"Dark Shadows": (Warner Bros. 2012). Director: Tim Burton; screenplay: Seth Graham-Smith (Pseudonym?); based on the television series created by Dan Curtis; Director of Photography: Bruno Delbone (Oscar!); Johnny Depp (Barnabas Collins); Helena Bonham-Carter (Dr. Julia Hoffman); Eva Green (Angelique Bouchard); Jacquie Earle Hailey (W. Loomis); Johnny Lee Smith (Roger Collins); Lila Heathcote (Victoria Winters); Michelle Feiffer (Mrs. Collins).
Note: "Mrs. De Winters" is the central character in Hitchcock's "Rebecca."
Based on: Lara Parker, Dark Shadows: Angelique's Descent (New York: Tor 1998).
Reviews:
Manohla Dargis, "A Vampire Thirsty and Bewildered," in The New York Times, May 11, 2012, at p. C1. (Ms. Dargis is bewildered, as usual, and missed the association with "Rebecca" together with the point of the movie. Manohla Dargis may also be "Carlotta Gall.")
"Dark Shadows," in The New Yorker, June 28, 2012, at p. 19. (The reviewer identified as "A.L.," I believe, is also one of the persons writing under the name "Manohla Dargis." Steven Holden? Please see "'The Reader': A Movie Review" and "'Revolutionary Road': A Movie Review.")
Computer crime prevents me from using italics or bold script at this site. At the moment, I am able to write only for about 45 minutes per day. Recent cybercrime has cost me several days' worth of writing time. If I am able to continue acccessing this blog and posting texts, I will add a list of sources to this text that may interest those attracted to the themes in this film. I am prevented from printing my essays today through hacks into the NYPL computers. I will try, again, tomorrow to print my work. Alternatively, I will try to print from more expensive public print shops.
I. "You're Weird!"
Tim Burton's films are descents into childhood dreams. Often these dreams are surprisingly sad and scary. I do not know much about Mr. Burton's life. I see and relish the humor and playfulness in Mr. Burton's work. The sense of a broken childhood and massive loss is overwhelming in Mr. Burton's entertaining movies -- movies that, like all art, provide compensatory pleasures as a balm for our wounds in life.
"Dark Shadows" is Mr. Burton's most Romantic work to date. As with any hipster -- Mr. Burton seems curiously concerned to preserve his hipster credentials -- a cynicism about ideals and values is always on display, even as lush melodic gestures are common in his art (as is, paradoxically, a passionate or idealistic personality for which we constantly receive his abject apologies).
It's O.K., Tim, you're allowed to read Byron and Shelley, even to like Opera. I am sure that Mr. Burton is a good painter in addition to his cinematic work who should study and who has already absorbed El Greco and Goya, Di Chirico and Dali, Picasso and Magritte.
The "Manerist" elongation of figures that Mr. Burton favors suggests a fondness for the Baroque Master Painter of Toledo ("El Greco") on the part of our director along with a hint concerning the "distortions of perspective" inherent to camera and screen as well as to these characters' views of life.
Like Barnabas Collins and myself, Mr. Burton is "really weird!"
Clearly, Mr. Burton feels affection for the "schmaltzy" movies and t.v. shows that he no doubt consumed -- like White Castle "rat burgers" -- as a very young man. This movie is a tribute to those campy films and shows from OUR misspent youth.
I am fast approaching, I am told, great antiquity and a corresponding decrepitude. I actually remember "Dark Shadows" (WOR or ABC on afternoon television). I recall, distinctly, running home from school to marvel at the perfect breasts of "Lara Parker," a nubile blond on the original show, who is now a Vassar-educated writer in her post-"Dark Shadows" life.
Bad acting and God-awful writing was part of the fun to be had with the old "Dark Shadows" -- along with tantalizing glimpses of the pale flesh of young actresses appearing on the show as distinct from the menacing vampire, Barnabas Collins.
Mr. Burton's tongue is stapled to his cheek as he reconstructs this world filled with artificially-induced smog and bodices ripping.
Mr. Burton widens his perspective to encompass Alfred Hitchcocks's "Rebecca," a movie that "haunts" this work. Angelique has replaced Mrs. Danvers as impediment to our star-crossed and undead lovers. Hell hath no fury like a horny and pissed-off former lover who is several centuries old.
One of the defining characteristics of witches was said to be sexual appetite and jealousy resulting in erotic power over men. (Horrors!) Many women burned as witches in Medieval Europe were whores and some were early scientists studying the body and its mysteries.
The mythology of possession or unhealthy love ("obsession" is not just a fragrance by Calvin Klein!) in a Hollywood-generated context is celebrated. Waves crash into the rocks and cliffs, again and again -- oh, the horror of it all!
