Movie 146: Gothic (1986)

Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Natasha Richardson, Myriam Cyr, Timothy Spall.

Director: Ken Russell

I'm not sure there is any historic story that captured my imagination quite like the story of Mary Shelley's writing of Frankenstein.  You all know the one: Mary accompanies the poet, Shelley, to the home of famous poet Lord Byron where, stuck indoors due to a massive storm, they all participate in a challenge to all write a ghost story.  Mary is the only one who finishes, creating Frankenstein.  The story is a cool one, made even cooler by the dramatized insanity of professional crazy-maker Ken Russell.  I've decided to do Ken Russell movies today, which makes me question my own sanity...but the guy makes some brilliant films and I can make it through these.  I think.  I mean, I'm gonna try.  I always remember Gothic as being one of the less insane films, though, and I've always really dug it.  So we'll start there and see where it gets me.

What a cast this movie has.  Byrne and Sands are probably two of my favorite actors ever, and Spall and Richardson do some excellent work here, too.  I totally want to rent out an island cabin sometimes and DO the Byron challenge: everyone writes a ghost story to read that night.  That would be a lot of fun.  But, really, there's a lot of brilliance to utilizing this story as a piece of historical horror fiction: it has all the traditional horror elements of dark and stormy nights, hauntings, damaged psyches and hubris...the burden of creation.  

Russell loves a good over-dramatic performance, not to mention operatic scene styling and just a little bit of surrealism...the entrance of Lord Byron and the pure awe he inspires over Shelley (bordering on near homoerotic attraction, because Ken Russell) is so over-the-top that it's undeniably brilliant.  Byrne is perfect casting: he has such a sense of mystery and arrogance that encapsulates Byron.  Everyone except for Natasha Richardson plays their character as if they're one bad night away from an asylum: these people are clearly the most insane people.  Myriam Cyr as Clair plays off of Byron well, and vice versa: the idea that Byron kicking her in the face, grabbing her hair and trying to push her into a fire is basically foreplay...and, of course, Byron teasing Polidori with vaguely sexual...oh, hell, it isn't even vague.  This movie is just "everyone wants to fuck each other blind" for ninety minutes.  Well, that and "hey, why are there animals just wandering around" or "what is the deal with the weird animatronic thing with boobs that Julian Sands is playing with?"  Seriously, this movie is weird.

I have a feeling it's going to be difficult to write anything coherent about this movie because, well, it isn't really a terribly coherent movie.  I mean, there is Julian Sands standing naked on the roof, in the rain, bellowing about lightning being the fundamental forces of the universe...and Polidori playing with yet another animatronic that plays the piano.  I sometimes wonder if it's supposed to be a subtextual idea that Byron drugs his guests with hallucinogens...or if the cast just went ahead and did a bunch of hallucinogens.  

Everyone except Mary wants to bang Byron...and now, Clair has a weird fantasy about an undead monster in a suit of armor with a huge phallus, and Shelley flees from the room in a sweaty horror, babbling about breasts with eyes in them.  Then a plot roars in, as they decide to write ghost stories...and then Polidori watches as they have an orgy, albeit a fairly tame one.  

Mary reveals that she had a miscarriage, that the baby was Shelleys, and the fear of her sadness and pain, of the desire to have that child back.  Polidori is actually pretty sympathetic to her pain: there's a nice element of he and Mary as mutual outsiders, a sense of togetherness from two people who are apart from the others.  There really is a lot of subtextual character work in this film: everyone is doing an excellent job in presenting their characters.  For all of its surrealist functionality, it's actually something a fairly honest film.  These people are decadent and, as such, mildly deranged.  Their relationships to one another and what they want aren't explicitly stated but rather actually performed more in line with stage plays than traditional film.  Russell adores the set pieces, too: big looming rooms with roaring fireplaces and expensive decoration, but notably empty and echoing.  This feels like another film that I really should write after watching the film and designing an actually coherent piece of writing, because there really IS a lot of write about.  Doing the blog in this manner, though, kind of leave me writing at the mercy of a madman. But, that's the way I've been doing it and so I may as well stick with it.  I really do think that, someday, a full on critical essay could be written on not just this film but on the horror work of Russell altogether.

