Heavenly Creatures (Revisited)
Nov. 8th, 2012 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakHeavenly Creatures was the first film directed by Peter Jackson I ever watched, back in the early 90s when film versions of Tolkien were limited to Bakshi cartoons and every reviewer felt obligated to call him "cult horror director P.J." before marvelling said director had produced a film which wasn't horror at all. I think it might still be his best film - the LOTR films being an epic achievement which can't be seen independent from each other, let alone from the book they are based on. But Heavenly Creatures is its own film, based on real events and transforming them into a story that at different times is compelling, funny, sad and horrifying and refuses to come up with a single simple explanation for the event that it culminates in. It's that rare film which manages to make its two central characters understandable without excusing them, which largely, but not exclusively stays in their point of view yet gets across how increasingly distorted this pov becomes, or losing sight of the humanity of the other characters.
I rewatched it the other day for the first time in years, and found myself as shaken, amused, disturbed and stricken by the end of it as ever. Which automatically makes me ramble, about the film itself with some footnotes about the real life background. Also the casting: back then, Peter Jackson cast two unknown and very young actresses, both of whom made their international screen debut here, in the leading roles, Melanie Lynsky and Kate Winslet. Because Kate Winslet went on to subsequently have a big career, virtually every reviewer who watched the film after being familiar with Winslet's later work seems to feel obliged to mention that Melanie Lynsky "steals" the film from her, apparantly laboring under the misconception that Kate is supposed to play the main character. Actually, while they are both playing leading roles, Melanie Lynsky's character, Pauline, is the point of view and the center as established by the script - it's her voice over that carries us through the film, which is based on the real Pauline's diary, and we mostly see everything through her eyes, both when she's alone and with Kate Winslet's character, Juliet. (Whereas there are only three scenes where Juliet is on screen without Pauline.) You can't steal when you're already the queen, so to speak.
(I'm reminded of similar reviews about, say, Blackpool, claiming David Morrissey, who plays the lead character, Ripley, and is credited as such, "steals" the three parter from David Tennant, who, years and years pre Doctor Who, plays a supporting character, Peter Carlisle, who while important to the plot is still only supporting and far, far down on the credits, if you bother to check them out. Again, if you're the king already, you can't "steal" the audience's attention and central emotional investment: it's supposed to be yours.)
Back to Heavenly Creatures. One extraordinary thing the film pulls off right at the start is this: it doesn't cheat about where it is going, and yet it makes you forget while you're watching. What I mean is: it starts with the end, our two teenage leads running screaming and covered with blood. We don't know yet why (unless we're familiar with a famous crime in New Zealand in the late 1950s, which I wasn't when watching the film for the first time all those years ago), but it's clear something really terrible must have happened. And the rest of the film is a flashback, which lures you in to a seemingly very different type of story altogether, that of a passionate teenage odd couple friendship, between brooding working class Pauline and and high strung upper class Juliet. Who start out as very different but share a history of childhood illnesses, a passion for writing, films and tenor Mario Lanza that pulls them together.
Pauline and Juliet are such identifiable teenagers. It's all so familiar: the giddiness, the melodrama, the you-and-I-against-the-world attitude, the growing conviction that nobody understands them and is against them. The creativity, too: like the young Brontes, Pauline and Juliet create their own elaborate fantasy world, Borovnia, in which they set long fantasy epics. Peter Jackson's decision to show said fantasy world (aka when Weta got its first big challenge) is crucial, imo, for what the film achieves in terms of pov. (It also allows him some meta fun: the heroes of Borovnia are modelled after the film stars the girls adore, like James Stewart, but Orson Welles, aka "the most hideous man alive", becomes their Id turned flesh, or rather, clay, dispensing executions and providing sexual frisson.) It's part of what makes the audience complicit. The first few times the Borovnian world turns violent as Pauline and Juliet imagine the death of annoying psychiatrists and intrusive preachers, it's funny. We've all felt like this.
