Penny Dreadful 3.04.
May. 24th, 2016 06:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which it's the Eva Green and Rory Kinnear acting hour, and it's marvelous.
I mean, it's a given that we get a Vanessa centric flashback episode once a season, and this is the biggest challenge John Logan throws his leading actress yet, which she more than rises to - a single white room, and at times she's so immobilized we don't even see her mouth, and yet she emotes like hell. But let's hear it for Rory Kinnear, too, who ends up playing three characters in this episode, none of which are his regular series character, and who has to keep up with Eva Greens awesomeness and manages that.
This was an extreme version of what we call Kammerspiel in German and what genre fans usually refer to a as a bottle episode - with the exception of the brief opening and closing scene in Dr. Seward's office, it takes place entirely in the white padded room of the asylum Vanessa was interred at, during the space of five months, and there are only two people (well, two people and two more demonic entities). It uses the "therapist uses hypnotism to evoke flashbacks" concept, but at one point I wondered whether it doesn't do a bit more than this, i.e. when Vanessa sent both brothers packing, because Vanessa in the asylum hadn't met Joan Clayton yet and thus wouldn't have known the verbi diaboli. And given Dr. Seward couldn't bring Vanessa back to herself in the present until Vanessa had the information she needed, I position that Vanessa's present self with the help of some magic actually transported herself back to the past, in the head of her past self, to learn the names of her demonic suitors/persecutors and then refute them. (Also because knowing the name of something in supernatural stories always gives you a certain amount of power over them.)
My biggest fear from last season's cliffhanger - that the reveal that the Creature was before his death and resurrection by Victor an orderly in the asylum - would lead to the end of Vanessa's and his friendship - didn't come true. Instead, it seems Logan noticed last season that Eva Green and Rory Kinnear play each other off really nicely, and contrived to come up with something like this to give then an entire hour of interaction, which, brief demonic interludes aside, are all in the positive vein. And while it's left open whether or not Vanessa has realised that her friend John Clare from the Cholera cellars is the same person (well, body) as the still unnamed orderly - and she may not, because of the Lily/Brona precedent: different accent, the Creature has yellow eyes whereas the orderly has Rory Kinnear's normal ones, there's the additional facial scarring and the hair - , she's unlikely to believe he willingly deceived her.
Kinnear makes the orderly into a very sympathetic character, at first professionally distant, then increasingly worried about Vanessa and what the treatment says about the asylum yet also under pressure to keep his job (btw: it occurs to me that the Orderly and even the Creature later are the only characters the show uses to explore this side of late Victorian life once Brona is dead and resurrected; everyone else is financially secure enough not to need money and take a crappy job to make it, even Ethan), and then finally deciding that this is torture and he can't participate in it any longer, not even when faced with unemployed poverty. I kept expecting the story to end in the reveal that Vanessa and/or Lucifer and/or Dracula killed him, since the whole thing evidently happened close to his death (his son is already sick), but no; the manner of his death is something we've yet to find out.
Otoh now that we have his personality and Brona's to compare to the Creature and Lily, I think the theory that the Frankenstein method of resurrection and immortality results in both the manifestation of repressed anger issues and greater self-centred-ness has merit, as is ironic fate. Lily manifesting the anger at a life time of exploitation as a woman Brona went through is pretty obvious; her current living in luxury is the exact opposite of Brona's miserable circumstances, but, and there's the irony, it entirely depends on a man. Whereas the orderly was the clog in a medical machine, an instrument in medical science and experimental treatments which he increasingly came to believe were not for the benefit of the patient but were, in fact, as the patient insisted, torture until he refused to be that anymore - and ended up as a medical experiment himself, his bodily autonomy as utterly taken away as Vanessa's was in this episode (and any of the other patients the orderly cared for in the asylum before Vanessa's case made him quit). The Creature didn't have conscious access to the orderly's memories until very recently (and now only limited to a few), but I wouldn't be surprised if subconsciously, this colors how he relates to Victor as well as the obvious issues.
Despite the dire circumstances, the slow growing trust between the two characters was lovely to watch. At one point I groaned, sure Logan had slipped and ruined it all: you guessed it, when Vanessa, in an understandable (from her pov) attack of "I can't believe I only had sex with Mina's fiance whom I didn't even like, and the devil, and now I'll end my days here!" kissed the orderly and he started to kiss her back. But thankfully he quickly recovered and firmly put a distance between them. Because that would have been wrong in so many ways (power-wise, emotion-wise, everywise), and I think they both knew, which is why it never came up again. One moment of emotional transference in that particular situation, though, is understandable, and I salute its end shows that no, you don't have to give in into every impulse if you're aware it leads only to disaster and would be abuse, if followed through.
