Eyes of Laura MarsMurder and violence are so horrible, that they burn their way into your retinas. That's the underlying message of the psychothriller, Eyes of Laura Mars, about the eponymous Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway), who sees visions of murder, then feels compelled to recreate the tableaux in her fashion photography, courting acclaim and controversy at once. But when one of Laura's colleagues is murdered in the exact same way she envisioned in a nightmare, she grows increasingly anxious that she has a point-of-view insight into real murders being committed by a serial killer--one now out to destroy her.
|
|
Eyes of Laura Mars emphasizes style over substance, which seems fitting for a movie that deals extensively with fashion photography and wealthy New Yorkers at play in the arts. That said, Laura is something of an outlier in this environment. She seems to resist the vapid excess that comes with living in this circle, exemplified via her agent, the effete Donald Phelps (René Auberjonois), along with others. When Laura is driven to a gala showing of her recent work by her grizzled driver, Tommy (Brad Dourif), she looks like a fish out of water, as commentators and journalists looking for a hot take ply her with aggressive questions. Laura's responses are reminiscent of a deer caught in headlights. She has no apparent interest in sensationalism; she seems to want to do good work for its own merit, never mind that she profits generously from it. (For example, her apartment in NYC is pretty huge and gorgeously decorated...except for that bed.) She and her colleagues are making a (proverbial) killing by selling sex and violence in the vein of Helmut Newton's own style of fashion photography. Her works adorn busses, and she puts on exotic and erotic photo shoots in the city for passersby to ogle at. She describes the scenes she shoots as visions that come to her, but like she describes to a police detective named John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones) who attends her show, she thinks of herself more like "Grandma Moses" than some deviant looking to peddle transgressive chic and murder porn. Is Laura being honest with herself? When she is working, she gets into a "zone" where she is solely focused on creating the scene in her head; but has she ever stopped to ask herself "why"?. After she envisions the murder of her friend and another colleague, her panicked confession to witnessing it causes her to be called into the police for questioning. Here, she reunites with John, who shares a couple of photographs from actual murders that have never been published, and compares them with works Laura has in her art book--and the similarities are uncanny. Laura replies that she started having these visions about a couple of years ago, which coincides with the timing of John's photos. But why didn't these visions trouble her before, and how is it that she has this psychic link to the murderer in the first place?
At its core, Eyes of Laura Mars is meant to be a thriller that titillates with action and sex appeal, and keeps the audience engaged with red herrings--usually ancillary characters who frequently get killed off to keep us guessing. Adapted from a story by John Carpenter (who has expressed his displeasure at the rewrite of it), the movie always feels a lot like a relic--very much a product of its time. Characters are essentially two-dimensional, and can usually be summed up with a single sentence synopsis. The set pieces are boilerplate, like a climactic chase through the streets of New York City, complete with car chases, gunfire, et cetera. And of course, there is the copious disco music on the soundtrack, played at length (ad nauseum) during the colorful photo shoots, as the pretty models (wearing pretty much nothing) prance about, and Laura applies fake blood to a handsome man in a tuxedo who feigns being dead. In the interest of avoiding spoilers (although I'm not sure why I'm doing that at this point), the ending is a twist that is as predictable as possible for a movie of its nature. Someone who falls into the "the least likely person all along" camp of murderers, and yet the revelation still leaves more questions than answers; Eyes of Laura Mars is hoping, however, that you aren't paying close enough attention to catch these incongruities. Many have described Eyes of Laura Mars to be a Hollywood-styled attempt at a giallo horror movie, akin to works like Deep Red by Dario Argento. This movie certainly apes those movies in its frequent use of the killer's POV, meant to instill a fresh kind of terror in the audience by implicating them in the murder. Yet the very core conceit of Eyes of Laura Mars feels like a thinly veiled attempt to justify this for its own sake, so that American audiences can feel like they have some context for the POV shots, which in and of itself feels a little condescending to be frank. Eyes of Laura Mars also falters and shies away from the gorier aspects of giallo horror, so it seems ill-equipped at inviting American audiences to explore giallo movies by the likes of Argento or Lucio Fulci or Mario Bava, and so on. What Eyes of Laura Mars does have going for it is a cast of talented actors who concisely depict the key elements of the characters they play. Consider Laura's ex-husband, Michael Reisler, played by Raúl Juliá; Michael sneaks into Laura's home, afraid because he is the prime suspect in the murder of her friend, Elaine (Rose Gregorio). In their only scene together, the audience gets all they need about their bad break up and his vices that led to their divorce. He is skittish and, as Laura observes, he has been "drunk for the past six years". He employs passive aggressive verbal jabs, yet begs for help anyway. Yet despite quality acting, Eyes of Laura Mars never feels like more than the sum of its parts. The opening "torch song" by Barbra Streisand (called "Prisoner") feels like something written just to add emotional punch to the opening/closing credits. And the movie even subverts its own POV conceit to try and pull a fast one on us at the film's climax concerning the killer's identity; by obfuscating the victim's face in the elevator, it undermines its own effectiveness as a way of instilling tension. Sadly, the picture that develops from all of these flaws in Eyes of Laura Mars makes it clear that it isn't the kind of film that's worthy of gracing, say, the cover of a collection of the best films of the Seventies, and is instead condemned to the vast bargain bin of forgettable popcorn munchers of yesteryear.