And then you start to realise/remember where this is going.
Much of the adult world - the teachers, Juliet's self absorbed parents, said therapist - is often treated satirically: but Pauline's mother Honora, the adult character with the most screen time, never is. Which is important. Honora is extremely sympathetic, sweet, well-meaning, and increasingly bewildered and hurt by the way her daughter comes to reject her. This is also where Jackson manages to both keep the audience in Pauline's pov and simultanously show how distorted it is. Same with Pauline's pov of Juliet's parents, only in reverse, and it's very much tied to class and gender: Pauline idealizes the rich Hulmes, especially Juliet's father, and imagines her mother as the obstacle between Juliet and herself, when in actuality Dr. Hulme is the one fretting homophobically about the "unnatural" closeness between Pauline and Juliet and demands of Pauline's parents to put an end to it. (Jackson, btw, doesn't commit himself regarding the sexuality of his heroines: they fantasize about celebrities and each other alike. But he takes several biting pot shots at the fear and repression even a suspicion there might be same sex attraction was treated with in the 50s.)
Again, it's the teenager-ness of it all that's so familiar even as it gets out of control: of course the girls go from close to absolutely obsessed with each other when the parents try separation. Of course they have runnning away fantasies and remake the adults into mean stupid monsters. What chokes me up, no matter how often I rewatch, is the inevitability of it all, and yet the emotional horror when Pauline's "I wish my mother was dead!" goes from being an avarage teenage explanation to an actual plan, and you realise they will do it.
Stories that present a horrible crime these days often have to face the accusation that they're more interested in/have more sympathy for the killers than for the victim(s). While the girls are the main characters of Jackson's film, he never, as I mentioned, loses sight of Honora, never more so than in the sequence leading up to her death. (Years later, he accuses himself on the "Fellowship of the Ring" audio commentary of stealing from it for Boromir's death sequence, and if you're familiar with both, you can see the point.) It's also the point where he starts to disconnect the audience with his young heroines: when you watch Pauline persuading her mother to eat another bit of cake and you realise this is because she thinks of this as her mother's last meal. Then comes the walk Honora and the girls take, to Puccini's humming chorus, eerily beautiful, and then suddenly the complete break in styles when they go through with their plan. There is no soundtrack except for everyone's breath and then the cries as Honora is battered to death, which for me is one of the three most brutal and devastating death scenes ever (the other two being Janet Leigh's in "Psycho" and Maddie's death in "Twin Peaks"). As with the others, the horror, the brutality isn't so much in the gore (your avarage Quentin Tarantino film as more), but in the way the suffering of the victim is made real, sudden, and comes at the hands of characters which the audience until that point was sympathetic towards.
In "Twin Peaks", the death of Maddie takes place on two levels, the slow mo killing by BOB intercut with the actual speed killing by Leland. Jackson, having arrived with his film where he started, also intercuts the immediate aftermath, both girls running, with one last fantasy sequence, but this one refusing to go as the girls want - instead of their escape (which they wanted to fantasize about), it becomes their separation. It hardly needs the credits to tell you that with this murder, which in their bizarre logic they thought would allow them to stay together, they in fact sealed their separation: after the trial and their prison sentences (in different prisons), they never saw each other again. It's what makes the film in the end a tragedy in the relentless Greek sense: the crime creates its punishment, the Furies couldn't have done it better.
