I really can’t describe I Am A Knife With Legs, and that’s okay. An accurate description wouldn’t even convey the absurdity of I Am A Knife With Legs. You just have to experience it… which I did twice and I still can’t describe it.
Europop star Bene (writer/director Bennett Jones) is waiting for death in his apartment. Grieving the lover he lost in a suicide bombing, Bene awaits an assassin responding to an ad on Fatwalist.com calling for Bene’s death. Bene recounts his story to us with absurd meta interludes while he waits for an assassin to arrive. Also it’s a musical.
That plot makes it sound too real. It’s really just a series of absurdist sketches, but they do connect in a legitimate plot. Jones is basically playing with the idea of an indie film shot on video in one guy’s apartment, but he fills that thin format with creative ideas manipulating the editing, incorporating animation, and text. If you have no resources, make that the hook of your movie.
I could just list all the absurdly funny bits in I Am a Knife with Legs but I want you to experience them yourself. If I tell you about “pants insurance” you’d want to know what that joke is, right? Bene is a really funny character with really funny dialogue about absurd philosophy like “grief spiral notebooks.” He’s also an opinionated a-hole and I loved his attitude towards graphic novels and 9/11 conspiracy theories.
There’s some classic humor in I Am a Knife with Legs including a pseudo-”Who’s on First” riff, a callback to pants insurance, and that misdirect where you say something ridiculous, then you admit it’s not true but correct the part of it that did make sense, thus implying the absurdity is the truth.
When you make a movie as ultra cheap as I Am a Knife with Legs, you’ve got to make it so weird it’s worth experiencing, so it doesn’t matter that it looks low-res. Jones is so confident in his absurdity that I Am a Knife with Legs is relentless. It’s also an opportunity to comment on the illusion of film, since Knife is never going to create a real cinematic illusion. Spoofs of stunt doubles, sound effects and continuity are always ripe for satire.
It’s nice to know there’s still some new absurdity out there, and you don’t have to look too far to find it. It could be right in your own apartment. Not only did I see I Am a Knife With Legs twice at Fantastic Fest, but I bought the soundtrack, so I can take a little bit of Bene home with me.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
