The Final Member Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

The Final Member Blu-ray Movie Review

This Is My Quest

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 27, 2014

Let's get the sniggering out of the way. The latest release from Drafthouse, The Final Member, is about the world's only penis museum. The museum was a personal project of its curator, Sigurður Hjartarson, a former history professor and prolific author, who could have easily fit into Erol Morris' documentary on men with odd careers, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control. Hjartarson, known to all as "Siggi", began the collection when a fellow faculty member gave him a bull's penis as a prank. But something about the item appealed to Siggi's personal delight in challenging taboos, and he began collecting additional specimens as a scientific and anthropological response to contemporary Western society's simultaneous obsession and discomfort with male genitalia. When the collection grew too big to house at home, Siggi opened the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which has gradually attracted more and more visitors to the tiny island nation.

For their first feature film, Jonah Bekhor and Zach Math decided to make a documentary about Siggi and his 40-year quest to assemble as close to a complete collection of male genitalia as possible. When they begin filming, the museum's collection was nearly complete, except for one glaring omission: a human specimen, the "final member" of the title. Siggi's efforts to finish his life's work before retiring form the film's dramatic arc.

The Final Member tells two overlapping stories. The first is Siggi's own history as a collector and curator, with an exploration of the unique pursuit that has consumed much of his life. Having devoted so many years of his "day job" to explaining history to his students, Siggi is an articulate and forthcoming interview subject. He presents himself with ease and directness. But Bekhor and Math don't just take their man as they find him. They also interview his wife, his daughter, his brother and extended family and friends, all of whom are not only comfortable with Siggi's avocation but seem entertained by the whole affair. The single best line comes from Mrs. Hjartarson, who observes that she was pleased when her husband opened the Icelandic Phallological Museum because it gave them so much more room at home.

Any temptation toward prurience quickly fades in the face of Siggi's clinical detachment and deadpan sense of humor. While speaking to the camera, he may be casually boiling an animal "specimen", then splitting it open to extract a bone inside. Or he may suddenly point out the bow tie that a friend is wearing—one of only four in the world, made by Siggi from the penis skin of a sperm whale. Later in the film, when Siggi appears for a special occasion wearing his own iteration of that special adornment, your eye is drawn right to it.

Siggi's life-long quest for the elusive human specimen leads to The Final Member's second, even more extraordinary story, when, after so many years of fruitless search, he is suddenly confronted with two competing donors. The first is 93-year-old Pall Arason, a famous figure in Iceland for his outdoor adventures and his pioneering efforts in the tourist trade, but even more so for his womanizing and reputation as a bon vivant. Arason isn't very talkative on camera, but one gets the sense that having his private parts memorialized in Siggi's museum strikes him as a fitting conclusion to a highly public career as a Don Juan.

Arason's competition is a Texan named Tom Mitchell, who is by far the most memorable character in the film. Three times married and divorced, Mitchell refers to his penis as "Elmo", hastening to add that the name was bestowed by his first wife, long before the Muppets. He seems to regard his genitals as an entity entirely separate from himself, to the point where he wishes to make his donation to the museum while still alive. The documentary crew accompanies him to an appointment with a sex reassignment surgeon, where Mitchell explains why he wants to have healthy organs removed and donated to a museum, while the surgeon steadfastly retains a professional demeanor. (You wonder what she's really thinking.) Privately, Mitchell imagines himself visiting the museum and admiring Elmo on display. He even draws up plans for how the display should be arrayed, with specifications for construction and materials. The entire project becomes a personal obsession.

Caught in the middle is Siggi, who, on the one hand, has Mitchell calling him repeatedly, and on the other, has a major Icelandic public figure to whom he has made certain promises. As Siggi's predicament draws to its comical close, it becomes clear that his collection will finally be complete, but at what cost?

Be sure to watch the credits. They include some priceless . . . well, see the extra screenshots for an example.

The Final Member Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Specific information about the shooting format for The Final Member was not available, but it is obviously a digital video production, and the Blu-ray has presumably been sourced directly from digital files. The credited cinematographers are two young cameramen, Viggo Knudsen and Sean Stiegemeier, who I suspect split their duties between scenes in the U.S. with Tom Mitchell and the remaining scenes in Iceland. Drafthouse's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray offers a no-frills but functional image, which conveys the high level of detail necessary to let the viewer fully experience the extent and, for lack of a better word, texture of Siggi's collection with appropriate detachment. Colors are modest and slightly undersaturated, which is frequently how DV looks without extensive manipulation in post-production. The benefit of the understated palette is a general absence of video noise.

Drafthouse typically uses BD-50s, but this 77-minute film with minimal extras resides comfortably on a BD-25 with an average bitrate of 23.98 Mbps. Given the digital origination and the unchallenging nature of the material, that is sufficient bandwidth to avoid artifacts, and none were observed.

The Final Member Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Final Member arrives with an English 5.1 track in lossless DTS-HD MA, but it's hard to see why. Like most documentaries, the film is entirely dialogue-driven, and its format is traditional, in the sense that the filmmakers remain unheard and off-camera. No serious effort is made to capture or recreate the environments in which interviews were conducted, and the only other major component of the soundtrack is a modest score by Rob Simonsen (The Way Way Back). Siggi Hjartarson speaks excellent English, while most other Icelandic participants are subtitled. Optional English SDH subtitles are also available.

The Final Member Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Tour of the Phallological Museum (1080p; 1.78:1; 11:12): Selecting this feature plays a brief introduction by Siggi Hjartarson, followed by a menu listing specific exhibits and a "play all" function. The individual exhibits are listed below:
• Bull Specimen
• Cave Bear Specimen
• Elephant Specimen
• Hamster Specimen
• Horse Specimen
• Invisible Man Specimen (yes, this is a joke, but Siggi presents it with the straight face of a practiced performer)
• Raccoon Specimen
• Walrus Specimen
• Whale Specimen
• Penis Bone Specimen



• Trailers
• The Final Member
• The Ambassador
• The Act of Killing
• Klown
• A Band Called Death
• Wrong



• Booklet: As usual, Drafthouse has included an informative booklet inside the disc case. This one contains biographical sketches of the three main characters in the film, plus film and disc production credits.



• Application: Would you like to pledge a donation to the Icelandic Phallological Museum (and I'm not talking about money)? A donor form is included. Three witnesses are required to confirm your signature.

The Final Member Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

America's infrastructure may be crumbling, its economy may be depressed and its political system in gridlock, but The Final Member demonstrates one enduring certainty: In the realm of bizarreness, we remain indubitably Number One. If a history professor in Iceland thinks up something strange, an American will kick it up to a whole new level of crazy. That may be a dubious distinction, but it's our dubious distinction. Not for the squeamish or the phallo-phobic, but The Final Member is a unique experience.