Now You See It and Now You Don't: Don't Look Now
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FlickChick.
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Movie Talk!
As I suffered through the tedious psychological thriller
Premonition, starring
Sandra Bullock as a woman haunted by shattering visions of her husband's death, I couldn't help but think of
Don't Look Now (1973), a film whose mix of intense family drama and paranormal phenomena not only works, but works so well that more than 30 years after I first saw it, the fleeting image of a child in a bright red coat can still give me chills. So what better choice for this week's DVD Tuesday pick?
Directed by
Nicolas Roeg and based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier (
Rebecca,
The Birds) Don't Look Now begins with the death of a small girl, Christine: She drowns in a pond on her parents' country estate. Her father, John (
Donald Sutherland), has a sudden intuition that something is wrong, but arrives too late to do anything but pull his daughter's body, dressed in a distinctive red slicker, from the water. Wracked with guilt, John - an architect - subsequently takes a job restoring a church in Venice. He hopes an extended break from familiar surroundings will help him and his wife, Laura (
Julie Christie), get over their child's death. But once there, they meet a blind psychic who claims to have seen Christine; soon John himself begins having visions - of a funeral barge gliding through the canals and a small red-lad figure - that convince him he too can see what ordinary people can't. John's determination to speak to Christine's restless spirit sets the film en route to a twist ending so inexorable it approaches the proportions of Greek tragedy.
The reason
Don't Look Now works and
Premonition - which I'm now using the exemplify the kind of lazy, pointless thriller in which "clever" twists trump all - doesn't is that
Don't Look Now's weird goings-on are rooted in solid characterization. John and Laura, both intelligent, capable people, are unmoored by grief, guilt and despair. Nothing makes sense to them after Christine's death, so they're looking for a new sense and find it in omens and signs. Roeg - a world-class cinematographer before he turned to directing - scatters signposts through the mise en scene in the form of ominous slashes and splotches of red, but where they lead and where John
thought they were leading are two very different things.
Things to consider:
Do you care about believable characters in thrillers, or are you just along for the twists and turns of a slick thrill ride?
What twist ending made the biggest impression on you?
Could you enjoy watching that same movie a second time knowing the ending, or would that feel pointless?
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Previous DVD Tuesday blogs:
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
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Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also:
This week's new DVD releases
