reVIEW (43)
SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

“Our battle, our struggle, is to create art. Our weapon is the moving picture.
“Because we have the moving picture, our paintings will grow and recede. Our poetry will be shadows that lengthen and conceal. Our light will play across living faces that laugh and agonize. And our music will linger and finally overwhelm because it will have a context as certain as the grave.
“We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory. But our memory will neither blur, nor fade.”
-- F.W. Murnau

Nicolas Cage certainly has an interesting view of vampires.
In 1989, he starred in Robert Bierman‘s Vampire’s Kiss, a black comedy in which he played poor, befuddled Peter Loew, who believes—perhaps mistakenly—that he’s been bitten by a vampire.
11 years later, Cage chose as his feature producing debut, E. Elias Merhige’s brilliant take on Nosferatu, Shadow of the Vampire.

Here, noted German director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (John Malkovich) sets off to film (without the widow Stoker’s permission) Dracula, and in the interests of authenticity, has a real vampire (Willem Dafoe) pretend to be an actor named Max Schreck, to play Nosferatu’s Count Dracula stand-in, Count Orlock.
As early as that singular premise—with its funhouse mirroring of truth masquerading as fiction, to play a fiction which is both truth (as Schreck/Orlock really is a vampire) and a double fiction (Orlock is merely Dracula, under a different name); all of this, of course, a fiction of a truth, as we see a behind-the-scenes-look-that-never-was of the making of Nosferatu—it should be plainly evident that Shadow of the Vampire is so much more than your average cinematic blood-sucking experience.
With a script by Steven Katz, Shadow of the Vampire asks the central question, How far is an artist willing to go for his art? And in asking that question, Shadow also explores the double-headed metaphor of art as vampire, and art as a means to immortality.
It also takes the film industry to task. Humourously, by poking fun at how a star’s ego can hijack a production, and darkly, by presenting the camera (in the film, merely an extension of the director) as cold, apathetic observer and recorder, as leecher of vitality and life, an idea which reaches its apex in a chilling sequence that touches on the ultimate disposability of actresses in the grand old Boy’s Club of movie-making.

Merhige takes all of this weighty material and crafts a tantalizing portrait of the high cost of art and the dangers of obsessively brilliant artists.
And who else to play the narrative’s obsessively brilliant artist, but John Malkovich?
Malkovich’s Murnau is calculating and exacting, a cinema despot who asks his extras not to “act,” but rather, to “be.” In his white lab coat and goggles, he is the mad scientist only too willing to go to extreme lengths to complete his celluloid Monster.
But he meets his nemesis in Schreck, a role that Dafoe clearly dives into with relish. As part of the ruse, his Schreck is apparently the ultimate method actor, appearing to the cast and crew always in costume, and constantly in character.
And if you’ve seen Murnau’s Nosferatu, you’ll note that Dafoe nails the oddly disturbing mannerisms actor Max Schreck displayed in that classic of German Expressionism.
But it isn’t just that peculiar physicality that Dafoe brings to his performance. He also brings a humour, curiously both self-effacing and cunningly self-aware, as when, in one scene, he is at first coached as to his character’s motivation, before taking his first stab at ad lib.
Dafoe also brings a strange air of pathos to his character that serves to inform a role that could easily have been all melodramatic pantomime gesture and Vaudevillian tics, with some genuine longing and emotion.
What gives Shadow even more of a kick is how awesome and effective the rest of its cast is: genre stalwart Udo Kier, Eddie Izzard, Cary Elwes, Catherine McCormack, who all go about recreating scenes and sequences from Nosferatu like skilled and particularly respectful grave robbers, making the film, aside from everything else, a wonderful homage to a masterpiece of black-and-white cinema.

Shadow of the Vampire also has much in common with films like John Madden‘s Shakespeare In Love and Ken Russell’s Gothic, films which use actual historical figures to propose a fictional scenario that ultimately informs an artist’s work and creative sensibilities.
Or, as I put it earlier, films that show a behind-the-scenes-look-that-never-was of a film, or play, or novel.
So at this point, I think it should be stated in so many words: Shadow of the Vampire may have fangs, but it really isn’t about neck-biting and blood. It’s a fascinating and complex entry in the vaults of vampire cinema, one that is only willing and eager to be discussed and debated over.
After all, with so many funhouse mirrors around, it makes it that much harder to determine, where is the real Monster of the piece?
The ancient, bloodthirsty creature, only seeking to slake its inhuman thirst?
The despotic director, to whom all are merely a means to an end?
Or the film itself, the aforementioned end, for which all else is sacrificed?

Parting shot: A review of Merhige’s follow-up to Shadow of the Vampire, Suspect Zero, can be found in the Archive, where the article series “The Cinematic (Un)Life of Count Dracula” can also be found. Part I (“A Symphony of Shudders”) discusses F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu.

(Shadow of the Vampire OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by Samuels Advertising]; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
(Review)

Julie Taymor’s Titus is quite possibly the wildest and most interesting Shakespeare film adaptation I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t overly fond of her Frida, though.
Those sentiments clearly don’t make me a rabid fan of her work. She is, however, one of those directors that are always on my radar, whose films are always worth, at the very least, a healthily curious look.
And when her Beatles-inspired musical, Across The Universe, ran into some studio interference, well, that just pumped up my curiousity all the more. I mean, when a film gets into trouble with the studio, more often than not, that means it’s not your usual, run of the mill Hollywood pap. (Or it’s gone insanely overbudget.)

