MAY #3: Don't Look Now

            

              Let’s start with the ending. What does it mean? The inevitability of death? The inescapability of fate? The unchangeability of the past? The hubris of man? Or is it just that Nicholas Roeg is still having nightmares about Freaks. Either way, it’s out of left field and an all-time shocker! Or it would have been if I hadn’t already known it was coming. Curse you, comprehensive knowledge of major and minor ‘70s horror classics!

              Spoilered though it may have been, this film lost none of its panache. The Sixth Sense it ain’t. The randomness of the ending, and its tonal dissonance with the restrained, poetic hundred odd minutes that precede it, mean that knowledge of the final twist has little bearing on the rest of the film. And like the labyrinthine alleyways of Venice, this one is made to get lost in.

              The Baxters, John and Laura, each a curly-haired vision in tweed, have recently lost their young daughter, Christine. Laura is still grieving when the pair who, and I cannot emphasize this enough, resemble the pages of a high-end catalog for moneyed academics, head to Venice so John can renovate a church and Laura can make vague allusions to getting back to work and mostly wander around Venice eating at fancy restaurants while their surviving son hangs out in boarding school back in England. These two would be living the dream if it weren’t for, you know, the tragedy and grief that haunts their outwardly happy lives. Laura, clad in a trench coat that I want very much to own, runs into two old English ladies who sound like my Nana, one of whom is psychic and lets Laura know that Christine’s spirit wants to tell her something. John wants nothing to do with this womanly mumbo-jumbo but that’s just too bad, because he has second sight too, and soon he’s catching glimpses of his dead daughter running through the streets of Venice.

              It’s the kind of film that a plot summary can’t do justice to, further insulating me from the effect of spoilers. The dreamlike and disorienting editing, the tight close-ups, and staccato flashbacks imbue everything, from an ornate pin to an open window to a houndstooth tie with occult significance. The weight and power of this film is all in the style, and stylish it is, a ‘70s mood board of unreliable authorities, supernatural meaning, and truly amazing hair.

Just look at it, holy shit!

              I don’t mean to make light; it’s no wonder this film is a hidden horror classic. Impatient viewers will be frustrated, but as a forebearer to today’s atmospheric, meditative arthouse horror, it’s an extraordinary case – an indie-arthouse gem that takes on weighty psychological themes and embraces the ambivalence of modern horror. “Elevated” horror is a loaded term, but Don’t Look Now proves it’s nothing new.

Vibecheck: Like a travel documentary filtered through Freud’s uncanny. In this film, place is mood. Enjoy the alleyways of Venice filled with fog, the sounds and smells of the ever-present water. The camera fixates on whatever is in the corner of your eye.

Scare Factor: More unsettling than scary. A horror film for people who hate horror films. What I’m saying is, I could probably call this a thriller, show it to my dad, and he’d never be the wiser (but he’d hate the ending).

Pairs Well With: Originally on a double-bill with The Wicker Man, surely one of the all-time best double-bills in cinema history. Both are picturesque and culminate in the total failure of the male protagonist and his heroic self-perception, so mood and theme are complementary too. Traces of Don’t Look Now are evident in all manner of horror films about grief and the failure to cope with it, but Antichrist, Midsommar, and extra-especially Hereditary make suitable companions. Theorist Carol Clover links this film to Poltergeist, as both feminize the occult world. Be warned, Don’t Look Now is a lot more restrained than all of these films. There are absolutely no traumatic head wounds, genital mutilation, or cop immolation. Somehow, it’s still a pretty good flick!

But how gay is it?: Deeply un-gay, really just a study in heterosexuality. Like its modern-day descendants (with perhaps the exception of Hereditary) it deals with a husband who cannot cope with and seeks to control his wife’s grief. And like these later films, it’s ultimately pessimistic about the possibility of emotional support in heterosexual couplings. While I do think straight people can do better (I hope so, for their sakes), it could be read as a critique of heterosexuality and gendered expectations.

Girlfriend’s Corner: I know we have fun here in Girlfriend’s Corner – oh, do we! – but in all honestly I could not be more relieved that I didn’t watch this movie; for reasons I don’t terribly want to get into here, children drowning is a huge trigger for me and watching this would have ruined my day, if not week. It sounds very good in every other way and Seventies arthouse nonsense is, verily, my shit, but for my own mental health it’s definitely for the best that I skipped out.