The horror is only compounded as we are subjected to the Carpenters' alleged music on the historically correct soundtrack along with the agony of late seventies' disco music to which I once danced, enticingly, without revealing my body to more than a fortunate few:
"The infamous witch-hunting manual 'Malleus Mallificarum,' published in 1486, barely mentions the Sabbat [other sources remedy this defect] making only slight refrence to a 'congress of women in the night time' and a 'ceremony ... when witches meet together in a conclave on a set day.' The key features of the classic Sabbat are that it occurred at night [midnight -- the "Witching Hour"] the witches gathered to pay hommage to the Devil, renounce Christ and make pacts; and that feasting and OBSCENE [i.e., orgies] antihuman behavior took place. This behavior usually involved ... indiscriminate orgies and other perverse sexual activities, including the obscene kiss, [lots of oral sex] ..."
Lois Martin, The History of Witchcraft (London: Pocketessentials, 2002), p. 33.
All of this sounds, distressingly, like Hollywood today.
II. "They tried stoning me, my dear. It didn't work."
One of the pleasures afforded by this movie is the opportunity to wallow in absolute "drek" from another era, as I have noted, except that Mr. Burton -- like most good artists -- manages to say some important and true things about romantic relationships between the lines, as it were, of this cinematic text without diminishing the fun and games on screen.
Sexy Eva Green, as evil witch "Angelique," is clearly based on Mr. Burton's real-life love, Helena Bonham-Carter. Ms. Bonham-Carter plays a supporting role as a psychiatrist seeking immortality and setting us up for a sequel. ("He's in denial!")
The seventies was the era of "psychobabble." Ms. Green's character -- unlike the British thespian who, I hope, inspires this director -- is unable to love, but she does desire. Ms. Green is French and was last seen in "Casino Royale." Who needs James Bond when there is Barnabas Collins?
The dreadful banalities of Leo Buscaglia and pop-psychology's golden age of drivel ("I'm O.K., You're O.K.") rise from the grave recalling the flawless prose of Manohla Dargis in The New York Times.
Possession and will-to-power, yearning that leads to smoking hot sex choreographed to the silken baritone voice of Barry White " ... my everything" -- all of this "schlock" is a way of traipsing down memory lane for Mr. Burton and many of us pondering the gray hair that has mysteriously appeared in the mirror. We are back in Studio 54, floating in champagne bubbles and balloons as Bianca Jagger enters the room on a white horse.
Persons unable to love what they desire (Baron Scarpia? Iago? Manohla?), which may also frighten them, often long to control, torment, or otherwise affect, somehow, the love-object or desired person. Rollo May is eloquent in describing these forms of pathology and sadism in "Love and Will."
The desired person cannot be allowed to escape the would-be "mistress" seeking to enslave him or her. The film hints, subtly, at a twisted master/slave dialectic that is entirely routine in today's East Village of Manhattan or in the disco era of the seventies. Mr. Burton is boringly normal, after all, preferring the Vicky side of his lover to the very distinct Angelique side of his lady who certainly has her virtues -- two of them in fact! (Please see Ms. Bonham-Carter's performance in "Twelfth Night" then "A Room With a View.")
A central metaphor in the film is the "fall" (Albert Camus) from a great height -- as in "Rebecca" and at the same location -- which suggests not only journeying in or through time (how long has Mr. Burton been married?), but also the initial collapse into passionate romantic love. Ascent after such a fall may be interpreted as completing Carl Jung's metanoia journey, which is also the hero's journey in art and mythology. Sacred versus profane love, Mr. Burton?
The most powerful symbol in the film is visual and surreal in the form of the dead witch's offer of a dried-up and shattered heart to the object of her desires. This powerful image is a serious comment amidst the humor on the inability of many persons to love, selflessly, in an age of false values and, as Manohla would say, "pointless" consumption. The loss of passion and enthusiastic love has become a plague today. Meaningless sex is as plentiful as ever. ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!")
Visually, the film is a feast. Michelle Feiffer is amused throughout the movie at Johnny Depp's deliciously hammy performance. Mr. Depp is munching on the scenery recalling the stage performances of "Fabian Hardakre." ("What You Will ..." and "Serendipity, III.")
Mr. Depp is funnier than I thought possible for this dramatic Hollywood male lead.
The photography has given the actors a translucent glow that defines "star quality." Colors bleed, fade, and are restored to full intensity echoing the themes of the film -- death and resurrection, based on primal red (eros) and black (death).
Mr. Burton has read Schopenhauer and Freud as well as Byron and Shelley, to say nothing of Christina Rosetti, whose verses will close my essay. In addition to Hitchcock, Cocteau gets a nod alongside Roger Korman and Christopher Nolan as well as the MGM masterpiece, "The Wizard of Oz."
III. "Release me from this prison!"
Tributes to various films -- the "Times" reviewer noticed only a few of them -- are offered in service of a final warning about erotic possessiveness against the human need for freedom. We need freedom to love those persons who are essential in our lives because they allow us to "become the persons we are." We also need liberty of commitment to the arts or studies for which we feel a special vocation and gift. ("Master and Commander" and "God is Texting Me!")
