The Sheila Variations

"Don't Look Now"

Don't Look Now starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie

You hear references to it all the time.

Usually, you will hear about:

1. that sex scene

Or

2. How freakin' terrifying that little creature in the red hood is Ahem.

Or

3. how radical the film was for the time, and what an important moment for British cinema it was

It was made in 1973, and you can FEEL how much it has been copied in the years since. Very influential film, in its own quiet intense way. That's the thing about context - and how important it is. It's important to know where things fit in in the grand scheme of things, how British cinema was developing during the 60s, what was going on at the time ... and how Don't Look Now fits in to all of that. I had the context - only I had never seen the film itself.

First of all - there were times when I got so freaked out that I had to watch the film in "diamond vision". (This stolen from Ann Marie - as so many genius phrases are) "Diamond vision", obviously, is when a movie is so scary that you put your hands over your eyes - and yet you feel compelled to peek out between the diamond-shaped spaces left by your overlaced fingers. So yes. That little red-coated creature glimpsed through the murky dank streets of Venice caused much diamond vision.

And also - here's another amazing thing: If you haven't seen the film, I wouldn't dare give the ending away - because I had no idea how it ended, although I knew the general plot (husband and wife lose their young daughter, and then are haunted by sights of her - a small red-coated creature who scares the living shit out of you ... and somewhere along in here they have a notoriously hot sex scene). That's what I knew. Other than that, nothing. I just had to sit back and watch it unfold.

What beautiful and deep performances by Sutherland and Christie. It really feels like a marriage. It has a real sense of reality to it - that kind of casual intimacy that comes from a day in day out knowledge of one another, brushing teeth naked and stuff - NON-sexualized nudity, which is so hard to do on film - and I'm always delighted when a film gets the right tone and can get away with something like that. Because it's part of life. Our bodies, whatever ... a naked body isn't necessarily sexual - and so there's a really nice feeling between these two people. In a way, you can tell they're "over it" - meaning past the first flush of a relationship where nudity ALWAYS is sexual. They have (or had) two kids. They've been together a long time. They've been through a lot. They're married. So the way it's filmed - Sutherland brushing his teeth, nude, while she sits in the tub - and the two of them are talking about something - casually, the way couples do - I loved that.

So when that sex scene comes ... it's not like a gymnastics soft-lit scene , the way you so often see in Hollywood movies. Where when people take off their clothes, they cease being human beings - or characters - and just become People Having Sex. As though everyone has sex the same way - married couples, one-night stands, whatever, and everyone is good and graceful at it, and nobody has body issues, and there's always a soundtrack ... We all know scenes like that. This scene, which comes in the first half of the movie - is, indeed, striking - and there's a reason why it is referred to all the time. They're both buck naked - the scene goes on forever - but watching it, I felt ... Let's see. First of all - as the scene goes on and on, there are intercut scenes, glimpses of them getting dressed afterwards because they're going out to dinner. So we get a close-up of her buttoning her blouse, him zipping his trousers ... interspersed with the love-making. Fascinating. This is a real relationship. Couples behave this way all the time. You are naked, then an hour later you're clothed and you're at a dinner party. The world doesn't STOP for sex. Sex is just ONE part of a relationship, and the way the scene was edited really hit that home. I thought it was a great choice.

And so I felt like I was watching their relationship, rather than two naked bodies having sex. It takes a lot of guts and trust to do a scene like that - and Sutherland and Christie appear to be in a totally private love-making space, they are all about each other, completely engrossed. It's actually quite beautiful. I didn't find it all that sexy - because it felt more private than that. It felt as though the camera wasn't even there. And instead of it having just a titillating purpose - it had a real purpose in the plot-line. Laura (Julie Christie) has been in mourning, ever since their little girl died. Their relationship has become rote. They are hiding their grief from one another, and from their remaining son. Their marriage is on auto-pilot. They are wounded. That is - until Laura meets the blind psychic woman - who gives her hope by telling her that the dead daughter is laughing, and happy, and okay. The sex scene becomes indicative of Laura's reawakening to life, her re-vitalization, her memory of her love for her husband. John (Sutherland) feels like he has his wife back, it's marvelous, wonderful for him ... a life-affirming moment. But of course, there's a sinister side to this ... or an unhealthy side. Laura's re-blossoming is based on the knowledge that her dead daughter is actually still with them, trying to communicate. And John - who despite his work on the church - is definitvely anti-religious - thinks she might be going mad. He refuses to believe in this "second sight" of the blind psychic, thinks it is all silly, and is frustrated at Laura's insistence on belief.

Something is not right.

Who is better than Donald Sutherland?? God, I love that guy.

The opening scene - with John and Laura sitting in their house in England - as their children play outside ... is completely arresting. Watch the jump-cuts. Watch how it is edited. It immediately sets you up in an uneasy position as the audience. It's not that anything scary is happening ... not yet ... but the way the edits come, unexpected - the red-hooded figure in the photo John is looking at ... and how Laura looks up and off, as though she hears something "not quite right" ... and then cut back to the outdoors, with the rain falling on the pond, and the little girl in the red plastic jumper walking along in the grass ... cut back to Sutherland at his desk - It's terrifying. And VERY well done.

Ebert writes about this style in his Great Movies series piece on Don't Look Now:

Nicolas Roeg's 1973 film remains one of the great horror masterpieces, working not with fright, which is easy, but with dread, grief and apprehension. Few films so successfully put us inside the mind of a man who is trying to reason his way free from mounting terror. Roeg and his editor, Graeme Clifford, cut from one unsettling image to another. The movie is fragmented in its visual style, accumulating images that add up to a final bloody moment of truth.

You, the audience member, are put in the position of being a collaborator in film-making like this. The story unfolds mysteriously, with missing links. We don't hear WHY they are suddenly in Venice ... we are left to figure that out on our own. Pieces of information do come, but they fit together a bit jaggedly, the same way they do in life. All we know is is that this couple has been through a wrenching ordeal, and they are just trying to survive. Trying to either numb themselves to the loss, or find escape in work or sleeping pills.

Sutherland feels that he is losing his wife to her new ecstatic knowledge that their daughter is still with them. He doesn't want to puncture her bubble, but he is worried about her.

And then there is his work at the church and the creepy archibishop - all of which is filmed with an uneasy point of view, and you are not sure (until the very end of the movie) WHY you are uneasy. A sudden close-up of the archbishop's onyx ring. Back to a master shot. Sudden cut to the archibishop's hand taking a handkerchief out of his cloak pocket. Back to a long shot of Sutherland and the archbishop walking along a canal. It makes no sense, in a literal way - but emotionally, it makes perfect sense. Christie says to her husband later, "There's something about that archbishop ... he makes me feel uneasy." And yes, we as the audience feel that too ... not because of anything he has said, or anything he has done ... but because he has been filmed in an uneasy manner. The camera angles and the edits put us on edge.

I love movie-making like that.

And be warned. The last 15 minutes of the movie are best watched through Diamond Vision.

Here is Roger Ebert's review of this movie. Great flick - not one dull moment.

Posted by sheila