NATURAL BORN KILLERS
A film review by John Walker
Copyright 1995 John Walker
My form of "rating": After watching NATURAL BORN KILLERS, I felt sort
of soiled; I wasn't sure what I'd been in contact with, but I was
upset that it was contaminating the world. Was that because
NATURAL BORN KILLERS brought me in contact with the spirit of the
"real" America? Or was it because NATURAL BORN KILLERS brought me
in contact with the mind of its director/co-writer Oliver Stone?
I leave that up to you to decide.
[A version of this review previously appeared in the December 1994
issue of The Curmudgeon (4505 University Way, N.E., Box 555,
Seattle WA 98105).]
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The story opens with Mickey and Mallory Knox (Woody Harrelson and
Juliette Lewis) at a roadside bar out in the great American desert
someplace. Mallory puts a record on the jukebox and starts dancing
(well, writhing) to it. A yokel joins in, and gets fresh. So Mallory
starts beating him senseless as a prelude to killing him; she and
Mickey kill everyone in and around the bar, leaving only one alive to
tell the tale--and make sure their names are known. Nice kids, huh?
We then learn a little about them. Mallory is the daughter of a
sleazo (Rodney Dangerfield) who used her for sex since who knows when.
Mickey apparently also has a history of molestation. But the big thing
is that they love each other and kill everyone they meet.
So, of course, they're big in the media, particularly with
"American Maniacs"--a tabloid TV show hosted by Wayne Gale (Robert
Downey, Jr.). And they have zillions of fans world-wide. As one
observes, no one wants to endorse mass murder--but if that's what you
*are*, then you'd certainly want to be Mickey and Mallory.
When they're eventually captured, the media circus heats up even
more. And after they're convicted, Gale will bring his show right to
the prison to interview them.
<>
Well, what are we to make of this?
I usually like to think in terms of the story, the characters, the
acting--who does what, when, and so forth, how much I liked this
character or that. But NATURAL BORN KILLERS is one flick that
practically screams that those things are trivial. The *story* is
subordinate to the *film*, and so is everything else.
Take where we learn about about Mallory's Happy Home Life. We get
it presented as a TV sitcom, with its own opening title, background
music, and laff track! We get a family presided over by a real sicko
with an ineffectual wife (Edie McClurg), and the characters skate a
line between what might happen in reality and how it might be presented
by a sitcom as sick as Mallory's pop.
And that, brothers and sisters, is a relatively *realistic*
element of NATURAL BORN KILLERS! Throughout, we get every film-school
trick imaginable, every possible dredging of symbolism. When Mickey
and Mallory are in a motel room, say, there'll be rear-projection
images showing film clips from World War II, from Westerns, from
perhaps Mickey's childhood, from sitcoms. Periodically during the
film, a character will flash on the screen drenched in blood, or
banners will be projected onto the characters, labeling them demons or
whatnot.
The film will switch from color to grainy video black and white,
to shots at any angle that strikes the director's fancy. When we see
the TV news following Mickey and Mallory's travels, it may be sort of
documentary style. Or it may be inserted into a 50s advertizement of a
family dressed up, surrounding the TV--all black and white except for
the news story on the little screen in color.
Uh, have I said "surreal" yet?
NATURAL BORN KILLERS is a film that insists, that screams, that
"*Every* frame is *filled* with *meaning*! (You have to say that right
-- intensely, showing your commitment, your *sensitivity*--dwell on
each word: "*filled* with *meaning*". Practice it.)
OK. So what's the meaning? That people who grow up watching
"Leave It to Beaver" are going (if male) to rape their kids? Or (if
female) to do nothing while hubby does so?
OK, so let's ignore the surreal stuff for a moment. How's about
"satire"?
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OK, I guess I can call it satire. We're assured by the press kit,
and a sermonette from Stone, that this is a "satire on violence and the
American media".
But how good a satire?
Mickey and Mallory are clearly presented as creeps, but at least
we get some idea why. Other than them (with one quasi-exception),
there is no one (repeat: no one) for whom the film gives us any
substantial reason to be sympathetic. The people killed on screen are
all either: 1) ciphers, complete unknowns, just momentary faces; 2)
dorks and yokels; or 3) creeps and sickos of various varieties.
