A Venezia... un dicembre rosso shocking

There are two types of horror films, really. There are popcorn horror films, good for a cheap in-the-moment thrill at best, and there are serious horror films, movies that linger in the mind and in the bones. I have just watched Nicolas Roeg's 'Don't Look Now' and my spine is frozen. It's 4am, I'm alone, and I have a heightened awareness of sounds and sights I usually don't notice.

Here is a movie that's both resolved and unresolved, ultimately growing more ambiguous as it progresses and becomes more complex. After it is over and has become a complete(d) work to the eye of the viewer, the lasting impression is that of mystery. Too many films in this genre bark up the wrong tree, working to explain all of the events that unfold. By explaining nothing, by being almost abstract, questions and images will haunt the viewer indefinitely. It is what it is, and while this movie can be watched over and over, and the events that occur can be anticipated, they will forever remain an enigma. This is true cinema, purely visual and aural, without the helpful but ultimately self-defeating aid of a proxy observer; the viewer is the direct observer, and there's no filter through which the events and images develop any sort of tidy rationality.

Donald Sutherland's performance here is sober, adult, the grief of his character palpable. And in the face of this grief is a force that runs through the movie like a dark current, evoking the eternal and spookily ethereal and subterranean; less an eternity of the heavens than the eternity of a crypt. Venice is not merely the ideal location for this story, but the necessary location; it could not take place anywhere else. The unquestionable, and indeed imposing, Gothic majesty of the churches, whose interior height dwarfs their human occupants with the spiritual dread of the ancient, overlooks the canals of Venice like the wicked-faced stone gargoyles Sutherland finds himself physically embracing, while the canals that run through the city are literally the ghost of this couple's personal tragedy. Living in Venice, in light of the details surrounding their loss, seems almost a perverse choice, perhaps a masochistic one; they could be punishing themselves for their daughter's drowning by living in a flooded city.

It's not that Sutherland's character is a rational man in an irrational environment, but rather a rational man in an environment whose own secret code, which one may trust makes perfect sense to itself (like a tree in the forest that will only fall if no one is around to hear), is inaccessible and inexplicable to him, baring itself only in fragments in a way he chooses to ignore, just as you might ignore a spectral voice in the dead of night, dismissing it as a product of your imagination.

The movie's notorious love scene is jarringly explicit, yet rather than erotic, it is profoundly sad, and takes on a deeper (even creepy) resonance after the film ends. That the scene is intercut with scenes of Sutherland and Julie Christie dressing prevents the two from ever being completely naked and united; this editing choice changes the dimensions of the love scene in a way that I've never seen attempted elsewhere. At other points, Roeg inserts moments and images that carry sinister implications, none of which are ever concretely substantiated and only leave the viewer with more questions.

The film drifts along at a wandering pace. The final twenty minutes are among the most atmospheric and suspenseful twenty minutes in any film, culminating in a montage that is absolutely chilling.

'The Blair Witch Project,' made over two decades later and probably influenced by this, has similar aspirations, but finally has only a fraction of the emotional gravity.

Don't Look Now(1973) has been badly negleted by many film viewers does to its enematic nature. The first five to fifteen minutes are splendidly edited. Don't Look Now(1973) is based on a novel by Daphne Du Maurier. Borrows somes themes from the Alfred Hitchcock film of another ghost story by the author called Rebecca(1940). The film score by Pino Donaggio beats anything he has done for Brian De Palma except for Carrie(1976). Don't Look Now(1973) may have been influenced by a similar themed pic called Who Saw Her Die?(1971).

Nicolas Roeg does an excellent job in filming scenes of creepy and eerie impact. Donald Sutherland gives a extraordinary performance as the clairvoyant but disbeliever, John Baxter. The film's most controversial sequence is the shocking sex scene with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. What's shocking about this one scene is the realistic feel of the act. There are some who believe to this day that the sex scene was not acted but real. The Sutherland-Christie sex scene is done with the same editing technique as The Man Who Fell to Earth(1976).

