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Movie Review: Natural Born Killers
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Nathan Davis
Staff Writer
Oliver Stone's latest movie,
"Natural Born Killers," is a virtual
collage of violence, psychological
neurosis, and human exploitation.
It functions as an accurate repre
sentation of the excesses of mod
em pop culture. The entire film
plays like a bad acid trip.
Images are distorted, hallucina
tions are portrayed frequently, and
there is only a very tentative sense
of time manifest in the movie.
Though this method of filming
makes the movie much more en
grossing, as well as disturbing, it
also obscures any concrete mes
sage to its audience.
In most films this would be a
negative value. However, given
that "Natural Born Killers" muses
on the mysteriousness of our fas
cination with images of destruction
as conveyed through the media, it
actually helps the film. It forces
those who wish to understand why
there is presently such a
voyeuristic attraction towards vio
lence to examine themselves and
society at large, not just the movie.
"Natural Born Killers" tells the
story of two lovers, Mickey and
Malory Knox, who also happen to
be mass murderers. As the two
travel across the American West,
leaving extreme amounts of car
nage in their wake, the history of
their respective psychosis is told
through flashback.
Both of them were abused as
children, which is a standard trend
in explaining why some are moti
vated to kill for pleasure. Other
than this explanation, which left
me rather unsatisfied, no motive
was offered to explain why
Mickey and Malory became mass
murderers.
Indeed, the first half of the
movie immerses the audience so
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deeply in images of violence that
any perspective is almost impos
sible. However, once Mickey and
Malory are incarcerated, the film's
tone shifts drastically. More time
is spent analyzing the psyches of
the other characters involved in the
film.
Though I had hoped to find at
least one of them as a bearer of
some moral principle, this was not
to be. All of the other characters
were portrayed in a manner so they
seemed just as disturbed, if not
more so, than Mickey and Malory.
Saying the view of the existence
offered in "Natural Bom Killers"
is bleak is like saying that John
Candy had a slight weight prob
lem. It is an extreme understate
ment.
In a world without morals, all
that remains is the quest for indi
vidual pleasure. The world of
"Natural Bom Killers" is definitely
without any real morals and, dis
turbingly enough, Mickey and
Malory seem to be the happiest of
all of the movie's characters.
They are more content than the
other characters for two primary
reasons. First, every character in
the movie.suffersJsGm destructive
impulses. In fact, they all, in one
way or another, contribute to
others' suffering.
What makes Mickey and
Malory different is that they do not
fight their impulses. They cel
ebrate their violence. To kill with
passion makes murder pure. At
least that is what Mickey and
Malory claim.
Second, Mickey and Malory
have each other. All the other char
acters are alienated from one an
other, while our mass-murdering
couple finds happiness in their
mutual affection. As Mickey says,
"Love kills the demon." Strangely
enough, Mickey and Malory seem
to be portrayed as the most heroic
characters in "Natural Bom Kill
ers." This is probably the singu
larly most disturbing aspect of the
movie.
In his book "The End of the
Modern World," Romano
Guardini states an eerie
aggreement, an apt footnote to the
disoriented themes of NBK :
We know now that the modern
world is coming to an end... Love
will disappear from the face of the
public world, but the more pre
cious will be that love which flows
from one lonely person to an
other... the world to come will
be filled with animosity and dan
ger, but it will be a world open and
clean.