In the self contained world of the film, that is. Real life usually is far messier and also has the most unlikely sequels. Jackson's film re-awakened interest in the case, reporters started to investigate what had become of the girls after their release from prison, and lo and behold, one of them, Juliet, had actually managed to achieve what they had dreamed of and had become a bestselling author. Of Victorian murder mysteries, named Anne Perry. This caused a lot of psychologizing by journalists and you could tell the lazy ones from those who'd done their research: the former told their readers Anne Perry's novels were murder excusing and victim blaming, apparantly with the assumption this was how an ex-teenage murderess would write. I had read several of them pre-Heavenly Creatures and some after, and err, no. They're conventional nineteenth century set whodunits, meaning the family of the victims are usually nobility with long simmering feuds, betrayals and secrets exposed by our pair of detectives, which in one of her two series is an inspector and his wife, in the other an inspector turning private detective, a resolute nurse and a lawyer. If you look very hard for possible autobiographical elements, you can eye the inspector-turning-p.i., William Monk, who starts out his series with amnesia and discovers soon he doesn't like his old self very much, and has to wonder whether or not he did commit a murder (spoiler: he didn't). But that's stretching it.
Now, Pauline turned out to have become a riding teacher, which didn't cause nearly as much public interest, and I think it's because it doesn't disturb our sense of narrative and justice as much. Pauline and Juliet committed murder. Becoming a bestselling author afterwards flies in the face of the idea that crime doesn't pay, literally because of the nature of Victorian mysteries. You can't even make it a cynical point, as in "Chicago" where Roxy and Velma exploit their crime, because Anne Perry's fame (not sensational, but solid; she was and is fairly successful on her genre) had nothing to do with her original identity as Juliet Hulme, which only came to light after it was already achieved. You can certainly not make dramatic sense of it. And so I suspect that even had he known, Peter Jackson would have left very well alone and had left film Pauline and film Juliet precisely where he did in the movie as made: seperated in black and white fantasy, together but with blood all over them in colour, with the audience feeling, as Aristoteles demanded, terror and pity.
I rewatched it the other day for the first time in years, and found myself as shaken, amused, disturbed and stricken by the end of it as ever. Which automatically makes me ramble, about the film itself with some footnotes about the real life background. Also the casting: back then, Peter Jackson cast two unknown and very young actresses, both of whom made their international screen debut here, in the leading roles, Melanie Lynsky and Kate Winslet. Because Kate Winslet went on to subsequently have a big career, virtually every reviewer who watched the film after being familiar with Winslet's later work seems to feel obliged to mention that Melanie Lynsky "steals" the film from her, apparantly laboring under the misconception that Kate is supposed to play the main character. Actually, while they are both playing leading roles, Melanie Lynsky's character, Pauline, is the point of view and the center as established by the script - it's her voice over that carries us through the film, which is based on the real Pauline's diary, and we mostly see everything through her eyes, both when she's alone and with Kate Winslet's character, Juliet. (Whereas there are only three scenes where Juliet is on screen without Pauline.) You can't steal when you're already the queen, so to speak.
(I'm reminded of similar reviews about, say, Blackpool, claiming David Morrissey, who plays the lead character, Ripley, and is credited as such, "steals" the three parter from David Tennant, who, years and years pre Doctor Who, plays a supporting character, Peter Carlisle, who while important to the plot is still only supporting and far, far down on the credits, if you bother to check them out. Again, if you're the king already, you can't "steal" the audience's attention and central emotional investment: it's supposed to be yours.)
Back to Heavenly Creatures. One extraordinary thing the film pulls off right at the start is this: it doesn't cheat about where it is going, and yet it makes you forget while you're watching. What I mean is: it starts with the end, our two teenage leads running screaming and covered with blood. We don't know yet why (unless we're familiar with a famous crime in New Zealand in the late 1950s, which I wasn't when watching the film for the first time all those years ago), but it's clear something really terrible must have happened. And the rest of the film is a flashback, which lures you in to a seemingly very different type of story altogether, that of a passionate teenage odd couple friendship, between brooding working class Pauline and and high strung upper class Juliet. Who start out as very different but share a history of childhood illnesses, a passion for writing, films and tenor Mario Lanza that pulls them together.
