Do film’s need to be interpreted
outside of their historical context? I think that’s a question
which is particularly relevant to movies with twists. For most of
cinema history, a twist could set a movie apart from the competition.
But now the market has become saturated with them, and twists are
usually accepted only if they tie everything which came before
together, while disregarding nothing.
That was my initial objection to Don’t
Look Now upon my first viewing; the fact that it was a “Gotcha!”
in which nothing that happened actually mattered to the conclusion of
the narrative. However, re-examining it, I find it to actually have
some interesting themes, and I believe that I can see the intention
behind it more clearly.
The movie ends with John Baxter (Donald
Sutherland) being murdered by a dwarf in a red rain coat. He
believed the dwarf to be the spirit of his deceased daughter, who
he’d been mourning for much of the film. However, the dwarf was
actually a serial killer who’d been committing murders throughout
Venice.
The reason I originally rejected this
movie as a “Gotcha!” was that it presented itself as supernatural
and I believed that the reveal killed this. After the death of their
daughter by drowning, John and his wife Laura (Julie Christie) travel
from England to Venice, as he’s been commissioned to restore an
Italian Cathedral. (I don’t believe his exact job description is
ever stated, but I can say “architect,” for lack of a better
word).
However, re-examining it, I begin to
see the significance of the supernatural in this film. Laura meets
with a pair of sisters, Heather (Hilary Mason) and Wendy (Clelia
Matania). Heather, who is blind, claims to be psychic, and also
claims that John has the gift, unbeknowest to him. John doesn’t
believe in psychics, but begins to see the figure in the red rain
coat as they travel around Venice.
Does it seem contradictory that John
eventually follows his own gift to his death at the hands of a
completely mundane serial killer? Not at all. Throughout the film,
Heather gives dire warnings and they are given reasons to leave.
Their son suffers an accident, causing Laura to return to England
even as John stays. He uses the premise of “finishing his
commission,” but the audience is well aware that he wants to follow
the red raincoat. Furthermore, John sees a premonition of the
sisters and his wife onboard what he fails to recognize as his own
funeral barge, leading him to issue a missing persons report for his
wife who he falsely believes to have remained in Venice.
Whatever else you can say about it,
John is chasing a specter. He wants “proof” of the survival of
his daughter’s soul, even while her soul is telling him to run and
not look back. By the end we recognize that he’s ignoring
legitimate warnings from beyond, simply because he caught a glimpse
of a red raincoat that happens to be like the one his daughter wore
when she drowned.
The horror of this movie, at least to
me, is that we really shouldn’t be questioning these things. The
forces of Good & Evil are far beyond our immediate concerns, and
when they deign to give us a warning, we’re not supposed to sit
around and look for further evidence! We’re supposed to run like
Hell! His daughter’s spirit has absolutely no interest in her
existence being demonstrated to anyone whose life isn’t in
immediate mortal peril.
I do recommend this movie. It’s a
bit slow, a bit stilted, and I still haven’t fully forgiven Donald
Sutherland for messing up the Buffy movie, but it’s a
challenging film if you have any belief in the spiritual.
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