Another thing: since Lily has Victor's accent and vocabulary as opposed to Brona's and the Creature has Victor's as well, I assume the Creature's fondness for poetry as opposed to the orderly not liking it is all Victor, too. (Though how they absorb from Victor remains a mad science mystery, since while Victor was around to talk to Lily, he wasn't for the Creature.) Otoh it's also possible Vanessa liking poetry made the orderly look up more before his death, especially since he did already find that one book for her, so we get Rory Kinnear reciting Robert Louis Stevenson (of course!) and the Shadow poem.
Lastly: I liked that when Vanessa pulled an "Not Like Other Women", the orderly talked about his wife and her every day bravery and told Vanessa not to disparage her sex. Vanessa is a fantastic character, but note she does have a tendency to underestimate other women (if she doesn't see them, like Joan or Dr. Seward, as fellow rebels) - she did it with both Mina (to Vanessa a helpless damsel, but it was Mina who got engaged first and who got an actual mob and moved away from her parents' house) and with Gladys (an utter none-entity in Vanessa's flashbacks, but in her scene with Malcolm, where the narrative shows her outside Vanessa's pov, Gladys is easily holding her own and in fact setting the rules after a complete verbal knock-out - "We don't have any more children for you to kill").
I mean, it's a given that we get a Vanessa centric flashback episode once a season, and this is the biggest challenge John Logan throws his leading actress yet, which she more than rises to - a single white room, and at times she's so immobilized we don't even see her mouth, and yet she emotes like hell. But let's hear it for Rory Kinnear, too, who ends up playing three characters in this episode, none of which are his regular series character, and who has to keep up with Eva Greens awesomeness and manages that.
This was an extreme version of what we call Kammerspiel in German and what genre fans usually refer to a as a bottle episode - with the exception of the brief opening and closing scene in Dr. Seward's office, it takes place entirely in the white padded room of the asylum Vanessa was interred at, during the space of five months, and there are only two people (well, two people and two more demonic entities). It uses the "therapist uses hypnotism to evoke flashbacks" concept, but at one point I wondered whether it doesn't do a bit more than this, i.e. when Vanessa sent both brothers packing, because Vanessa in the asylum hadn't met Joan Clayton yet and thus wouldn't have known the verbi diaboli. And given Dr. Seward couldn't bring Vanessa back to herself in the present until Vanessa had the information she needed, I position that Vanessa's present self with the help of some magic actually transported herself back to the past, in the head of her past self, to learn the names of her demonic suitors/persecutors and then refute them. (Also because knowing the name of something in supernatural stories always gives you a certain amount of power over them.)
My biggest fear from last season's cliffhanger - that the reveal that the Creature was before his death and resurrection by Victor an orderly in the asylum - would lead to the end of Vanessa's and his friendship - didn't come true. Instead, it seems Logan noticed last season that Eva Green and Rory Kinnear play each other off really nicely, and contrived to come up with something like this to give then an entire hour of interaction, which, brief demonic interludes aside, are all in the positive vein. And while it's left open whether or not Vanessa has realised that her friend John Clare from the Cholera cellars is the same person (well, body) as the still unnamed orderly - and she may not, because of the Lily/Brona precedent: different accent, the Creature has yellow eyes whereas the orderly has Rory Kinnear's normal ones, there's the additional facial scarring and the hair - , she's unlikely to believe he willingly deceived her.
Kinnear makes the orderly into a very sympathetic character, at first professionally distant, then increasingly worried about Vanessa and what the treatment says about the asylum yet also under pressure to keep his job (btw: it occurs to me that the Orderly and even the Creature later are the only characters the show uses to explore this side of late Victorian life once Brona is dead and resurrected; everyone else is financially secure enough not to need money and take a crappy job to make it, even Ethan), and then finally deciding that this is torture and he can't participate in it any longer, not even when faced with unemployed poverty. I kept expecting the story to end in the reveal that Vanessa and/or Lucifer and/or Dracula killed him, since the whole thing evidently happened close to his death (his son is already sick), but no; the manner of his death is something we've yet to find out.
Otoh now that we have his personality and Brona's to compare to the Creature and Lily, I think the theory that the Frankenstein method of resurrection and immortality results in both the manifestation of repressed anger issues and greater self-centred-ness has merit, as is ironic fate. Lily manifesting the anger at a life time of exploitation as a woman Brona went through is pretty obvious; her current living in luxury is the exact opposite of Brona's miserable circumstances, but, and there's the irony, it entirely depends on a man. Whereas the orderly was the clog in a medical machine, an instrument in medical science and experimental treatments which he increasingly came to believe were not for the benefit of the patient but were, in fact, as the patient insisted, torture until he refused to be that anymore - and ended up as a medical experiment himself, his bodily autonomy as utterly taken away as Vanessa's was in this episode (and any of the other patients the orderly cared for in the asylum before Vanessa's case made him quit). The Creature didn't have conscious access to the orderly's memories until very recently (and now only limited to a few), but I wouldn't be surprised if subconsciously, this colors how he relates to Victor as well as the obvious issues.
