let these bodies be witness to our love

a blog for martyrs (2008)

[elvirashauntedhills]

[✯]

[martyrian]

just saw Weapons

[abortiontechnician]

[martyredangel]

Morjana Alaoui protesting the censorship of Martyrs (2008)

[martyredangel]

We fucking did it gang 💪 Martyrs (2008) screening at my university ♡

[martyredangel]

how it started

how it's going

[theonlyadawong]

"what did anna see at the end of martyrs??" i literally don't give a single solitary fuck. talk about how horrific abuse can occur in even the most perfect seeming suburban homes

[christiandiorhypnoticpoison]

Martyrs (2008)

[martyrian]

ik Etienne by Ethel Cain is abt Ètienne-Louis Boullée but i’m gonna pretend it’s abt Martyrs bc Etienne is the name of the guy in the organization that Mademoiselle talks to through the bathroom door before killing herself

[jewishevelinebaker]

when i make slop in my nice kitchen to feed my skinned pet human in my basement

[jellogram]

One of the criticisms I often hear about Martyrs (2008) is that it's sexist because it "uses the torture of women as entertainment," and while I think a LOT of horror movies are guilty of this, I don't think Martyrs is one of them.

Like do you think maybe there was a reason the movie had the villains be people who are using women's pain as a tool? Do you think maybe the reduction of women's bodies down to an instrument of spiritual study was like, a theme? Do you think maybe there was a reason this organization only uses women, and how the women try to help each other, and how the leader of the villains is also a woman? Like do you think maybe you missed some things if all you got out of it was "they're torturing women too much in this movie"?

It's an incredibly hard watch and not for everyone (I personally didn't enjoy it much) but it definitely has a lot to say and it's not very subtle about it and I don't think it should be grouped in with movies that are actually deeply misogynist.

[perestroika-hilton]

Martyrs (2008) is sometimes considered a hallmark piece of new French extremity, although the director claims the piece is "first and foremost yuri"

[stavroginas]

Hélène Cixous, Love of the Wolf

[thisfinalfathom]

does anybody like martyrs 2008 … is there a fandom for that …

[miserybutter]

I also just Can’t read the movie as hopelessly nihilistic because of the way that the bathtub scene is - when Anna is taking care of Sarah. Anna finds this woman who has obviously been severely injured, and in a lot of other horror movies, Sarah would be presented as something to be scared of - but Anna immediately tries to help her. From the moment Sarah appears on screen, she is a recipient of sympathy. The gore when Anna is removing the head plate isn’t gore that comes out of violence but gore that is just a necessity of taking care of someone. The scene is so attentive - we see Sarah grab Anna’s wrist, scared - we empathize with her - we see Anna holding her hand - she wraps the towel around her head in such a soothing way. It’s such an overwhelming display of care, and although in a way Anna is punished for it in the movie, the movie doesn’t punish her for it if that makes sense

[sevicia]

Also I did in fact post about my room temp take on The AfterLife because I watched a video on Martyrs and people were, once again, focusing a lot on what Anna's answer was. Like Mr. Pascal really got everyone there (including me, on the first watch). Cause when you're thinking of the answer you're really just trying to find a point to the movie's violence, AKA the violence inflicted on Anna (and others, but hers is obviously the most explicit and personal to us), which is the same thing the people that tortured her were doing. Obviously it's not the exact same for I would like to believe the average person is not torturing people on the reg BUT my personal humble and in my eyes "correct" (read: it makes the most sense to me) room temp interpretation of the movie is that the "point" is that there is none. Anna's torture is completely unjustifiable. She went through all that pain for nothing at all, you never get to find out. It's what I love the most about this movie. I feel like it really looks at you as the viewer, not accusing you necessarily, but it's just such a Human film to me ..... But anyways, I think the lack of an answer/"satisfying" ending is what ultimately makes the movie so disturbing to some that they make up their mind to never watch it again. It has such raw depictions of violence that never are resolved in a way that makes you feel any relief, you just feel BAD at the end, and the lack of a *point* makes a rewatch feel like a looot of pain for zero gain. To me the question is not what happens after we die, but why we choose to look at violent things over and over again, and why we choose to be violent ourselves.

[postconnaissance]

“Photographs of the suffering and martyrdom of a people are more than reminders of death, of failure, of victimization. They invoke the miracle of survival.”

— Sontag - Regarding the Pain of Others