Dard Divorce – 2007

Dard Divorce is a film directed by Olaf Ittenbach, so there’s bound to be lots of gore and guts. I’ve heard many things about it but I have never seen it until now. If I ever heard anything else that it’s bloody and gory and superb from that perspective is uncertain. That might be good, but does that make a movie good as a rule? Let’s find out. I’m a curious soul. I had to google Dard, they later explained it in the movie as well. It’s a Persian word meaning pain.

Well, right away I noticed that the acting is pretty bad, yet, there are only a couple of actors in the frame early on. It does get better but you’ll have to wait for it. The editing is also very annoying. You know what they cut between angles during a conversation? It just seems like random cuts. I don’t know why this is, because later in the movie I didn’t have any problems with that. The only viable reason I can think of is that no emphasis was laid in the early parts of the film and that Dard Divorce is all about the gore and torture scenes. Maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Olaf Ittebacks gore is top-notch most of the time, but directing people might not be his strong suit.

Torture Mode

Well, it goes into torture mode pretty quickly after the main premise is explained. I think those early parts of the story are important for the end of the movie. So, even if it’s not particularly complex, pay attention to what’s happening in the early stages. Except, of course, if you’re only in it for the gore. It’s nicely done most of the time, there were a couple of times where I could clearly see it as fake but for the most part it’s quite realistic. Except that anyone suffering that kind of extensive bodily harm must be a superhuman.

But there are really beautiful scenes in there as well. There’s a strange stylistic beauty to a scene where a naked man disposes of a corpse. It’s the imagery and the soothing music that make it work I guess. It creates some kind of contrast that makes the horrible acts look beautiful. But as I said before, it’s the gut and makeup effects that are the main characters in this movie. It’s not Martina Ittenback, which, I believe was married to the director at the time of making Dard Divorce. It’s very violent and very bloody. I personally don’t like the use of gts for the sake of it, but it works fine here. And the torture scenes are really gruesome.

Extremely Scary

There is something extremely scary about a scene where the tormentor is extremely calm and doesn’t seem to have any emotions whatsoever. When there is just a conversation and the perpetrator describes what he’s going to do with a calm voice. That’s way more scary than violence to me and those scenes make me shiver to the bones. I find it really, really disturbing.

I did think about the twist ending at some point but when it happened I was still taken by surprise. It wasn’t that far fetch but I thought we were beyond that stage by them. But on the other hand, there is a second twist that I didn’t see coming in a million years. And that’s always something to commend. Very refreshing!