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Review: |
In "Heavenly Creatures," director
Peter Jackson takes us into the darkest recesses of the human
psyche while simultaneously instilling a deep sense of regret,
fear, sadness, and tragedy into his proceedings. His two main
characters, based on the lives of two New Zealand teenagers
responsible for the death of one's mother, would appear cold,
remorseless, and psychotic to the outside world, but by using
one girl's diaries as reference material for his unfolding
plot, he and co-writer Frances Walsh reveal a much more engrossing
matter than that of mere psychopathy. ***
The plot revolves around two misfit
teenage girls, Pauline Rieper and Juliet Hulme (Melanie Lynskey
and Kate Winslet), who meet when Juliet begins attendance
at the Christchurch girl's school where Pauline attends classes.
The two girls are instantly drawn to one another, Pauline
in admiration of Juliet's unabashed way with words around
the teachers, Juliet out of a fantastic scar on Pauline's
leg. In the beginning, their friendship is merely out of a
need for one another: they fill in the holes in each other's
lives that their parents and classmates have no dream of even
spotting. ***
Seeing this early sequence of events,
it's difficult to register the awful crime of which they were
committed and sentenced to five years in prison. Their friendship
is carefree, whimsical, enlightening, and gleeful, so much
so that they create their own imaginary fantasyland, "The
Fourth World" as Juliet comes to call it, where all of nature
is in brilliant bloom, and they are free to be themselves.
***
As their bond thickens, things
begin to grow tense, both internally and externally. Juliet's
sudden bout with tuberculosis splits the two girls apart for
many months, during the course of which they write one another
in the form of royal lovers. Their bond becomes so fragile
during this period that a male love interest for Pauline is
seen by Juliet as a wrench in their relationship; Pauline,
seeing the pain in her friend's eyes, immediately acknowledges
her wrongdoing and remains "faithful." Their parents, whose
eyes are ever-watchful, begin to take note of the extreme
nature of their daughters' friendship, and suspect that there
is more to it than simple girl talk and chatter. ***
The film takes time out of various
instances to toss in a rich, texturized undercurrent of homosexual
themes throughout the piece, implying that Pauline and Juliet
were, in fact, lovers of a sort. It would certainly appear
as such, considering their passionate embraces, their not-so-innocent
kisses, and their trips into their own private world, where
their wildly imaginative story begins to take shape in the
form of clay figures and outrageously over-the-top scenery.
But there is also a counter-theme that runs parallel to these
events, that which focuses on the extreme unease with which
their friendship is handled. This stems from the unstable
psychological nature of the girls as individuals: they don't
see themselves as lesbian lovers as much as they view themselves
as normal in regards to their own perspective. The fact that
they are always there for one another, becoming fiercely dependent
on the support of the other, makes the issues of homosexuality
seem secondhand. ***
Jackson and Walsh are careful not
to overstep the bounds of characterization with these two
fragile beings. It would be easy for one to craft a movie
in which the girls are seen as little more than being "stark,
raving mad," as Pauline so elegantly puts it; Jackson does
not want to do that. Rather than play on the viciousness of
the crime, he explores the events that lead up to it, taking
on the great challenge of creating a connection between the
audience and the two girls, that which brings about a variety
of emotions like understanding, sadness, perhaps even sympathy.
***
Even in the end, Jackson remains
faithful to this rendering, as seen in his brilliant closing
sequence, which juxtaposes their crime with a series of images
in the mind's eye of Pauline and Juliet. Pauline is standing
on a wharf as a boat departs with Juliet on it; the two see
one another, both are crying uncontrollably, and there is
such a wave of depression about the scene that almost conjures
up tears in one's eye. Theirs was a friendship they thought
was worth killing for; it never occured to them that what
they thought would end their pain would, in reality, be the
dividing wall that would separate them forever. ***
In a film like this, casting is
the most essential key; without it, all bets are off. Jackson
has found an inspired duo of young actresses who run the gamut
of elation and unhappiness; Winslet and Lynskey have such
a powerful onscreen presence, be it together or separated,
that one becomes instantly mesmerized by their characters.
Even in the most extreme situations, our involvement in the
events at hand never founders, and that is due to the fact
that these two actresses are able to convince us of their
characters' mental states without making them seem like outright
lunatics. These girls weren't crazy in the general sense of
the word: they were crazy about each other, and for them,
that was more than enough justification for any wrongdoing
they would have to undertake. "Heavenly Creatures" isn't trying
to change one's mind about the atrocity of a crime; it merely
wants to provide a reason, and does so without flaw.
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