Love Beats the Demon

'Ban this sick film!' screamed the Daily Mail - mouthpiece for the faintly literate mob mentality. And like every 'sick' film that the Daily Hate has tried to discredit through the ages, Natural Born Killers is an intelligent and stylish film that's become judged solely on the basis of its violent content.

That's not to say that Mr Stone is a shy little lamb about portraying a bit of fisticuffs. In fact, there's probably more blood in this film than there is water in Titanic. But, just like its clear predecessor, the equally iconic Bonnie & Clyde, Natural Born Killers seems primarily to be a story about love. Mickey and Mallory might be deranged, homicidal and ever so cool, but they also represent the only true lovers in a world of adultery, prostitution, rape and child abuse. As is made utterly clear by the way in which almost every supporting character is portrayed as corrupt in some way (whether by strangling a prostitute or just by thinking of women as objects), it's society that's sick. Oh, and special kudos to Mr. Tommy Lee Jones for yet another fantastic supporting role. Jones is a horrifying example of a fantastic character actor ruined forever by the star system. In his supporting days, he was consistently brilliant (see also JFK and The Fugitive). Since then, his need to maintain a consistent screen persona has lead to him deadpanning his way through some frightful rubbish (who remembers Volcano? No, me neither). Catch him at the peak of his powers as the delightfully pervy warden.

And what's to blame for all this sickness? The media, naturally. The media are fascinated by Mickey and Mallory's crime spree, as represented by crime reporter Wayne Gale. Gale's interview with Mickey is not only responsible for his attempted prison break, but Woody Harrelson's smoothly psychotic soundbites also spark a prison riot single-handedly. Such is the effectiveness of Mickey's oratory that it could almost have been an attempt to provoke trouble in the prison. To make sure the audience knows where the blame lies, however, Mickey and Mallory's final interview includes them assuring us that it was totally unplanned.

Without the media frenzy, Natural Born Killers would be a film about a couple cruising around shooting people. They have no real goals during the first hour of the film as they cut a bloody swathe through petrol stations and diners. And during the prison sequences, they are often simply reacting to events. But 'the media made them superstars' as the box proclaims, and in this case, life really did imitate art.

In his prison interview, Mickey attacks the media as a parasitic entity covering the continent like the weather, and how we have been corrupted by its language and values. Instantly, you can see why newspapers became defensive when this film hit the screens. The ideas echo those of Jean-Luc Godard, who commented that advertising had bankrupted language. Stone had clearly watched Godard's classic 1965 film, Pierrot le Fou, which shares Natural Born Killer's fascination with mixing genres.

But while Pierrot le Fou was shot entirely in Eastman colour, with characters consciously switching genre (or through the use of Godard's beloved intertitles) by bursting into song or quoting whole scenes of Laurel and Hardy - Stone's film instead mixes genres by mixing film stocks. We have standard glossy colour film, arty black and white, grainy US TV footage and even animation. The characters are entirely at the mercy of the cinematic medium itself. And all through are brief flashes of blood-stained figures, fanged rabbits and other unpleasant images, all against a black background. The film is a constant assualt on the senses, and you can not afford to take your attention from the screen for a second. This was a little annoying for me, as I have to write a rather more academic essay on the film, and making notes was a massive problem.

Stone also reinvents the practically obsolete technique of back projection, turning it into an imaginative device for conveying atmosphere or the psychological state of characters by projecting images on the ceiling or through the windows of sets. And when they're driving, of course. When they are driving, the skyline has a habit to alternate between desert landscapes and unconvincing alien puppet monsters.

There is too much detail in this film to list exhaustively in a review of this nature. Suffice it to say that Natural Born Killers is far more satirical than its schlock reputation would have you believe. I haven't even begun to mention the subplot of the Native American grandfather that sets the couple on the road to redemption, or the final scene in which Mickey and Mallory, reunited after a year in prison, attain total clarity. Throughout, TV tells America that the killers always leave one person alive at the scene of each crime, to tell their story. And also throughout, anyone assuming they will be spared for this reason is butchered quite happily. But the most chilling example comes at the end, when Gale pleads for his life on the basis that he's the last left alive. The answer is obvious even before Mickey indicates Gale's news camera. The message is clear: we live in a society where the media, and feeding the media, has become more important than an individuals life. Even if Stone's work were not enough to make this clear, the closing credits provide a barrage of footage from Waco, O J Simpson's trial and other atrocities of the time.

In other words, we are all Natural Born Killers.