Filmed for the BBC as part of their Ghost
Stories for Christmas series in the early seventies from a story by M. R. James. I found out about this from the BFI’s review
of British folk horror (located here: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/where-begin-folk-horror). An archaeologist visits Anglia to find one of
the fabled three crowns that were buried to protect the realm; of course,
disturbing them is bound to bring bad luck.
In this case, the crown is haunted by the ghost of the last remaining
member of the family that charged themselves with guarding the burial
site. The ambience is spooky (all
lonesome beaches and deserted woods) and occasionally creepy as hell and even
scary if you have the lights turned out and put yourself into the “spirit” of
things. I’m reading Lovecraft at the
same time and the mood can be similar (although H. P. does go gruesome more
readily). A treat.
Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall agree to
act as caretakers to the Overlook Hotel in Colorado during the winter. Their son Danny comes with them and his
psychic powers are immediately enflamed because of the Hotel’s scary past – a
previous caretaker had murdered his wife and two daughters with an axe. Stephen King, author of the source novel,
notoriously hated this film version because of the transgressions that Stanley
Kubrick made when transposing the book to the screen. There is no doubt either that this is a
Kubrick film, dominated by his obsessional production design and odd touches –
and endless tracking shots (in the hotel’s hallways and in the giant hedge maze
outside). I never noticed during
previous viewings just how slow and dream-like the acting can be. For example, when Jack sits with Danny on the
bed, telling him how he wishes they could stay in the hotel forever (and ever
and ever), the camera hangs expectantly and the scene takes a few beats longer
than it should. Moreover, when Jack
meets Delbert Grady in the red and white men’s room the pauses between each
line seem enormous and when they are shown in a two-shot, it feels like a
staged Jeff Wall photograph (as does the earlier shot in the bedroom and the
shot with the scary naked women in Room 237).
But truly it is the soundtrack, dominated by Penderecki, that makes even
mundane scenes feel creepy and even horrifying. But how mundane is the film,
really? On the simplest level, this is a
film about a breakdown in a family, with Nicholson perhaps feeling hemmed in
and restricted by his wife and son (this is less overt in the 113-minute
international cut of the film that I watched).
However, there may be deeper levels – and in fact that wormhole can be
very deep (try googling The Shining and conspiracy – or watch the outrageous
documentary Room 237) with a range of experts putting together the evidence
from Kubrick’s changes, ellipses, mistakes, and perhaps intended clues and
contradictions (particularly in “telling” continuity errors and the jumbled
physical geography of the hotel). Of
course, it seems believable that Kubrick wanted to comment on family and
relationship issues which can easily elicit anxiety and horror when trust slips,
but was he also encoding messages about the Holocaust or genocide of the Native
Americans? Has he left clues that he
faked the Apollo 11 moon landing footage?
On this pass through the film, I could find no real evidence of these “deeper”
things, even though I was looking. However,
I didn’t try to unpack the evidence closely.
I am willing to believe that Kubrick was deliberately trying to
disorient us and that things in the film are there for a reason. Yet, I just let the dream imagery wash over
me and I prayed for Scatman Crothers to come to my rescue.
The
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) – L. Buñuel
Luis Buñuel is up to his usual tricks
here, trapping six members of the bourgeoisie in an endless cycle of
interrupted dinner and luncheon dates and using the occasions to inject a
healthy dose of surrealism and satire into the film. So, there is no plot to speak of but a steady
stream of jokes – some of them “in jokes” such as Fernando Rey secretly being a
drug dealer (as he is in the contemporaneous French Connection). At several moments in the film, minor characters
interrupt the action to describe vivid and haunting dreams that they have had
(apparently dreams that Bunuel himself really had) and then, later, the main
characters take turns waking up in the middle of certain anecdotes, suggesting
that it has all been a dream and/or a dream within a dream. Commentators have noted that most of the
interruptions in the film stop the characters from enacting their deepest
motivations (for eating, drinking, sex, etc.) so perhaps Buñuel really is a
wily old bastard subjecting them to this – or perhaps even deeper he is telling
us how society’s conventions (which the Bourgeoisie love) stand in the way of
real fulfilment.
Maggie Cheung plays silent screen actress
Ruan Ling-Yu, who was China’s biggest movie star in the 1930s until she
committed suicide in 1935. This was Maggie’s break-out role and she went on to
become an international star after winning the best actress role in
Berlin. She appears in every scene and as
a result, her character is the only fully delineated one in the film, probably
intentionally. Director Stanley Kwan
uses an impressionistic strategy to triangulate the viewpoints on Ruan – the
re-enactments of her life and films by Cheung and the cast, clips of Ruan’s
actual films in grainy black and white, and occasionally, discussions between
Cheung and Kwan himself along with surviving Chinese actors about the real
Ruan. Unfortunately, I saw a cut version
(121 minutes) which may have skimped on some of the latter experimental
aspects, sadly. The film’s art direction
is sumptuous, with an intense use of patterns (bold Chinese dresses in front of
mismatched wallpaper somehow works a charm due to the colours chosen). Ruan’s life was not a happy one due to her
problematic relationships with an exploitative gambler and a supportive but
married older man and a battle with the tabloid press seems to have ended her
will to live.
