Obscure Movie Worth Investigating: THE BOTHERSOME MAN (2006)

A man arrives via bus at a desert outpost where he is then chauffeured to a gray and charmless city where he is provided a boring home, a boring office with a boring job, and even some money to get started. It’s all very civilized. But there seems to be something wrong with the people. Sex is mechanical and utterly without passion or pleasure. Food is tasteless, drink without affect. Every conversation he encounters is mind-bogglingly vacuous and repetitive. He witnesses bloody suicides that nobody seems to care at all about, not even the victims, who show up alive and uninjured. At one moment, he suffers an intense injury, which goes away in ridiculously short order. It is clear that if he stays, he will be here forever, where all sensual or emotional satisfaction is denied him.

Now, internal evidence will easily lead you to the conclusion, very early on, that he is in Hell. It is no spoiler to reveal that the existence of a better place, and his quest to get there, is an important part of the story, but I can tell you right now that nobody ever comes out and explains that in concrete terms, as they would in an American film; here, it is so obvious a point that the movie trusts you to put two and two together, without making it a “twist.” (Indeed, our hero has almost no dialogue where he expresses his dissatisfaction, or tells us what he’s thinking; again, it’s there to be inferred by any halfway intelligent moviegoer.)

I can tell you that if you get into the movie’s rhythms, the relentless, horrific banality he encounters acquires a steadily increasing comic impact. It’s funny as hell. And what happens when our hero rebels has a beauty that is half-wonderful, half-terrible. One of the great sense of wonder visuals I have seen in fantasy films in some time, and not one superhero in it.

I haven’t even mentioned the couple necking on the subway platform. Who are…well…disturbing.