Interview with the Vampire Revisited
Jan. 21st, 2022 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakRewatched: Interview with the Vampire, which holds up amazingly well. I remember back in the day fretting endlessly before its release, since I had loved the first three of Anne Rice's Vampire novels, and defiinitely hadn't imagined either Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise as Louis and Lestat, respectively. Like many another fan (and Anne Rice herself), I was convinced by the actual film. (Say what you want about the late Anne Rice, but how many famous people, writers or otherwise, do you know who are prepared to admit they were wrong and pay a two page newspaper insert to do so?) But I haven't watched it for many years, if not decades - I'm actually not sure.
Going back to it now, when in the intervening decades vampire pov stories have become standard instead of being new, and such a lot of tv series, books, movies etc. have come and gone... it still was a powerful viewing experience. Not least because Neil Jordan's artistic sensibilities really complimented Anne Rice's here, which is to say: he completely committed to the homoeroticism, the eros/thanatos sensuality and the family melodrama of it all, but he also added a black humor not present in the first vampire novel that is perfect comic relief just where it's needed (the poodles! Jordan fave Stephen Rea introducing himself to Louis by pantomiming him! The raising-of-Claudia montage!) and with yet doesn't take a bit away from the horror.
Because there is horror, the way there isn't in a lot of the post-IWTV epigones. For all its commitment to the vampire pov, to feel with our three main characters, each of whom is a serial killer, the film never loses sight of just what they do to their victims. The scene with Lestat killing the two women in front of Louis, with the second realizing what is happening, is spinechilliing. The later scene in the Parisian Theatre of the Vampires, the on stage killing of a woman while audience believes they're watching Grand Guignol, is sickening. And both IWTV the novel and the film really bring home to me, then and now, the horror of what it would mean for a potentially immortal being to be trapped in the body of a child and become aware of it more than any other similarly themed story has.
(Also quite good: Kenny in his two Highlander the Series episodes. But still not close to that both versions of IWTV do with Claudia.)
It's an incredibly strong performance by Kirsten Dunst. In the audio commentary on the dvd, Neil Jordan says that while in his other movies when there was a child involved, he preferred to work with children who hadn't acted before, he knew in this case he really needed a child actress who had worked before, who knew the difference between fantasy and reality and who had a supporting environment who knew how to deal with film work before, because the role of Claudia was so rich and disturbing. And he definitely made the right choice, because kid!Kirsten Dunst really sells both Claudia the child before and shortly after her transformation, and then later the woman trapped in a child's body. (I think the only other time I've seen a young actor play a much older being that well was the kid playing Five in Umbrella Academy. And Five, unlike Claudia, has lived a full live before being put back into a kid's body.)
There's not a bad performance in the entire film, come to that, and it is famously one of the few where Tom Cruise acts outside of his usual persona. I knew he could do it (I'd seen Born on the Fourth of July), but IWTV, like later Collateral, is one of the few times where he's not the lead but the antagonist (well, mostly), and unafraid at coming across villainously. (Which is one of the many things that make his Lestat more interesting than Stuart Townsend's in Queen of the Damned, but okay, the script in the later movie did not help.) Back in the day, the full ghastliness of his Scientology involvement wasn't yet known, but I have to say that now, several documentaries and articles later, I when watching this film still am not distracted by this awareness. It helps that movies are not the product of any one person the way a book is, of course.)
Something else that still, a gazillion vampire stories later, makes IWTV still stand out is that there is no vampire/human romance taking place, let alone being the main emotional arc. Instead, you get what is possibly Anne Rice's most enduring contribution to vampire stories, the pseudo family with its emotional ties and power struggles (when I watched the Forever Knight flashbacks with Nick-LaCroix-Janette or read many a BTVS fanfic featuring Angelus, Spike and Dru written before s5 of BTVS and S2 of AtS gave us the actual backstory of the Fanged Four, I recognized the Ricean origin at once). Mind you, there's also the "everyone wants Louis" red thread (and credit where due, like I said, Neil Jordan totally commits to this and doesn't include any disclaimers like "I want you, but not like that! Like a brother/cousin!"), but really, pace Armand fans, Louis-Lestat-Claudia is where it's at in this story for me. (One reason why I'm glad Jordan streamlined the events from the novel and didn't let Louis travel with Armand for years before having it out with him about Claudia and ditching him.)