Pauline and Juliet are such identifiable teenagers. It's all so familiar: the giddiness, the melodrama, the you-and-I-against-the-world attitude, the growing conviction that nobody understands them and is against them. The creativity, too: like the young Brontes, Pauline and Juliet create their own elaborate fantasy world, Borovnia, in which they set long fantasy epics. Peter Jackson's decision to show said fantasy world (aka when Weta got its first big challenge) is crucial, imo, for what the film achieves in terms of pov. (It also allows him some meta fun: the heroes of Borovnia are modelled after the film stars the girls adore, like James Stewart, but Orson Welles, aka "the most hideous man alive", becomes their Id turned flesh, or rather, clay, dispensing executions and providing sexual frisson.) It's part of what makes the audience complicit. The first few times the Borovnian world turns violent as Pauline and Juliet imagine the death of annoying psychiatrists and intrusive preachers, it's funny. We've all felt like this.
And then you start to realise/remember where this is going.
Much of the adult world - the teachers, Juliet's self absorbed parents, said therapist - is often treated satirically: but Pauline's mother Honora, the adult character with the most screen time, never is. Which is important. Honora is extremely sympathetic, sweet, well-meaning, and increasingly bewildered and hurt by the way her daughter comes to reject her. This is also where Jackson manages to both keep the audience in Pauline's pov and simultanously show how distorted it is. Same with Pauline's pov of Juliet's parents, only in reverse, and it's very much tied to class and gender: Pauline idealizes the rich Hulmes, especially Juliet's father, and imagines her mother as the obstacle between Juliet and herself, when in actuality Dr. Hulme is the one fretting homophobically about the "unnatural" closeness between Pauline and Juliet and demands of Pauline's parents to put an end to it. (Jackson, btw, doesn't commit himself regarding the sexuality of his heroines: they fantasize about celebrities and each other alike. But he takes several biting pot shots at the fear and repression even a suspicion there might be same sex attraction was treated with in the 50s.)
Again, it's the teenager-ness of it all that's so familiar even as it gets out of control: of course the girls go from close to absolutely obsessed with each other when the parents try separation. Of course they have runnning away fantasies and remake the adults into mean stupid monsters. What chokes me up, no matter how often I rewatch, is the inevitability of it all, and yet the emotional horror when Pauline's "I wish my mother was dead!" goes from being an avarage teenage explanation to an actual plan, and you realise they will do it.
Stories that present a horrible crime these days often have to face the accusation that they're more interested in/have more sympathy for the killers than for the victim(s). While the girls are the main characters of Jackson's film, he never, as I mentioned, loses sight of Honora, never more so than in the sequence leading up to her death. (Years later, he accuses himself on the "Fellowship of the Ring" audio commentary of stealing from it for Boromir's death sequence, and if you're familiar with both, you can see the point.) It's also the point where he starts to disconnect the audience with his young heroines: when you watch Pauline persuading her mother to eat another bit of cake and you realise this is because she thinks of this as her mother's last meal. Then comes the walk Honora and the girls take, to Puccini's humming chorus, eerily beautiful, and then suddenly the complete break in styles when they go through with their plan. There is no soundtrack except for everyone's breath and then the cries as Honora is battered to death, which for me is one of the three most brutal and devastating death scenes ever (the other two being Janet Leigh's in "Psycho" and Maddie's death in "Twin Peaks"). As with the others, the horror, the brutality isn't so much in the gore (your avarage Quentin Tarantino film as more), but in the way the suffering of the victim is made real, sudden, and comes at the hands of characters which the audience until that point was sympathetic towards.
In "Twin Peaks", the death of Maddie takes place on two levels, the slow mo killing by BOB intercut with the actual speed killing by Leland. Jackson, having arrived with his film where he started, also intercuts the immediate aftermath, both girls running, with one last fantasy sequence, but this one refusing to go as the girls want - instead of their escape (which they wanted to fantasize about), it becomes their separation. It hardly needs the credits to tell you that with this murder, which in their bizarre logic they thought would allow them to stay together, they in fact sealed their separation: after the trial and their prison sentences (in different prisons), they never saw each other again. It's what makes the film in the end a tragedy in the relentless Greek sense: the crime creates its punishment, the Furies couldn't have done it better.
