Byzantium

Neil Jordan – 2013 – England

It’s hard not to wonder about Neil Jordan’s motivations while watching this film, but even so, that isn’t very distracting because Byzantium is an extremely hypnotic work.  Jordan, of course, made what some hardcore fans consider the last genuinely “good” vampire film, 1994’s Interview with the Vampire, and he seems to be reasserting his authority in this genre nearly 20 years later.  In the age of Twilight and True Blood, it’s also easy to read Byzantium as an antidote to the effects-laden vampire soap-opera format that has saturated the culture.  Jordan instead harks back to Harry Kümel’s decadent classic Daughters of Darkness (1971), with its mix of horror and European sophistication and similar seaside resort locale.  Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) is a 16-year-old girl who also happens to be a 200-year old vampire since being turned by her own mother in order to protect her from a life of non-stop victimization in the male-controlled society they live in.  Eleanor is an ethical vampire, resolved to killing only those who welcome death as a relief, such as the elderly and terminally ill.  The feminist theme crossing generations is effectively handled without ever seeming trendy or preachy.  Clara (Gemma Arterton) and her daughter find the same oppression in the vampire world as they did in 18^th century Europe, where a woman without family or property could only subsist in prostitution.  In fact, we learn, there are no female vampires at all because it is a privilege men reserve for a select group of their own.  Like any teenager, Eleanor is repulsed by her parent’s hypocrisy and acts out by writing stories that tell their true story as plainly as possible, which in turn are taken for signs of madness by all who read them.  She also begins a tentative romance with a boy (Caleb Landry Jones) who, ironically, is a hemophiliac.  If only for its subdued and moody atmosphere, accomplished with realism instead of intense stylization, Byzantium impressed me as a fresh attempt to get back to the heart of what makes vampire myths so lasting.