Movies
Dante 01 (V)
“It’s also a movie that lacks any sort of drive…. So I dunno, it’s not for me, but certainly some folks dug it, and I can see it being a minor cult classic among fans of French horror.”
Whenever a creative duo splits, I am instantly curious as to how well they fare on their own. Being a big fan of Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, I was initially kind of bummed that Jeunet went off on his own, but with the exception of Alien Resurrection (which isn’t THAT bad, just not up to par), he has proven to be a capable filmmaker (still bummed that Very Long Engagement failed to reach the same level of success as Amelie). However, Marc Caro had been MIA, so when I saw he had made his own film, Dante 01, I was pretty excited.
That excitement was dulled, however, once I got twenty minutes into the film and realized I wasn’t engaged at all by what was on the screen. After another 20 minutes I realized I didn’t UNDERSTAND what exactly was happening, and by the hour mark I was merely just sort of looking at the movie, not even bothering to try to make sense of it.
One problem, perhaps the biggest, is that the entire cast is made up of bald dudes in ugly brown jumpsuits. It’s a dark movie by design (made darker by a poor projection on DVD), so any scene where 3-4 of the guys are running around stabbing each other or whatever is completely incoherent. The only two guys I can single out are Lambert Wilson (in a nearly mute starring role as a Jesus incarnate) and Dominique Pinon, who as usual is terrific and fun to watch. I’m not sure why Caro would choose the spaceship movie route after seeing what happened to Jeunet on Alien, but I’m glad he convinced Pinon to don the spacesuit and stand in front of greenscreens again (Pinon even has another underwater scene!).
It’s also a movie that lacks any sort of drive. We are told that everyone on the ship is going to die, but from what is beyond me. Something about the ship colliding with a planet or whatever? It’s hard to get really pumped about such a scenario when the film itself doesn’t seem to be too concerned about it – the only tension in the film stems from the characters fighting with one another. If anything, the movie is like an episode of Aeon Flux, with the same thing just happening over and over: Lambert sees an orange squid/alien thing inside someone, he sucks it out, pukes and screams, some bald dudes run around and fight, other bald dudes watching them from a control room say things like “it worked!”, and then the whole sequence starts all over again. The final act mixes things up a bit, but it suffers from complete incoherency, and the final scene seems randomly swiped from 2001, not THIS film’s logical conclusion.
So I dunno, it’s not for me, but certainly some folks dug it, and I can see it being a minor cult classic among fans of French horror. It would make a hell of a Blu-Ray (since it’s so dark, the improved contrast range Blu offers is practically a necessity), and if it had commentary (or even a shooting script) on the disc I would be first in line to pick it up at Best Buy. I have a feeling that it could be like Southland Tales, in which once you accept it for what it is (and what it isn’t) and are provided with some background info that isn’t in the film (apparently their budget was cut in half halfway through production), it would actually be something I enjoy. For now though – life’s too short to subject myself to confusion for 90 straight minutes. At least Southland has a good soundtrack to make up for its narrative woes.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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