wim-mortelmans2
I did not like the movie but will not give it a rating. Why? Because I saw the movie in 2014 and I have changed since I watched horror movies in the eighties. I feel that I would have liked the movie then since it was the way they made horror movies at that time and I really liked them.I have that with many of the eighties movies. Also with the older Vincent Price movies of which I know they were very good at their time. So it is not the movie that is bad but me who has changed. Therefor no rating even though I did not watch the movie till the end. :)By the way I do not consider the change good or bad. It just is. Not that long ago I saw Terminator 2 (1991) again. I remember leaving the theater in '91, so impressed with the special effects that I thought that this could never get any better and now I had a feeling "pff, primitive special effects". That's change for ya...
Andy McGregor
Historical accuracy moves over to make room for dramatic license in this extremely bizarre "re-imagining" of the weekend Mary Shelley first brought "Frankenstein" to life (as it were!). Although, to be fair, there isn't too much about the novel at all.Byron (Gabriel Byrne) invites Mary, her then future husband Percy (Julian Sands) and her cousin Claire to spend the weekend with himself and another friend of his, Dr Pollidore (who also went on to write a Gothic horror) at his estate in Geneva. After much drug-fuelled recourse, dodgy parlour games and sexually liberated liaisons it becomes apparent that the ever omni-sexual Byron has questionable motives and is basically trying to fire-in to all the guests! This brings about an adequate amount of paranoia,jealousy and arguing amongst everyone which inevitably turns into soul-seeking, psychotic breakdowns and eventual emotional ennui. Presumably it is in this state Shelley went on to put pen to paper.The cast are solid in their roles and Byrne is thoroughly convincing as the foppish predator. Russell delivers this movie with complete frankness and is somewhat mercenary in his reshaping of the facts to suit his own ends. Never one to shirk from the difficult often shocking subjects, he manages to turn an otherwise average script into a sexually charged hallucinogenic nightmare. While not exactly deserving of the "horror" label it has been tagged with, "Gothic" is an interesting foray into the dark abyss of the director's mind.
st-shot
Fierce and flamboyant film director Ken Russell takes the viewer for a weekend in the country with some literary notables in Gothic, a nightmarish orgy of blood and thunder based in fact. It is nothing new for Russell who unlike like any other director took factual historic accounts of lives of the famous (Mahler, Tchaicovsky, Isadora Duncan) and applied audacious compositions that some might say bordered on character assassination. Given Byron's temperament I'm sure he would have approved.Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) has the poet Shelly (Julian Sands) , wife Mary (Natacha Richardson), and half sister sometime lover Claire down to the Villa for a weekend of sadistic parlor games challenging the status quo and their sanity with ungoverned imagination and confession. Accomodated by a violent storm the five scurry wildly from room to room to roof hallucinating and acting out monstrously. The weekend is framed between two eras fitted into brief prologue and epilogue, centuries apart with inquisitive tourists checking out the grounds and listening to the same gossipy chatter of the guide. Within this framework we are barraged with relentless scenes of shock and awe as each character confronts and is confronted with mean spiritedness and cruel reality. Russell in typical form offers up some incredibly potent imagery with copious amounts of blood and sexual depravity as well as appearances by living gargoyles and leeches. He allows no respite between opening and finale as the dark humor he skillfully applies in other films is so dark as to be invisible here. Byrne provides the character of Byron with a a perverse twinkle in his eye while half sis Claire played by Myriam Cyr remains semi demonic throughout. Sands idealistic Shelley counterpoints Byron nicely and Natascha Richardson brings a balance and touch of sanity to the group as Mary Shelly, even as she endures a night of terror and memory. Fifth wheel Dr. Polidori played by Timothy Sprall conveys a magnificent repugnance. With Byron's well documented esoteric lifestyle and the fact that Mary Shelley claims to have been inspired on this night to write the book Frankenstein Russell's wild style is a good fit to fill in blanks. Watching it for some may be an ordeal but I'm sure Lord Byron would have been impressed with Ken's kindred spirit.
