Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Interview with... need I go on?
(Disclaimer – this is just about the movie. The book series
is sufficiently different that it merits a different write-up.)
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| http://therottingzombie.blogspot.com |
The Man, the Myth, the Movie
Interview
with a Vampire is a Vampire movie, not just an action/romance movie with
Vampires. Really, does Underworld
need to be a Vampire/werewolf movie? You could replace the lichens (hey, lichens are composite organisms, too), I mean,
‘Lycans’ and Vampires with any warring faction and barely change the story one
bit. If your leading lady is just going to be shooting people and wearing tight
leather for the whole movie, couldn’t she be almost anybody? If these guys have
been doing the same thing for a thousand years, do they really have to be
immortal?
Interview, on the other hand, really
uses the Vampire premise. Here, Vampires aren’t monsters for a protagonist to
defeat to prove his self-worth, or masculinity, or anything else so subjective.
Again, that could really be any monster: you could swap the Vampires for
gang-bangers and barely change the story (look at the Lost Boys). Also, these Vampires aren’t generic dangerous love
interests for young women. Those could just as easily be real life sociopaths,
and still be the stuff of spectacularly ill-advised fantasy (look at the Lost Boys).
No: Louis’s character conflict and
arc and relationship with Lestat are all defined by this unique situation and
set of circumstances. The existential questions raised by Vampirism, the moral
implications of killing to survive, the process of gradually becoming
desensitized to murder, ‘siring’ as seduction, and the experience of
agelessness without physical maturity: these are not window dressing. They’re
the substance of the story. I really have to give Anne Rice and the filmmakers
credit for that: these kinds of stories can still succeed regardless (I do
mildly like the Lost Boys), but
thinking through a premise allows more opportunities for originality. Plus, you
feel like you get your money’s worth.
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| http://deliciousreadsbookclub.blogspot.com. |
Incidentally,
one fun series of questions I get from the aforementioned cool hosts is: do
vampires find Vampire movies scary? What movies do we find scary? In fact, do we find movies scary? Sure. My
scariest movie: Threads, a British
docudrama about post-nuclear war survival. I first watched it in the 1980s, when it
was basically the world’s most horrifying weather forecast. Expecting a genre
film to replicate that experience would be unfair. Movies are obviously
not aimed at my people, but they’ll work if they reflect our insecurities and vulnerabilities.
Take Interview: the scene where Claudia and Madeleine are burned to death by the sun. Horrifying. Especially the build-up: Claudia and Madeleine are trapped in this narrow tower, sentenced to death in a chaotic flurry, with just one vent leading to the outdoors – no exit, barely enough room to move let alone escape, and the vent is too high for them to reach or guard. Then it’s daytime, we watch the sunlight slowly descend upon them, and we watch Claudia’s confusion and gradual realization of the situation, her gasping in horror as direct sunlight slowly hits them. Then the payoff: we see this sculptural pile of ashes that’s still shaped like her in her last moments of horror. True Blood pulled something like this recently (except it involved a witch and voice distortions), and it was unintentionally hilarious. Interview made it as horrifying as it should be.
I hated Claudia from start to
finish, and this scene still made me feel for her. Madeleine was innocent though,
and I still don’t understand why the Paris Vampires killed her. She wasn’t an
accessory to Lestat’s murder, and she was an adult. God, five minutes earlier
she was promised immortality, and it all ended like this. Executed for her
sire’s crimes. Bastards.
Take Interview: the scene where Claudia and Madeleine are burned to death by the sun. Horrifying. Especially the build-up: Claudia and Madeleine are trapped in this narrow tower, sentenced to death in a chaotic flurry, with just one vent leading to the outdoors – no exit, barely enough room to move let alone escape, and the vent is too high for them to reach or guard. Then it’s daytime, we watch the sunlight slowly descend upon them, and we watch Claudia’s confusion and gradual realization of the situation, her gasping in horror as direct sunlight slowly hits them. Then the payoff: we see this sculptural pile of ashes that’s still shaped like her in her last moments of horror. True Blood pulled something like this recently (except it involved a witch and voice distortions), and it was unintentionally hilarious. Interview made it as horrifying as it should be.
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http://reviews-of-movies-i-watched.blogspot.com.
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Basically, the whole film is a
scary what-if scenario for my people. What if there was no real vampire
society, and you and your sire had to fend for yourselves? What if your sire was
evil? What if you really were hungry and desperate for blood every minute, and
could blow at any time? What if you pulled away from a victim, and he/she
really was dead?
The scenario’s not so far-fetched.
There are vampires sired outside of our community, generally called
‘extra-nationals,’ and they make Louis look mentally balanced by comparison.
Whenever we find and imprison one of them, it’s a reminder of what we could
have been, and that it’s our circumstances that made us who we are – now that’s
psychological horror, right there.
My culture emphasizes
introspection and personal development. The fear of losing your ideals and the
basis of your personality with time, and with the changing cultural zeitgeist –
that fear is very real, whether it’s justified or not. My people are by no
means alone in that regard. Sometimes as you get older and learn about moral
ambiguity, and the role of conditioning and moral breakdown, the monsters don’t
look as external anymore. They may not even look much like monsters.
I think Interview works better as horror, especially adult horror, than
most of the Vampire films that take the perspective of the hunters and the
victims. Those films usually play on the fear of monsters. Stories like Interview play on the fear of becoming
monsters ourselves. That’s one reason the Vampire genre has lasted so long: it
combines the two. I think the latter is scarier. And really, which one is more realistic?
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http://reviews-of-movies-i-watched.blogspot.com.
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In 1984, the Inner
Party wouldn’t just torture you for resisting them: they’d break down your
sense of reality and morality until you could maintain the controlled lunacy of
doublethink, and you’d be willing to
throw your lover into a cage of rats if it meant saving your own ass. Contrast
that with, say: ‘some guy from the Thought Police killed Winston Smith in the
middle of the night, oh, and he had scary teeth and claws.’ Yeah. Lestat
killing the prostitute at the beginning of the film was alarming but not scary.
Lestat destroying Louis as an individual as we watch him regress into a monster
as horrible as Lestat, on the other hand, is memorable and scary.
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