Man Bites Dog: And Then What?

Some movies seek to entertain. Others have the gall to make one think. The truly perverse, like those by, say, the Coen Brothers, attempt both at the same time. After watching the Belgian black comedy-mockumentary Man Bites Dog (1992), I cannot shake this (masterfully crafted, in my opinion) three-branch classification system. I can’t tell what the film is up to.

I’d heard of the movie before seeing it, almost always summarized in the same way: a documentary film crew follows a serial killer named Ben (Benoît Poelvoorde) until they become involved in his crimes themselves. At the level of plot, that’s what happens. Ben, smiling widely and storming fiercely, showcases the Janus face of psychopathy. The film’s French-language title, C’est arrivé près de chez vous (It Happened Near Your Home), playing I am told, on the premise of a Belgian TV show, suggests the director wants us to recognize 1) middle-class paranoia and 2) the perverse possibility that murderers can be funny and affable in Ben.

This expectation seems misguided. As best we can tell, the crew falls for Ben for no reason. At first, they seem to fear him. Soon they hold down children and commit sexual assaults by his side. The movie provides no answers here. I didn’t feel there was much to ponder. Freaks beget freaks, I guess ? If the point is rather that journalists and moviegoers risk complicity in what they watch and comment upon—fair enough. But I’m not sure 90-some-odd minutes of humorous murder and torture makes that point most effectively.

In a way, that’s unfair of me. The film says it is a comedy; it wants to make us laugh. And, to be fair to Man Bites Dog, it often succeeds. In English, its very title indicates a desire to turn around our sense of humor, to show us something new. Hearing Ben go on about the way developers don’t properly plant trees around new low-income developments made me grimace and chuckle. His drunken shout-singing about cinema, stirring an otherwise bleak neighborhood in the middle of the night, brought a momentary smile to my face. But, of course, the director swiftly undermines that sequence by means of a vicious (and think intended-to-be humorous?) gang-rape scene. Bravo ?

My issue with Man Bites Dog is not that it isn’t entertaining or well made. It is both. But the film leaves me feeling empty. I’ve seen enough shock cinema to remain entirely unperturbed by the movie’s Sternian revue. I’ve taken in more on the complicity of film viewing than I care to admit. I think the movie is about 75% as funny as it thinks it is. With these gone, what’s left ? Am I entertained ? Have I been gebildet ? There is an abyss where there ought to be an answer.