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I took in a screening of a
positively sparkling new print of Nic Roeg's 1973 "Don't
Look Now" this evening. Almost all of Roeg's 70s output is
essential (although "Walkabout", while still
fascinating, seems a bit dated now, and he hasn't done anything
worth a shit since the early 80s
"Insignificance"/"Eureka" double-whammy), and
"Dont Look Now" singlehandedly explains why. Roeg's
films at their best never exist on a linear plane, instead
embracing the structure of a shattered glass run through a
projector in reverse, so the various shards can spring off the
ground and coelesce (it's no accident that in the opening scene
of this picture Julie Christie is reading a book called "The
Fragile Geometry of Matter in Space"..."Fragile
Geometry", incidentally, being the title of Joseph Lanz'
later bio/analysis of Roeg. He takes an almost alchemical
approach to his editing in his best films (look at the
stomach-pump sequence from his neglected "Bad Timing",
the murder sequence from "Eureka", or Rip Torn having
sex with his students while David Bowie has an extra-terrestrial
ephiphany watching Kabuki in "The Man Who Fell To
Earth" for details), and the near Moebius-strip structure of
"Don't Look Now" manages to solidly and effectively
extend this skill over an entire 110 minute film, rather than a
few isolated sequences. Christie and Donald Sutherland play the
parents of a drowned daughter (the film is based on a Du Maurier
story) who relocate to Venice to escape their grief. Sutherland
immerses himself in his work, while Christie develops a
relationship with a pair of mysterious English sisters, one of
whom claims to be psychic and has visions of the dead girl, while
Sutherland has similar, more physically tangible visions, which
serve to override and belittle Christie's new
"spiritual" link to replacing what they'd lost. Roeg
(wisely) abandons the plot in favor of creating a psychological
study based on location and atmosphere. The Venice of this film
is a hopelessly desolate, disorienting, monochromatic maze
teeming with corpses and refuse (the new print, which could have
from the looks of it been struck earlier this morning, gave an
almost organic malevolence to the film that the bleached and
choppy video prints I'd previously seen have obscured). Ironic
that the film's most notorious sequence is an incredibly tender
portrayal of domestic intimacy (Sutherland and Christie's
unusually graphic lovemaking intercut with their detatched and
offhanded dressing for dinner), while every frame of the rest of
the picture is positively saturated with grief, paranoia,
mistrust and alienation. By the time Roeg (in a shockingly cold
move) trots out the slate-white arbitrary horror of the climax,
you've already been through the patient wringer (though the
ending, for me, never fails to pack a punch, rather garishly in
the dazzling arterial spurt of this new print). The picture has
aged remarkably well, and print notwithstanding, it's a treat to
see Roeg's inimitable band-aid shaped compositions on the
pre-formatted wider-screen. If this print comes through YourTown,
by all means plop down the cash. If not, the bleached and choppy
video print should get the point across, though to a considerably
dulling effect.
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