Fotografando i fantasmi

A few years ago I stumbled across this book by Steve Szilagyi (quite a name he got himself there), I read it a couple of times, thought it was an entertaining story with some interesting themes... and then I pretty much forgot all about it. Until now, where I stumbled across it on DVD, didn't even know it was made as a film, and so I gave it a shot yesterday, not hoping for much (tiny British films aren't always the epitome of excitement).

A positive surprise. The film is about a British photographer who's specialized in trick photography after he came home from WW1. He's a rational man, to the point where he's almost dead inside (the very opposite of Arthur Conan Doyle who also shows up in the tale, played by the guy who played Watson in the TV show btw) but that changes when a woman brings him some photos she claims show her daughters playing in their garden with a bunch of... you guessed it, fairies.

This is essentially a fantasy film, but it's not quite like most other fantasy films; questions about belief is the central theme, but it's stretched and played around with so it's constantly intriguing, even for a cynical agnostic (atheist if you're Christian) like me. Is heaven a state of mind, and if so, does that make it less worth? How do you find truth in life, and is it ever better to lie about the truth for the sake of those you love? Thematically they've incorporated many of the more "out there" ideas from the book in rather clever ways; drugs, sex, violence, are also themes in Szilagyi's innocently looking book, and the filmmakers have tried to stay true to this. This isn't some film about small creatures with crowns on their heads who smiles a lot, nor is it a funny Spielbergian flick, it's an exploration of grief and obsession and how those things can affect our beliefs, shake us to the very core. Yeah, it doesn't sound very jolly, which I guess it isn't, but it's interesting.

The cast is excellent, the music and photography far better then I had expected (same goes for the limited fx). Going by the cover and BBC's name on it somewhere, I actually thought it was maybe a TV movie. Really brilliant use of slow motion, not just for kicks, as a gimmick, even though it looks ravishing as well, but actually done in a meaningful way with regards to the plot (though that's easier to see if you've read the book).

The writers have changed a lot with regards to the plot; shuffled around, condensed, introduced new scenes/characters, and so on, but that's like it should be. Any attempt to take the book directly from the page would've failed miserably. They've even introduced a completely new intro & ending as well. It works like a charm, though some might find it a bit too convenient.

I did have some problems with it though... the lead is deliberately almost always kept at arms length, which is okay in some ways, but leads to detachment. I ended up finding his destiny more stimulating and interesting then gripping. There is also the inherent problem a book like this one poses when turned into a movie; how do you visualize ideas and thoughts. How do you visualize symbols? Film is a literal medium, and so it can't hide things the way language can, this film proofs that by coming up short in some of the books most magnificent sequences (but it improves on others); this isn't a fault from the filmmakers, what can they do after all, but it is a problem when they've chosen a story that is essentially more about mystical/spiritual question (going all new age here) then it is about the literal discovery of fairies.

Anyway, despite my few complaints, and despite the fact that this is not a mind blowing, life altering, hyper super fantastic religious experience of a film, I still highly recommend it. It's a rather unique and different attempt to play in the fantasy pen, and that is to be applauded I think. It's also pretty entertaining... if your idea of a good time is a bunch of Brits running around in gardens searching for fairies that is.

A darker, more metaphysical take on FAIRY TALE: A TRUE STORY which came out also in 1997. Where FT is suitable for older kids, this one certainly is not. This film features many of the same characters as FT, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, two cute little girls, and the Theosophical Society, and theme, we are taken on a very dark journey that explores use of halluciongenic plants as a way to view the fairy folk. There are no fairy tale happy endings here.

Go ahead and rent this film and FT. Let your kids enjoy FT, and after you tuck them into bed, watch PF and spend the rest of your evening comparing and contrasting the surprisingly similar and strikingly different films..

Far better than I expected and wrongfully neglected. A dark and profound examination of agnosticism and faith that is quite remarkable, with unexpected twists and shocks. I very much recommend this film, particularly the performance by Toby Stephens who is, in a word, amazing.