Jude (Jim Sturgess) is a factory worker from Liverpool who makes the great escape to the U.S. of A. with a personal agenda. Lucy (Running With Scissors’ Evan Rachel Wood) is a privileged young girl about to go off to college.
The paths of these soon-to-be star-crossed lovers are about to intersect, and in the company of Lucy’s brother Max (Joe Anderson, who played Peter Hook in Control) and a motley crew of—in Lucy’s mom’s own words—“promiscuous drug fiends,” they spend a pivotal summer in New York, while war rages in a tiny Asian country called Vietnam.
It’s there, in the Big Apple, social unrest and awakening going on all around them, that Jude and Lucy learn life’s most valuable lesson: all you need is love.

At its core, Across The Universe is a love story.
But that, of course, is complicated by, not just the ‘60’s counterculture backdrop, but also the presence of the film’s supporting characters, some (like Max) more prominent than others (the sadly underused Prudence, played by the curiously named T.V. Carpio).
Things get a tad disappointing when a character like Prudence is introduced into the narrative with the quiet and poignant yearning of “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” only to be shuffled in and out of the story without any apparent rhyme or reason.
Jo-Jo (Martin Luther McCoy) also gets a powerful and effective introduction, with the gospel stylings of “Let It Be,” his arrival in the big city heralded by Joe Cocker’s blazing rendition of “Come Together” as urban anthem.
Jo-Jo, at least, gets slightly more face time than Prudence, but his subplot (also romantic) happens largely off-screen.

Clearly, the choice to set Across The Universe during the ‘60’s was to give the story more depth and resonance, and I’m all for that. But when the narrative fails to support not just the number of characters, but also the weight of its own intentions, then the film falls short of the dizzying heights of its immense potential. The result is a tale that lacks substance, peopled by characters that aren’t as fully realized as they ought to be.
The narrative, as well as its energy level, doesn’t quite sustain itself over the 2-hour running time. And somehow, the climax leaves the impression that the characters survived the ordeal, rather than triumphed over the adversity of the times.
While it takes a page from Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge by utilizing popular music as narrative shorthand, Across The Universe doesn’t hit the bull’s eye the way Luhrmann’s rousing and incredibly moving musical did.

That’s not to say that Across The Universe is a complete let down. This is one of those cases where the parts are most definitely greater then their sum.
“Strawberry Fields,” which juxtaposes Jude’s agonized personal confusion, with the horrors of Vietnam (though the flaming strawberry bombs are arguably a tad much); the snatches of “Across The Universe” that we actually manage to hear—as Taymor chooses to pit it in a discordant war with “Helter Skelter.”
And those final moments of “Across The Universe,” with eerie visuals that rival some of the more vivid images from Titus.
These are when the film works the best, when the imagery and the music (and in some numbers, Daniel Ezralow‘s choreography) merge into a cinematic experience that stays with you past the end credits.

Across The Universe also boasts some interesting appearances by Bono, Eddie Izzard, the aforementioned Cocker, and a past Taymor collaborator (the cameo’s too sweet to spoil the surprise).
It’s also got solid musical support from McCoy (touted as “one of music’s next big movements”), Carpio (daughter of noted Asian singer Teresa Carpio), and Dana Fuchs, who, as Sadie, eerily recalls Janis Joplin (whom she played in the off-Broadway hit, Love, Janis).
The central performances are however, slightly problematic. Sturgess and Wood can sing well enough, sure, but sometimes, the emotion doesn’t shine through as much as it should, particularly from Wood, whose Lucy, after all, is asked and demanded more of by the narrative.
There’s also the very suddenness of the film’s denoeument, sparked by a rendition of “Hey, Jude” placed in a weirdly improbable context. This is arguably one of the bigger shortcomings of the film, leaving the audience with a vaguely unsatisfying ending, as if they needed to wrap things up, and weren’t at all sure how.

Still, though Across The Universe may be uneven, and I’ve still to find that Julie Taymor film that slays me completely, this is clearly not a boring film.
In my books, Taymor’s still a far more interesting director for a musical than, say, Rob Marshall.
Or Joel Schumacher.

Parting shot: Proving she likes to work with familiar faces, Taymor is gearing up for the Spider-Man musical, with Bono doing the music.
To further reinforce that notion, word once floated on the web that Taymor was looking at Sturgess and Wood to play Spidey and Mary Jane in the musical, though I’ve yet to hear anything concrete regarding casting.
Taymor is, of course, best regarded for her work on The Lion King musical.

Parting shot 2: For those of you who love behind-the-scenes thingies, Dana Fuchs blogs about her experiences during the Across The Universe shoot here.

Parting shot 3: Reviews of Running With Scissors and Control can be found in the Archive.

(Across The Universe OS courtesy of impawards.com; soundtrack album cover art courtesy of amazon.com; images courtesy of Sony Pictures and about.com.)