Sunday, May 25, 2014

REVIEW: "The Woman in Black"

In 2003, I had the privilege of seeing the long-running production of "The Woman in Black" at the Fortune Theatre in London's Covent Gardens. Having loved it on the stage, with its play within a play framed narrative structure, I approached the 2012 stage version starring Daniel Radcliffe with trepidation.


I found myself pleasantly surprised as the film began. 

I had no trouble believing Radcliffe as Arthur Kipps, a widower and father to a four-year-old boy, as I thought I might. And director James Watkins handled the gothic tone and chilling scares with precision. At least for the first half of the film.

The problem for me is, of course, the story. Halfway through the tension dissolved and the story began to plod through the expected. Not to mention the addition of several devices that went nowhere, and were thus pointless.

In the play, and the novel, there are three main thrusts that the climax and resolution of this story relied on: 1) The passage of time, lulling the audience into believing that Kipps had indeed escaped beyond the reach of the Woman in Black; 2) That Kipps survives the story, leaving the audience with that oh-so-gothic dread that he (and thus they) will be haunted by that drab lady to the end of his days; and 3) Kipps, as a young man, had within him the hope and lightness of a happy, love-filled future awaiting him, one that his gothic adventure at Eel Marsh House destroyed.

The film threw all that out the window.

Instead, we met Kipps as a man already defeated by death, as he's already haunted by the death of his young bride who lost her life in childbirth. In the play and novel, Kipps has his fiancee Stella waiting for him when he heads to Crythin Gifford.

This change alone needn't have ruined the story though, if only it had served a purpose. Stella could've become a sort of guardian angel, serving to protect Kipps. Or perhaps as a siren luring Kipps to long for death to be reunited with her. Instead, the only purpose the addition of her ghost to the story seemed to serve was as a time filler, one used only to characterize Kipps as a sad man. Which we already knew, because Radcliffe is rather talented.

Stella's ghost did attempt to serve one other function (although it didn't quite work); that of opening the skeptic Kipps up to the idea of psychics and the afterlife. Only that didn't happen either. Aside from a quick glimpse of a newspaper advert for a psychic, and a brief conversation with Mr. Daily (Ciaran Hinds) about the possibility of the paranormal -- during which both men professed to being disbelievers -- the subject wasn't broached.

Again, this change to the story could've worked had it been utilized properly. Charlatans proclaiming to be psychic were rampant during that time, so the element fit the period. If at the beginning of the film, Kipps had been so distraught at the death of his wife that he'd abandoned his disbelief in the supernatural and spent the last four years hiring psychics in a vain attempt to connect with her. Had the film opened with him announcing to his nanny that he was through with the psychics, that he would no longer entertain the idea that contacting the dead was possible, then his character could have arched and grown (as it did in the play). 


However, with the way the screenwriters (Susan R. Hill and Jane Goldman) restructured it, Kipps has no room to grow. So the moment when he randomly decides to use over-the-top supernatural means to get rid of the Woman in Black in order to protect his son, seems completely out of character and out of place in the story. 

Why not simply intercept his son and nanny by taking a train back a few stops? Or why not get right back on the train when it arrives, rather than wait around in a town where you believe your son to be in danger? They had no proof their outlandish tactics to rid themselves of her had worked. And while we're on the subject of unbelievability, it was simply appalling that the story had Kipps let go of his son's hand and not notice on a train platform. Deadly ghost or not, you don't let go of a youngster around trains.

But I perhaps could've accepted all of that, if the ending hadn't absolutely destroyed the story. The film went from gothic horror to happily ever after in a split second (in a scene regrettably reminiscent of the "Harry Potter" finale -- with Radcliffe experiencing the hereafter in a train station). 

Sure, Kipps' son had to die somehow, but in order for the film to stay true to the gothic horror form, Radcliffe needed to survive, left alone with grief, sadness and heavy dread. Instead, he dies, too and goes off into the light with his wife and son -- a happy ending. And a moment that totally spoiled that close-up of the Woman in Black's face at the end. She'd reunited a family. What's so scary about that? 

Personally, I believe it would've been better had Kipps successfully saved his son at the train station -- a close call to lull us into a sense of happy resolution. 

THEN, years later, a sort of epilogue scene with Kipps watching his son playing, accompanied by the man who sent him out to Eel Marsh House or perhaps Mr. Daily who's come for a visit. Somehow the happenings of Eel Marsh House are mentioned, only briefly, as a dark time long past. Perhaps Mr. Daily has come to report that Eel Marsh House has burned down and he's been sent by the townsfolk to ensure no one will be sent from Kipps' firm to view the remains of the estate, and perhaps resurrect the Woman in Black.

Just then, Kipps' son suffers a fatal accident, one that seems completely unrelated. Then, when Kipps looks up from his son's limp, broken body, he sees her once again -- the Woman in Black, the specter of death who's found him after all these years. Perhaps with the implication that she's finally free to find him now that the destruction of the house has unleashed her evil spirit on the world... (And a set-up for Woman in Black 2 were the filmmakers so inclined -- although I wouldn't recommend that.)

An ending like that would've been more suspenseful, less anticlimactic (as the movie's was, since it was so obvious and easy to anticipate), AND more true to the gothic feel of the novel.

Oh well. Maybe next time. Until then, go see the play. Last I heard, it's still playing at the Fortune in London.


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