One Paragraph Movie Review: Man Bites Dog

Three hundred and forty-fifth film: Man Bites Dog, a 1992 mockumentary that makes us think we’re watching low-budget filmmakers following a serial killer around Belgium while he talks about his work, architecture, art, aesthetics, and pigeon biology. And kills people. We see many, many murders, and gradually the members of the film crew — those who don’t get accidentally shot — become complicit in the killings — they help carry and dispose of bodies, and in easily the most shocking scene, help the killer rape a later-mutilated victim. Super controversial when it came out (and now), at least up to the rape scene the movie is set as a droll, whimsical comedy, as we watch body after body being wrapped and rolled into a quarry, or the killer describing hiding a couple of dead Arabs in the fresh concrete of a construction site (“facing Mecca of course”) while lamenting the low quality of building materials. This is barely about a murderer but very much about how we as audience consume violence daily, making it commonplace and something a conversation about poetry can be had during. A genius premise that feels at times like it’s trying to sustain its nudge/wink to the audience through repeated, slightly different scenes, (the stand-out exception being when the film crew’s path crosses that of a second film crew shooting a documentary about another serial killer), it’s still something I’m going to think about for a long time. Yes? I guess? Three and three-quarter fake pairs of Brigitte Bardot’s underpants out of five.