Film Review
A truly chilling excursion into the paranormal and nightmare world of
the subconscious,
Don't Look Now
is unquestionably one of the most distinctive and unsettling of British
horror films. Director Nicolas Roeg's penchant for the
elliptical narrative and boldly impressionistic editing are best
utilised in this, his greatest film, to provide a cinematic experience
that is genuinely disturbing and pretty well unique. This is one
of cinema's most successful attempts to embrace the subjective, telling
a story not as it is seen by a causal bystander, but as it is
experienced by its central protagonist. The maelstrom of
images that constitute the fractured narrative is bewildering until we
realise that what we are seeing is the confusion in a man's mind as his
life ebbs away. Whilst most horror films are content to show us
what happens on the outside (cheap visceral thrills involving silly
teenagers, butcher's knives and gallons of theatrical blood), this one
shows us what takes place on the inside, what it is like to die.
At a time when British cinema had already begun its slow decline
towards near-extinction, Nicolas Roeg was a beacon of hope,
consistently making films that would enthuse the critics and assure the
sceptics that the art of cinema had not yet been entirely surrendered
to the French and the Americans. Having started out as a camera
operator in the 1950s, Roeg became a sought-after cinematographer,
working on such films as Roger Corman's
The Masque of the Red Death
(1964), John Schlesinger's
Far from
the Madding Crowd (1967) and François Truffaut's
Fahrenheit
451 (1966). His directorial debut with
Performance (1970) was
well-received and he went on to make several notable films, including
the David Bowie sci-fi classic
The
Man Who Fell to Earth (1976).
Don't Look Now is his most highly
regarded film, a murky psychological thriller that is perfectly suited
to Roeg's technique, particularly his jarring use of image and sound to
create a sense of disorientation and mental disintegration.
With Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie each turning in
a top notch performance, Roeg effortlessly delivers a film
that is both stylistically brilliant and a compelling
piece of drama.
The film was innovative not only in dispensing with
the classical linear narrative but also broke new
ground with its explicit sex scene. This scene was added by Roeg
at the last minute because he was concerned that
Sutherland and Christie's characters seemed to spend most of their time
bickering and did not make a sympathetic married couple.
Don't Look Now was one of a
number of films in the early 1970s that radically redefined and
reinvigorated the horror genre, laying the foundation for the modern
horror film, far removed from the stylised Gothic chillers of previous
decades. In common with William Friedkin's
The
Exorcist (1973), it succeeds in convincing us of the reality
of demonic and paranormal forces, frightening us with what we all know
to be true but dare not admit, namely that there is much more to our
world than we can ever hope to experience with our five senses.
But whereas
The Exorcist
embraces this shadow world of the unknown for all it is worth,
Don't Look Now offers us a mere
glimpse, but the effect is just as terrifying, perhaps more so.
What are we to make of the distorted view of our world that
Don't Look Now presents us
with? It is as if reality as we know it is being put through a
cosmic cheese grater. Past, present and future realities seem to
be splintered and forced to coalesce into a new geometry, one with a
fractal texture where strands of time have become twisted and spliced,
in a sublime mockery of the notion of cause and effect. And how
appropriate is Venice as a setting for this
Möbius-strip-like reality. With its dank labyrinthine
passages and its quasi-surreal decor comprising grey stone and even
greyer water, the ancient city is a fitting visual metaphor for the
human mind, dark and unfathomable. Yet Venice also has a sense of
timelessness, an innate otherworldly quality that has inspired
philosophers and artists for centuries. This is a true no man's
land, where life and death co-exist
in a perpetual limbo. No one dies in Venice.
How can you die in a place where the clocks have long ceased to run?
© James Travers 2010
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
John and Laura Baxter are a young couple who are both profoundly
traumatised when their five-year-old daughter Christine drowns
accidentally at their home. Deciding that a change of scene
will do them both good, they head for Venice, where John finds work
restoring a dilapidated Byzantine church. With her husband busy,
Laura allows herself to be befriended by two elderly English sisters,
one of whom is blind and claims to have psychic powers. Laura is
intrigued when the blind woman reveals that she can still see
Christine, dressed in the plastic red raincoat in which she died.
Although John is too ready to dismiss the two old women as cranks, he
too experiences premonitions and is haunted by his precognisance of his
daughter's death. The blind woman convinces Laura that she and
her husband are in great danger and must leave Venice
immediately. John remains sceptical and has no intention of being
driven away by the utterances of a mad woman. Instead, he stays,
and allows himself to be driven ever closer to his inescapable doom...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.