The Decline of the West (2012)

• 67%
• 2012
• Chris Coffman
• Chris Coffman
• John Russell Herbert
• Kathryn Winkler

Unlike anything else you will see in this year or any other, 'The Decline of the West' is a groundbreaking social allegory that challenges its audience to explore the effects of contemporary conditioning; of the stereotypes, and counter-stereotypes surrounding race and ethnicity. By employing a unique blend of absurdist humor and dry, dark comedy, both the insularity and the inertia of progressive society are put on trial and hanged in this bold film that goes places few have ever gone. The film maintains its extended, detailed allegory, in which the physical layout of Manhattan comes to life as its symbols of Progress slowly turn into a comic liberal hypocrisy. Anything that "isn't allowed" is used to confront the audience with hypocrisy. Make-up plays a crucial role throughout the film, as a hinge that simultaneously showcases characters and the existential reality of the players behind them. An absurd narrative built from this symbolic city becomes progressively more absurd until it spirals completely out of control into a reality that is dark in every way. Look around you - the film is horror and this is where you really live. As the veil of denial is removed in every way, process and narrative merge into Godardian/Faulknerian Auteurism and as social trends are taken to their logical ends through the microcosm of insane characters...finally, what is brought about? The Decline of the West, as Oswald Spengler boldly predicted in his freakish, but brilliant 1922 metanarrative that shares its title with this film that rattles the fabric of society and exposes its rotten core, using simultaneous absurdism, allegory and existential metanarrative as armor portraying an aversive aesthetic as if the only worthy vessel for truth that hits you in the face this hard.