The Fernando Arrabal Collection 2

This second set from surrealist Spanish writer/director Fernando Arrabal compiles five films on three discs. The first disc features Car Cemetery (1983), a post-apocalyptic retelling of the life of Jesus set in an auto junkyard populated by freakishly dressed figures and punk rockers. The second offers The Emperor of Peru (1982), a wispy fable celebrating the imagination of children, made in a fashion similar to that of Robert Rodriguez's contemporary family-friendly pictures but on a meager budget. Mickey Rooney stars as a curmudgeonly train engineer who persuades three kids—a boy who dreams of being a hero, his older sister, and a recently arrived Cambodian immigrant—that if they repair a locomotive, it can transport the refugee back home. The last disc contains three offerings: Arrabal's 1992 adaptation of his 1969 novel, Farewell, Babylon, largely a monologue by a young woman roaming the streets, illustrated with bits of footage (often involving the gutting of fish) and observations by directors such as Spike Lee and Melvin Van Peebles; the 1998 documentary Borges: A Life in Poetry, which juxtaposes excerpts from late Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges' last public statements on art and life with dreamlike montages; and a 2007 documentary on the director himself, Arrabal, Panik Cineast, the title highlighting his co-founding of the so-called Panic Movement (referring to the god Pan) with Alejandro Jodorowsky, who's among those here commenting on Arrabal's work. Although Arrabal himself declares “I am cinema” in an interview, one trusts he intended the claim as a joke, since his films are largely oddball footnotes to mainstream cinema history, hardly as influential as the efforts of some other avant-garde filmmakers. Recommended for collections in film history or modern art, this is optional elsewhere. (F. Swietek)