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.