BEFORE: I'm sorry that I'm kind of jumping all over the horror map here, started with ghosts and moved on to zombies, then some straight up killers (political and non-political), then came some sea monsters and a giant ape, then back to ghosts or ghost-demon or whatever that was last night. I can't help it, I've chosen the actor links as my organization system, and I have to go where that takes me right now. All brands and flavors of horror are accepted here, no film gets turned away for its subject matter, it just has to be spooky in some way. Look, I don't limit my documentaries by subject matter, I'll watch a doc on any subject, as long as it interests me in some way. I tend to gravitate toward rock stars and actor bio-docs, but just this year I watched one about the Mars rover, a couple about Trump, one about people with strange last names, and one about the guy who started Nathan's hot dogs.
I'll go wherever that linking muse takes me, that's my point. And the horror genre can work the same way, films can be animated, or comedy-horror or monster-horror or even a doc about filmmakers like Spielberg or De Palma who directed horror films have qualified, if needed. Whatever keeps that chain going can be OK, I might even slip in a superhero film like I did "Morbius", if it seems spooky enough AND it keeps the chain alive (or undead). Tonight it's a film based on classic lit that may not be outright horror, but it's freaky and hopefully spooky. OK?
Rebecca Hall carries over again from "The Night House".
THE PLOT: A corrupt young man somehow keeps his youthful beauty eternally, but a special painting gradually reveals his inner ugliness to all.
AFTER: Of course, I'm somewhat familiar with the "Picture of Dorian Gray" storyline, though I've never read it, you just pick up things by osmosis sometimes. I've never watched a film version of it either, unless you count the character's appearance in the movie "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", which seems to have fallen out of favor for some reason, but it was based on a comic book that had THREE volumes, and the film only dealt with the first one. It's not too late, somebody could still make a sequel with Captain Nemo, Mina Harker, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and the Invisible Man fighting off the aliens attacking from Mars as in "The War of the Worlds". Sure, I get that Sean Connery's no longer available, just replace Allan Quartermain or bring him back from the dead and played by a younger actor, I'm fine with it either way, but let's get to it! Replace him with John Carter of Mars, I don't care.
The one character who can't come back for the sequel would be Dorian Gray, who crumbled to dust after being forced to look at the portrait of himself, which had taken on all his injuries and aging that he somehow managed to deflect on to the art. But of course that "Extraordinary Gentlemen" movie was a bastardization, with Stuart Townsend playing Dorian, and I've never bothered much to find out what takes place in the REAL story, the only novel written by Oscar Wilde. I've seen other films based on Wilde's plays, like "An Ideal Husband" and "The Importance of Being Earnest" and "A Good Woman", but never tackled any version of "Dorian Gray" until tonight.
My first question is, where did the story idea come from? My first thought is that it came from Wilde's own vanity, perhaps looking in a mirror and seeing signs of his own aging, and wishing he could stop it. Or did he see someone having their portrait painted, as was the custom of the time, and notice the fact that the portrait would never age, while the person would, and hey, there's maybe a story there, what if it worked the other way around? It turns out my second guess is very close to the mark, in 1887 he watched a female friend having her portrait painted and remarked in jest that it was tragic, that the painting will never grow older but the subject would, and right away his brain reversed it and he had the idea for the story.
Now, the story went through some changes, apparently after Wilde had written it as a short story, his publisher took out any references to homosexual desire, because that sort of thing would have marked the book as "indecent" and might have prevented publication. But by 1891 the novella had become a longer novel, twenty chapters but still light on the gay stuff. It wasn't until 2011 that the "uncensored" version of the book was published, and the parts of Wilde's story about the artist, Basil Hayward, having romantic feelings for Dorian Gray were restored. Whether this is for the better, it's not for me to say, like I'm all for the artist being in love with Dorian, but somehow the art displaying Dorian's age might be tied to him selling his soul, so I don't know how close anyone wants the gay themes to be to the work of the Devil, just saying.
But to what extent is the story meant to be taken seriously, and how much of it is metaphor about the purpose of art in society, the value of beauty, and the role of an artist in creating a portrait of someone. Somehow the creation of this picture freezes Dorian in age and beauty, and is that ultimately a good thing or a bad thing? Did he make a deal with the Devil just by saying so, is that the way the world works? If Dorian could stop aging just by having his portrait made and wishing it to be so, why didn't anyone else seem to be able to do this?