The real influences of Gothic are fairly straightforward (again, disregarding the whole surrealism element), it really is all there in the title.  It's one of the better (somewhat) modern representations of gothic horror done, really: the storms, moving suits of armor(and the mechanical people), lots of wafting curtains and tattered sheets...it is, in itself, a ghost story told around a fire on a stormy night.  Like all good ghost stories, the true horror comes from within the minds of the characters.  You can make an argument that supernatural things happen in Gothic and you can argue that nothing supernatural happens at all.  On one hand, Mary recounts stories of strange goings on whenever Claire has one of her fits, on the other these people are all mad and have their own specific problems, many of them sexual (because Ken Russell).  So, basically, what we have here is a psychosexual gothic horror story that results in one of the greatest gothic horror stories ever written.

The above paragraph is brought to you by the letter D for Duh.  But, really, if I didn't say it you might think I had no idea what the hell was going on.

Mary is a particularly interesting combination of roles, here: it's rather fascinating.  She seems to bear the identities of several types of "Woman."  In one scene she is a sexual fantasy of Byron, she is patient to Polidori, a Mother (both in her regrets of lost children and in her responsibility to Claire) and then Mistress AND Mother to Shelley(who also fits more than one form of identified male-ness: chased by groupies early on, being of sexual interest to Byron and Polidori, and as lover and child to Mary)...as Shelley weeps inside a bath, fearing his own mortality, Mary must continue to comfort him, to cradle him.  She also needs his reassurance and declarations of his love.  It's an odd mixture of identities.  I want to meet my own Mary who will put up my sudden bouts of insanity.  But, I'm not famous poet, nor do I look like Julian Sands.

It isn't even just Mary or Shelley, really: Polidori becomes infantilized over time (literally being revealed as bald and weeping like a child, reduced by his sexual inadequacy and confusion, and undergoing a transformation not entirely unlike rebirth), even Byron has his brief moment of sexual weakness as he places the mask on his servant, kneeling before her and weeping as he pushes his head against her midriff.  However, it's interesting to note that Byron is pretty much the only one who keeps himself together for the most part as everyone else breaks down under stress.

"Like God, we have already created.  Maybe God, like us, wishes to destroy his creation before creation can destroy him."
"BUT GOD IS ALREADY DEAD!"

"But haven't we raised the dead?!"  My favorite exchange in the film.  Incredibly well performed.

Myriam Cyr gets short changed here, I think: she's really rather good but happens to be the only one not super famous.  Seeing her, covered in mud, kneeling on the ground with a rat in her mouth...slathering mud all over Byron.  This becomes such a dirty, sweaty movie awfully quickly, especially when Cyr starts just going nuts with her performance...I vaguely wonder if Byrne managed to hurt any of his co-stars in his intensity as well.  He certainly does not look like he's being gentle.

It's also important to note that imagery breaks down to traditional gothic trappings rather quickly as well: catacombs, cobwebs, rats, skeletons, winds and lightning flashes.  Ghostly voices behind doors, and confronting of fears and desires.  Mary literally runs through a gothic horror haunted house in the climax of this work, confronting both physical and psychic fears, not only for herself but for others as well.  It's all very surreal, of course, but not unclear.  They all represent both the worst possible outcomes, but also for bad outcomes that have already come to pass.  It's a true trial-by-fire for her, a crucible of the mind and soul.  "The Storm is over." Shelley intones.  "Is it?" Mary replies.

Upon the light of day, Mary is changed: no longer will she be those roles I mentioned earlier.  Mary is now only Mary, hardened by the nightmares she has fought her way through and, of course, inspired to give form to her fears.

Final Thoughts:  This is probably the first time I've really seen Gothic as a character study.  This realization makes me feel like I'm seeing it for the first time.  It's not a perfect film-like a lot of Russell's work, it does occasionally tend to get a bit weirder than it probably should-but within all of its madness there is a work of real heart and soul, of psychoanalysis and philosophy, and a great deal of intelligence within.  As I said earlier, it might be one of the purest gothic horror films made in the modern era, especially when one looks at not only how well the movie understands those conventions, but also understands their origins and metaphors.  Weird flick, but a strong one nonetheless.

Final Rating: Three and a Half Stars.