Don't Look Now(1973) was The Sixth Sense(1999) of its era. One film that sports the same idea about fate is David Croenberg's The Dead Zone(1983). Julie Christie is just brilliant as Laura Baxter. Shares the same gloomy landscape as the director's later film, The Man Who Fell to Earth(1976). The climax of Don't Look Now(1973) was a gloomy and shocking sequence to watch. Don't Look Now(1973) is in the tradition of films such as Last Year at Marienbad(1960).

"Don't Look Now" was released at about the time of "The Excorcist". There is otherwise no basis for comparison between these movies. While the Excorcist hits us in the face with the equivalent of a special effects rubber chicken, "Don't Look Now" manages to get under your skin from the very first scene, and gradually, elegantly insinuates itself into a place where your childhood and adult fears dwell and steep. Its setting in Venice is both beautiful and menacing. Something terrible is always just around the corner from our conscious mind. It is also troubling, and, as only a good movie can, leaves more questions unanswered than resolved. Without a doubt, it contains one of the most beautiful loves scenes ever filmed, showing scenes of Christie and Sutherland in genuinely erotic (by '70's standards) lovemaking, mixed with scenes of the couple as they dress and prepare for their day, the following morning. Director Nicolas Roeg is a forgotten Master.

I like horror movies. Really, I do. It's one genre where the film has to be really, really abhorrently terrible for me to actually be bored, as most bad horror movies at least provide a few laughs. Despite, or perhaps due to, my affinity for the horror genre, I find it nigh impossible to find films that are unsettling. "Don't Look Now", a film responsible in many ways for my becoming a film buff, is such a film, not for its 'disturbing' or gory content, but for its subtle suggestions, insinuations, and especially for the thick, tense, gloomy atmosphere that director Nicolas Roeg so brilliantly creates and maintains.

By consistently maintaining "Don't Look Now" as a character-driven script with recurring themes and motifs the writers of this film, Allan Scott and Chris Bryant who adapted their screenplay from the short story by Daphne DuMaurier (Rebecca), ensure that the 'jump moments' are never hollow or empty. Really, there are many moments here where you see a fleeting glimpse of creepy imagery that so frequently come off as desperate and stupid, but in "Don't Look Now" the same moments are so tied to the mythology the film develops and the thematic content of the film that they are actually meaningful and essential.

Of course, no comment on or discussion of "Don't Look Now" is complete without commentary on the famous love scene. Yes, it's surprisingly explicit, but people who dwell on the weirdness and explicitness of the scene are largely, hugely missing the point. Roeg initially included the scene as a last minute addition to balance out the scenes of the couple arguing, but through masterful editing from Graeme Clifford (under the creative supervision of Roeg, obviously) the scene is turned into an essential part of the film, not only bizarrely erotic and tender, but also creepy, unsettling, and sad. Roeg intercuts the scene with images of the two dressing, preventing a moment of pure togetherness in the scene, changing the dimensions of and artistic motivation behind the sex scene drastically and definitely for the better.

Anthony B. Richmond, a once great cinema photographer (gone from working on "The Kids are Alright" to "Dumb and Dumber: When Harry Met Lloyd" these days) photographs this film beautifully with the strong creative involvement of director Nicolas Roeg. The score by Pino Donaggio is creepy, evocative, interesting, and sometimes even unpredictable. The unusual and innovative editing of the film is a crucial part of its resounding success, creating creepy moments out of nothing. Some of the acting is (deliberately) exaggerated for effect and mostly excellent.

With its creepy atmosphere, innovative editing, strong characters, good writing, and brilliant, unsettling final montage, "Don't Look Now" is director Nicolas Roeg's finest accomplishment and is deservedly regarded as one of the finest British films of all time, but I'd go a bit further and say it is likely a strong contender for the title of best British film, period.

10/10

Now here's a film that may just get you thinking, the extents that some go to with abstractive linking, as a daughter is drowned, this might just make you frown, as you witness two souls, whose reality's sinking. Wandering around Venice there's a large hint of menace, two sisters suggest afterlife has a premise, a wife who believes, husband who still grieves, though to him, hocus pocus, is far too remiss. Understanding their feelings is the key to the door, through eyes that have witnessed events that have scored, a scar through their souls, left bottomless holes, a knife that has slashed at least one, to the floor.