The Return of Captain Chaos

Last week I blogged about Roger Ebert's review of the film "Chaos" and the "open letters" he exchanged with the filmmakers. These have resulted in what the editor of his web site calls "an unusual number of impassioned and thoughtful responses from readers." They've reprinted some of them here.

I especially like the letter by someone named Karlheinz Noise (great name!), who writes in part:

You neglected to mention one thing: The only victims who did anything "wrong" were women. Were we to take the message seriously, it is this: that women (especially young and pretty ones) should stay home and do what they're told, and if they don't, they DESERVE to get tortured, raped, and killed. This is a classic example of what feminists call the "protection racket," and there's probably enough in this one movie to fuel a dozen Susan Sontag books.

you let them off much too lightly when you simply called it a "surrender." The filmmakers claim that they "tried to give you and the public something real." This claim has a simple rebuttal: Their film is not a documentary. It is fabricated out of whole cloth -- more accurately, out of the celluloid scraps of better films, as you and others pointed out.

I must say this may be the most thought-provoking film that I have no expectation of seeing I've ever heard of...