Don't Look NowGrief has a way of locking us into a fixed point in time, a tether from which we spin in a circle, surrounding that moment of loss. It is a stain which is hard to remedy, a mark which is the absence of the constancy, the sense that one we love is taken, never to return. For some, the recuperating process begins with finding comfort in the company of others who will tell you the messages you need to hear to overcome your sadness; for others it involves an immersion in one's work, a substitute for the affections of love in achievements and professional merits. But that grief must be managed, lest it drive us to our doom.
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Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now is the story of a couple--John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) and his wife, Laura (Julie Christie)--and their efforts to cope with the loss of their daughter, Christine (Sharon Williams) after she is drowned while playing at their home in England. Some time passes, and they are in Venice, where John is working on restoring a Catholic church set in the venerable, waterbound city. One of the key phrases here is "some time passes"; the concept of time is an ephemeral one in the film, where events must take place in a sequence, but at times our exposure to them is fragmented. Is time always drawn in a straight line, or can we be perceptive to the physicality of time, witness events beyond the temporal and have some inner sense of what is to come? Our logical minds say "no", because we cannot rationalize this way of thinking, so it must not be. But if it is--and if, deep down, we put aside our "rational" dismissal of this concept, then the doors of this cathedral of possibilities opens wide, the canals carry us on to the possibilities that there is more than meets the eye in our world of singular perception. John has some kind of a sense--it is made apparent as early as when he "knows" that Christine is in danger, though his skepticism or his hesitation often results in his tragic untimeliness to act on this impulse. The idea that Christine is trying to warn him and Laura from beyond the grave is posed to Laura by a pair of English sisters also staying in Venice, namely the blind one, Heather (Hilary Mason), who makes this revelation to Laura. John is skeptical about the possibility that Christine is anything but dead, yet Laura finds comfort in this sentiment. John expresses two diametrically opposed maxims at different points, and yet both of them remain true: "nothing is what it seems" and "seeing is believing". He expresses the first prior to Christine's death when Laura and he are discussing frozen bodies of water, but expresses the second as an off-hand defense. His approach to disavowing the supernatural is likely the result of his loss, his own kind of grief, and an unwillingness to accept that he may have had some capacity for predicting the calamity, and thus averting it. In a similar fashion, he appears to reject the idea of God, expressing weariness at Laura's interest in stopping at a church to light candles in memory of Christine--ironic that his profession is to restore churches. It is also ironic that just prior to John's fateful discovery of Christine that the significant slide which he spilled water on is one which Laura casually tosses onto a book titled, "Beyond the Fragile Geometry of Space", written by John; the implication of the title is that while John is an architect of physical structures, he is subconsciously in tune with the architecture of time and space. And like that title, the film in its tonally aligned--but sequentially splintered portrayal of events--suggests that our permanence is less rigid than what we want to believe, and that our experiences are like the very mosaic John works upon restoring: comprised of beautiful things which only give us the full picture when assembled in a deliberate way.
Although Don't Look Now is a British movie, it spends the majority of its time in Italy--specifically Venice, a city of wending canals and narrow, dark alleys, staircases and bridges, something antiquated and steeped in time. The Venice of Don't Look Now is one which stands half submerged, wading out to sea, like it were drowned itself...a city of the dead; and so it is that Laura and John are haunted, carrying the ghost of Christine with them, the vestiges of their love enshrouding them as grief. As they cannot fully relinquish Christine to the underworld, they have accompanied her to this Renaissance necropolis, where the occult speakers of the dead are capable of seeing their otherworldly child, even if we cannot. Heather tells Laura that Christine wants her and John to get out of Venice, for John is in danger. Even when Laura is called to visit their son in England--and John stays behind to work on the church--his contact with the church, the bishop Barbarrigo (Massimo Serato) advises John that he should have gone with his wife. The bishop is a man of God, and candidly tells John that he wishes he did not have to believe in prophecy, but there is the sense that he does, and even if this connection is only remotely tied with the kind of psychic foresight which Heather appears to possess, the connection is there. And John senses this too, though he rails against the idea that he might have some capacity to see what he should not--and how he should see it. Is seeing solely the purview of the eyes, or can other parts of us "see" what is beyond? By this rationale, Don't Look Now purports that we have more than one sense, and our means to experience the world are not limited to sight. The dreamlike imagery and fashion of editing are evocative of something more than just the literal mise-en-scene; there is a feeling being provoked in the back of our minds, an incantation which is meant to conjure up a sensation beyond the camera's eye. John should be aware of this in his occupation of restoration, a practice filled with the past, haunted with the reconstruction of events and elements to form the image from the pieces; but John's apprehension is his Achilles' heel, something which gives him the answer he should have heeded, only too late. Shattering glass, slides of red coats, pooling of red ink like blood when exposed to water, the images are verses to a poem, an elegy. The sinking feeling persistent throughout Don't Look Now is also keen, as the ubiquitousness of water and its perils are everywhere. Water is an anathema here, contrary to our impressions of "water as life", its presence not only a constant reminder of the Baxter's loss, but of the presence of a killer roaming through Venice, with bodies being periodically fished from the canals. Even the constant gondolas are reminiscent of Charon, the ferryman to Hades, where the dead are taken to their final rest, an association teased once or twice in the film. John's odyssey through the confusing streets of the ancient city is even reminiscent of "The Inferno" by Dante Alighieri to an extent; coincidentally, the first supernatural figure Dante met in this work was Charon. As John and Laura cope with their grief in their own ways, they are forced to understand more about one another as a result, a further cementing of their relationship, arguably making Don't Look Now something of a kind of existential cross between a psychological horror film and a love story both, and a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of not keeping an open mind.
