The Woman In Black (Film)

The Woman in Black

Film, 21^st February 2012

The filmmaker has so much wizardry at her fingertips that a poor film is an unforgivable thing.  I don’t tend to watch poor films, or any films for that matter.  If you go to the theatre regularly and you like to read books there doesn’t tend to be much room for film as well.  And it’s hard to sit still at home without a book resting in your lap and somehow anchoring you with a guilt-free pursuit of self-improvement.  Film does not seem to offer self-improvement which might be why a good film is so enjoyable, providing you’re in a cinema and not tempted to multi-task with the ironing.  Anyway, I had to see this particular film because the original film held a sort of vivid sentimentality in my mind and I doubted that this recent Hammer production would be as scary.

Circa 1995 an old charmer who went dubiously by the profession of teacher used to allow his class of bright girls the illicit opportunity to forget their studies temporarily and watch a film in his English lessons.  Not a film of a set-text, I might add.  And the excuse for this indulgence was usually the end of term or something like that.  And always the same film, wasn’t it girls?  The Woman in Black.  No doubt it was a bit of a thrill to have a class of adolescent  girls squealing behind their hands as they hid from the maniacal eyes of the said woman.  Middlemarch is all very well but if you really want to get a reaction from the pubescent mind, put on a film.  Even better, put on a scary film and watch them scream. 

I haven’t read Susan Hill’s book so apologies to anyone who is hoping for a point-for-point discussion on how true to the original text the most recent  film is.  A film should stand as a thing in its own right but I suspect that the two films made of this book are successful because the book obeys so many fundamental principles of scare-mongering:  A spooky, old house cut off from civilisation by mists and marshes, dark windows, threatened children and a ghost woman with such over-riding anger issues that she kills children to avenge her own cruel history.  It is the simplicity of the story that makes it such a success and no amount of techno-wizardry can make a film good, or bad for that matter.  Usually the film is made good in the same way that the stage play is made good:  Well-written script, compelling story-telling, accomplished cast etc. 

The screen-play was written by the indomitable and hugely talented Jane Goldman who was responsible also for the fabulous Stardust.  Clearly she likes the Gothic genre.  So too does little Daniel Radcliffe who plays Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer fresh out of Hogworts and trying to cope with the death, in childbirth, of his wife in white.  Radcliffe is the perfect bland canvas on which to hang all things Gothic.  He is small in every way, the ideal narrator of a story that is bigger than he is.  He is supported wonderfully by big, old Ciaran Hinds whose stolid performance as Sam Daily grounds the ghostly story in some sort of sensible reality.  Unlike Sam’s wife Elizabeth, played by Janet McTeer, who has transferred her maternal affections, after the death of her young son, onto a couple of pooches who sit at the table in high chairs and get rocked to sleep at night in cradles – wonderfully twisted stuff; it could be Dickens.

As for being scared; I was not disappointed in the least, I was petrified.  So much of the film was lost to me as I hid behind my hand.  Sitting now, in front of a computer screen, it seems incredible that I was rendered so terrified but this is film’s trump card:  You can put down a book and walk away but if you walk out of the cinema half-way through you look like a bit of a wuss and that is your only get-out clause.  From the first moment Arthur approaches the old house we notice the dark porch with weeds growing out of its recesses.  Instantly I thought that a spider would fall on his head and so the imagination starts on a little journey.  I confess that I remember very little of the original film other than that face leering suddenly through the window.  What is it about the window at night?  Even now that I am a rational grown-up I do not like to look out into the darkness.  Why?  Do I really think that the Woman in Black will appear and scream her nasty, penetrating scream?  Or does a part of all of us want to be scared?

When Arthur pursues the woman we are thinking to ourselves, ‘don’t go into the house, you crazy fool, run, run for your life!’ But it is alright so long as he is not scared himself.  But at some point this changes and he starts to run through the old house to escape the ghost-woman’s clutches.  A chase is almost agonizingly exciting because we all know the feeling of being pursued, in our imaginations, from childhood.  Whenever the torment became too great, Sam would appear and provide light relief before the next bout of scariness.  The underlying unease, however, comes from the threat to the children.  We don’t really care what happens to Radcliffe, he is, as stated; simply a vehicle of narrative but whatever torment can be borne oneself the threat to innocents causes excruciating anguish.  When the pale-faced girl is dragged into the police station and the boys tell Arthur that she has drunk poison he takes her in his arms where she coughs up blood and dies.  This comes out of nowhere and is startlingly effective at unnerving us.  A clever little touch is that Arthur is on his own and when he shouts for help nobody comes.  It is as if he is suddenly in a night mare where however much you shout nobody comes to help.  But the death of this girl is nothing in comparison to the impending doom we feel when mention is made of Arthur’s little son coming to join him in the ghostly town.  And little Misha Handley was chosen to play Arthur’s son, Joseph, because of his unbearably cute and squidgy loveliness.  He is a character born to die and we know it from the first moment we see him.

It was exhausting, it was exhilarating.  How on earth was it rated 12A?  I don’t think I was really old enough to see it. If you’re brave enough, do go and see it.  It is the rare work of art that delivers more than you expect.

