Crimson Peak
Whoever Mia Wasikowska is, she is luminous as Edith Cushing in Guillermo del Toro’s new movie Crimson Peak. She is the sort of actress that when the camera is not trained on her you wish it would move back and frame her. She may be an Aussie but she mastered American English in this role as the daughter of a Buffalo, New York magnate. She doesn’t have long to hang around Buffalo though once Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) trains his eye on her. Neither will her father, but I won’t get into that detail and spoil the plot.
Thomas and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) knock on Edith’s father’s door in search of capital, of the green kind. You see back in England at Allerdale Hall the brother and sister now run the family estate atop a hill of rich red clay. Thomas is perfecting an invention that will efficiently mine and process his clay, but has run out of money. When he can’t figure out a way to borrow the money from Edith’s dad (played by Jim Beaver) his only alternative is to marry his way into it. Edith’s dad Carter instinctively dislikes Thomas, so no nuptials or even dates with his daughter seem likely. It seems even less likely after Edith sees her mother’s ghost, rendered with the impressively creepy special effects we come to expect from del Toro, who warns her not to go to this place called Crimson Peak.
Ah, but you know the plot. Edith and Thomas quickly fall in love anyhow and she and her father’s fortune move to Allerdale Hall. The Gothic hall is in an advanced state of decay, so much so that much of the roof is missing. It’s not until she arrives as the new Mrs. Sharp that she realizes the decrepit place built on red clay is actually known locally as Crimson Peak, but by then it’s too late to run for home or from the ghost of Thomas and Lucille’s mother that inhabits this hall.
del Toro is an consistently creative director, but it’s hard to be creative with a story that is typecast as a Gothic romance. He does make the movie suitably creepy, but Allerdale Hall is perhaps a bit too perfectly Gothic. From its evil basement that Edith is warned to never venture into, to the incest going on upstairs and of course the many hauntings in the place it feels more stereotypical than a place where belief can be plausibly suspended. For one thing, there is never a sunny day. Also fall leaves are always falling through the roof and a blanket of snow (fairly rare in England) usually covers the ground. A lighter directorial touch here might have made for a better movie. But at least there is eye candy: Mia for the men and Tom for the women as well as some very sickening violence early in the movie and near the end. Some transformer-like creatures from del Toro’s earlier Pacific Rim might have been preferred to the tired Gothic frame.
Fortunately, there aren’t many Gothic romance movies anymore so given the slim pickings this one will stand out among them. Thus it’s best not to be too critical and to let yourself be carried away by the over the top frame. Mia Wasikowska may be luminous to watch but neither she nor Tom Hiddleston nor the film’s famous director can quite pull this film up to a master film of the genre. Nice try though.
3.3 out of four-stars.
[xrr rating=3.3/4]
Suffragette
The trailer really made me anxious to see Suffragette. It’s hard for me to stay away from a movie with left wing themes. Moreover, women’s suffrage has also been virtually ignored by Hollywood, which makes it fresh material for the screen. You don’t have to get too far into this movie to realize that women were quite literally second class citizens at this time (the early 20th century) with no right to vote and with the husband controlling all decisions including whether to give his son or daughter up for adoption.
Then there were the menial jobs women worked. For Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) it meant working long hours at the laundry for meager wages and a boss into sexually harassing his workers. Yet Maud finds herself a reluctant suffragette (the term given for a woman working for women’s voting rights). It’s mainly her sympathy for a fellow laundress Violet (Anne-Marie Duff) that convinces her to attend a demonstration. Later when Violet is roughed up on her way to testify to no less than the Prime Minister about this discrimination, Maud unexpectedly testifies for her. This gains her many enemies, including the eventual enmity of her husband whose manhood is threatened by his uppity wife.
It’s a story ripe for the telling. Director Sarah Gavron snags a few A-List actresses, principally Helena Bonham Carter as Dr. Edith and Meryl Streep as Mrs. Emmeline Parkhurst, the central leader of the suffragette movement who is hounded by police and usually is in hiding. After fifty years of struggle with nothing to show, women are feeling pretty frustrated. Mrs. Parkhurst thus urges women to go beyond civil disobedience. Maud somewhat reluctantly gets involved in some violent acts including blowing up mailboxes and destroying the Prime Minister’s summer residence under construction. The Inspector Javert of this movie is Norman Tailor (Geoff Bell) who gets to try to control these increasingly militant suffragettes.
Gavron does a great job of portraying the age in its non-tech glory and a pretty good job of assembling an interesting cast. The story centers on Maud’s gradual inculcation into the suffrage movement, and Mulligan does a convincing job of making us care about her and the other women in this struggle. The laundry is a bleak place and her lodgings less than humble. Spats of prison time including a hunger strike are convincingly portrayed. Her only joy in life is her son.
Gavron went for the tight shot and handheld cameras, probably to enhance the film’s believability and intimacy with the story. For me it detracted from the film, which seemed overly jumpy and made it hard to focus on individual characters. Suffragette at least begins to plumb this era for Hollywood, however it doesn’t quite feel like the definitive film. But at least it’s a start.
3.1 out of 4-points.
[xrr rating=3.1/4]
Occam's Razor 
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