The cabaret of Radioactive Sago Project

The Goethe-Institut’s Third German Silent Film Festival opened with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with music provided by the Radioactive Sago Project.

Even if you have read the plethora of reviews online of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – and, unless you have seen the movie on laserdisc or DVD, or – moo-moo! – watched the movie when it was first released back in 1919, there were hardly the kind of previews bombarding our movie-going senses these days. (Video options aside, nothing compares to the theatrical experience, big-a$$ movie screen and all.)

And that is one of the festival’s major ingredients: the "purity" of the experience. Aside from having neither a trailer or poster for us to see, heartening is the absence from the movie itself of sound effects or (audible) dialogue, much less digital animation or even "lifelike" camera paces, and, instead, the presence of two as-the-movie-unfolds elements: the live voiceover and the live score by a guest performer/band.

Supplied by Radioactive Sago Project, the music, its spontaneity and unpredictability, underscored the movie’s tone and sensibility – in The Cabinet’s case, a visualization of madness.

A representative from the Goethe-Institut explained much of The Cabinet’s vital details, such as the film’s expressionist style – starting with the wonderfully painted-scene backdrops that mirror the movie as a work of art, down to the excessive makeup and the actors’ performances – and the fact that the film was released right after the first World War.

He also divulged that the movie has the power to manipulate people’s minds. He stopped short, however, of explaining that, at the time of its release, The Cabinet was meant to subtly depict the turmoil in post-WWI Germany, given an unstable republic that, as film reviewer David Rolston has noted, "clung tenuously to public legitimacy" (talk about modern relevance!), and a citizenry that "suffered mightily from the effects of rampant inflation and record unemployment" (wow, ditto dito!).

The Cabinet, to quote Rolston again, likewise serves as a Cinema 101 case study-cum-history lesson: instead of trying to match the commercial extravaganzas that were the Hollywood productions of even then, German filmmakers competed artistically – a strategy that, in our generation and in the face of hundred-million-dollar American fare, has been imbibed victoriously by the likes of Lav Diaz, Jeffrey Jeturian and Khavn De La Cruz.

Soon, the classic movie’s 72 minutes started to tick. If anyone among us thought The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to be an artsy-fartsy affair, we were happily refuted. Raw as it is compared to the over-spiffed offerings of cinema now, The Cabinet is engrossing and entertaining. Evidently, it is the mother that spawned the countless horror flicks, thriller ticks and fantastic tricksters (Tim Burton included) that hit the screens in the nearly nine decades since. No wonder it is included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (Tabu, F. Murnau’s last movie and the ongoing festival’s next feature, is also in this compendium). While, from an outside-looking-in standpoint, the film’s premise is utterly simple, it ultimately embodies the axiom, "It’s the journey, not the destination" – a point absent from closure-happy moviemakers or -goers. The Cabinet is a hyper-real exercise for the eyes and the brain. Its narrative is progressive in direction yet loose enough to evince unpredictability. Its visuals are surreal enough to portray mental chaos (aside from the jagged doors and freaky-white makeup, there are the high officials’ literally high chairs and the scrawled, as opposed to neatly printed, text). Its acting is equally amusing and riveting, mainly by Werner Krauss as the titular doctor and Conrad Veidt as the ghoulish cabinet content, the skeletal Cesare the somnambulist. (Krauss here looks like Anthony Hopkins’ great grandfather; Veidt looks like one of Mick Jagger’s direct ancestors.)

All told, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is an artistic triumph, a fact it wears nicely on its sleeve: the "cabinet," we realize, represents the mind, Dr. Caligari the person owning that mind and Cesare the evil that may lurk within that mind. The movie, for all its artificial imperfections, is a winner, right down to its final line of dialogue: "I know how to cure him." The movie may be short, but that open-ended line ensures that The Cabinet is still "opening and closing" in my head even as I write this 24 hours later.

Of course, a question remains: How was Radioactive Sago Project’s interpretation of the film? First off, the eight-man band is the perfect choice to accompany a film as dark and witty in tone as The Cabinet, given their own discography that, lyrically and musically, explores the seedy, tragicomic underbelly of the Filipino’s inner and outer lives. (Consequently, their being front and center, right below the movie screen, during the showing made for a highly interesting "double bill.") The De Veyra brothers (bassist Francis was the concurrent main conductor while Lourd played with a keyboard and pre-recorded sounds from his MacBook) and company were wise, unpresumptuous enough not to have strayed too far from the movie’s moods, careful not to stumble by, say, not supplying somber notes when the carnival scenes came on – cautious not to exacerbate any incongruence that is already onscreen.

While Sago clearly composed and rehearsed the score (hello, music sheets), the live-ness of the gig guaranteed an enjoyable modicum of surprise and delight – most especially in many of the scenes involving Cesare (will someone make an action figure of him, please?) and in the moments when, with Sago channeling avant-punk musician John Zorn, the movie deserved a riotous cacophony. The live music also demonstrated a curious aspect: had there been no sound as we watched, the silence might have been more deafening than Sago’s blaring, the Cesares and Dr. Caligaris in our head instead making all the racket right inside our skull.

My sole downside view with the Sago score is this… The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, while not as horrifying to our generation as it was to the silent-era audience, is unmistakably creepy. Looking back, faintly recalling the score here and there, it did not seem to have maximized the potential of emitting a more foreboding sound – which Sago is certainly capable of (witness their Spaceship 711). The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari won’t make us think there’s a monster hiding in our cabinet back home, but it does have an ominous charisma that, in my selfish opinion, could have been mimicked some more musically.

One thing is undeniable, though: The combination of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Radioactive Sago Project is a marriage made in creepy heaven.