He's macabre and memorable.
Dark Star: HR Giger’s World
Grade: B
Director: Belinda Sallin
Screenplay: Sallin
Cast: Leslie Barany, et al.
Runtime: 95 min
by John DeSando
Just what you might have expected: HR Giger’s home is a museum of the macabre. The celebrated creator of the Alien monster and a painter, sculptor, and architect as well, Giger inhabits a world of gargoyles and monsters, straight from his imagination to us. Dark Star: H R Giger’s World is an intriguing documentary sometimes as weird and inscrutable as his mind. It certainly doesn’t burden the audience with analysis.
As director Belinda Sallin tracks us through the baroque museum that is his Zurich house, we see a phantasmagoria from Egyptian-monarch-looking portraits to old skulls, one of which he dragged around by string when a young boy. While the camera passes his Oscar on a shelf, the spare narration overall gives no nod to this achievement (Oscar for best visual effects for Ridley Scott’s Alien), typical of the documentary’s minimalist approach.
Appearances by his collaborators like Gabriel Fischer, a metal musician, sometimes refer to the artist’s kindness, and they occasionally give insight into the psycho-sexual, violent undertow of his startling images. The now humble man appears as if in the aftermath of a stroke, moving and speaking slowly and deliberately, but always kindly as he autographs body parts and throws off a sly smile or tow.
Perhaps the purpose of limiting explanation about his work is to let the array of deeply symbolic creations out of his subconscious speak for themselves, almost defying analysis. Although Freud would have a holiday assessing Giger’s innermost demons, Giger's expressionism remains delightful impressionism for viewers.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
