me at university. Enter what was called, simply, "Fucked Up Film Night", a film night put on by that geek trifecta of videogamers, wargamers and sci-fi fans, that put on everything from shlocky but enjoyable gorefest The Machine Girl to the honestly actually rather good, if utterly tongue in cheek Finnish epic, Iron Sky, in which Nazis return from the moon to attack America.
And so it was on one of these nights that I was first exposed-and like one of Repo!'s fictitious illnesses that blight humanity, infected is very much what it does-to this strange beautiful weird film. Telling the story of Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino), the head of GeneCo, the chief organisation in charge of the lucrative and exploitative organ transplant market, and his bickering family, violent Luigi (cult b-movie actor Bill Mosely), narcissistic Pavi (Nivek Ogre of Skinny Puppy), and Amber Sweet (a pitch perfect if utterly left-field Paris Hilton). As Rotti faces his own mortality, so the operatic narrative (and songs, given the impressive pipes on all four of these actors) intersects with one of GeneCo's chief Repo Men, Nathan Wallace (Anthony Head) and his daughter, Shilo (Alex Vega).
Without a doubt, this film belongs to Sorvino and Head-their shared backstory, in which a jealous Rotti eventually lead to the death of Wallace's wife, and the illness that afflicts Shilo, is as operatic as science-fiction ever gets, leading to a positive Grand Guiginol of a finale in which vengences are eked, scores are settled, and both men get, in essence, what they deserve. Wallace, without doubt, is a perfectly cast role, with Head able to swap between a soft croon, and use of his upper vocal register, as Nathan, and a rolling growl, not undisciminlar to German industrial band, Rammstein's Till Lindeman, as the Repo Man, a fearsome cowled figure that simply reclaims the organs on which debts are owing, in bloody fashion. This dualistic sense to Nathan is best seen in Thankless Job, which sounds like it's escaped from a Tom Waits album, as the Repo Man's surprising relish plays nicely against what we know of Nathan as a father so far.
It is certainly to Anthony Head's credit that we never quite lose Nathan in the darkness of his alterego, with several songs shared between Head and Vega a comparative softness compared to the rest of the industral-rock tinged soundtrack. Yet, it is on Tonight We Are Betrayed, coming just before the finale, that these two sides come together, with lines delivered in alternate vocal styles to great effect. At the end of the day, this is a protective parent, who, despite his job, wants the best for his daughter and to protect her from the harsh world that he stalks. Shilo, for her part, as a natural teenager, and perhaps the closest thing that this film has to a heroine, wants freedom, and through several songs, including the racuous Seventeen, in which Joan Jett rocks up on, for no reason other than, quite honestly, it's just awesome, puts that to her father, and eventually butts heads with him, this itself complicated by Rotti's machinations in turning daughter against father.
And then we have the Largos, and musical cinema has rarely had such a dysfunctional family that are this much fun, with two full songs given over to what, in essence, is high-class musical arguing and pointscoring, as the dynamic between Luigi, face-wearing Pavi, and drug-and-surgery-addicted Amber, whose relationship with Greek Chorus-ing Graverobber, (creator Terrance Zdunich, who moves through the action, stitching together the plot in the few moments when it's necessary, is essentially that of relucant drug-dealer and buyer, as he deals in the addictive substance, Zydrate. Certainly, in this adult-orientated part of the story, we begin to see the more obvious cyberpunk elements, the amoral world that the Largos rule over, and the impact of the Largos and GeneCo upon the poor and unfortunate.
Yet, if one thing makes me love this film, it is how nimbly it passes its 80 minutes in a mix of impressive (especially so, given its tiny budget) cyber and bio-punk visuals, including moments of plot and backstory that neatly slip into drawn comic book visuals, its tight, well cast group of characters who are all impressive vocalists and whose characters play off each other so effortlessly-we believe, for example, that the Largos, despite Mosely and Ogre being nearly double Hilton's age really are a family, despite their numberable flaws, and that their relationship with their patriach, for all its dysfunction, is genuine, not to mention that between Nathan and Shilo, despite their differences.
But most importantly, it rocks. Every single song, whether it be punk, music hall, industrial, electronic or, with Sarah Brightman as a doomed opera singer, full on "op'ra shit", with visual kei godfather, Yoshiki of Japanese metal band, X Japan at the helm on the music side giving every song a dynamism missing from the original stage versions of the songs. Nowhere is this epitomised better than in the beginning of third-act medley "At the Opera Tonight" not only brings practically the entire cast together on one song, but refreshes the audience of their motivations and characters, whilst going through opera, hard rock, industrial and, yes, musical, in a two and a bit minute showstopper. It's brilliantly, almost ruthlessly efficient. Practically every song is this good, telling its part of the story, dropping a couple of neatly hooky moments in, and then disappearing off to stage right as soon as the story needs to move on. This is practically the only musical soundtrack I own, and it's one I own proudly.
Whilst Repo may not have the cult status that its older spiritual brother, the equally weird, equally rocky and equally unashamedly transgressive and B-movie loving The Rocky Horror Picture Show has, it deserves it every bit as much. It's one of cinemas great scrappy underdogs, a beautiful, weird slice of cyberpunk musical cinema, where the creators and cast's love for the project is evident in every single second, and every single song-rarely do musical films give themselves over so completely, utterly, and unabashedly give themselves over to a concept, an aesthetic, as much as this, and Repo! The Genetic Opera is, to put it bluntly, in the best way possible, as these subcultures from which it takes influence from have always been, unashamed, defiant, triumphant.
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