Martyrs
And The Coming Understaffing Of Prisons
Anyone remember that “New French Extremity” period? In the mid-00’s, some gnarly horror movies and filmmakers were coming out of France. Supposedly this was in response to issues of class and race, particularly in how France had let in a considerable population of displaced Muslims. There has to be more to it than that, however, to give audiences the likes of “Frontier(s)”, “High Tension” and “Les Revants”, not to mention my personal favorite, Claire Denis’ “Trouble Every Day”.
The most notorious of these films, however, was the intensely upsetting “Martyrs”. This unconventional shocker had the benefit of sneaking up on the audience, beginning as a story about an escape, then a story about revenge, and finally a story about unrelenting abuse. No three-acts structures here – this was as dark and as sinister as movies could get. “Martyrs” builds to the bleakest close to a horror film, an existential shocker that leaves both the “good guys” and “bad guys” with a profound, gawping loss.
“Martyrs” is unflinchingly violent and graphic, so of course an American remake opted for a more subtle, restrained take. Huh? Gonna lay this one at the feet of screenwriter Mark L. Smith, a decorated scribe who was credited in 2015 for writing this and also adapting “The Revenant”. I do want to mention this because I saw “The Revenant” plenty of times in prison, and I also wrote the book. And while the real life history behind the book is questionable, I recall it has a much more thoughtful ending that leaned on Hugh Glass’ capacity for forgiveness and sense of justice. Smith, likely spurred on by studio executives sinking $150 million into the budget of that movie, instead closed on a resolution of vengeance, turning the tale of Hugh Glass into an intense modern day Charles Bronson movie. Guessing the Oscar voters felt the same, since his screenplay was not one of the film’s many Academy Award nominations.
Screenwriters don’t get much control in Hollywood. But Smith’s name is still on “The Revenant”, and it will eternally be on this misbegotten redo of a horror classic. “Martyrs” does everything you’d expect a bad American remake of a foreign film to do. The storyline is far more linear: while the storytelling in the first film leads you to wonder how we’ve shifted from one point to another, here there’s a clearer throughline, particularly when tortured young orphan Lucie befriends Anna. You don’t have to have seen the earlier picture to find the building friendship between these two girls laborious in its exhaustive table-setting.
The reason for this is to allow for more agency to the female leads. The original “Martyrs” revels in the torture and destruction of the female form – combined with the passive nature of the characters, it allows the picture to be read as misogynist. The American version seems to act as if its above that. But the solution is to merely add incidence to the plot – the girls are infiltrating a suburban home to seek revenge on the torture cult that harmed Lucie, but the intention seems to be to put a gun in Lucie’s hand more than it is to explore Lucie as a human being. It’s a “screenwriting” fix, in other words, as opposed to a fix that proves more interesting and involving. The result is that you took the “Martyrs” out of “Martyrs” – which, fine – but replaced it with any generic stalk-and-slash movie of its kind.
When it comes to bad horror remakes, I always think of “The Vanishing”: the original had one of the most disturbing endings of all time, whereas the American edition provides the “Simpsons” version of that conclusion. “Martyrs” doesn’t sink that low, but it is still a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material. The earlier film has more of a philosophical bent towards the issue of torture, which allows for an intellectual out simply through inarticulation – it’s a cheat that works. The newer movie, by contrast, seems to focus more explicitly on the Christian religion. But it does so without confronting any ideological depths, instead opting for a very basic disapproval of demagoguery that never truly engages with any theological matters. I may not be religious, per se, but I know to treat religion with a proper amount of weight, whether believing or otherwise. Like everything in this version of “Martyrs”, it’s just genre window-dressing.
The second Trump presidency is about to begin, and it’s worth noting what will happen to the Federal Bureau Of Prisons. As we already know, Trump will greatly expand the carceral state, empowering law enforcement officials to prosecute people who would normally escape scrutiny. However, he’s also campaigned on matters of financial austerity and efficiency, largely due to his associations with cut-and-burn millionaires and billionaires like himself. The workforce within the FBOP will be shrunken considerably.
Many federal prisons (and state prisons too) are struggling to maintain their operations given the struggles in hiring in such places – many prisons can be found in the hinterlands like my last stop, and convincing the locals to work there is often difficult. However, Trump and his cronies will likely cut certain positions and employees within the prison system. Not everyone is a c.o. (commanding officer) in a prison, but at some point, some officials will be called upon for c.o. duty. Now, even that will come to be a contentious issue, as cuts result in the loss of several staff members. These prisons will largely react to that by waving the white flag and shutting down operations, eliminating all programming and recreation opportunities for inmates.
When I was down, it only took a couple of absences for certain activities to be cancelled. A couple of c.o.’s off could result in no time on the yard, no exercise. Certain c.o.’s unavailable meant there could be no movement towards the leisure library (where books reside) or the law library (where inmates can research appeals and challenges to their cases). During an entire summer at a holding facility, a lack of staffing meant I was stuck in my cell for months, with only a bunk and a toilet/sink combination. A vote for Donald Trump likely means a vote for more and more shutdowns in prison, caging and confining convicts even in low-and-minimum security institutions like animals not permitted to go free. Don’t worry, the savings will go directly to tax cuts for the upper percentage of earners.