I can't exactly recall where I heard about this movie from but the title alone was all I needed and the story that unfolds wasn't really what I expected. It at first seemed about a woman with consumption waiting for death but then we get an inverse of A Christmas Carol where the spectral driver of the eponymous carriage comes to collect a dead drunk and shows him the life he threw away and the mistakes he made that has links with the dying lady but he's already dead so he can't change it, before it naturally resolves to a happy ending. The movie is close to two hours long so you get familiar with these characters and their histories, seeing them go from loving and caring almost idyllic lifestyles to such depressing depths. It is a horror movie but not quite in the typical way you would think, true the phantom carriage is a proper spooky visual but it's almost more an existential horror. I mean imagine you die or are near death and you have to confront a life's worth of regret, seeing what your actions have wrought that have hurt other people's lives, to be helpless and succumbing to a sickness whether it be something as banal as liquor or something as serious as pneumonia with no real chance to heal, that's pretty fucking horrific to my eyes. And you are stuck with this bastard of a character, played by the director Victor Sjöström himself no less, through the majority of the film as he just becomes this loathsome man who has to own up for his choices and it's a pretty decent performance. Astrid Holm as the Salvation Army nurse Edit is the real victim here and played to tragic beauty, just someone trying to help where they can who is almost cursed with sickness makes it eerily clear that people have lives out of your orbit, she really is the light in such a dark film. The driver of the carriage also played by Victor due to the lore presented that if someone should die at midnight on New Year's Eve they must take the reins of the carriage is an interesting presence, keeping the hooded robe and scythe from the Grim Reaper yet somewhat personable as he lays someone's life out before them. He feels appropriately intangible and someone you could never fight, it's a more lowkey potrayal of Death but a good one nevertheless. The production is also pretty simple too with minimal sets that are reused thoroughly throughout, with a contemporary time period instead of a period piece set centuries ago which I think is awesome cause that means you get to see just a teeny bit of 1920s Sweden, the dark shadows and warmly lit interiors are very nice and the telling of a ghost story around a fire is as classic as classic can get. I can see the film being very life affirming to some with a message imploring others that it's never too late for love or forgiveness until your dying day, but it does leave you with more awareness of your own presence in the world. I quite liked it, it's not a great film or a shining example of silent cinema but a well told story with a strong message, and hey it's not everyday I can talk about a foreign silent film so I can dig it. I give it 2.5 stars, 7/10, and next week we got a little grab bag of movies so stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment