The 2020-2021 Film Journal Entry #29: "Interview with the Vampire"

2020-2021 Film Journal Entry #29

by Xavier E. Palacios

"Interview with the Vampire"

3.5 out of 5

Directed by Neil Jordan

Premise: Adapting screenwriter Anne Rice's titular novel, reporter Daniel Molloy (Christian Slater) interviews his most fascinating subject: the vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt). Louis chronicles his transformation into a vampire by the temperamental Lestat de Lioncourt (Tom Cruise) in late eighteenth-century New Orleans, his struggles to adapt to his new form, the pairs' creation and adoption of a ten-year-old vampire, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), and his eventual, hostile encounters with a Parisian coven of vampires led by the ancient, lonely Armand (Antonio Banderas). While beginning as a supernatural story of awe, Louis' story succumbs to the horrors and sufferings of his immortal, violent life. Mature and interpretive, the impressive production compliments this unexpectedly crafted film.

"R"

My Thoughts

When the two-hundred-year-old vampire, Louis, finishes recounting his life so far to Daniel Molloy in a San Francisco motel room, said chronicler demands to know how the undead man's story really ends; what his point was. Louis, speaking as delicately as ever, merely says there is no point to his story. The interview has caught up to the present of his life which does not end util the world does, or he so chooses. In an appreciatively meditative way, Interview with the Vampire has no moral. No clear and exact takeaway nor comforting guidance for the audience who must conclude for themselves what this film means to them.

Personally, I infer one interpretation within this multi-faceted piece. Molloy is a complete fool for longing to be a vampire after hearing Louis' recounting. The vampire understands what the immortal father, Angus Tuck, sings about undying folk in Tuck Everlasting, the musical adapting Natalie Babbitt's book of the same name: We just are / We just be / No before / No beyond. Such knowledge falls on Molloy's naïve ears, and Louis concludes he has wasted time with this human. Thankfully, my time with this surprisingly unusual film was certainly not.

The first vampires I remember seeing were from the late nineties' episodes of one of my favorite television shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I always liked the concept of fanged bloodsuckers whose weakness is sunlight, but never felt a deep connection to them. I never joined any recurring cultural craze about these creatures of the night, so my love for any Buffy story comes from the character drama, not any supernatural context. A disclosure: I have a kind of hate-love relationship with supernatural stories. To me, they are commonly very cliché and childish. I hardly ever find a vampire, witch, demon, and or paranormal investigator, likeable or not, who does not end up being involved with some Dollar General Store apocalypse.

While I like vampires, their individual stories often never quite satisfy me. The Buffy vampires are the monsters' quintessential forms for my daydreaming, but they are specified as demons inhabiting the body of their hosts, combining their evil, soulless natures with the people's memories and personalities into hybrid, unholy predators. Thus, most of those vampires are cartoonishly evil and nothing more. To me, Count Dracula should be as unspeakable as the Dark Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter series or Darkseid from Jack Kirby's Fourth World Saga comic books. But once one knows the Count's gimmicks, watching characters slowly discover the basic mechanics of this villain feels dull in his tale's many retellings. (However, I hope that Dracula flick, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, does eventually get made and released, as I was interested in that film's pitch). Additionally, like zombies, there is a pretentious desperation to vampiric threats. As if they do not have at least four, universally known ways for being slain: sunlight, stake through the heart, fire, and decapitation. Plus, they can never enter one's home uninvited and often fear crosses and garlic. With such restrictions, if not for their speed and unhinged brutality, they are about as fearsome as a common human psychopath.