By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Karl-Joosep Ilves, Laura Niils and Janno Puusepp
Written and directed by Sander Maran
Mariani Bros.
Really, you’ll probably know just from looking at the photo above whether you want to see CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING. This Estonian production is a gloriously excessive and thoroughly incorrect ode to blood and gore and inappropriate behavior, with musical numbers too.
Writer/director Sander Maran introduced the raucously received international premiere screening at Montreal’s Fantasia festival (where it screens again on Friday) by calling his movie “too violent…too naughty…definitely too musical,” and it’s definitely a little too much of everything. The 118-minute running time could probably be trimmed by about 20 or so, and one sequence, with our heroes encountering a very unusual tribe in the woods, could be lost with no effect on the overall impact. Yet Maran, working from a story he whipped up with star Karl-Joosep Ilves, sustains the energy and humor remarkably well. And as Peter Jackson (whose early films were a clear inspiration) demonstrated in DEAD ALIVE, Maran knows that a way-over-the-top splatterfest works best when it’s grounded in a love story.
Ilves plays Tom, a young shlub whose life is not going well, to the point where he’s decided to end it all. Just as he’s about to drown himself in a river (which is about half a foot deep), he spies the beautiful Maria (Laura Niils) figuratively drowning her sorrows nearby. The two are quickly frolicking through the countryside together, until their romance is rudely interrupted by a “fuckface with a chainsaw” (Martin Ruus) who lays Tom low and abducts Maria into his chain-festooned van. Determined to rescue her, Tom teams up with a passing goofball motorist named Jaan (Janno Puusepp), but there will be plenty of obstacles on the way to the couple’s reunion, not the least of which is Tom and Jaan’s ineptitude at heroics.
The outrageous splatstick tone is set early on, and within the first half hour, there’s a scene wringing laughs out of random shooting victims that will have any sensitive viewers heading for the exits. The final “victim” is pretty hilarious, however, and the movie’s violence in general is so exaggerated that it’s hard to take too much offense. In this particular massacre, the use of obvious digital blood effects adds a welcome element of unreality, though most of the carnage in CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING was done practically, and gore effects creator Jan Andresson was definitely kept busy. If there’s any way to destroy the human body or parts thereof that Maran and co. didn’t capture somewhere in this film, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
It’s not all about the splatstick, though. Silly wordplay, sight gags (including a great one at a gas station that I can’t believe no one’s done in a slasher comedy before), clever visual tricks and, of course, the songs are part of the engine driving CHAINSAWS, all put across with a consistent rude vigor. With the English subtitles evidently doing a good job of replicating the meaning of the Estonian lyrics while maintaining a rhyme scheme, the musical passages amusingly spoof that genre’s standards while giving the principals a chance to express themselves. The aforementioned “fuckface,” whose given name seems to be Killer, even gets a chance to bare his soul in song and kinda engender a bit of sympathy. Certainly, he doesn’t seem quiiiiite so bad when compared to the rest of his cabin-in-the-woods-dwelling family, especially his monster of a mother (Rita Rätsepp). The introduction throughout the film of new characters–adult, infant and animal–also helps keep things percolating.
Colorfully shot in widescreen by Darn Arseman (anagrams, anyone?) and Sven-Erik Mändmaa, with rat-a-tat editing by Sandra M. Naer (what was I saying about anagrams?), CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING has a style that, in addition to Jackson, suggests TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE meets EL MARIACHI. And like all the aforementioned past flicks, it’s the clear product of an unbridled ambition to go for broke, and not let budget or any other restrictions get in the way. This was an especially long-aborning project, shot in 2013 and assembled over an extended postproduction period–and perhaps under those circumstances, Maran felt he just couldn’t part with any of his material. In the end, it may not be sporting to quibble about overlength anyway, in a movie where excess is very much the point.