george karpouzas
I have read some, quite of lot, of the viewers' critiques before watching this movie again, from start to end, and form a final opinion. I did see the movie, which I have seen whole or in fragments previous times and some things became clearer to me.You have to know enough about the background of the story and the heroes to understand the plot. Otherwise you will think that they are a bunch of raving maniacs. I happened to be interested in the Romantics, thus I knew a lot about the stories generated from the time spent in the famous villa. There the most famous novel of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein was conceived. I had read the novel in the English language with a dense introduction that was describing the preoccupations of Shelley's circle, the infatuation of the age with the newly discovered electricity and the belief that it could generate life. Also I knew about the intricate relationships of the characters involved.If someone without this background tries to understand what the movie is about, he will be disappointed unless he has such a fine artistic sensibility and general education that can fill the gaps of the ignorance of the facts and emotions surrounding this coterie of quite exceptional people.All the information relevant is contained in the dialogues and images but unless you knew that before you would be unable to make the relevant connections or understand why the characters behave in such a manner, why and what they speak about and the whole purpose of it all.The actors are good I think for their roles. Gabriel Byrne has the latent evil touch and subdued lasciviousness that we attribute to Byron, Julian Sands is truly, the "Mad Shelley", as he was called by his fellow schoolboys when at Eton, Timothy Spall gives a grotesque image of Dr. Polidori, which is perhaps unavoidable given the fact that tradition has so much focused to the personalities of the two great literary men that his reputation has been eclipsed, therefore a normal appraisal is perhaps impossible. Myriam Cyr as Claire Clermont follows the conventional interpretation of her character as a sensuous girl attracted by the fame of the poets and lacking herself the depth and gravitas of Mary Shelley. Natasha Richardson is the most normal character among the protagonists and has a fine sequence of scenes, near the end, where she sees as if a prophetess the ensuing fate of many of the characters, which latter developments validate. The other point I wanted to make about Claire Clairmont is that when she is not portrayed as a slut with cultural pretensions, she is shown in a condition of animalistic primitivism or as possessed by demons. Dr. Polidori is also a buffoonish homosexual who eyes both the great poets. It is clear that because Claire Clairmont and Dr. Polidori were the ones of the company that did not achieve literary fame, because the were not the "literary monuments" the other two and to a lesser extent Mary Shelley later became, they have to suffer in the hands of posterity when a director has to cast their roles so as to fill the required quorum along with the "great ones". Not only life but also posthumous reputation is unfair....Sound and visual effects are adequate and achieve surprise and fear, especially the first time the movie is watched. A lot of demons and related creatures occupy the screen. One though must not blame the director for overdoing it because those elements formed the staple iconography of the so called "Gothic" atmosphere and the diaries of the heroes contain references to hallucinations and the like, perhaps because of drug taking, or just because the symbiosis of some of the most active and strong imaginations alive during that particular time.The best word that I can use to describe this movie is "uneven". It has good actors, it is supported by sound and scenic effects, it has costumes that look authentic but at times it becomes disgusting, chaotic, devoid of a real plot and radiates hysteria. There are attempts towards sexual explicitness, though by today's standards not so offensive; it must have been for the eighties though...I was interested in the movie because I am very interested in the Romantics. Otherwise it can be seen as a story of rich people indulging to their decadent appetites for sex, drugs, aimless philosophising and self-absorption, reminding one of a company of people devoted to Marquis de Sade's idea of pleasure(graphic illustrations of his books are page-turned by Mary). Mind you, if tabloids had existed during that time the story would have been a scoop. It might even hit YouTube. When famous people follow their fancies or get their kicks, it is always different from simple plebeians.... Apart from the literary fame of the characters, which in their lifetime was actually secured only by Byron, Shelley and even more Mary Shelley were to be vindicated by posterity; and Shelley was actually more famous-that is- notorious for his unconventional sexual mores, his atheism and his political radicalism, rather than for his verse, is this a story actually worthy to be made to a movie? I can not give a definite answer. Would such a story of drugs, free love (actually sex), hallucinations and sheer self-absorption be of interest to anyone? But of course it produced Frankenstein the most famous of Gothic novels …. I do not think that all this creativity was portrayed in the film. It focused more on the "bad, mad and dangerous to know" aspects of the characters. In that sense I do not think it does justice to what happened in the villa of Geneva and mainly to what was produced. Not all hedonists produce novels of enduring value. Stressing on the eccentric aspects of the lives of the characters the film has betrayed their literary significance and succumbed to sensationalism and cheap thrills.
