The Binary Images & Haunting Sounds of “Eat, for This is My Body”

Eat, for This Is My Body, Michelange Quay's binary heavy film acts more like a poem than a movie. There is no plot to speak of and we instead follow images and sounds that lead us on a journey of post-colonialism of the Haitian variety. The scenes aren't all disparate though, we see the same characters throughout the piece, and together they help to build a tension that is both erotic and filled with disgust. Those characters include an old woman or matriarch of an old estate (amazingly played by Catherine Samie), a young male servant, a younger woman called Madame and the troop of young black boys she instructs.

The feature film is a first for Quay, who was born in Queens and is a first generation Haitian. The film is filled with a cinematic language that strays from convention and instead offers up it's own rules of comprehension. The mishmash of images and auditory emphasis on sounds that are wet and bring the focus to the human aspect of things, seem fitting considering how the "story" came to be (according to Quay):

“Wow. Hard to say. In all honesty, the film kind of wrote itself. One day, the main incantatory monologue of the Old White Woman that starts, 'Eat, For This Is My Body', came to me, and from then on, images, and ideas sort of attracted themselves around this core, magnetically, without design, by 'feeling.' " [Michelange Quay in M&G]

The issues of the film are aided by the lack of convention though, as the history of Haiti itself isn't straightforward and traditional. Quay successfully puts a complicated history of hatred and sadness into context with his film:

“Tragedy is a strong word. Haiti is paying for having emerged the first decolonized nation and after the United States and France, the third successful revolutionary republic in history...achieved by black slaves. In that history there is triumph, pride...and isolation that have followed Haiti up until today, into its relationships with its neighbors, particularly the United States. Tragic, magnificent, painful national karma.” [M&G]

It because of this history and the unique language, that Eat, for This Is My Body should be seen by many and also won't be seen by many:

The unhappy question is whether there’s an audience for this kind of cinema: boldly non-narrative, preoccupied with dialectics (racial, historical, sexual), palpably angry, yet utterly sincere. It’s “difficult” filmmaking in the sense that it demands engagement and provides few answers (easy or otherwise), but is articulate enough that advocacy need not bleed over into special pleading. Simply put, Quay’s film is too vivid—too lucidly oblique—to be classified as one of those cinematic Rorschach tests that say more about the looker than anything else. There’s definitely something to see here. [Cinema Scope]

And there is something to see, something I quite enjoyed. Like all first first films it isn't perfect and could stand to lose 20 or minutes, but regardless it's more daring than anything in theaters today and deals with a subject matter that we could all stand to learn more about. The scene of the old woman lying in bed, slowly reciting a monologue that progresses from a quiet murmur to a full on poem of hatred isn't something I will forget soon. Likewise, watching the scene where the group of boys sit around a table that has a big cake on it and slowly start to taste the cake, enjoying it in moderation before they all start madly grabbing at the confection shows true talent on Quay's part - his metaphor of the "cake of humanitarianism" is one of the strongest images I've on screen in sometime.

The trailer : http://youtube.com/watch?v=flREy0YyFBA

originally posted @ takepart.com