Mind you, this is no one's Bechdel Test friendly story. Other than Claudia, all the female characters are food. It's worth noting that when Jordan did his other vampire movie years later, Byzantium, he put two female vampires at the core of it (mother and daughter - again with the family). But then, that's true of the novel as well. And while I know that in tihe years a film version was in development, Louis actually was intermittently a female character (presumably to mollify homophobic viewers), I'm really glad Jorden did not go with that approach. It's a perverse family story with fangs and lots of not so subtext, and as far as I'm concerned, still one of the best vampire stories ever done.
Going back to it now, when in the intervening decades vampire pov stories have become standard instead of being new, and such a lot of tv series, books, movies etc. have come and gone... it still was a powerful viewing experience. Not least because Neil Jordan's artistic sensibilities really complimented Anne Rice's here, which is to say: he completely committed to the homoeroticism, the eros/thanatos sensuality and the family melodrama of it all, but he also added a black humor not present in the first vampire novel that is perfect comic relief just where it's needed (the poodles! Jordan fave Stephen Rea introducing himself to Louis by pantomiming him! The raising-of-Claudia montage!) and with yet doesn't take a bit away from the horror.
Because there is horror, the way there isn't in a lot of the post-IWTV epigones. For all its commitment to the vampire pov, to feel with our three main characters, each of whom is a serial killer, the film never loses sight of just what they do to their victims. The scene with Lestat killing the two women in front of Louis, with the second realizing what is happening, is spinechilliing. The later scene in the Parisian Theatre of the Vampires, the on stage killing of a woman while audience believes they're watching Grand Guignol, is sickening. And both IWTV the novel and the film really bring home to me, then and now, the horror of what it would mean for a potentially immortal being to be trapped in the body of a child and become aware of it more than any other similarly themed story has.
(Also quite good: Kenny in his two Highlander the Series episodes. But still not close to that both versions of IWTV do with Claudia.)
It's an incredibly strong performance by Kirsten Dunst. In the audio commentary on the dvd, Neil Jordan says that while in his other movies when there was a child involved, he preferred to work with children who hadn't acted before, he knew in this case he really needed a child actress who had worked before, who knew the difference between fantasy and reality and who had a supporting environment who knew how to deal with film work before, because the role of Claudia was so rich and disturbing. And he definitely made the right choice, because kid!Kirsten Dunst really sells both Claudia the child before and shortly after her transformation, and then later the woman trapped in a child's body. (I think the only other time I've seen a young actor play a much older being that well was the kid playing Five in Umbrella Academy. And Five, unlike Claudia, has lived a full live before being put back into a kid's body.)
There's not a bad performance in the entire film, come to that, and it is famously one of the few where Tom Cruise acts outside of his usual persona. I knew he could do it (I'd seen Born on the Fourth of July), but IWTV, like later Collateral, is one of the few times where he's not the lead but the antagonist (well, mostly), and unafraid at coming across villainously. (Which is one of the many things that make his Lestat more interesting than Stuart Townsend's in Queen of the Damned, but okay, the script in the later movie did not help.) Back in the day, the full ghastliness of his Scientology involvement wasn't yet known, but I have to say that now, several documentaries and articles later, I when watching this film still am not distracted by this awareness. It helps that movies are not the product of any one person the way a book is, of course.)
Something else that still, a gazillion vampire stories later, makes IWTV still stand out is that there is no vampire/human romance taking place, let alone being the main emotional arc. Instead, you get what is possibly Anne Rice's most enduring contribution to vampire stories, the pseudo family with its emotional ties and power struggles (when I watched the Forever Knight flashbacks with Nick-LaCroix-Janette or read many a BTVS fanfic featuring Angelus, Spike and Dru written before s5 of BTVS and S2 of AtS gave us the actual backstory of the Fanged Four, I recognized the Ricean origin at once). Mind you, there's also the "everyone wants Louis" red thread (and credit where due, like I said, Neil Jordan totally commits to this and doesn't include any disclaimers like "I want you, but not like that! Like a brother/cousin!"), but really, pace Armand fans, Louis-Lestat-Claudia is where it's at in this story for me. (One reason why I'm glad Jordan streamlined the events from the novel and didn't let Louis travel with Armand for years before having it out with him about Claudia and ditching him.)
Mind you, this is no one's Bechdel Test friendly story. Other than Claudia, all the female characters are food. It's worth noting that when Jordan did his other vampire movie years later, Byzantium, he put two female vampires at the core of it (mother and daughter - again with the family). But then, that's true of the novel as well. And while I know that in tihe years a film version was in development, Louis actually was intermittently a female character (presumably to mollify homophobic viewers), I'm really glad Jorden did not go with that approach. It's a perverse family story with fangs and lots of not so subtext, and as far as I'm concerned, still one of the best vampire stories ever done.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-22 09:35 am (UTC)