A Review of If It Bleeds

     If It Bleeds, by Isabelle Pauwels, was a movie that metaphorically demonstrated, in a convoluted and satirical way, the corruption that favors showmanship in MMA. It also showed behaviors, roles or moments that are characteristic inside the sport. The artists style, in general and in the film, was an attempt to deviate from traditional narratives that rely on causality and linearity in the story line.

     In the film, the use of popular culture references made MMA seem more relatable. This is conceptually difficult to film, as MMA lives in a niche world of fighting. Artistic elements in character, props, and filming, could be summarized as being semantically indirect, vibrant, characteristic, motionful, multifaceted, and scrappy.

     The art revolved around a complex, but choppy, narrative and a very cheap budget; props were used to fill in for characters, which was an interesting change from traditional film. I thought it was intelligent of the director to use props instead of people for characters, as it made it easier to focus less about the complexity of the character, and more on the exchange of dialogue.

     Cheap materials used for effects were styrofoam, paint, hats, pom poms, cardboard, paper, a dollar bill, among other things, all of which have many different representational forms when experienced on a day to day basis. I liked, for example, that a beer can did more than sit still when it was used to represent a character; The beer can was compressed when representing a hangover, and was rolled when representing a character being drunk or surprised.

     Form and motion were used with the inanimate objects to convey many sorts of subliminal messages. In one scene, the activity of dotting of black on yellow styrofoam gave an impression of danger. The tightness of a circular borders around a person as overlapping film, gave the impression that the character was under the spotlight and was being scrutinized by people. Careful use of transitions, and auditory spatialization were used to better express dialogue and scene relationships. For example, it was clever that there was an audio recording of soda and tapping markers in one transition, as it hinted that there was a fighting scene occurring in the background in a less menacing way than by showing a normal fighting scene.

     The childish moments resemble improv, and like improv, the film added aleatoric effects that made it become more original, which I enjoyed. The intensity of satire, and choppy nature of the narrative, meant to connect seemingly unrelated dialogue or topics. The lack of obvious connection between parts led me to think meta-conceptually about why seemingly random moments or items were strung to impose an effect. At the end of the film, many elements of reference or symbolism were described in the credits, which I thought was a great addition to clear any difficulty understanding representation and scenes in the film, because of the complexity of the narrative.