The one quasi-exception is an Indian (Russell Means). He may be a
sympathetic character, but he's hardly part of the ordinary world. He
speaks no English, has visions, and rattlesnakes don't bite him. (He
has a grandson, who also speaks no English, to ask him questions, so
that the subtitled conversation can fill us in on mystical details.)
Means projects a nice, stable, laid-back character--but one who is
clearly meant not to be part of 1990s America.
America is the hordes yearning for Mickey and Mallory to off more
nobodies.
(Ollie Stone's not anti-American, though. The whole *world* joins
in the fascination--particularly those silly, air-headed Japanese.)
Lined up against Mickey and Mallory, the forces of Law and Order
are not exactly Marshall Dillon. Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore), who's
tracking them, is a self-promoting hack. He has, let's say, a certain
desire to dominate women. Warden Dwight McCluskey (Tommy Lee Jones)
must go to the same hair stylist that does Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.
(McCluskey might not be realistic enough for that flick, however.)
Well, if this is satire, it's about the level one would expect
from a high-school or freshman writing class. Except that high-school
kids might actually have fun making everyone look like total jerks.
Oliver Stone does not appear to be having fun. This is serious
business. The promos make it all too clear that NATURAL BORN KILLERS
is a Statement, a Warning to America.
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All right, let's give Stone his Statement. He has obviously
absorbed pop culture, and turned it on its head. Time after time,
Mickey and Mallory are in situations much like those in teen flicks and
sitcoms. But in those flicks, the hero or heroine might sock or slap
somebody, or just throw back a snappy one-liner. In NATURAL BORN
KILLERS, they kill somebody. But because of our complete lack of
identification with the victims, the killings are "distant"--without
any impact except as devices to move the action along.
So, it certainly looks like Stone wants us to enjoy this on a
superficial level. Then, presumably, when we look back, we'll see that
we, too, have been sucked into the whole pop culture of death and
slaughter. And we'll repent.
Doesn't this sound vaguely familiar?
Particularly on film, wasn't a lot of soft-core porno written and
marketed this way? Filled with "oh the shame" and "warnings to youth"?
I think that NATURAL BORN KILLERS has been misrepresented as a
satire of the media. As I said, *everybody* in the film is a creep;
the media types are merely *celebrity* creeps--just like Mickey and
Mallory.
But it would be fun to analyze NATURAL BORN KILLERS as a critique
of the media, since the film is so self-referential. The old soft-core
marketing schtick is merely one aspect to look at. Don't the
tabloid-TV types tell us how opposed they are to what they're hyping?
I think it would be interesting to examine NATURAL BORN KILLERS to see
to what extent it can be criticized as being what Stone claims to
satirize and condemn.
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Unfortunately, though, after reading Stone my thoughts turned to
something darker than the usual media incompetence and
self-righteousness.
Throughout NATURAL BORN KILLERS, one explanation of Mickey and
Mallory is "fate". We are bombarded with the past as backdrop to the
present. Mickey himself states it expressly: He and Mallory are just
Natural Born Killers. Their unremitting violence is fated. Virtually
all those who were killed surely had something dark enough in their
past that they deserved to be butchered.
Maybe Stone is just giving Mickey some slimy self-justification.
But those ideas are almost nowhere contradicted and sometimes
explicitly affirmed by the film. To the extent the film offers us an
out, it is that "Love beats the demon". Stone himself cites this line,
saying that "I do believe there is love at the end."
Is love the final redemption, then?
*But what about the killings?* For at least a hundred years,
certain voices have announced a fascination with violence--that
violence alone can cleanse us of the things that drag us down. That
humanity can rise above its grubby little present only by passing
through a river of blood, a wall of fire. Those who kill--joyously
and without restraint--will rise purer and stronger than any before
them. They will be triumphant--purged, redeemed, the truly innocent
and free, truly capable of love and exultation.
Stone, immediately after citing the "love beats the demon" line,
closes his sermon with:
"Without giving away our ending, I find it ironic that it is
Mickey and Mallory who are the ones to escape the Great Yawn.
But you make up your own mind."
If you see NATURAL BORN KILLERS, I suggest you do just that.
John Walker
walkerj@access.digex.net
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