Film – Salt Sweet Bitter

Friday Fave: Vampire Films

the-hunger — The Hunger (1983), starring Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, and David Bowie

Vampires actually aren’t my favourite paranormal theme: I much prefer ghost stories. The trouble is that ghost stories made into films are usually rubbish, in my experience; there are a few notable exceptions, such as The Others, but on the whole they’re a disappointment unless done tongue-in-cheek. I’ve never found werewolves a particularly appealing theme either, again with the occasional exception such as An American Werewolf in London. Vampires are the reverse–often (although not invariably) dull in fiction, but frequently excellent as subjects for film stories. As supernatural/paranormal type films go. When I was a teenager, The Lost Boys (1987), (Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula (1992), Interview with the Vampire (1994), and From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) were the best recent offerings of the genre; after that the focus seemed to shift to ghosts and all the horror films inspired by The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Saw (2004). There were the Underworld and Blade franchises, and the occasional silly or incredibly dark vampire film (Van Helsing, 2004; 30 Days of Night, 2007), but while Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel were going strong on television, there was a bit of a dip in production of films about vampires.

Then came Twilight. Love the series or hate it–I’m closer to the ‘hate it’ end of the spectrum, although I did read all of the books in a single binge during a fit of depression–Stephenie Meyer did bring vampires back to the forefront of pop culture. The first book in the series came out in 2005; in 2006 there was a sudden burst of vampire films, and the vogue has remained in effect since then, dominated, of course, by the film adaptations of the books. Lots of these films are dross, of course, but there have been a few gems in the flood.

Let the Right One In (2008) was in theatres at the same time as Twilight. Everyone I knew went to see Twilight; few people I spoke to had even heard of Let the Right One In, which I felt to be a crying shame, because it’s an excellent film regardless of genre, and so much more interesting than its more famous rival. Most vampire films incorporate some element of sexual attraction in their vampires, or else make them horrific, repellent creatures (Coppola’s Dracula manages to do both); Let the Right One In takes a different approach, telling the story of a lonely boy who befriends what he thinks at first another similarly lonely child; the sweetness of relationship between the two makes the child-vampire Eli’s predatory nature all the more eerie. The two kids in the lead roles, Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson, are brilliant–Leandersson is currently studying theatre and seems intent on pursuing acting as a career, but Hedebrant seems to have abandoned acting for music, which is the film world’s loss but, I presume, music’s gain.

Byzantium (2012) flew even further under the radar than most of the artier vampire films. I remember reading a review of it and thinking I wanted to see it, but somehow I got it into my head that it was a tongue-in-cheek vampire story about a girl’s boarding school. (I have no clue where I got this idea. All I can think is that I was reading a preview or review of American Horror Story: Coven, which started at about the time Byzantium would have been released on dvd, and I conflated the two in my memory. It wouldn’t be the first time my mind has played such a trick on me.) I forgot about it until I noticed it playing on one of the film channels and recorded it; even then it took me a couple of weeks to get around to watching it. I particularly regret this–it’s one of those films that would look particularly good on a big screen.
Byzantium isn’t tongue-in-cheek in the slightest, but neither is it a blood-and-guts horror film. It’s a little like Twilight in being at its core a romance between a vampire and a human, but it’s also an engaging, if flawed, thriller. This time the tension isn’t between vampires and their human prey; it’s between the race of vampires, here a sort of eternal Victorian men’s club a la Boodles or The Athanaeum, and the only two female vampires in existence, who are being hunted down for violating the rule of the order (i.e. that only men should be vampires). It’s a feminist vampire story, something that, to my knowledge, is entirely new in the genre, unless you count Buffy. It isn’t perfect; Gemma Arterton’s and Sam Riley’s characters are well-acted but inconsistent in their aims, and their respective about-faces at the end of the story, though necessary for the conclusion, make little sense psychologically. Saoirse Ronan and Caleb Landry-Jones, on the other hand, are pretty much perfect. (Landry Jones, unprepossessing as Banshee in the X-Men franchise, is absolutely magnetic as the terminally ill Frank, and would be worth watching even if the rest of the film were terrible.) The film also features Thure Lindhardt and Jonny Lee Miller being evil and Tom Hollander and Maria Doyle Kennedy being cluelessly human. Its greatest weakness is its title–Byzantium is ostensibly the name of a bed-and-breakfast in a small coastal resort town in Britain, which presumably opened some time in the sixties or seventies. I can’t imagine an English family opening a B&B called Byzantium in any decade, even the swinging sixties. A bar, maybe, but not a B&B. Interesting and evocative as a title for a vampire film; completely at odds with the tone and locale of the story that the film unfolds.

