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It’s hard to know just what to make of Ken Russell’s “Gothic”. It’s certainly not good by any rational measure. It fails utterly as history, narrative, comedy, tragedy or horror. Yet, it’s….as we Minnesotans would say, “Well, that’s sure different.” And that it is.
I initially wondered why Gabriel Byrne was affecting a limp until it hit me. “Oh, the club foot thing!” That’s about as much Byron-esque characterization as we get. It’s not that it’s bad acting. It’s just completely stylized and referential. Every speech of Byrnes is either something is Byron is supposed to have said or wrote, or something he might’ve written if he’d been working on a screenplay. It’s kind of a pantomime Byron; not even close to realism, but trying poetically get that whole “mad, bad, dangerous” thing going. Not very successfully.
Natasha Richardson seems to be working on a whole different movie set. Her scenes, when she isn’t shrieking, stuffing her knuckles in her mouth or running through hallways, are a lot closer to what we’d call conventionally “acting”. Talent will out, apparently. Aside from having to spout some of the more ridiculous lines in all of Ken Russell-dom, which is saying something, she’s better than the rest.
Better than Julian Sands, who is deeply and truly terrible. He was beautiful back then; his Shelley’s angelic looks are contrasted with his shameless mugging into the camera. Between the eye-bugging and showing us every tooth he’s got, he finds time to flail about randomly, wander the rooftops naked and generally carry on like a cocaine fiend on a bender. Overacting is not an adequate term. This one goes to eleven! I assume Russell extracted this performance from Sands to express the sheer emotional intensity of the superheated menage taking place on the shores of Lake Geneva. I’d like to think Sands, given his druthers, might have dialed it down a few notches.
About Myriam Cyr, I know nothing, except that anyone who can run down the stairs backwards two steps at time, and then roll around naked in the mud while chewing a prosthetic rat? She’s OK in my book. Plus, mammarical eyes. How can you not like those? Double plus, she can open her actual eyes wider than anyone since the beloved Marty Feldman. We’re talking white all around, here. Acting-wise, she’s about on a par with whatever Sands was doing. That is, making every line hyper. She’s also the token nudity which we expect in any Ken Russell movie. That guy playing Polidori does wander about with no pants a good bit of the picture, so there’s that.
And he is selling it like a true drama queen, hitting every word so flamboyantly that even in 1987, it must have come across as an offensive stereotype. As a portrayal of a gay man, it’s up there with Mickey Rooney playing Chinese. So over-the-top as to be risible rather than believable.
So, the players are, at best, an oddly mixed bag. How’s the movie? Another oddly mixed bag. Technically, it’s very good. The lush interior of the villa is wonderfully illuminated. Way too illuminated for a costume drama, to be sure; this sure isn’t “Barry Lyndon” filming by real candlelight. Total artifice in every lovingly set-dressed frame of "Gothic". And they are lovely frames. Everything is more real than reality could ever measure up to. I liked that. For a Ken Russell movie, the editing is exceptional, the sound is very good and the image of this Amazon stream much above average. It’s all totally competent, and better than a great deal of currently passes for cinema. The soundtrack (by new wave fave Thomas Dolby!) is undistinguished but unobjectionable. Routine, I’d call it.
But the screenplay, that’s where the donkey falls. This long unfocused ramble through the drug-addled psyches of a bunch of deeply unlikeable literary nerds, it just drones on and on. Everybody is hallucinating a mile-a-minute and not quietly. They all run through the hallways, slam doors, sob, emote, self-stimulate, self-mutilate (Polidori ever gets to do the stigmata!) and make out. Confessions are confessed, truths are told, anatomical models go down the stairs, rats are eaten, nightmares squat on chests, chests develop extra eyeballs….it’s all very busy but somehow kind of dull.
I think the problem is that this just isn’t Ken Russell enough. Where are the jump-cut blasphemies and gonzo religious symbolism? We get one crucifix, a couple big snakes, and a lot more dead baby than anyone, especially me, really needs. But check out “Lisztomania” and compare. “Gothic” is cream cheese spread thin on bland white bread next to “Tommy” or “Lair of the White Worm”. This ain’t no “Altered States” for sheer inspired lunacy. To say nothing of “The Devils”. Or even “Valentino”. If I’m going to invest two hours in a Ken Russell movie, I want to be shocked, challenged, even disgusted.
With “Gothic”, I was at most mildly amused. This picture skirts awfully close to a slamming door farce, with the principals constantly running through corridors Benny Hill style. A whole lot of rooms and doors, but not much progress. I’ll be pedantic enough to mention that laudanum, an opium extract, will not result in manic activity and hallucinations and full-tilt running and shouting. Opiates make users slow, stupid and sleepy, not jittery and creative. This whole crew would have been nodding out, not seeing gods and monsters.
Aside from the lack of classic Russell tropes, my caveat might be that Byron and Shelley were the A-list celebrities of their time. Big time literary smart guys. But we never see either poet doing any actual poetizing. Or creating anything, aside from Byron making snarky quips like some over-literate teenager on Twitter. Doing an Oscar Wilde impression. Shelley flutters about in a dither, Byron does his bon mots, Mary Shelley does not much of anything. She has a bit of a snit about Byron and Shelley making out with each other, has dead baby visions, and gasses on about creating life and destroying life, but to little effect. She doesn’t pick up a quill (did they still write with quills at this point? Surely steel nibs were in use) and say, “You fops are never gonna get anything written, to be frank. Frank…. Maybe another stein of Muller Brau will get things moving…. Stein. That’s it!”
The novel about the modern Prometheus doesn’t’ get much mention, except in a brief and pointless present day coda. I will allow that seeing old Square Head in the guise of that baby was a nice touch.
Maybe I’m being too critical. I was impatient during a lot of these two hours, but not really bored. Back in 1987, “Gothic” might’ve played better. Though going by the box office numbers, not much better. But by today’s lights, this is Russell-lite. With ten or twenty seconds of digital blurring, “Gothic” could play on basic cable and nobody would much notice. I mean, I see “Deadpool” on TV every week, seems like, with language that even a definitely non-prudish me finds kind of ear-boggling. “Gothic” isn’t even slightly scary, isn’t at all sexy and isn’t even very daring.
If I’d paid money and then stuck out the two hours in a theater, I’d have been majorly disappointed. For the price of a Prime admission, it was interesting enough to pass time on the elliptical. If you’re a Ken Russell completist, I’d say watch it. If you’re at all interested in the poetry of Byron or Shelley (and frankly, who is anymore? To anyone younger than me, if Byron is known at all, it’s for the whole louche lifestyle and incest and affairs and scandals and drugs and gambling and boarding school dormitory roulette) then maybe give it a pass. If you’re into the whole Frankenstein mythos, “Gothic” will provide no exposition beyond a few pools of goo and some unlikely stuff about lightning.
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Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2019
Verified Purchase
Perverse, intense and just plain weird; a fictionalized historical horror about Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and mass hysteria.
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2016Verified Purchase
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2017
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Top reviews from other countries
Death to spurs
Strange behaviour on Lake Geneva in the summer with no sun.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 30, 2016Verified Purchase
Donald Robinson
A good film, even though it played up Frankenstein, and played down Polidori's vampire.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 16, 2021Verified Purchase
Choren
Incredible Film!!!!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2011Verified Purchase
Mr. J. M. Zielinski
Great movie from famous director
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 8, 2011Verified Purchase
GA
Something special
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 9, 2013Verified Purchase
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