In a Dark Place (2006)
The years 2000 have produced The Turn of the Screw screen adaptations that are, in a word, strange. Such is In a Dark Place (2006). Despite the participation of the famous actresses Leelee Sobieski (as the heroine) and Tara Fitzgerald (as Ms Grose), the film is almost universally acclaimed as a failure (see reviews anywhere in the Internet). I am not of the highest opinion about it, either.
And how can I like it, if the director confesses that he never read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James? That fact should be enough to warn you and tell you what to expect. Still, the scriptwriters probably read the novella, and that is what we have got -
The action is transferred into modern days: cars, planes, mobile phones. Today, who'd care for stale old Victorians? The film begins as the school bell rings, bellowing kids start running about wildly... and in an empty classroom, a young teacher crouches under the table, retrieving shards of a broken glass. This is the heroine, Anna Veigh.
The headmaster, Mr James, sees her thus occupied and invites her to his office. (Is it accidentally that the dirty old man's name is the same as that of the creator of this story?) Once in, he tells her off: 'Your position here has always been art teacher, not art therapist!' (presumably, she taught children the wrong way) and then begins to paw at her knees. She looks distraught.
It seems she did not give in to the dirty boss after all, for next we see her in metro, with 'dismissed! dismissed!' ringing in her ears. As she comes home, there is a message. The ex-boss has found her an excellent new job as a nanny to two rich orphans. (I wonder: is it a revenge of the headmaster's? He saw the children's dossiers and knew they were anything but normal. She did not.)
She just went to the office of the kids' guardian, the super-rich businessman Mr Laing, who tells her abruptly: 'The job is yours!' and goes off. Time is money, you know!
And so she goes, blithely, to the house of Bly, to care for Flora, 8, and Miles, 10, (both kids look about 11) with the help of the efficient Miss Grose. She has to discover too soon that the children are strange due to numerous traumatic experiences. She is disturbed. Miss Grose bluntly asks: if they had told her all about the children, would she have taken the job? So Anna has to go on - to struggle with the kids' problems and with the ghosts of the previous caretaker, Quint, and the governess Miss Jessel. Not to count her own inner demons!
The plot then follows the familiar pattern. An attempt at originality (and indeed, no one else has ever thought of it!) is made in introducing the lesbian attachment between the heroine and Ms Grose.
Miss Grose is a formidable character: a dry, business-like, no-nonsense iron lady. Anna makes awkward friendly overtures to her, admiring her neatness and style - to be promptly rebuked and shown her place. The two women are a stark contrast. However, their mutual care for the children brings them closer together.
Ms Grose hides a passionate nature beneath the cold façade. One of the most impressive scenes with her is when she literally lets her hair tumbling down. Left alone, she takes her violin, plays it wildly, remembering her lost love. One could think she were a witch, whirling around deliriously, conjuring the spirit of the one who died! And it is as if she did conjure it, but to the wrong place: at the same time, the ghostly voice lures Anna into the lake. In fact, this is the only invention in the film I really liked (but I may see too much into it, so to say).
The so-called lesbian scene is not anything worth mentioning. It was amusing to read some reviews in the web, where people who hoped 'to see boobs' were largely disappointed. :)
Tara Fitzgerald does a great job of her character, making it repulsive, moving and quite memorable. In the end, I came to be really sorry for Miss Grose. She had too much on her hands: business matters, household chores, two weird children and a mad nanny into the bargain.
This is the moment when Miss Grose catches Anna prowling about the house with a huge kitchen knife. You should see Grose's face. (And what's wrong with it? Anna saw a maniac looking into the window! She had to protect the children! How better than grabbing a knife and venturing bravely out?)
Leelee Sobieski seemed not half as good as Tara Fitzgerald: she looked frozen and acted likewise. Maybe it is just my impression; maybe it was part of her task to show Anna's awkwardness, shyness and stiffness in some ways.
There is a disturbing thing about Anna: she became an art therapist in order to overcome her own fears. When she was a child, (spoiler) she was molested. It is shown quite directly in the film. From that time, the image of herself as a little girl in a blue coat haunts her. With such an experience, she is bound to suspect that the children must have suffered the same fate at the hands of Quint and Miss Jessel.
It is sad that, rather than feeling pity for Anna, we have to wonder if her childhood trauma was too much for her to overcome and if she is getting madder and madder in the seclusion of Bly. In this film, again, the ghosts are interested in her own person. Miss Jessel's voice beckons her: 'Anna! Anna! I'm here! Stay with me! Go with me!' - which makes the deluded woman literally crawl into the lake (Miss Grose saves her just in time).
The end is grotesquely tragic, more so that it gives the viewer hopes that the boy will actually 'be saved'. (Big Spoiler) When he says the name of Peter Quint (anything to get away from Anna!), the ghost vanishes. Anna is jubilant: You are saved! I've done it! Then Miles acts very cleverly, locking the demented nanny in and running away. Unfortunately, he does not survive. Whether the ghosts existed or not, it is the nanny who kills him. The boy drowns before her eyes, and she does not see it, muttering to herself that he is free and reverting back into her younger self, that little girl in a blue coat. Abominable. (End of spoiler)
What to think of such a character? The kids were right to cross out the name 'Anna' in their drawings of her, writing 'Monster' instead. And... it seems very unfair that a person who suffered in childhood through no fault of her own, did her best to overcome it, to fight it by helping others, should fail and be condemned, as if she were doomed from the moment some pervert spotted her. It is a very ugly idea, that a victim of violence always carries madness inside (even though it is sometimes true - remember all those stories of maniacs who were victims themselves when children?).
And well, it seems pretty clear that the problems lie with the governess, not the ghosts.
That said, it is only left to mention some curious moments.
- Anna is reading The Turn of the Screw in bed.
- Miss Grose reads about the Goose Princess aloud to the children.
- After Valerie Jessel drowned, Peter Quint hanged himself. This film, as far as I know, is the only version that reverts the order of their deaths.
I am delighted at this interpretation of events: it looks almost feminist! :) Indeed, why should only women miss their lovers too much? *in a voice of the servant Connie from Helen Walker* Died for love! How romantic!
(Romantic, that is, if we forget that Quint looks frighteningly like some retired PT teacher, bald and shabby.)
- The action takes place in winter, which is a bonus.
- Have a look at the kids!
Flora has asthma and cares a lot for her teddy. There is little else to say about her.
Brother and sister
- Anna's criminal carelessness has no excuse, as she did not receive a letter from school - she went there herself to fetch the dismissed boy! While waiting for him, she receives cheerful info from the girl: Miles is dismissed again for, what, sixth time?... It is more than odd that she asks no questions and just accepts the fact.
- But the biggest mystery of this film for me is not whether Anna was mad or the ghosts did exist (it is pretty obvious that 'she done it'). No, it is the Grose method of cooking boiled eggs.
We see a dipper on the stove, with an oval brown thing being boiled in water. I thought, a single potato? Then I saw Miss Grose looking seriously and wistfully at it and dropping another similar object into the water. The sound of it makes it obvious those are two eggs. ??? Why put one egg, then another? Puzzles me to no end. Grose is a mysterious woman.
And how can I like it, if the director confesses that he never read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James? That fact should be enough to warn you and tell you what to expect. Still, the scriptwriters probably read the novella, and that is what we have got -
The action is transferred into modern days: cars, planes, mobile phones. Today, who'd care for stale old Victorians? The film begins as the school bell rings, bellowing kids start running about wildly... and in an empty classroom, a young teacher crouches under the table, retrieving shards of a broken glass. This is the heroine, Anna Veigh.
The headmaster, Mr James, sees her thus occupied and invites her to his office. (Is it accidentally that the dirty old man's name is the same as that of the creator of this story?) Once in, he tells her off: 'Your position here has always been art teacher, not art therapist!' (presumably, she taught children the wrong way) and then begins to paw at her knees. She looks distraught.
It seems she did not give in to the dirty boss after all, for next we see her in metro, with 'dismissed! dismissed!' ringing in her ears. As she comes home, there is a message. The ex-boss has found her an excellent new job as a nanny to two rich orphans. (I wonder: is it a revenge of the headmaster's? He saw the children's dossiers and knew they were anything but normal. She did not.)
She just went to the office of the kids' guardian, the super-rich businessman Mr Laing, who tells her abruptly: 'The job is yours!' and goes off. Time is money, you know!
And so she goes, blithely, to the house of Bly, to care for Flora, 8, and Miles, 10, (both kids look about 11) with the help of the efficient Miss Grose. She has to discover too soon that the children are strange due to numerous traumatic experiences. She is disturbed. Miss Grose bluntly asks: if they had told her all about the children, would she have taken the job? So Anna has to go on - to struggle with the kids' problems and with the ghosts of the previous caretaker, Quint, and the governess Miss Jessel. Not to count her own inner demons!
The plot then follows the familiar pattern. An attempt at originality (and indeed, no one else has ever thought of it!) is made in introducing the lesbian attachment between the heroine and Ms Grose.
Miss Grose is a formidable character: a dry, business-like, no-nonsense iron lady. Anna makes awkward friendly overtures to her, admiring her neatness and style - to be promptly rebuked and shown her place. The two women are a stark contrast. However, their mutual care for the children brings them closer together.
