Colours Are Overrated - Goth Films
Gothic [goth-ik]: “noting or pertaining to a style of literature [music or
popular culture], characterized by a gloomy setting, grotesque, mysterious, or
violent events, and an atmosphere of degeneration and decay”.
Ah the Goths... they make great characters for movies don’t they? Dark brooding
creatures, faces painted white, jet-black hair, often vampiric… with moribund
dispositions and an over-developed sense of romance and despair.. Oh the pain
of it all!!
In pop culture, the goths (reversioned nowadays as “emos” or “emotional
goths”), are probably the subculture that find themselves the butt of the most
jokes, for the perception of taking themselves way too seriously. But that
hasn’t prevented movie studios from making loads of money out of such
characters, especially given the commercial potential for the large market.
Perhaps the first film to put “gothic” on the map in cinema was
Nosferatu (1922), German director F. W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece, an
unauthorised movie rendition of Bram Stoker’s famed Dracula story. Murnau’s
film pioneered the blueprint brooding atmosphere that set the standard for goth
movies of today... Shadow and light play off each other like foes, and unease
infuses every frame... The Count is at once inhuman and tragic – the
cornerstone of any good goth tale.
If
Nosferatu (1922) kicked off the gothic movie genre,
The Crow (1994) revitalised it and brought it to a whole new generation
who were - by 1994 - corn-fed on what had become substandard hyper-macho action
movies. On the night before his wedding and Devil’s Night - the night before
Halloween - hotty leather-panted rock star Eric Draven (Brandon
Lee) and his betrothed are brutally murdered by a gang of thugs. One
year later a crow brings Eric back to life so he can avenge both their deaths,
which he does with martial arts tenacity, in dimly lit night clubs,
superbly-designed inner-city warehouses and on the mean streets. The great
achievement of The Crow was not only its ability to harness action - and
reconfigure the action hero in cinema - but also to authentically bring into
film contemporary music of the time… The (then) MTV generation were stoked. The
Crow could not only kick some serious butt he could look also stylish, wear his
heart on his sleeve and cry without losing his manhood.
Directed by Australian Alex Proyas and starring son of Jujitsu king/actor Bruce
Lee, sadly life imitated art when Lee Jr. was struck and killed on The Crow set
by a live bullet fired from one of the guns in a shootout scene (it was
supposed to contain blanks). Not surprisingly The Crow struck a chord with
Goths – and kids – everywhere. The untimely death of its star only served to
heighten its legend and success at the Box Office.
The Crow aside though, no self-respecting Goth can safely count themselves as
part of the tribe without having seen Edward Scissorhands (1990) at least five
times – or for that matter, American director Tim Burton’s entire back
catalogue. In contemporary American cinema it is Burton who has created a
legitimate space for Goth stories and characters in mainstream cinema – to much
acclaim and commercial success. Whether it be his Batman movies, the suburban
tragedy of Edward Scissorhands, grotesque urban comedy Beetlejuice (1988),
animation The Corpse Bride (2005), costume fables Sleepy Hollow (1999) and
Sweeney Todd (2008), Oscar-winning biopic Ed Wood (1994) or the more
autobiographical tale Big Fish (2003), the perennially Peter Pan-ish Burton has
never been able to resist the urge to make his films paeons to the dark side of
life, love and romance...
- Megan
Megan Spencer has spent way too much of her life in the dark, all for a good
cause though - watching movies as a professional film critic. For the last six
and a half years she has been serving the ever-increasing hunger for film and
DVD reviews as radio triple j's resident film critic, and a year ago joined the
new line up of long-running SBS-TV film review program, The Movie Show.
Every now and then she pops up into the light to make her own films,
documentaries (her latest is 'Fantastic Brutality', a documentary about an
obsessed wrestling fan, to be released next year). She has also written about
film for many publications including J-Mag, Limelight, Inside Film Magazine and
the Age Green Guide.
And the impossible question to ask a film critic: what's her favourite film?
"Blue Velvet would be at the top of the list, so would Fight Club... But then
again American In Paris makes me cry every time."
Megan has also been part of the Foxtel's Project Greenlight Australia as an
on-air panelist and judge.