Such a shame that this beautiful film has been so overlooked and dismissed. I can think of few films that deal with the issue of loss and grief so sensitively and with such original flair. Nick Willing's film is tender, mysterious, moving and confident. And, often quite rare in modern cinema, his characters actually deliver and go on a genuine journey. In short, this film takes us somewhere. I believe Mr Willing and his producers have been criticised heavily for their fairy effects: the fairies that appear are sometimes lithe, naked little nymphs, and sometimes plump little men. Both are absolutely perfectly judged, in my opinion, providing something as far from Disney as possible, but entirely in keeping with the Edwardian mood of the whole piece. Moreover, the lighting, pacing, over-cranking and scoring of the sequences wherein the fairies appear are masterfully handled. As a film-maker myself, I find this film an inspiration. The end of the film is unbelievably balletic and touching. Ben Kingsley, Toby Stephens and Edward Hardwicke are splendid. The score by Simon Boswell is also an absolute gem, and it's a shame this isn't on general release on CD. One of the great British films of the end of the century.

Along with other great English fantasy films like The Company of Wolves, Things to Come, The Devil Rides Out and Jonathan Millers's BBC-filmed production of Alice in Wonderland, this is an intelligent and complex production, miles away in mood and concern from the typical American product. In a film that reminds one of his father Robert's The Asphyx, (as it also involves the attempt to film the supernatural by nineteenth century photographers) Toby Stephens is ideal as the intense, mourning photographer Castle, haunted by the abrupt death of his wife.

The central concern of the film, that of seeing, or not seeing (or perhaps more perhaps *comprehending*, or not - is established in the opening shot of the film: the blurred face of Castle alone in the group photograph he takes of his wife and others. In an image which anticipates those of the fairies later on, he is the one blurred, here the 'ghost' on his film. Appropriately, in a film full of echoes and symbols, this long shot out from Castle's wife's iris recalls his later, obsessive, photographic enlargement of another eye: that of one of the girls photographed with fairies.

The death of his wife then reduces Castle further, through grief and shock, to a state almost like that of a somnambulist. He walks through life, hovering between the shades, oblivious to fear and the concerns of the real world - as evidenced by the unexploded bomb he encounters without any sense of danger, ticking like the time piece he keeps to remember his wife. Castle doesn't care. He wants to die - a sense of foreboding which stays with the viewer from the beginning to the end of the film. He even 'photographs the dead' in his studio, witnessed by his work for the soldier's parents. Even when a new sexual relationship becomes a possibility, later in the film, he cannot rejoin this aspect of life though spiritual malaise.

This thread is continued later in the scene later where Castle enters the church to hear a sermon by the bereaved Kingsley. Earlier that morning he has taken the flower-drug and has 'died' watching the fairies. Now he appears, bloodied like a victim in Macbeth, as the pale ghost at the ceremony..

Castle's attempt to photograph fairies, spirits who hover between life and death, is obviously an attempt to capture something back from the spirit world that has captured his wife. Such is the delicacy and subtlety of the films structure and symbolism, however, that at the end one could feasibly argue that Castle actually died with his wife on the mountain and - rather like in The Occurrence At Owl Bridge Creek - what has happened since the opening scenes has just been the dream of a dying man!

Performances are generally excellent (although Ben Kingsley's wig and stare are slightly disconcerting). Those who found the actual fairies disappointing in effect were perhaps expecting something grander. Some of Castle's hallucinations reminded me of Jacob's Ladder and Kingsley's demise of the killer's suicide in Peeping Tom.

As a last instance of the film's care with presentation and sophistication, one may take the music. The chief elements that reoccur are a sombre dirge like bass-motif and a light waltz. Only at the end of the film does recognise that the bass-motif is an altered element of the famous Beethoven slow movement which plays throughout the last few scenes. Like Castle himself, it is transfigured - or 'completed' by events.