Recommended for: Fans of a clever and abstract kind of thriller, where the events and expectations never really let you stand on firm ground, and the attentive will be rewarded for their capacity to make connections; the shocking denouement will leave you reeling.
Although Don't Look Now is a British movie, it spends the majority of its time in Italy--specifically Venice, a city of wending canals and narrow, dark alleys, staircases and bridges, something antiquated and steeped in time. The Venice of Don't Look Now is one which stands half submerged, wading out to sea, like it were drowned itself...a city of the dead; and so it is that Laura and John are haunted, carrying the ghost of Christine with them, the vestiges of their love enshrouding them as grief. As they cannot fully relinquish Christine to the underworld, they have accompanied her to this Renaissance necropolis, where the occult speakers of the dead are capable of seeing their otherworldly child, even if we cannot. Heather tells Laura that Christine wants her and John to get out of Venice, for John is in danger. Even when Laura is called to visit their son in England--and John stays behind to work on the church--his contact with the church, the bishop Barbarrigo (Massimo Serato) advises John that he should have gone with his wife. The bishop is a man of God, and candidly tells John that he wishes he did not have to believe in prophecy, but there is the sense that he does, and even if this connection is only remotely tied with the kind of psychic foresight which Heather appears to possess, the connection is there. And John senses this too, though he rails against the idea that he might have some capacity to see what he should not--and how he should see it. Is seeing solely the purview of the eyes, or can other parts of us "see" what is beyond? By this rationale, Don't Look Now purports that we have more than one sense, and our means to experience the world are not limited to sight. The dreamlike imagery and fashion of editing are evocative of something more than just the literal mise-en-scene; there is a feeling being provoked in the back of our minds, an incantation which is meant to conjure up a sensation beyond the camera's eye. John should be aware of this in his occupation of restoration, a practice filled with the past, haunted with the reconstruction of events and elements to form the image from the pieces; but John's apprehension is his Achilles' heel, something which gives him the answer he should have heeded, only too late. Shattering glass, slides of red coats, pooling of red ink like blood when exposed to water, the images are verses to a poem, an elegy. The sinking feeling persistent throughout Don't Look Now is also keen, as the ubiquitousness of water and its perils are everywhere. Water is an anathema here, contrary to our impressions of "water as life", its presence not only a constant reminder of the Baxter's loss, but of the presence of a killer roaming through Venice, with bodies being periodically fished from the canals. Even the constant gondolas are reminiscent of Charon, the ferryman to Hades, where the dead are taken to their final rest, an association teased once or twice in the film. John's odyssey through the confusing streets of the ancient city is even reminiscent of "The Inferno" by Dante Alighieri to an extent; coincidentally, the first supernatural figure Dante met in this work was Charon. As John and Laura cope with their grief in their own ways, they are forced to understand more about one another as a result, a further cementing of their relationship, arguably making Don't Look Now something of a kind of existential cross between a psychological horror film and a love story both, and a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of not keeping an open mind.
Recommended for: Fans of a clever and abstract kind of thriller, where the events and expectations never really let you stand on firm ground, and the attentive will be rewarded for their capacity to make connections; the shocking denouement will leave you reeling.