Ms Grose hides a passionate nature beneath the cold façade. One of the most impressive scenes with her is when she literally lets her hair tumbling down. Left alone, she takes her violin, plays it wildly, remembering her lost love. One could think she were a witch, whirling around deliriously, conjuring the spirit of the one who died! And it is as if she did conjure it, but to the wrong place: at the same time, the ghostly voice lures Anna into the lake. In fact, this is the only invention in the film I really liked (but I may see too much into it, so to say).
The so-called lesbian scene is not anything worth mentioning. It was amusing to read some reviews in the web, where people who hoped 'to see boobs' were largely disappointed. :)
Tara Fitzgerald does a great job of her character, making it repulsive, moving and quite memorable. In the end, I came to be really sorry for Miss Grose. She had too much on her hands: business matters, household chores, two weird children and a mad nanny into the bargain.
This is the moment when Miss Grose catches Anna prowling about the house with a huge kitchen knife. You should see Grose's face. (And what's wrong with it? Anna saw a maniac looking into the window! She had to protect the children! How better than grabbing a knife and venturing bravely out?)
Leelee Sobieski seemed not half as good as Tara Fitzgerald: she looked frozen and acted likewise. Maybe it is just my impression; maybe it was part of her task to show Anna's awkwardness, shyness and stiffness in some ways.
There is a disturbing thing about Anna: she became an art therapist in order to overcome her own fears. When she was a child, (spoiler) she was molested. It is shown quite directly in the film. From that time, the image of herself as a little girl in a blue coat haunts her. With such an experience, she is bound to suspect that the children must have suffered the same fate at the hands of Quint and Miss Jessel.
It is sad that, rather than feeling pity for Anna, we have to wonder if her childhood trauma was too much for her to overcome and if she is getting madder and madder in the seclusion of Bly. In this film, again, the ghosts are interested in her own person. Miss Jessel's voice beckons her: 'Anna! Anna! I'm here! Stay with me! Go with me!' - which makes the deluded woman literally crawl into the lake (Miss Grose saves her just in time).
The end is grotesquely tragic, more so that it gives the viewer hopes that the boy will actually 'be saved'. (Big Spoiler) When he says the name of Peter Quint (anything to get away from Anna!), the ghost vanishes. Anna is jubilant: You are saved! I've done it! Then Miles acts very cleverly, locking the demented nanny in and running away. Unfortunately, he does not survive. Whether the ghosts existed or not, it is the nanny who kills him. The boy drowns before her eyes, and she does not see it, muttering to herself that he is free and reverting back into her younger self, that little girl in a blue coat. Abominable. (End of spoiler)
What to think of such a character? The kids were right to cross out the name 'Anna' in their drawings of her, writing 'Monster' instead. And... it seems very unfair that a person who suffered in childhood through no fault of her own, did her best to overcome it, to fight it by helping others, should fail and be condemned, as if she were doomed from the moment some pervert spotted her. It is a very ugly idea, that a victim of violence always carries madness inside (even though it is sometimes true - remember all those stories of maniacs who were victims themselves when children?).
And well, it seems pretty clear that the problems lie with the governess, not the ghosts.
That said, it is only left to mention some curious moments.
- Anna is reading The Turn of the Screw in bed.
- Miss Grose reads about the Goose Princess aloud to the children.
- After Valerie Jessel drowned, Peter Quint hanged himself. This film, as far as I know, is the only version that reverts the order of their deaths.
I am delighted at this interpretation of events: it looks almost feminist! :) Indeed, why should only women miss their lovers too much? *in a voice of the servant Connie from Helen Walker* Died for love! How romantic!
(Romantic, that is, if we forget that Quint looks frighteningly like some retired PT teacher, bald and shabby.)
- The action takes place in winter, which is a bonus.
- Have a look at the kids!
Flora has asthma and cares a lot for her teddy. There is little else to say about her.
Brother and sister
- Anna's criminal carelessness has no excuse, as she did not receive a letter from school - she went there herself to fetch the dismissed boy! While waiting for him, she receives cheerful info from the girl: Miles is dismissed again for, what, sixth time?... It is more than odd that she asks no questions and just accepts the fact.
- But the biggest mystery of this film for me is not whether Anna was mad or the ghosts did exist (it is pretty obvious that 'she done it'). No, it is the Grose method of cooking boiled eggs.
We see a dipper on the stove, with an oval brown thing being boiled in water. I thought, a single potato? Then I saw Miss Grose looking seriously and wistfully at it and dropping another similar object into the water. The sound of it makes it obvious those are two eggs. ??? Why put one egg, then another? Puzzles me to no end. Grose is a mysterious woman.