Ghosts and Ghouls in the Cold, Dark North

Ghost stories, on the printed page, on the silver screen, on the tube, I’ve always been drawn to them.  I developed a taste early for black-and-white horror films, from The Haunting to The House on Haunted Hill (the original, not the remake, in both cases). You may recall that I have issues with allegedly scary movies that aren’t. (A blog about less than scary stuff I've seen.) I tried again this weekend, viewing a period piece with cinematography that sometimes appeared almost black and white, but wasn’t — cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones’ rich tones made the blacks blacker and the grays deeper, with some luscious browns in addition.  Visually, this ghost story was exactly as advertised.

Daniel Radcliffe as Arthur Kipps at the gates of the haunted house.

I’ve enjoyed the build-up and trailers to The Woman In Black.  And I’m rather surprised but happy to report I enjoyed the film as well.  This is an unambiguous ghost story, sure of itself. Its color scheme lends to a time when Nature ruled us and we had no inkling yet that we might try to rule Her.  Candles light houses, headlights are weak, and the amazing combustion engine is something that no one has had before to potentially uncover truths ― and skeletons ― in this mad haunting. 

Some thoughts:

First, adults are stupid.  That’s not about the movie, but I ask you, if you saw the advertisements for this film, where there’s a scary lady and a number of dead children, would you bring children?  A five year old?  The woman behind me brought a gaggle between five (at most) and nine.  These children may not have gotten this film while they watched it, snuffling and slurping and crunching and whispering that they had to pee.  But tonight, or tomorrow night, or the night after?  I predict there will be nightmares and the stupid adults won’t understand why. 

Second, this film is visually awesome, from the close-ups to the long shots, the darkness that is barely touched with light.  Shadows frighten even as they woo us toward their peculiarly warm depths.  Director James Watkins and cinematographer Maurice-Jones seduce us with a watercolor palette in a brightly lit opening scene of innocents at play.  Then the tones turn to moody oil paints. Kudos to set decoration by Niamh Coulter — the child’s nursery is the creepiest room I’ve ever seen.  All those Victorian wind-up toys and gewgaws may seem like mere clutter, but those bulging eyes engender dread and terror.  The Woman in Black has fabulous production design (Kave Quinn) and art direction (Paul Ghirardani), as well as brisk film editing (Jon Harris). 

Third, the premise works pretty well — most haunted house stories start off at a disadvantage with a ridiculous reason given for staying in the psychologically and physically threatening place. Here the protagonist actually has good cause to determinedly push on to this unpleasant wreck of a house to find all the papers hidden there — and they are indeed hidden without rhyme or reason throughout the house. The death of the last inhabitant was allegedly recent, but the estate has been falling into ruin for a good many years.  The rather desperate plight of the protagonist, Arthur Kipps, attorney, is set up well, and, rather like the decrepit house, Kipps has been grieving for his dead wife for four years and probably wouldn’t care at all about his debt and looming job loss but for his four-year-old son.  He must do this unpleasant task or face whatever English debtors face in the time between the Boer War and the first world war. 

Ciaran Hinds as Mr. Daily

How do we know when this takes place if we’re not experts about the single automobile seen?  As Kipps reads The Evening News on the train north (Daniel Radcliffe may never escape long train rides north), we see an ad about spiritualism and a medium endorsed by Arthur Conan Doyle.  That would place the story after the Boer War.  Everything else (clothing, candles instead of electricity or even gas lights, horse-drawn vehicles) definitively places the story earlier than World War I. 

Fourth, the performances in this film across the board are first rate.  Really.

• Daniel Radcliffe’s first foray into a feature film as an adult tells us that the boy’s still got it.  As young attorney and widower Arthur Kipps, his big blue eyes are woeful, his face lights up with amazed joy then crumples in bewildered despair.  Arthur is running on fumes, but Radcliffe is not.  He took the chance of doing a ghost story and carries it well.  He’s not yet a powerful player in the adult arena, but he’ll get there.
• The last few times I’ve seen Ciaran Hinds, I considered him miscast.  At last, in this film, it’s a fine fit as wealthy landowner Mr. Daily, the only man in the village with an automobile.  He is a sturdy, certain, god-fearing and loving man, who has suffered loss but still reaches out to help a stranger. 
•  The great Janet McTeer plays his wife.  She’s a little bit off, perhaps way off, but anyone who stays in this god-forsaken village is likely to be.  McTeer is delightful and fearless, her Mrs. Daily as loving to her “twins” as she would wish to be to her dead son.

Daniel Radcliffe and Janet McTeer

The people in this town are unpleasant. They lie, they stare, they close doors on poor Arthur, they’re downright mean.  Then we remember the opening scene of the film — one of very few in bright daylight, in which three pretty little girls interrupt their tea party.  They look in unison toward something we cannot see, then turn to look at the windows.  They go to the child-size windows, and….I don’t need to see the result, it’s searingly bright and horrific.   It’s an affecting and shocking scene in which there is no blood or gore.  Blood and gore aren’t scary, they’re just gross.  Director Watkins and screenwriter Jane Goldman (based on Susan Hill’s novel of the same title) get the horror genre better than many.  Together they create simple, sharp scenes with multiple characters; then long silent scenes with Arthur alone.  Or is he?

