I have in my Netflix queue a variety of movies I’m interested in seeing. I also have, seeded throughout it at intervals, a variety of stuff that I may have heard about once, so I toss it in offhandedly. (I love that place. I really hope they continue going strong.) And sometimes, they’re titles I threw in so long ago that I forgot why I put them in there the first time.
Enter Alphaville, which now marks one of the most pretentious pieces of craptacular cinema that I’ve ever seen. The story is allegedly science fiction. “Intergalactic” space spy Lemmy Caution comes to Alphaville to retrieve or kill a fellow who invented Alpha-60, the computer who runs the place. Caution crosses intergalactic space by driving on the highway…it’s surreal, you see. Or something. Alpha-60 is given to spouting random incoherent voiceovers; they all sound like someone’s slowly, deeply belching the lines. Caution does voiceovers, too, but at least he has a normal voice.
There’s a love story in there, or rather, that’s what the subtitles suggest is supposed to be there. If you could convert the strength of the chemistry between Caution and his love into heat, you could flash-freeze an entire bison to the point where the nitrogen in the air would liquefy around it.
Some parts were laugh-out-loud funny. They weren’t meant to be, I’m afraid. My favorite part was where Alpha-60 is belch-interrogating our hero, and informs him that in another age, his ideas would be called “sublime”. In the context of the film, and Cautions “ideas” as revealed, that’s far, far funnier than it looks here, trust me. A close second for comedy scenes was Caution getting roughed up in an elevator. They demonstrated this by tightly focusing the camera on the doors, the cops in question out of sight to both sides, and Caution slowly lurching back and forth between them in and out of frame.
Another high point: at one point, the love interest interests the arrest-in-progress by giving the slowest telling of a joke I think I’ve ever heard. The cops are standing there patiently, looking like they’d rather be hanging themselves. Notable not for humor, but because it was the first time I felt connected with any of the characters.
It’s one of those experiences I plan to inflict on unsuspecting friends and enemies–as long as I can avoid sharing it with them.