'When the Gods Fall Asleep'? More like, 'When the Audience Fall Asleep' a somewhat mediocre offering, This sequel to 1971's 'The End of Man' (Finnis Hominis) really left a lot to be desired.
While I cant really fault this film visually (I continue to argue that José Mojica Marins is a phenominal talent as a director and cinematographer) its the scripting side of things that really lets this production down. Feeling less like a coherent picture and more like a deleted scenes package assembled from offcuts of the last picture.
So, this film opens where the last film left off, our possible reincarnation of god 'Finnis Hominis' willingly hands himself into a sanitarium. Only...within minutes of him going in, they let him go. And so...he continues doing what he did in the last film. Wandering around, occasionally getting involved in situations where sin may be about to be committed to diffuse the tension and offer a brighter, more holy alternative.
The only difference here between this film and the last one, is its traded an ultra thin layer of comedy, for exploitation. featuring PLENTY of panty shots, naked backsides and cleavage. This films much more interested in shocking visuals than actually trying to do anything particularly interesting with its plot. The Nadier of which happens around half an hour in when we get an extended scene of 'satan worshippers' ripping live chickens apart with there bare teeth. Which did NOT win me over frankly...
It basically feels like they took the skin of 'The End of Man' and draped it over 'The Strange World of Coffin Joe' and the results are a marginally more interesting film narratively and visually. But a film that still doesnt really hang together all that well, and one that struggles to really muster up any kind of enthusiasm towards it other than annoyance and apathy.
The pacings pretty nippy all things considered. We do move from scene to scene with some clip, but at 77 minutes long, this film REALLY could have fooled me, because despite being ULTRA short, it felt like full feature running time AND it felt even at 77 minutes that it could have been 15 minutes shorter still and not felt any kind of pinch.
I suppose, the biggest flaw this film has really is it just doesnt really do enough to make me want to care about anyone involved within it. 'The End of Man' ran with a fairly solid 3 act structure that asked the question 'what is a god?', 'what seperates man from god?' and 'what is sin?'
This film just shows us sin, then shows Jose coming in to fix the sin. It ends on a cheesy gag that fell flat in the face of a harsher tone and atmosphere. Its essentially just a more unlikeable take on the previous film.
The characters dont get developed enough to have any meaningful kind of complexity or impact, the film struggles with even basic structuring. its a bit of a mess and one I mostly yawned through.
Thats not to say its all bad! the visuals are still A+ quality, theres some nice colour and lighting usage throughout, compositional choices were a little lacklustre...and thats not to say they were bad, but im getting the feeling that, at this point in his career as a director José is beginning to run out of steam when it comes to mining inspiration from this angle. I do hope that his next attempt maybe tries something a little different.
The performances are all overly muted and kind of uninteresting, there isnt much interesting physical performance work put in here...honestly this whole things just kind of a slump. Not helped by a now creaking soundtrack which has seemingly been in situe since 'The Strange world of Coffin Joe' some 5 years prior.
I really enjoyed 'The End of Man', and on hearing there was a sequel, I was under the impression that they may have tried something a little subversive. Having established in THAT film that this 'anti coffin joe' chap is something of a demi god. I figured an interesting angle might have been for them to explore what could happen in a godless universe (given he's locked up in an asylum)...But instead this film breaks its own back to try and tie up in knots an excuse to get José back out of the asylum as soon as possible...and then the rest of the movie just rides a single gear of interest for the full runtime. Never really escalating or giving me a reason to care beyond 'You liked the previous film...so heres more of that'
Definitely not an essential watch, and I feel like if you enjoyed 'The End of Man' this will kind of put a dampner on things. 'When the Gods Fall Asleep' had potential. and turned it into a 'Deleted Scenes' Featurette.
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/when-the-gods-fall-asleep/
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