Flesh (2005) User Reviews

The Naked Women Limit this Short's Potential

[haley-jeffrey · 2/10 · 30 January 2006]

This short film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. The Director didn't bother to come to the screening, we understood once the film began just why a director would avoid his audience entirely. The film is pornographic. Flesh raises some great questions and I think opens a good dialog. The standard rhetoric of liberals that 9/11 happened because we abused World economic relationships, and of Concervatives that "they hate our success" is not what this film is about.

I believe the filmmaker suggests that the conflict that Muslim Fundamentalists have with Western culture is that we treat and portray women in a sexually objective manner that reduces them to lesbian porno fantasies. I think this idea is a powerful one that should be discussed, we might change some of the great societal problems that independent filmmakers claim to exist to combat.

Unfortunately the sexual content of this movie becomes offensive within the first 10 seconds of the film. It is stylistically well done, but it wreaks of a great idea implemented so poorly that no one will ever see or hear about it.

I wish that we could open a dialog about the sexual objectification of women in western culture without being dismissed as Neo-Feminists, this film tried to open a dialog but foolishly fell victim to its own distasteful sexual imagery.

This film was the best edited, most well intended, complete piece of crap I saw at Sundance.

Too explicit

[Eric_Sjoeberg · 2/10 · 23 November 2005]

I saw this movie at Stockholm filmfestival before Kiss kiss bang bang. The director of the short film was there and he really seemed quite nervous that his film wouldn't get well received. A fear which was legitimate.

This is really not a good short film. The filmmakers are trying to make a statement which we really all know and to do this statement they use explicit photo of naked girls touching themselves and each other, projected on buildings in a fictitious New York city. It is all too obvious what they are trying to say and they could have done it in a much more subtle way. The reason it doesn't get 1/10 is that the animation actually is quite good.

terrible

[Kirpianuscus · 29 November 2021]

A noble idea served by pure pornography. A violent one , making entire project awful. For me, the first minutes are just disgusting . Because it is only a mix of teen erotic fantaisies , in grotesque way, proposing, in fact , nothing, using 9/11 as pretext. Sure, the basic purpose was to propose a manifesto against consumerism. But the result is just poor. And terrible .

In exceptionally poor taste

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 16 November 2008]

"The Empire unveils everything but sees nothing. Its enemies idealize everything but tolerate nothing. For some the earthly orgasm of virtual whores. For others the eternal orgasm of seventy virgins. What if it all came down to flesh?" This is the prologue to this movie and if you find this statement confusing and apparently pointless, then welcome to the club.

I am a very firm believer in the First Amendment and feel that everyone has a right to say what they want. However, I still have to strongly question the thinking of the people who made this film. Was their intent just to be gross and highly inappropriate?! If so, then they succeeded! The film begins with New York City and across all the buildings are projected nude women--many engaging in sex with each other. Then, unexpectedly, airliners replicate the 9/11 attacks and buildings start to tumble and instead of flames, the buildings start to appear to bleed. Then all over the city, the same thing occurs again and again. This combining of pornography with violence with an apparent indifference to the suffering of the victims of the attack is incredible and the only message I seemed to get from all this is that the film makers, I assume, hate America and laugh at the deaths on 9/11.

Heck, it would have been cheaper but just as effective to show someone urinating on an American flag or raping a cartoon version of George W. Bush--I am not sure why they went to all the trouble of making such an elaborate film. Sometimes "artistic license" is just an excuse to spread hate. If there IS some deeper and less vile meaning behind this film, I would sure like to know what it was!

Fleshy thoughts

[sandy-hunter-1 · 9/10 · 6 February 2006]

Flesh was made to be as controversial as possible and seemingly it has succeeded. Everywhere it has been shown it has sparked great divides between those blown away by the visual depth of the piece (not to mention its obvious audacity) and those unable to stomach the 9-11 imagery mixed with the porno assault. Does the film succeed in achieving it's directors goal of showing the dichotomy between the freedom of speech that allows Americans (and other westerners) to consume so much pornography and a religion that promises heavenly poontang to martyrs? I am not sure, but rather than another tired calling card short film, this is a complete package and vision that is executed in flawless fashion - not being able to swallow the content is one thing, but the talent involved in constructing this next level work of digital art should not be dismissed.