Image result for The Only Lovers Left Alive — The Only Lovers Left Alive

The best and most recent of my favourites of the genre is Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), which features Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as the eponymous lovers (Adam and Eve), Mia Wasikowska as Swinton’s wayward (well, possibly psychotic) younger sister, and John Hurt as Christopher Marlowe. (The Christopher Marlowe.) There is some existential angst and fear of a mysterious plague that is killing vampires, but mostly the story is a snapshot of what Adam and Eve experience during the course of one of their rare reunions, on this occasion interrupted by Eve’s younger sister Ava. There really isn’t much in the way of gore or terror in this one; it is instead littered with a wealth of cultural references and gorgeous cinematography. It is the most accessible of Jarmusch’s films, and the most elegant of Tom Hiddleston’s–well, except perhaps for his turn as Henry V in the BBC’s The Hollow Crown (swoon). I’d like to add a superlative for Tilda Swinton, but when is she not unheimlich and beautiful in a performance?

There are certainly other excellent vampire films, but if I covered them all we’d be here all day. (If you haven’t seen The Hunger, do, because–well, David Bowie is in it, do you need another reason?) Also, if you’re looking for a novel dealing with vampires that is not modeled on either Anne Rice or Stephenie Meyer, I strongly recommend Lauren Owen’s The Quick–a bit steampunk, a bit literary, all kinds of awesome. And of course there is the original, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Happy Halloween!

Friday Fave: Kate McKinnon

I wasn’t originally planning on seeing the new Ghostbusters, but when a friend wanted to get together one afternoon this was the only thing that appealed to both of us–everything else was too political or too heavy, and the films I really wanted to see weren’t out at the time. I was definitely looking forward to seeing something that pissed off Milo Yiannopoulos so badly; that alone made it worth it to me. I had witnessed his campaign of racist and misogynist abuse of Leslie Jones on Twitter (if witnessed is the word? I was online at the time and following some of the threads, but I had decided several months before not to follow Yiannopoulos himself), as well as the general whining about remaking an action film with all female leads, which also made me want to see it. All that said, I have not found previous Melissa McCarthy films especially entertaining, and was not expecting this one to be either, even if it did have Kristin Wiig in it.

Rarely am I so happy to be wrong. Leslie Jones was awesome, as was–somewhat unexpectedly–Chris Hemsworth. I had already settled on him as definitely the most talented of the Hemsworth brothers by miles (possibly the only talented one, at that), going by what I had seen him in previously. The cameos by the original cast members were cleverly and seamlessly worked in. I was also pleased to find that they used the original Ray Parker Jr. recording of the theme tune throughout, in addition to the new and distinctly worse version.

My favourite part of the film, though, was Kate McKinnon. I haven’t liked a performance in a comedy film so much since Emma Stone in Easy A (which I only started watching because I didn’t know what it was–literary snob that I am, I had been studiously avoiding it). Aside from the occasional Stefan sketch or “commercial”, I hadn’t watched Saturday Night Live since Amy Poehler and Tina Fey left, so I only knew who she was by process of elimination. That scene where Holtzmann starts dancing to “The Rhythm of the Night”, though? I’ve never felt the slightest doubt about my identity as heterosexual woman, but that was hot. Throughout the film, she and Leslie Jones are the funniest things in it. I came home, pre-ordered the blu-ray, and started looking up old clips of SNL.

Turned out I had seen her in a couple of skits, but hadn’t noticed her because the skits as a whole are so funny. (If you didn’t see The Day Beyonce Turned Black when it came out, you can find it here, and it’s hilarious.) She has a well-earned reputation for impressions–her versions of Justin Bieber and CNN’s Kate Bolduan are brilliant. My favourite CNN skits are almost always the ones where the cast themselves can’t keep from cracking up, and she also seems to have a knack for giving her co-stars fits of the giggles, as she does in this skit about alien abductions. She also has a cat named Nino, and talks about him probably as much as I do about my animals, so I’m sold.

And she’s Holtzmann, who is all kinds of awesome. If you haven’t seen Ghostbusters, go check it out, it’s well worth it.