More to the point, are we supposed to take Dorian's actions as "evil" or just that of a young, wanton man in Victorian England who falls in with a bad crowd, and uses his money to pursue beauty and pleasure in all of its forms? Would he be considered "good" if he settled down, married a woman and remained faithful to her, until they grew old together and one of them died? Is that course of action "good" just because society says it is? While pursuing hedonistic relationships with many women (and men) without any boundaries, is that considered "evil"? I think there's a slippery slope there, and we should probably resist putting the good/evil labels on any relationship choices, because it's not the Victorian Age any more, we went through a whole sexual revolution and people fought for gay rights and we've come too far as a society to revert to "marriage good, orgies bad". It's a whole new ball game out there, some people live in thrupples and some people are polyamorous and gender-neutral and so maybe Dorian Gray was just 130 years ahead of his time, as Oscar Wilde may have been.
Dorian experiments with every vice out there, but the effects are not reflected on his own body, they appear on the painting instead. So he's forced to remove the painting from view and hang it in the attic. Basil, the painter, wants to include it in a gallery show but Dorian obviously refuses. When Basil realizes why, he urges Dorian to pray for salvation, but Dorian blames his fate on the artist and kills him. Meanwhile, James Vane is out to kill Dorian for breaking the heart of his sister, Sibyl, who was engaged to Dorian then drowned herself when he called off the wedding. Well, she was playing Ophelia in "Hamlet" when they met, so that seems kind of fitting. Anyway, Dorian decides to travel and see the world, returning to London 25 years later to find that all of his friends are now old, though he has remained young.
He takes up with Emily, the daughter of his best friend, Henry Wotton, the one who told him to pursue beauty and pleasure in the first place. Umm, except he's not crazy about Dorian dating his own daughter, it turns out, probably because he knows what Dorian is capable of. But Dorian is trying to straighten out and fly right, whatever that means - only Emily is curious about what's stored in the attic and why she's forbidden to go up there. Gray is reminded of how cruel he was to Sibyl, as her brother James makes another attempt to kill Dorian for it. Meanwhile other people are looking at old photographs of Dorian and wondering how he managed to not age over time. All this leads to Henry sneaking into the attic and finding evidence of Basil's murder, then exposing the covered-up portrait which seems to growl and nearly come to life, and it's angry. The only possible response is to try and kill it with fire, and hope that does the trick.
It's a little tough to discern what lesson, exactly, we're supposed to take away from this story. Don't make a deal with the Devil? Umm OK, I won't. Don't have your portrait painted with those paints that will steal your soul and make the painting age in your place? Sure, I can do that. Learn to grow old gracefully? Well that seems more reasonable, but does anyone ever really do that well? I mean, we're all getting older every day, you can't stop it. I've got another birthday coming in 10 days, so yeah, I'm aware but as Indy said, it's not the years, it's the mileage. Growing old sucks, but it does beat the alternative.
Also starring Ben Barnes (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Colin Firth (last seen in "Barbie"), Ben Chaplin (last seen in "The Dig"), Rachel Hurd-Wood (last seen in "Peter Pan" (2003)), Johnny Harris (last seen in "The Last Days on Mars"), Emilia Fox (last seen in "Blithe Spirit"), Fiona Shaw (last seen in "IF"), Maryam d'Abo (last seen in "The Living Daylights"), Caroline Goodall (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Michael Culkin (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Pip Torrens (also last seen in "Easy Virtue"), John Hollingworth (last seen in "Napoleon"), Nathan Rosen, Jeff Lipman (last seen in "United 93"), Louise Kempton, Douglas Henshall (last seen in "Twice Upon a Yesterday"), George Potts (last seen in "The Son"), David Sterne (last seen in "The Protégé"), Louise Rose, Aewla Huillet, Jo Woodcock, Max Irons (last seen in "The Wife"), Lily Garrett, Emily Phillips, Hugh Ross (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Andrew Harrison, Daniel Newman (last seen in "The Dark Knight Rises"), Tallulah Sheffield.
RATING: 5 out of 10 imported cigarettes in a silver case
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