In Which We Burn Down The House Just To Watch It Burn

Nothing's Shocking

by JESSE KLEIN

Ex-Drummer

dir. Koen Mortier

90 minutes

It’s getting pretty hard to find something that’s taboo. At this point, you have to remove Charlotte Gainsbourg’s clitoris, and even then… Well, most films have the requisite number of shots of  the upper-division of the female torso and, increasingly, the upper-division of the lower-division of both women and men. You don’t even have to watch a movie with subtitles anymore to see special parts, or, even, special parts touching. At this point, something needs to be removed for it to register as racy, or the special parts need to have originated from the same special part and then touch. Then Ex-Drummer was made.  

Ex-Drummer, a Belgian film directed by Koen Mortier and recently released in the US on DVD by Palisades Tartan, is post-taboo. It’s not immoral. It’s not amoral. It’s post-moral. There is no compass. No cause and effect. In some scenes, there’s not even gravity. It is as if Murphy’s Law and the Peter Principle were brothers, got married, and adopted.  

The premise: Three ‘handicapped’ Flemish guys (they’re not handicapped in the more traditional, actual sense of the word) need a drummer. One of their Moms (a Mom who is now bald after losing her hair instantly upon catching her teenage son masturbating, a son who is now instantly paralyzed in his right arm, the arm he was using to… well, that’s his handicap) recommends a famous writer. This writer cannot play the drums. Has never played the drums. This is his handicap. He agrees. They decide on ‘The Feminists’ as their band name because four handicap guys are "about as useful as a group of feminists." It’s onwards and upwards from there.  

The writer, Dries, agrees to join the band believing that these new relationships will inspire his writing. But Dries doesn’t write at any point in this film, at least not literally; he writes with the other characters, he creates the events that take place. He is God-like, though more like God’s confrere. Dries creates something from nothing, a band where there were four ‘handicapped' men, music where there was only noise, hatred from inertia; he shows us how easy it is to fall, how good it can feel. Dries (played by Dries Van Hegen) is smart, sexy, familiar yet totally foreign. We relate to Dries and then feel shame for having done so. 

The ‘handicapped’ band member with the paralyzed right arm, Jan, is the only character with a family. His family is Ma and Pa Verbeek, Ma the aforementioned bald matriarch, a foul-mouthed woman—well, really just foul in general — and Pa, a man confined to his bed where he lies in a straitjacket for undisclosed, though presumably legitimate reasons. In one scene, Jan sits next to his father on the bed, cleaning him as they chat, a moment that is civil, familial, almost tender. Before exiting, Jan leans down to his father, their noses touching and whispers, "Loser," and exits. This scene is typical of the film: no justification of character’s actions, no internal logic on why anyone does anything. In Ex-Drummer, people change their minds, do things devoid of logic, hurt each other, hurt themselves. For no reason. The traditional motivations and inherent logic that govern most characters, and people, are absent; instead lies randomness, meaninglessness, chaos.   

Yet somewhere amidst the violence and depravity is humor. The absurdity, the sheer impossible madness of it, forces us to laugh. In Samuel Beckett’s Watt, Arsene talks about the three laughs: ethical, intellectual and mirthless. The "bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good" is ethical. The "hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true" is intellectual. But the mirthless laugh "is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus (pure laugh), the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs . . . at that which is unhappy." There is no mirth to be found in this movie, and yet we laugh. Not at or with, but because of, or in spite of. Maybe it’s all three. We start to laugh because we know it’s not good. Then because we can’t believe it to be true. And then, finally, because we know it is. We laugh because we know a world this depraved could exist. Because we know it does.  

An example. There’s a character named Big Dick. When Dries asks if his name is due to literal or metaphoric endowment, he calls in his wife. Then, after the mandatory nuptial name-calling, they are in her vagina. Standing there. Admiring his handiwork. Then, they’re back at the table in his trailer as if he and Dries had just taken a tour of the place. We laugh (or I laughed) at such a moment because what other reaction is appropriate? Such absurdity can only be met with laughter, a timid laugh, like when you’re reading an inappropriate book on the subway, but a laugh all the same.  

The other two band members, Koen (handicap: bad lisp) and Ivan (deaf), complete The Feminists. Koen, the lead singer, is nihilism incarnate; he "specializes" in assault and is aroused by Ma Verbeek, the obese woman twenty years his senior — he later tells her she has a "sexy stomach" in an attempt to woo her (read: he says this while taking her clothes off while she fervently resists). He’s also the one who lives upside down. Koen lives to destroy; he does not differentiate between people, property, friendships, or himself. They’re just things he can break, can enjoy breaking, can move on to new things to break after having broken them. It’s Ivan, the bassist, who has a smack of compassion; he is the only thing the audience can recognize as human. He’s married, though his wife and he engage in little more than abuse of various sorts (verbal, physical, drug et al).

Due to blind neglect, their daughter dies, echoing the death in Trainspotting of Sick Boy’s daughter. But in Ex-Drummer though characters suffer, feel pain, they don’t change. This extreme and absolute misery is par for the course; they accept it as if they knew it would happen all along, as if it’s supposed to. 

Ex-Drummer is compared to Trainspotting though the similarities are skin-deep; like saying two paintings are alike because they both have apples in them. Trainspotting is slick, often quite funny, but does not disturb, or resonate, to the same extent. In Trainspotting, people do despicable, deplorable things because they are addicted to drugs, because they feel they have no choice. In Ex-Drummer, people do bad things because they can. Because it’s better than not doing them. At the end of Danny Boyle’s film, we see Darwin triumph with a knowing smile on Ewan McGregor’s face. Ex-Drummer concludes with what can only be called a complete demolition, an apocalypse. Dries aside, no one gets out in one piece, Big Dick included. With seductive music as accompaniment, we see these people destroy each other, then, once dead, reflect on the vapidity of their lives with a cool, detached tone. It leaves its few surviving characters in their original state, a world of fear and stupidity. 

Reviewers and audiences have called Koen Mortier’s film morally repugnant— Variety labeling it "a new low in post-modern smug superiority", Slant claiming it is "just another unpleasant picture with awful people doing awful things to one another, in the service of empty shock" — but this rejection only underlines the film’s resonance. The film unsettles, because it works, because it’s good. It’s often hilarious, at times heartbreaking, and together seldom beautiful. It shows how beautiful destruction can be. And that’s what makes it scary. Ex-Drummer killed taboo. That’s why it’s worth watching. 

Jesse Klein is a contributor to This Recording. This is his first appearance in these pages. He recently completed his first film, Shadowboxing.

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