Thirty Years of Adonis (2017)

This movie is definitely NOT for the faint hearted and actually requires multiple viewing for one to understand the story. Lots of gratuitous nudity, violence, pseudo religious scenes and very explicit BDSM sex abound. Ke is a young aspiring actor who falls into a hedonism, engaging in sex work and pornography. The movie is told in a nonlinear manner so it may take a while for things to click. While the director said that he chose 30 as it marked a significant milestone in a man's life, this was not conveyed well. Instead, the age becomes rather arbitrary - he could have said 21, or 25 and it wouldn't have made a difference I feel. While he does capture the depressive, hedonistic lifestyle of young gay men, it was very surface-level and could have been further explored instead of having dicks on screen. Honestly, it is a missed opportunity because what lies nestled in this confusing mess of a potential could have been a stark, honest look at the challenges and desires of a young gay man as he transitions from his 20s to his 30s amidst the debauchery of sex work he engages in, grappling with religion, family and societal pressures. Unfortunately, we get some pseudo witch, naked men and violence, with only some fleeting references to society and family.

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You may ask why? And the film seems to answer with....

Life is short, people are bad, religion persecutes us and requires us to sacrifice ourselves eternally (no matter which religious body one is subscribed), the world of gay men is filled with aging vampires who want to suck the beauty and youth from the naive and wide eyed. No matter what our end may be (fate), the journey there still matters. Our lust and greed will actually consume us, (His death was his decision for money he didn't need and after, his remains are cannibalized-literally consumed).

In short nothing new, morals and topics covered much more in-depth and with more resonance elsewhere, and without erotically charged graphic gang rape, pornographic bloody body dismemberment and cannibalization.

So possibly the grotesque and shocking scenes are meant to haunt you and create a greater impact of these themes...but IMO detract and over-shadow the topics at hand.

Though, out of everything, the interviews at the end have the most impact. Is the director willingly stating that he is as much of a monster as what he depicts in an almost slap in the face to his own actors as they share their own life dreams on turning 30, sitting nude, exposed, and being exploited for the film he is making now? Or are all of them still in character and meant to drive home the fact that men, or people, in this world are truly as naive and lost as our protagonist was?

Most interesting to me, was that upon the first cross, all in the white of innocence, our main character is duped, tied down, and forced into being gang raped by 30 men. While his last scene he is a willing participant who undresses himself and puts himself on the red cross, an active agent in his own death and ultimate perversion. We never really get to see this transition in character and mindset of our protagonist, it just happens.

There are many things that don't add up in the story.

The character of his brother is never explained. They aren't blood related but its simply stated that they are as true as brother's can be. But when and how did they meet? Why are they so close? What is the purpose of this character existing? One of the large underlying themes is that he is alone with he weight of caring for his ailing mother, ye then there is the brother character which doesn't fit and isn't explained. If they are so close that he will not participate in the gang rape, why will he cower and watch and not try to free his "brother?" What was the point of him throwing himself in the way at the very end for the last perpetrator? Why isn't he the manager instead of the man that is? Why does he continue to allow his brother to perform sex work after seeing what was done to him? We will never know the answers....

As many reviewers have brought up outside of MDL, why is the protagonist so blindly trusting of his manager? Almost every ill-fated event that transpires in the film is at the hands of his manager. And yet, our protagonist and his "brother", keep the manager as if family, calling him uncle, and sharing their fortune with him, up to the point that manager arranges himself a lofty payout by putting our protagonist in a snuff film, and walking away with half the remains which he cooks up for dinner. And apparently the "brother" still never suspects or goes after him after our main character suddenly disappears and this guy becomes filthy rich, because it takes the creepy Buddhist who arranges the aforementioned earlier gang rape to exact revenge in the final scene of the film.

Any rational person would have never had contact with the manager after he stands idle watching rape and going for the money they make off it, before trying to help the demolished main character.

How does our main character never show trauma? His virginity is taken in violence by people he knows and trusted in a group act that leaves him bedridden. But then once his body is healed, he returns to his life and all relationships as if nothing ever happened, and actually becomes at peace with doing sex work and using his body for money. He also easily finds himself in romantic relationships. It is all very bizarre and unbelievable. Psychology having no place in the story.

Religion is superficial here, while Buddhism gets a bit more in-depth, the most tragic events occur upon and around christian iconography. Yet, little is said about either in any substantial way. There is a witch, who's mysticism has more screen time. In the end, all the fate and troubles are boiled down to past lives. So while the "secular" scare our protagonist with hell and shame and he is sacrificed both sexually and physically upon crosses, it is all done at the will of Karma and Buddhism so nothing here comes out unscathed.

With all this said, I think if you watch the film it will haunt you a bit. So the director probably feels successful in creating such in his audience. But, with the messages he seems to want to press upon us, and a story that is pretending to have much to say and not be just an excuse to watch beautiful men run around nude and doing sexual things, this creation sadly fails, and quite fantastically.

Even worse The world has seemed to not care about any message. In trying to find the film you will likely end-up on some porn sites where watchers have edited together the graphic sex to be something for masturbation. And can there be anything more perfect than a film the uses sex work and gang rape to show the utter destruction of its main character, and then those very scenes be used by the world for arousal, proving that the world really is as heinous as the film suggests. And maybe, just maybe the director didn't use the best methods to tell such a story.

Then again, one of the actors is a famous porn star, so maybe this being the films legacy, is the exact META statement of our society he was aiming, again bringing us back to the interviews before the final credits and what exactly was he trying to get across with them.

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