Normally I write about books here all the time, and on my other blog I often write about what I’ve watched on television. But I’ve watched two films this weekend and I wanted to do a quick review about them.
Cellar Door
This one attracted me because it appeared to be a thriller. The premise was good. A young couple recovering from a miscarriage get offered a house for free providing they don’t open the cellar door. Can they resist? Just one year of no looking and the house is theirs to keep.
I think so much more could have been done with this but it would be so much better as book than a film. 90% of the film was just boring. We had a bit of action at the end but it wasn’t the thriller type film I was expecting.
The two main characters were more annoying than anything. The husband seemed constantly miserable. The wife was obsessed with having a baby, which isn’t unreasonable but she’s painting the nursery as soon as she gets a positive line on her pregnancy test.
The husbands ‘other woman’ goes missing and it seems for a while that he could have done something with her, but there is no body and it all points to suicide.
But the cellar remains a mystery. The husband tries to open the doors once, but the wife stops him because it will ruin their future.
Some crazy bloke wants to burn the house down because it was promised to him but he lost it because he looked in the cellar. So his wife and kids left him. Or did they?
The owner who is allowing people to live in his house so long as they don’t look in the cellar also has a missing wife and daughter.
I think you are led to believe that the cellar is full of dead bodies. But the film is more psychological than that. It’s the fear or curiosity of the cellar that destroys people…..or is it?
Like I said, the premise is good but the film 90% boring. And what on earth did the original owner not want them to see in the cellar???
The Life of Chuck
Based on a novella by Stephen King this is another psychological film but I did enjoy it more. (Not just because of Tom Hiddleston, but well, you know, Tom Hiddleston ….. and he dances!)
In three Parts this film starts at the end, Act Three. Literally, it’s the end of the world, no, the universe. It starts with earth quakes, volcanos, sink holes, tsunami’s etc. The usual end of the world stuff. But the weird thing is all the posters saying ‘Charles Krantz, 39 years, thanks Chuck’ but no-one seems to know who Chuck is. It features a teacher who spends the last moments of life on earth with his ex wife. The end of the world is synonymous with Charles Krantz last moments as he dies of a brain tumour.
Act Two we have the Elusive Charles Krantz and he’s an accountant. The whole ‘act’ is done with a voice over. A young woman has been dumped by her boyfriend by text. Another young women is setting up her drum kit to busk for the day. She sees Charles walking towards her and starts to drum to what she believes is his ‘tune’ He stops. And starts dancing. The dumped woman is part of the crowd who has gathered to watch and he encourages her to join in. Then begins a surreal but really great dance scene. Then the three pack up, go for a coffee and then part ways.
Act One is all about Charles Krantz’ life from 7 years old. His parents and unborn sister die in a car crash and he goes to live with his grandparents. He gets older, his grandma teaches him to dance. His grandma dies, he takes dancing lessons, he falls in love, his grandpa dies and leaves everything to him. The whole time they live in an old house with a locked copula at the top of the house which he is not allowed to enter. His Grandpa admits one night when he is drunk, that the copula is full of ghosts. His grandma insists that they don’t use it because the floor is dangerous.
Charles is in school where they are learning about the Walt Whitman Poem ‘A Song of Myself’ the class is not paying attention but Charles asks the teacher what the line ‘I contain multitudes’ means. She explains that it’s everything inside his mind, and insinuates he has a universe inside himself.
Charles, once left alone, sells the house but not before looking in the copula, where he sees himself as an older man lying in a hospital bed dying. Then the image disappears.
He marries has a son and then gets glioblastoma (brain tumour) and of course eventually dies. The circle is complete.
It’s a much more interesting film to watch even though it’s really strange.
The main theme of the film is the poem by Walt Whitman, in particular stanza 51 (I’ll save you the trouble as it’s an incredibly long poem!)
The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
I am large, I contain Multitudes – Chuck, Charles Krantz, held the universe in his brain and when he died, the universe died with him.
I hope I haven’t lost you there because, even though it’s a little weird, it’s a film worth watching.
On a philosophical point, does anything exist for you once you have died. Yes, your family and friends continue, but for you the universe has ended.
Apart from each time your name is mentioned.