In the self contained world of the film, that is. Real life usually is far messier and also has the most unlikely sequels. Jackson's film re-awakened interest in the case, reporters started to investigate what had become of the girls after their release from prison, and lo and behold, one of them, Juliet, had actually managed to achieve what they had dreamed of and had become a bestselling author. Of Victorian murder mysteries, named Anne Perry. This caused a lot of psychologizing by journalists and you could tell the lazy ones from those who'd done their research: the former told their readers Anne Perry's novels were murder excusing and victim blaming, apparantly with the assumption this was how an ex-teenage murderess would write. I had read several of them pre-Heavenly Creatures and some after, and err, no. They're conventional nineteenth century set whodunits, meaning the family of the victims are usually nobility with long simmering feuds, betrayals and secrets exposed by our pair of detectives, which in one of her two series is an inspector and his wife, in the other an inspector turning private detective, a resolute nurse and a lawyer. If you look very hard for possible autobiographical elements, you can eye the inspector-turning-p.i., William Monk, who starts out his series with amnesia and discovers soon he doesn't like his old self very much, and has to wonder whether or not he did commit a murder (spoiler: he didn't). But that's stretching it.
Now, Pauline turned out to have become a riding teacher, which didn't cause nearly as much public interest, and I think it's because it doesn't disturb our sense of narrative and justice as much. Pauline and Juliet committed murder. Becoming a bestselling author afterwards flies in the face of the idea that crime doesn't pay, literally because of the nature of Victorian mysteries. You can't even make it a cynical point, as in "Chicago" where Roxy and Velma exploit their crime, because Anne Perry's fame (not sensational, but solid; she was and is fairly successful on her genre) had nothing to do with her original identity as Juliet Hulme, which only came to light after it was already achieved. You can certainly not make dramatic sense of it. And so I suspect that even had he known, Peter Jackson would have left very well alone and had left film Pauline and film Juliet precisely where he did in the movie as made: seperated in black and white fantasy, together but with blood all over them in colour, with the audience feeling, as Aristoteles demanded, terror and pity.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-08 02:20 pm (UTC)I didn't know the girl played by Winslet was now the author Anne Perry. I haven't read her novels, but whodunnits are such a justice-always-wins formula, that perhaps the only conclusion is that she learned early that violent crime didn't pay.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-08 04:00 pm (UTC)So the way I read the film (and it's been years since I saw it) was not as Greek tragedy, structured by fate, but as the human tragedy of a homophobic culture.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-09 11:36 am (UTC)However, re: Greek tragedy - Aristotle demanded that the hero of one should be brought down by a mixture of external circumstance and his own flaws. Homophobic culture certainly counts as an external circumstance in this case (though it's interesting that Jackson presents it as strictly class bound - all the characters who freak out homophobically are middle and upper class - Juliet's father, Pauline's therapist whom Juliet's father recommended - whereas the working class Riepers don't show any of this; Honora is upset that Pauline's grades are going down and that Pauline isn't talking to her anymore, not about Juliet, and Pauline's father is so clueless as to what Juliet's father means with "unhealthy" that he replies that yes, the girls should do more outdoors activities and get more fresh air). As does Juliet's father losing his job and getting transferred back go England, which is the trigger for the last chain of events. But the film definitely doesn't tell a "homophobia made them do it" story, at least in my opinion (views of the beholder, etc); we see a varietyof reasons, including increasing narcissism a deux and an enormous capacity for self delusion; Pauline thinking Juliet's parents, who are on the brink of divorce and have made it clear that they'll palm off Juliet to the next overseas health resort anyway, would basically adopt her and let her be with Juliet if her mother was dead is the last and biggest manifestation of it.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-08 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-09 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-10 03:34 pm (UTC)