Despite the dire circumstances, the slow growing trust between the two characters was lovely to watch. At one point I groaned, sure Logan had slipped and ruined it all: you guessed it, when Vanessa, in an understandable (from her pov) attack of "I can't believe I only had sex with Mina's fiance whom I didn't even like, and the devil, and now I'll end my days here!" kissed the orderly and he started to kiss her back. But thankfully he quickly recovered and firmly put a distance between them. Because that would have been wrong in so many ways (power-wise, emotion-wise, everywise), and I think they both knew, which is why it never came up again. One moment of emotional transference in that particular situation, though, is understandable, and I salute its end shows that no, you don't have to give in into every impulse if you're aware it leads only to disaster and would be abuse, if followed through.
Another thing: since Lily has Victor's accent and vocabulary as opposed to Brona's and the Creature has Victor's as well, I assume the Creature's fondness for poetry as opposed to the orderly not liking it is all Victor, too. (Though how they absorb from Victor remains a mad science mystery, since while Victor was around to talk to Lily, he wasn't for the Creature.) Otoh it's also possible Vanessa liking poetry made the orderly look up more before his death, especially since he did already find that one book for her, so we get Rory Kinnear reciting Robert Louis Stevenson (of course!) and the Shadow poem.
Lastly: I liked that when Vanessa pulled an "Not Like Other Women", the orderly talked about his wife and her every day bravery and told Vanessa not to disparage her sex. Vanessa is a fantastic character, but note she does have a tendency to underestimate other women (if she doesn't see them, like Joan or Dr. Seward, as fellow rebels) - she did it with both Mina (to Vanessa a helpless damsel, but it was Mina who got engaged first and who got an actual mob and moved away from her parents' house) and with Gladys (an utter none-entity in Vanessa's flashbacks, but in her scene with Malcolm, where the narrative shows her outside Vanessa's pov, Gladys is easily holding her own and in fact setting the rules after a complete verbal knock-out - "We don't have any more children for you to kill").
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-27 02:55 am (UTC)I have to wonder: why is this so important? I mean, it's obvious why it mattered then. She was basically facing death, so far as they both knew, and he was offering the only life-preserver of grace in a sea of misery and torture. It was a critical moment for both of them as they did what little they could when faced with forces beyond their control.
But why was that important to the Vanessa in Dr. Seward's office? That Vanessa knows she survives the "surgery" and even becomes a stronger person. So what is the value of the last moment of interaction?
Is she embracing The Creature's ethic that if people are not accountable to God, then they must be accountable to each other, thus the only grace in life comes from other people? That doesn't seem to be in keeping with her belief that her body and soul are promised to the Almighty. But what then? Is she taking a larger view of God--that he is the still small voice, or the act of kindness of an ordinary working man?
I guess I'm wondering if she stayed for the final moment not just to satisfy her curiosity, but because that moment of helplessness and shared strength is actually the thing she will ultimately need to defeat Dracula?
I don't know. But the whole damned episode was fascinating and delicious.
Oh, and regarding The Creature's love of poetry: Maybe some piece of The Orderly remembered that poetry can soothe those who are frozen and lonely? Ooooh. Wouldn't it be wild if Vanessa survived because of The Orderly's example and The Creature survived because of Vanessa's?
Weirdly, I'm actually kind of sorry that the next episode will be addressing all the characters that were neglected in this one. I want to see more of Vanessa and Creature's friendship.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-27 05:42 am (UTC)Well, the Doylist reason is obvious - the way the episode is constructed, the relationship between Vanessa and the Orderly is at its core, and so the audience needs that farewell (and also the information that the Orderly quit his job at this point) - but you're right, speculating about the Watsonian reason is worth it.
It might also be important that they were showing part of the scene between Vanessa and the Creature from the s2 finale in the previouslies re: God and not being alone. Knowing the names of her enemies is one thing. But Vanessa already defeated (some) of her enemies in the s2 finale and still ended up alone and isolated once more. So "knowing your friends", taking strength from those relationships and holding on to them is just as important for what's to come. Knowing you can make a difference for each other. And that's why older Vanessa in Dr. Seward's office needed to relive her goodbye to the Orderly? It's also a direct counterpoint of Ethan leaving her via a "Dear Vanessa" letter and telling her they're not good for each other because of mutual darkness etc. The Orderly tells her she's changed him, she's made him realise the wrongness of what he was a part of, and given him the strength to quit even though that means risking poverty. In turn, he wants to be there for her at what could be her last moment of consciousness. This is the direct opposite experience of how things (temporarily, I'm sure) ended with Ethan.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-30 08:04 pm (UTC)Also, when the orderly put makeup on Vanessa so that she could remember who she was seemed like a direct callback to S1 when he put makeup on himself in order to make himself look less ghoulish/more human when he went to call on the actress he had become infatuated with.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 01:10 pm (UTC)