Nora

Nora

Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, 31^st January 2012

In 2008 I went to the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry to see Ingmar Bergman’s play, Scenes from a Marriage, directed by Trevor Nunn.  Marianne and Johan were played by theatrical royalty:  Imogen Stubbs and Iain Glen.  Theirs was a dramatic match made in heaven, unlike the characters they played, where Stubbs’s earthy naturalism was contrasted to powerful effect by Glen’s masterful command of presence.  I must confess here that I am something of an Iain Glen groupie.  It was not by chance that I happened to be in the Belgrade in 2008 watching him perform.  No, I was stalking his performances after his 2006 role in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at Stratford.  Heavily pregnant I watched, mesmerised, by the sense of quiet gravity that he brought to the performance.  Perhaps a little hormonal I wept through most of the play and ordained him then as England’s finest stage talent.

So, imagine my delight when I learned that Glen and Stubbs were to be reunited once again at the Belgrade in another Bergman play; this time an interpretation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House called Nora.  Hastily I booked tickets and eagerly anticipated the event.  But things never go according to plan and so it was that husband and I found ourselves running full pelt towards the Belgrade after somehow managing to leave late and in the general way of things, thus arrive late.  The multi-story car park seemed to go on forever but we could see the welcoming illumination of The Belgrade the whole time.  It is a feature of the largely bomb-flattened city that you can usually see where you are trying to get to without having a clear idea of how to get there.  Still, I digress, now as I did then; to wonder briefly that Coventry is much prettier at night than it is in the day.  Pretty lights on buildings certainly have the desired effect.

So it was that we hurtled into our seats, husband briefly squashing the lady behind’s artificial foot and before we could catch our breath Nora and Torvald were on the stage.  Where were Mr Glen and Ms Stubbs?  Clearly I had made some sort of grave error; who were these nobodies on the stage?  The absence of my favourite luvvies tinged the play with an internal sneer for about twenty-five minutes; until I forgot about what I had hoped to see and started to pay attention to what I was seeing. 

Penny Layden as Nora was almost unbearably irritating and it was only as her character metamorphosis begun to take place that it became apparent that this was the result of a great talent.  She was doll-like to such a beautiful extent that it seemed real.  At one point, Torvald dances around with her and she is stiff in his arms like a real doll.  Nora brought into the twenty-first century was tremendously effective because there really are women like Nora is at the start of the play; who dress like dolls and play dumb to their husbands, even now.  Ibsen, like Shakespeare, could reduce all themes to the nuts and bolts of universality.  Imagine being able to relate so exactly to a female character, not only created some hundred and thirty years previously but also created by a man.  Layden’s Nora is, at times, maniacal but always within the social expectations of woman.  At the end of the play, when her transformation is complete, she walks off stage, case in hand and exits through the audience doors.  With her serious and reflective expression and dark clothes it was remarkable to think that this was the same person who opened the play.  It was as if Ibsen’s Nora walked right out of his 1879 script and into the modern world.

David Michaels played Torvald Helmer and provided the play with much of its humour.  We are laughing always at him and never with him because for most of the play he does not know what is going on and this makes him foolish.  His final, pathetic descent was displayed when he stripped on stage and simulated sex with Nora who was wearing rather more clothes than him.  Of course, this is an obvious motif for vulnerability and so it was that the audience seemed to sigh in collective relief when Nora threw a blanket over the naked Torvald.  Phew!  It’s nice to be shocked but, as with McKellan’s Lear a few years ago, one’s lasting impression of a play tends to be of nudity sprung upon us.  I can still see the old man’s surprisingly large penis swinging between his legs as he descends further into madness but I could not tell you much else about that particular Lear.  Still, by this point in Nora it has been ensured that nobody will feel any real sympathy for Torvald.  Perhaps Mr Glen opted out when he discovered there was nudity involved....

Bergman’s play differs from the original mostly in that it is paired down.  This seems to me a good thing because it makes it seem more modern.  Ibsen was not a subtle writer and the themes of the play, familiar as they are to us today do not need to be quite so overstated.  The beauty of A Doll’s House is that it is a feminist play that even men can understand.  One of the simplified aspects of the play is that Nora and Torvald’s three children are noticeably absent and only ever referred to.  This is effective because we are spared the discomfort of seeing Nora as a mother and we can focus on her simply as a wife.  A woman’s relationship with her children may never change but clearly there is room for improvement in a marriage such as Nora and Torvald’s.  It also helps with the controversial end scene; always a source of dissatisfaction with audiences is the idea of Nora walking out, not just on home and husband but crucially on her children.  Personally, I find the idea quite tantalising, especially at about eight o’clock in the morning but conventional stereotyping of women has prevented this aspect of the play from being considered acceptable and so in this play, Nora maintains the moral high-ground.

It was a marvellous, thought-provoking performance which was more than worthy of the ticket price and the Belgrade is a cracking theatre.  Its light and open layout stops it from ever feeling provincial and the staff are always friendly and without any sense of self-importance (small dig intended at some of the ushers at the RST).  And what’s more, if you want to really push the boat out, go hell for leather, or any other cliché you might care to mention and buy the best, most expensive tickets; you will be out of pocket to the tune of £13.50!  A bit more than going to see a 3D film at a fancy cinema.  And what you get is as fine as anything that you might see on the London or Stratford stage.