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| Universal (Australia). Region 4, PAL. 1.85:1 (16:9 enhanced). English DD 2.0. 105 minutes |
| The Movie |
| Cover Art |
 |
| Credits |
Director: Nicolas
Roeg
Starring: Julie Christie,
Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason
Screenplay: Alan Scott,
Chris Bryant
Country: USA |
I remember walking out of Tim Burton's Planet
of the Apes and feeling as though my mind
had literally snapped trying to comprehend exactly
what happened for it to reach the ending it did.
There was a murmuring of "What the fuck?!"
that hummed through the cinema as the credits began
rolling that clearly signified everyone else was
as bamboozled as I was. Don't get me wrong,
if the film maker's intention is to screw
with your heads then that's their thing, but
(and I'm probably alone in this boat) at least
I didn't feel completely ripped off. To sit
back and exclaim "What the fuck?!" after
a movie and feel completely ripped off shouldn't
happen to anyone (finger well and truly pointed
at Aliens Vs Predator… but
I digress…), but after sitting through Nicolas
Roeg's Don't Look Now,
I felt scummed, swindled, perplexed and worst of
all, that I'd just sat through those two hours
for pretty much nothing. Beware, spoilers may be
ahead…
The 70's was arguably the
best decade for horror films, but a lot of films
danced around the horror label by incorporating
supernatural elements and borrowing heavily from
the films around at the time. Don't
Look Now was one of these. When I picked
up the film, I was told it was one of the best
horror films of the 70's. If I could remember
who told me that, I would fight them. The only
thing remotely horrific about this film is watching
Donald Sutherland strut about nude for a while
before having surprisingly explicit sex with Julie
Christie. I've read reviews that compare
this film to Kubrick's The Shining,
which is blasphemy, straight up blasphemy.
The film tries hard to tell the tale of a married
couple who lose their daughter when she drowns
in a creek on the family's estate, and then
try to get over their grief by moving to Venice
for work. It works well… for a little while,
but as the film drags itself on like a cat with
it's hind legs broken, it loses itself and
it's audience amidst poorly edited sequences
that bear little to no meaning for the film's
plot or direction at all. Donald Sutherland starts
glimpsing a mysterious shape, dressed the same
as his daughter was when she died, and his wife
has become friendly with a blind psychic woman
and her sister who claim that the little girl
is still with them. Somewhere along the way, wires
get crossed and needless little scenes start stabbing
in at the main plot, (or plots) creating what
gradually becomes a terrible mess. The subplot
involving the daughter is switched on and off
and the filmmakers can't seem to make up
their mind about how to portray the elderly sisters.
On top of this, characters are given far too much
emphasis in sequences which ultimately result
in them not having any bearing on the plot at
all. It seems to try to play on the paranoia that
Rosemarie's Baby executed perfectly, but
fails miserably. I was shocked and bitterly disappointed
by the film's baffling conclusion, which
I pegged half jokingly about halfway through.
What makes it worse is that after watching the
film, I decided to explore the extras, hoping
for some sort of explanation. None was found.
All I could piece together from the director's
ramblings in the behind the scenes doco was that
he seemed to love random events, therein implying
that nothing in this film happened for any real
reason, that everything was just random coincidence.
I felt genuinely cheated, and if that was Roeg's
intentions, congratulations. |
| Video |
| The image quality isn't fantastic. It's
definitely above the copy that's probably
available on VHS at your local video store (if they
still have videos that is…), but it's
only just better than a good VHS transfer. Grain
and scratches, which other films available on DVD
from the same era manage to avoid (The Exorcist is a prime example), are evident. The film is presented
1.85:1 Anamorphic, but the cinematography choices
are such that it really wouldn't matter at
all if it was Pan & Scan, which is something
I usually find deplorable. |
| Audio |
| The sound in this film is really odd. There was
clearly a lot of post sound done on this film, as
some sequences are as out of sync as some Monty
Python sketches with sound effects being over emphasised
for no reason at all. Also, in Dolby 2.0, it's
not exactly blowing anyone's socks off and
retains that audible hiss present in older films
that lack remastered soundtracks. |
| Extra Features |
| The only extras present are a trailer and a retrospective
doco, which is basically three key members of the
crew, the director, editor and camera operator rambling
on about how awesome they are. Any answers you may
be hoping to find regarding this films stupendous
amount of unanswered questions aren't to be
found here. Roeg rambles on and on, trying to justify
the choices he made when making this film, the camera
operator does the same and makes the filming of
the sex scene seem like one of the most lurid experiences
in film making history. The editor's explanation
for superimposing one of the elderly sister's
faces into a particular scene leaves you thinking
"Good work, jackass." |
| The Verdict |
A lot of people seem to like this film for some
reason; many claim it to be a modern horror masterpiece.
I say bullshit. It feels cheap and shoddy and raises
far more questions than it answers, and ultimately
incites that same "What the fuck?!"
response as Burton's Planet of the
Apes, only you feel far more ripped off,
as though the whole thing was for nothing. The DVD
is also such a lacklustre package that the usually
decent $20 price tag is still, like the film itself,
a huge rip off.
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