by A.J.
Night 6: Horror Origins Night/Julian Sands Memorial Night
“As long as you are a guest in my house you shall play my games.”
I have long been fascinated by the “haunted summer of 1816,” when Percy and Mary Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron, and his traveling companion Dr. John Polidori challenged each other to create ghost stories over an unnaturally dreary and stormy summer at Byron’s vacation villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. Byron wrote only a fragment of a story, Polidori wrote the short story The Vampyre, and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Adding an extra layer of eerie lore to this true story is that their “haunted summer” was caused by the “Year Without a Summer,” when a volcanic eruption from the previous year threw so much dust and ash into the atmosphere that all over the northern hemisphere of the globe summer never really happened. Temperatures were far cooler than average, even frosty and winterlike, and storms and cloudy days were more prevalent. Ken Russell’s film Gothic is a speculative exploration of what inspired those young poets and authors and what ultimately inspired Mary Shelley to create Frankenstein and change the literary world forever. 
Ken Russell is perhaps the only filmmaker who could give John Waters a run for his money in terms of works of sincere camp, and sincere sleaze for that matter. His films are often broad, range from mildly to especially ridiculous, are highly sexual, blasphemous, and explore the origins of myths, as well as the psychological effect of imposed norms on complex persons. In Gothic, the characters grapple with their inner demons and fears, enhanced by cabin fever, until everyone reaches a psychological, nightmarish breaking point during one especially stormy night. With its strange sights and not so subtle subtext, this film might be hard to take seriously, but Ken Russell is perhaps the only filmmaker not afraid to indulge the at times outrageous nature of these characters. The cast is great with performances to match. The less famous figures of the bunch, Polidori and Claire, have the most memorable performances by Timothy Spall and Myriam Cyr. Lord Byron is well played by Gabriel Byrne as a sinister but alluring and magnetic figure. Julian Sands as Percy Shelley is perfect as an “artist” type. He is obsessed with his own death, completely overtaken by the wonders of nature, and still is believably worthy of the affection and care of Mary Shelley. Natasha Richardson is great as Mary Shelley–actually Mary Godwin since she and Percy were not legally married at this point–who seems like the only normal or sane person on this vacation filled with eccentrics. She may also seem like the most boring character, but she is not; she is just the best at hiding her neuroses. She may also be the only character with the greatest reason for anxiety and introspection and despair: the recent loss of her newborn baby. Her complexities are buried deep and as the film goes on they rise to the surface. Surreal sexual images abound: a woman whose breasts have eyes instead of nipples, a suit of armor with a pointed codpiece, and the anthropomorphized image of an imp, a miniature humanlike demon, sitting on the chest of a woman in her bed–a recreation of the famous painting The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. There is palpable homoeroticism between Byron and Polidori, and also Bryon and Percy Shelley. Polidori’s story The Vampyre is about a vampire disguised as an English gentleman who drains the life of a young woman–Byron had an affair with Polidori’s sister that proved ruinous for her, a mere incident for him. Bryon is more than hinted at as being a vampire, living off attention and lives of those around him. Claire Clairmont is obsessed with Bryon and pregnant with his child; Percy and Mary go to visit him essentially as an excuse for Claire to see Byron again. Since her and Polidori’s affections have been already won, Bryon has little interest in them and makes advances on Mary. The climax is a great psychological symphony of horrors. Every character is on the brink of madness or beyond. Gothic is about people that created works of horror, who are themselves haunted by fears and anxieties that come to the forefront of their psyches during one dreary and stormy summer. In a wild, swirling sequence the characters are each confronted with their own fears.
This is a period movie that does not feel like a period movie due in large part to the style of Ken Russell and his willingness to actually depict fantasies and nightmares for more than pure sensation. All of these characters are young, free thinking Bohemian individuals who act like young Bohemian individuals so they do not seem to belong in the costumes we associate with a time of reserve and manners. These elements give Gothic an incongruous but lively feeling. This is a strange movie but for their time these were strange people.
Gothic is currently streaming on Tubi.
No comments:
Post a Comment