The villagers are not caricatures, even though we can think of them as the Innkeeper, the Innkeeper’s wife, the Lawyer, the Lawyer’s wife, the Cart Driver, the Landowner.  These may sound like stock characters, but the acting makes these people individuals instead.  This is a village of the damned.  All the people of the village are extremely well played, from Tim McMullan as the local lawyer Jerome and his wife Cathy Sara, to David Burke as the Constable.  Daniel Cerqueira as Keckwick the cart driver is surly and closed off.  But he has a name.  Later Arthur will call his name in the mist, in the dark. Keckwick is an echo of the whole village.  Liz White as Jennet, the Woman in Black, is haunting and haunted as she wreaks havoc and revenge against anyone and everyone.  The unfriendly Innkeeper and his wife, the Fishers, are well played by Shaun Dooley and Mary Stockley, each dealing with their losses differently.  Not to mention the exceedingly creepy children, particularly Aoife Doherty as Lucy Jerome and the children we meet first, the Fisher girls, Emma Shorey and Molly Harmon. The acting in this film is terrific and that makes it a lot of fun.

All in all, I enjoyed The Woman in Black:  It brings Hammer Films into the 21^st Century with a hoot and a holler, and I had a few good frights.  I would have enjoyed it more had the children behind me been off watching “Hugo” where they belonged.  When The Woman in Black is on DVD and I can control the viewing space — that is, the only juveniles behind me will be cats — I think I’ll enjoy it more despite the smaller screen.  After all, my current television screen is much larger than the old TV screens on which I saw many a memorably frightening film.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, but keeping the lights on....

Debt Paid

“The Debt” is an unglamorous thriller that’s not about car chases or gunfights, or unlikely leaps from one building to another.  There are guns, there’s a van, and there’s an attempt to escape from East Berlin, but “The Debt” goes deeper into its characters, imprisoning the four main characters inside an East Berlin apartment and inside their own tortured lives. 

The prey:  In the winter of 1965-66, three Mossad agents are under cover in East Berlin to extract a Nazi war criminal, the “Surgeon of Birkenau,” and return him to Israel for trial.  The Nazi doctor is now “Dr. Bernhardt,” a kindly old obstetrician with a practice in East Berlin.  Jesper Christensen gives a chilling performance as the Nazi monster who can appear benevolent, charming, and lethal inside seconds. 

Jesper Christensen as the Surgeon of Birkenau

 The searchers:

• Stephan Gold (played by Marton Csokas in 1966, then Tom Wilkinson in 1997), to put it very simply, wants revenge and glory.  He is a political animal, and an angry one.  His rage is barely contained in his younger days, and well-directed by experience as he ages.  Stephan’s furious piano playing in the East Berlin apartment was particularly frightening.  Csokas is the only one of the primary actors with whom I’m unfamiliar, and while I cannot yet pronounce his name, I won’t forget it. 
• David Peretz (Sam Worthington in 1966, Ciaran Hinds in 1997) wants justice, and he wants it publicly:  The world must know.  His sole purpose is the mission.  He seems to live on despair as if he was doomed from birth just for surviving. Worthington’s face is bland, childlike, often immobile.  David keeps a mask in place as long as he can.  Only two things break through his discipline — the Surgeon of Birkenau and Rachel Singer. 
• Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain in 1966, Helen Mirren in 1997) may just want to be worthy of having survived.  She had been a translator, and the East Berlin mission is her first time in the field.  She is determined, but not yet as hardened as Stephan and not as fiercely stoic as David.  Soon after the mission, her life revolves around keeping the truth of the mission a secret, perhaps to protect herself, Stephan, and David as much as daughter Sara.

Chastain, Csokas, Worthington as Rachel, Stephan, and David in 1966.

The film goes back and forth between the mission in 1965-66 and its aftermath thirty years later.  The symmetries between Tom Wilkinson and Martin Csokas as Stephan as well as Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain as Rachel are remarkable. 

The older Stephan is as well written and acted as the younger — an angry young man grown up, ambitious, arrogant, manipulative, not one to deny himself the objects of his lust or to restrain his fury.  Mirren’s Rachel is Chastain grown much stronger after thirty years of building a persona for the world to see.  Accustomed to being in the public eye, only David can force Rachel to reflect.  Worthington’s David is less clear, and Ciaran Hinds as David thirty years later seems to be out of sync with the other actors.  He has enormous sad eyes, but his character’s actions speak much louder than his words.  The character David travels far in his quest for redemption, leaving Rachel to follow his path to its end.  I know this, yet it seems to me David was more effective offscreen than either Worthington or Hinds were onscreen.  In the 1997 story, David reappears like a revenant, unfulfilled in his mission for the world to know the truth, both about the Surgeon of Birkenau, and about 1966.

Excellent lighting helps to differentiate the locations and times of the film:  1966 East Berlin was dingy, wet and cold.  More rain entered the apartment than light.  Once back in Israel, Tel Aviv was bright, wide open, hot with a fresh wind.  The film makes powerful use of repetition in small details of scenes; in its lighting design ranging from grays to blacks to bright whites; in sudden changes from what we’d seen before and therefore anticipated. 

Helen Mirren as Rachel in 1997.

“The Debt” is based on an Israeli film, “Ha-Hov” written by Assaf Bernstein and Ido Rosenblum, directed by the former. 

Matthew Vaughn & Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan have crafted a screenplay for “The Debt” that is taut and disturbing.  Director John Madden does a fabulous job, filling the film with strained nerves, gasps, sharp turns, yet still providing food for thought.  Thomas Newman’s score adds to the suspense, as does Alexander Berner’s editing and Ben Davis’ cinematography.  Excellent fight choreography by Peter Pedrero presents very real people sweating, grunting, panting with the extraordinary effort to kill, capture, or just survive. 

“The Debt” has many white-knuckle scenes which do not dissipate like mist after the movie ends.  This is an intelligent thriller, its violence intimate and terrifying, its humanity sadly fragile.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, but not shutting off the light.  The world is far too scary for that.