Writing and reading is such a need for me. Evidently, money-making and success for the "Collins Enterprises" is important for Barnabas, increasing Angelique's envy.
Is Barnabas Collins a Republican? No, it cannot be. The horror would be too great.
Angelique's broken heart symbolizes romantic wisdom concerning the danger in losing the capacity for love as distinct from sex. Love always opposes death. Before Freud, Edgar Allan Poe made this point. Angelique/Vicky is "Annabel Lee."
Mr. Coppola's film of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and the silent film classic, Murneau's "Nosferatu," have influenced Mr. Burton's work. America's Noir tradition in cinema as well as pop-horror phenomenon, Steven King, are brought together with Woody Allan's humor in "Dark Shadows."
Mr. Burton has finally revealed himself as the postmodern-aesthetic vampire that he obviously is. Bring a crucifix and some garlic to any future encounter with this man. (See "The Nightmare Before Christmas.")
More interesting is Mr. Burton's Dickensian fascination with childhood -- also a traditional subject for the Romantics -- and memory as the source of art:
"In simple terms, the Freudian child suffers, so to speak, from an intensity of desire and an excess of vulnerability; and it was not, as [Phillipe Aries] was the first to show, that this was news about childhood. The news was in the need, beginning in the eighteenth century, to make the child an object of systematic knowledge."
Adam Philips, Equals (New York: Perseus, 2002), pp. 151-152.
Traumatized children REMEMBER differently from most adults (and this is true throughout their lives) by projecting much more of the content of their subconscious minds into shared images, often tapping into archetypal forms in Jungian terms. Typically, these children draw very well. I am sure that Mr. Burton can draw and paint as well as being highly responsive to symbolist poetry and impressionist music, from Debussy to Miles Davis. ("The Northanger Arms on Park Avenue" and "The Sleeping Prince" then "God is Texting Me!" and "What you will ...")
For Mr. Burton -- in Lacanian terms this time -- the movie screen is the mirror of the subconscious that, like the mother in infancy, reflects for the filmaker and audience members the realm of fantasy, desire, and fear from which those fragile fictions we call "selves" are made. ("'Unknown': A Movie Review" and, again, "Serendipity, III.")
Finally, I reserve special praise for Ms. Green's escape from the Bond woman trap as the beguiling and sad witch of this narrative, whose single flaw (inability to love) is her undoing even as love is shown, yet again, to be the greatest and most powerful magic. Mr. Burton is still in love with his leading lady. Waves crash into the rocks as I type these words.
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come in tears;
O memory, hope, love of unfinished years.
Oh, dream how sweet, too bitter sweet;
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet,
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
The opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!
-- Christina Rosetti.
Sources:
Books:
1. Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Our Selves (London & Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
2. Clive Barker, The Damnation Game (New York: Berkeley, 1985).
3. Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone (New Yorker: Harper, 2007).
4. Glen Duncan, I, Lucifer (New York: Grove Press, 2005).
5. Frank Kermode, Romantic Image (London: Routledge, 1957), esp. pp. 11-13.
6. Frank Kermode, Pieces of My Mind: Essays and Criticism 1958-2002 (New York: Farrar-Staruss, 2003), esp. pp. 32-40.
7. Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera (New York: New American Library, 1987).
8. Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus (New York: Signet, 1969).
9. Lois Martin, The History of Witchcraft (London: Pocketessentials, 2002).
10. Rollo May, Freedom and Necessity (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), pp. 109-131. (Updates "Love and Will" in "Witchcraft and the Projection of Destiny.")
11. Rollo May, The Discovery of Being (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983).
12. Lauren Paine, Sex in Witchcraft (New York: Taplinger, 1972). ("Women's Erotic Power as Black Magic.")
13. Adam Philips, Equals (New York: Perseus, 2002). ("The Child and Memory.")
14. R.D. Rosen, Psychobabble (New York: Avon Books, 1975). ("You're in denial as coenabler of your inner child!")
15. David J. Seal, ed., Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula From Novel to Screen (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991).
16. Beryl Schlossman, Objects of Desire: The Madonnas of Modernism (Ithaca & London: University of Cornell Press, 1989).
17. Montague Summers, A Popular History of Witchcraft (New York: Causeway, 1973).
18. Montague Summers, The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (New York & London: University Books, 1960).
19. Corey Wilkins, A Little Treasury of Love Poems (New York: Avenel, 1980), p. 83. (Christina Rosetti.)
20. Charles Williams, Witchcraft: A History of Black Magic in Christian Times (New York: New World Pub., 1959).
Films:
1. Nosferatu.
2. Dracula (1930, 1979, 2000, etc.).
3. The Wizard of Oz.
4. Beauty and the Beast. (Cocteau)
5. Bell, Book, and Candle.
6. Bedazzled.
7. Dr. Faustus.
8. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
9. Dark Shadows -- Television Show.
10. Interview With a Vampire.
11. The Hunger.
12. The Man Who Fell to Earth.