Recommended for: Fans of a predictable psychothriller that hinges audience interest on its clever conceit (and sexy models) even if it doesn't try to make any sense about it. Eyes of Laura Mars does stand out as an example of the kinds of "Hollywood-ized" movies that have been the foundation of popular remakes for decades. This seems more evident than ever in today's movie climate by way of the multitude of tepid American knock-offs of foreign movies that tend to lose something crucial in translation.
At its core, Eyes of Laura Mars is meant to be a thriller that titillates with action and sex appeal, and keeps the audience engaged with red herrings--usually ancillary characters who frequently get killed off to keep us guessing. Adapted from a story by John Carpenter (who has expressed his displeasure at the rewrite of it), the movie always feels a lot like a relic--very much a product of its time. Characters are essentially two-dimensional, and can usually be summed up with a single sentence synopsis. The set pieces are boilerplate, like a climactic chase through the streets of New York City, complete with car chases, gunfire, et cetera. And of course, there is the copious disco music on the soundtrack, played at length (ad nauseum) during the colorful photo shoots, as the pretty models (wearing pretty much nothing) prance about, and Laura applies fake blood to a handsome man in a tuxedo who feigns being dead. In the interest of avoiding spoilers (although I'm not sure why I'm doing that at this point), the ending is a twist that is as predictable as possible for a movie of its nature. Someone who falls into the "the least likely person all along" camp of murderers, and yet the revelation still leaves more questions than answers; Eyes of Laura Mars is hoping, however, that you aren't paying close enough attention to catch these incongruities. Many have described Eyes of Laura Mars to be a Hollywood-styled attempt at a giallo horror movie, akin to works like Deep Red by Dario Argento. This movie certainly apes those movies in its frequent use of the killer's POV, meant to instill a fresh kind of terror in the audience by implicating them in the murder. Yet the very core conceit of Eyes of Laura Mars feels like a thinly veiled attempt to justify this for its own sake, so that American audiences can feel like they have some context for the POV shots, which in and of itself feels a little condescending to be frank. Eyes of Laura Mars also falters and shies away from the gorier aspects of giallo horror, so it seems ill-equipped at inviting American audiences to explore giallo movies by the likes of Argento or Lucio Fulci or Mario Bava, and so on. What Eyes of Laura Mars does have going for it is a cast of talented actors who concisely depict the key elements of the characters they play. Consider Laura's ex-husband, Michael Reisler, played by Raúl Juliá; Michael sneaks into Laura's home, afraid because he is the prime suspect in the murder of her friend, Elaine (Rose Gregorio). In their only scene together, the audience gets all they need about their bad break up and his vices that led to their divorce. He is skittish and, as Laura observes, he has been "drunk for the past six years". He employs passive aggressive verbal jabs, yet begs for help anyway. Yet despite quality acting, Eyes of Laura Mars never feels like more than the sum of its parts. The opening "torch song" by Barbra Streisand (called "Prisoner") feels like something written just to add emotional punch to the opening/closing credits. And the movie even subverts its own POV conceit to try and pull a fast one on us at the film's climax concerning the killer's identity; by obfuscating the victim's face in the elevator, it undermines its own effectiveness as a way of instilling tension. Sadly, the picture that develops from all of these flaws in Eyes of Laura Mars makes it clear that it isn't the kind of film that's worthy of gracing, say, the cover of a collection of the best films of the Seventies, and is instead condemned to the vast bargain bin of forgettable popcorn munchers of yesteryear.
Recommended for: Fans of a predictable psychothriller that hinges audience interest on its clever conceit (and sexy models) even if it doesn't try to make any sense about it. Eyes of Laura Mars does stand out as an example of the kinds of "Hollywood-ized" movies that have been the foundation of popular remakes for decades. This seems more evident than ever in today's movie climate by way of the multitude of tepid American knock-offs of foreign movies that tend to lose something crucial in translation.