God Is On Their Side

Having just been introduced to the films of Mark Eisenstein, I found myself in the presence of a true outsider artist. His dark comedy The Final Journey of Arnie Schwartz (aka The Electric Chair) features a powerfully honest performance by the late, great Victor Argo as an aging stand up comic, and struck a chord in me somewhere between Lenny and The King of Comedy. Early on in a scene from his latest film, a terrified infantry man approaches his superior:

“What is it, soldier?”

“It’s God, sir. He’s on the other side.”

We soon are soon shown God, white robes, halo and all, gleefully mowing down scores of soldiers from inside a divine foxhole. So begins the surreal odyssey of a dysfunctional platoon of World War 1 soldiers. They are led by a dwarf general with a disproportional temper, who, when he’s not kowtowing to the needs of his high-maintenance trophy wife, enjoys arm-wrestling his underlings to prove he’s the “bigger man” (they wisely let him win). The underlings include Colonel Gimpfoot, an opportunistic sycophant with a Billy Pilgrim-like leg injury; Colonel Machine, who looks like he just transferred from Dr. Strangelove’s command; and the general’s wife (Joan Marie Moossy, Bill Hicks’ cousin), who might as well have her mail forwarded to Machine’s bedroom. They are all vying for the Napoleon-like general’s attention, while he’s busy trying to impress God enough so that He and His heavy machinegun will join their side.

The film has a ball satirizing religion, the military, overcompensating masculinity, and the area where the three most overlap: wartime. What sets the film apart from the many anti-war classics are its creative surrealistic touches, such as having the general’s office wallpapered with his face, and the imaginative art design by Nada Severdija. The mise-en-scene calls to mind the work of Jean-Pierre Jeunet; also worthy of mention is the singing, acting, and dancing performance of David Johansen as Buster Poindexter aka God.

While sound is at times rough, and the conceit of the film gets stretched a little thin over the eighty eight minute running time, making you wonder whether perhaps the concept might have worked tighter as a short film, certain standout moments, such as the musical numbers and the scene where a television reporter calls the battle carnage like a sports announcer play-by-play, make God Is On The Other Side more than worthwhile. What other film has prayer offensives and God doing stand-up comedy?

-Andy Gately