Dark Harbor – Where are we going with all this?

Dark Harbor (1998) directed by Adam Coleman Howard stars Alan Rickman (David Weinberg), Polly Walker (Alexis Chandler Weinberg) and Norman Reedus (young man).

The Weinberg couple are driving through the rain to catch a ferry when Alexis spots a young man by the roadside. She urges her husband to stop and help and find a bruised and battered young man in need of assistance, who insists on them not calling the police. Through a series of circumstance the young man winds up on the couples island, staying for a few nights and as a result the couples life gets turned upside down.

Okay, so as a summary that looks kind of cliché, right? A couple picks up a drifter and strange things happen. It is cliché.

What’s worse is that this movie is one of those Pinteresque slight-of-hand things. It drags on in its own pace and you feel the tension under the dialogue the whole time, but it isn’t until at the very end that the twist is revealed.

And here’s the catch – once you know what the twist is – the subtlety of the acting and all the little strange things that catch and ping on your radar suddenly make it all better. But – and this is the problem too – you actually don’t get there until the very end of the movie and by the time you do, you actually need to watch it again to really get and enjoy the many little things that these three actors give you along the way.

Reedus is perfectly cast, slim as a whippet, and with something hidden in his brooding eyes, he can seem boyishly innocent and at the same time there’s something vaguely menacing about him, and that’s not only because he carries a knife and lounges around in the background, whittling.

Alan Rickman and Polly Walker play a disaffected couple with so many strange emotional undercurrents going on that there at times seems to be a third party to their every conversation that calls up things like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, not that it’s anywhere near that intense, but still. I find my references sidle towards theater, but that is probably easily explained by the fact that most of the action is just the three of them in various constellations.

Still, that doesn’t mean this is in anyway an untroubled production. There are a couple of blatant goofs that even I react to, and I’m not usually bothered by that stuff. And I would really, really like to have a talk with the person who scored this movie. There are some really smart choices, but mostly the music fails badly. It’s overly dramatic when there truly is no need for it, and that always makes me feel like the film-maker isn’t confident in the material carrying it’s own weight.

There are also a couple of really cheesy camera tricks, like gliding along a corridor to a door while the music tries to build suspense, failing spectacularly.

The biggest problem, though, lies in the fact that in order to fully appreciate and enjoy this movie you have to watch it twice – and it’s not entirely certain that the average viewer will want to. It’s not good enough for that. Hardened movie-watchers, like myself, might but the regular viewer will probably dismiss that notion right out of hand.

It does bring to mind Polanski’s Knife in the Water (1962) but it’s nowhere near as brutal. It has art house and Noir sensibility and it is, like I said, really well acted, but there are still quite a few things missing. I find myself a little conflicted about the whole thing. That can sometimes be a good thing, but you really have to be in the mood for that sort of challenge.

Mule

Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Director Tim Burton has made an impressively gothic and dark version of the Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler musical from 1979 about Sweeny Todd (2007). The Demon Barber of Fleet Street stars Johnny Depp as the barber himself, Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett and Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin.

Visually Burton is up to all his old tricks, creating a feeling of the surreal. Not that musicals don’t have that as a built-in quality already. Just as you would expect Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter have worked with vocal coaches and that is probably a good idea since they come under heavy scrutiny right from the get go.

The look and feel of the movie is dark and beautiful, the main characters are all as pale as china dolls and dressed in a monochrome. Burton manages to create a look close to black and white, but much richer. The blood, and there is quite a lot of it, is ridiculously red and cartoony which works surprisingly well.

I am not particularily comfortable with musicals. Even when I like the visuals and the theme and the look and feel, like I do here, I still find I cringe at the idea. This is a penny dreadful come to life in all the right ways, but there is still a music hall sentimentality which makes me uneasy. Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin is an excellent villain – and he is not twiddling an imaginary mustasche or anything – but all of a sudden he bursts into song. And I am sorry, that just feels wrong. The scene where Turpin sits sprawled in Todd’s barber chair letting himself be shaved whilst singing about pretty women should have had more of an impact because of his very helplessness and the intimacy of the setting. The song is one of those romantic, sweet and flighty musical numbers that are supposed to enhance and lift the action, but I can’t get past the artificial nature of the beast.

One of the few musicals I have seen and thouroughly enjoyed was The Black Rider where the music was written by Tom Waits and the words by William S. Burroughs. It has the same gothic underpinning – it’s basically a postmodern day mephistopheles – but it manages to keep its menace even in the sweeter passages. And frankly I think that’s what I am missing here. The look of the movie is just right, but the music… They could have done more. The score feels outmoded and overly traditional to my mind. It glimmers and shines on a few occasions, but mostly it feels too close to the singing Von Trapp family for my taste.

Buckets of blood. That’s what you get. The revenge tale gives motive to Todd’s madness, but the action seems foucused a little to the left of where it could have been. The love story between Todd’s estranged daugther Joanna (Jayne Wisener) and the sailor Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower) is one of those subplots that seems to have been kept in mainly to justify the sickly sweet songs between the two youngsters. Not much is made of the actual pie shop where Todd and Mrs Lovett serve their customers to their customers… Which is too bad because I would have loved to see what wicked dark humor could have been drawn out of that. If the song “A Little Priest” gives any indication that could have been fun.

Visually I want for nothing. This really is lush and cool and dark and detailed. The cast do an excellent job of bringing this to life and Depps scowl is everything it should be just like Bonham Carters whimsy. You can tell they worked hard at making this work. Actual actors who can act is better than pretty singers who can’t act their way out of a paper bag. On rare occasions you can get both, but it is not common.

I enjoyed the movie, but I willingly confess that the musical in general is not my first choice. Had it not been for the unlikely combination of cast, director and theme I would not have chosen this one.

Mule