S&M aficionados, Nazi sympathizers and more adorn Seidl’s shocking if enlightening tableaux-esque documentary about the bewildering secrets and fetishes that transpire in the basements of Austrian residences.
Review #2,681
Dir. Ulrich Seidl
2014 | Austria | Documentary | 81 min | 1.85:1 | German
Not rated – exceeds R21 guidelines for explicit unsimulated sexual acts, nudity and offensive content
Cast: –
Plot: Whatever people no longer need, they dump in the basement. But some pursue their obsessions there, in hiding. Think brass-band music and opera arias, expensive furniture and cheap men’s jokes, sexuality and sadism, fitness and fascism, whips and dolls…
Awards: Official Selection (Venice)
International Sales: Coproduction Office
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Mature – Basements; Fetishes & Secrets
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Niche Arthouse
Viewed: MUBI
Spoilers: No
In Singapore, when we think of basements, we think of lift buttons that say ‘B1’ and ‘B2’, or carparks underneath malls. The majority of us live in high-rise apartment buildings, and unless one is ultra-rich, basements just aren’t in our vocabulary as far as domestic affairs are concerned.
In Austria, however, and as Ulrich Seidl’s documentary shockingly if enlighteningly reveals, some people hide their most bewildering secrets in this most private of spaces.
In the Basement looks and feels very much like a Seidl film, tableaux-esque in style, as an assortment of mostly weird people are profiled in front of the camera.
We have the somewhat ordinary, for instance, a toy train collector; but at the other extreme, which Seidl is always attracted to, we get to see a Nazi sympathizer and his extensive collection of SS memorabilia and several S&M aficionados with strange fetishes.
“I like that when I say something, it will be done.”
While In the Basement isn’t a surprising work, some critics have called out Seidl for being unethical in the treatment of his subjects. I’m not sure if that argument holds any weight.
I would, in fact, argue that filming in someone else’s basement poses more ‘risks’ to Seidl because, well, I mean the S&M enthusiasts could simply tie the director up and subject him to all manner of torturous pleasures should the occasion arise. (That would make such a great story for a movie though.)
His follow-up, Safari (2016), feels like a natural counterpointing extension of In the Basement, a documentary about hunting tourism in Africa, leaving the dark fantasies associated with basements behind for the natural landscape and broad daylight of human-inflicted violence on animals.
Grade: B+
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 