Friday Fave: Angels in America

Angels 2

I’m sure many of my friends are ~~sick of~~ familiar with hearing me go on about just how amazing so much of the television produced in the last fifteen years has been, how shows like the The Wire, Peaky Blinders, and Borgen have made screenplays not simply an offshoot of stage drama but something like a hybrid of plays and the serial novel from the days of Dickens and Wilkie Collins. It isn’t as though I didn’t like television to begin with, but there is a depth to these recent series–albeit not always in every season of some long-running ones–that rivals many of the films considered to be more serious art, which I think is a great pity. Six Feet Under was the first such series that I saw, back in 2002; it was like nothing I had ever seen, and I loved it. About a year and a half later the HBO production of Angels in America aired, and I was transfixed.

It was a play to begin with, of course, so adapting it for the screen was presumably less of a challenge than stories written as novels or other prose, but the freedom afforded by filming with regard to locations, sets, and special effects gave the scenes a dimension that just couldn’t be achieved on a stage. (My experience of drama is admittedly limited, but to my mind there are some plays that will always be better on stage than on screen; I do not think this is one of them.) I had heard of it when I was growing up and considered buying the script when I was in high school, but resisted because I wanted to see it on stage first. (I still haven’t had the chance, but I live in hope.)

From the opening scenes I thought the production was as close to perfect as could be; the ensuing years and numerous viewings have not altered my opinion. The casting was spot-on, particularly Mary-Louise Parker, Jeffrey Wright, and Al Pacino as the vile Roy Cohn. There are so many luminous moments in the six hours that I don’t have a favourite scene, although I do have a favourite line–Belize looking Cohn straight in the eye and saying “I am the antithesis of you.” Prior’s line about taking anti-depressants “in wee fistfuls” in his first dream-sequence meeting with Harper, and Harper’s vague query about why Mormons are thus named are close seconds. If there is a flaw at any point in the film, it is Emma Thompson getting too strident and manic as the Angel in her scenes with Hannah Pitt–for me a couple of those moments veered from the intense into the absurd.

The play is valuable for so many reasons. It’s an insight into the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, and the discrimination faced by the LBGTQ community, which much of our society still has so much trouble understanding. It’s a particularly haunting account of personal struggles with physical and mental illness, and of how fear can lead us to hurt those we love most. It’s also an insight into how the idea that the straight white Caucasian male is superior to all other genders, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations can damage just about anyone, even those who believe most strongly in the idea–even when they are among those disadvantaged by such a position, such as Hannah Pitt and Roy Cohn.

Beyond–or underlying–all this is the fact that it’s a beautiful work of literature, and that the television production is a gorgeous example of what can be done on a screen. Aside from the fact that I am a staunch feminist and I believe strongly that the rights of the African-American community, people of colour, and the LGBTQ community continue to be suppressed and infringed upon in this country, I get frustrated with commentary on works such as Angels in America, Between the World and Me, and Hamilton that dismiss them out of hand because they “advance a liberal agenda.” Dismissing these and other such works because they portray a worldview you have no experience of or familiarity with is to miss the point of what good art is, and what it can achieve. It is possible to be able to appreciate a work while still disagreeing with its central premise, or actively disliking the person who created it (*cough cough* Woody Allen, Roman Polanski). Refusing to listen to / read / watch something because you do not share the perspective of the creator or protagonist(s) is as absurd as saying that a woman shouldn’t read Tom Jones and can’t enjoy its humor because she’s not a randy and yet hopelessly romantic young man, or that only men with military experience should watch Band of Brothers–another near-perfect example of filmmaking–because it fails the Bechdel and DuVernay tests. Badly. Such refusals are as dismissive of our cultural inheritance as the proverbial reduction of the Western Canon to a single-semester course in “dead white men”, because they deny that we still have art that is vital and creative and new, and that all of the techniques and facets of language those same dead white men used, and in some cases created or perfected, are still present and alive in these new works. (If characters being portrayed by people of different races and genders bothers you, blame Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Sarah Bernhardt; Lin-Manuel Miranda was not the first to hit on the idea.)

Margaret wrote an excellent review of Between the World and Me a few weeks ago, in case you didn’t read it the first time. I will have more to say on Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton, and its amazing cast at some point in the (hopefully near) future. If you haven’t seen Angels in America, or haven’t seen it in a long time, give it a try. It’s held up well in the years since its filming.