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.
I like vampire stories here and there, like Richard Matheson's book, I am Legend. Of the werewolves, ghouls, and other garden variety spooks, I still have a soft spot for these bloodsuckers. But most of these stories have never deeply drawn me in past the light offerings of mild entertainment from fanged, killer beasts. I always thought there could be more to them. However, Anne Rice's story of vampires is one I have longed to see. There are no apocalyptic or Satanic threats. No hyping up of some garden variety nosferatu. No predictable plot nonsense of vampires butchering victims until some wannabe hero saves the day. Interview tells of a vampire's life and nothing more.
Fortunately, said vampires are completely adult. Undead, immortal carnivores with no inhibitions towards violence, sex, or immorality. I never found getting "eaten" by a vampire to be as gruesome as the way characters describe, but, in this film, the vampires' feeding is not sadistic but graphically bloody, their menace and mercilessness like a big cat's. They can hover somewhat, which I always like. Their senses and abilities are greater than any human's, shown in one frightening metaphorical image of a statue with living, human eyes to illustrate Louis' description of vampiric eyes making inanimate objects appear to be moving. They need living blood to function properly, as corpse blood weakens them, which is novel to me. Blood is not necessary for survival, but unfulfilled thirst is extremely agonizing. While crosses and stakes mean nothing to them, I like that these vampires sleep in coffins to be completely secure against sunlight, since most modern stories make fun of this fun conceit. The sun is still the great enemy, turning vampires into ash and, boy, the film's portrayal of this death is burned into my mind. Yet Rice's story does not give much attention to trivial vampire rules like most stories. Really, these creatures are merely uncompromising, amoral killers. Ageless beings who are never comfortable in their own skin. They are as human as I have ever seen them.
The film's interview structure could make for a film a little too dull, slow, or self-important. For my tastes, Interview is none of these, always holding my attention and moving the story forward towards the logical, inevitable destination. Welcomingly, the piece is presented in a mature style that films today are not always encouraged to pursue. Director Neil Jordan and his crew have created one of the finer-looking horror films I have seen in a while, too.
The atmosphere of New Orleans and Paris in the eighteen and then nineteenth centuries, the two primary settings, are utterly gothic, bemoaning melancholy images, forsaken angles, and inhuman tones in every lighting set-up and scene staging. The costumes designs are fit for a grandiose Victorian literature adaptation. Sets are designed for the widescreen sheen, filled with miniscule details. I also swear there is a miniature set of a port! These archaic settings are perfect for a horror picture yet also realistic, giving the historically accurate impression that everything is covered in grime and human waste. The film's locales of swamps, sewers, mansions, whore houses, plague-ridden neighborhoods, and any of the labyrinth that is Paris are notably well-crafted. I was pleasantly reminded that the nineties were the last decade when R-rated films meant solely for grown-ups who appreciate less frantic pacing and standard plotting could easily have lavish budgets put to good use.
The vampire make-up and effects appear to be done practically and in-camera. Such film wizardry was created by the team of that gone-but-never-forgotten film sorcerer, Stan Winston. This crew resolves a small annoyance of mine with this horror sub-genre: these vampires bare real fangs! Not cartoon sized or vaguely noticeably teeth, but razor sharp, piercing fangs that are not garishly obvious! The, for lack of a better name, "Zombie Lestat" prosthetic make-up is especially creepy, as is the cinematography and staging build-up to this reveal. There is also no shying away from blood and nudity, since vampires are most certainly violent and erotic creatures, though the film never lessens itself with grotesque imagery. Individual costumes are telling. Lestat's aristocratic wrist cuffs, Louis' humble but moody shirts, Armand's archaic cloak, and Claudia's spoiled dresses provide a tangible sense of reality and personality.
Suitably, the filmmakers succeed in creating a world that is one I recognize and relate to so that Louis' story feels true. The musical score, by Elliot Goldenthal, feels appropriate for a Halloween-flick, nicely theatrical. Yet the music is also a little haunting, a little sad, and kind of sweet, like the orchestrations cannot handle the weight of all of Louis' years. The filmmaking keeps me on my toes with spooky camera angles and violent, disturbing imagery, reflecting Louis' suffering. I expected some competent filmmaking, but left the piece impressed and creatively inspired by how this crew gave fresh artistic life to vampires.
Filling in this well-crafted film world is a surprisingly strong central cast. Brad Pitt is an odd choice for Louis at first glance. Once, this vampire was a plantation and slave owner in New Orleans who, after losing his wife in childbirth, longed only to die. Then, he was attacked by Lestat. He gave Louis a choice to die or become an immortal vampire. The mortal choses the later, though the many heartaches of this new life have come to make him regret that decision. Louis is very soft-spoken, poetical in his language but never ridiculous. He is gentle, giving the auditory and visual presence of a chilly breeze. His narration comes with an understanding of the power his words have. Louis became a sympathetic protagonist I understand well by film's end.
Pitt, a celebrity known the world over for as long as I can remember, never overplays his performance. If Louis is frightened or furious by sinister vampires or weighed by his sorrows, some of his own making, Pitt reacts appropriately to his character. Once I got used to him in the voice over narration, I came to recognize the soul within the inhuman Louis. He is as lonely and lost as any immortal, incapable of ending his own life for reasons maybe he does not understand. This characterization works well because Pitt's performance is by an actor, not a celebrity.
Speaking of which, Tom Cruise is an acting enigma. He is one of the last, larger-than-life but true actors still working. I cannot think of too many like him whose films are advertised by promising audiences they will see a lead performer hang on the side of a real, gosh dang plane during takeoff. His public and private life gossip has been far too flourishing over the decades and, so, he is a bit of a clownish figure in pop culture, almost an adjective than a proper noun. He has stared in so many films across an entire spectrum of quality that he can only appear to me as no one else but Tom Cruise, (though I always thought his unique voice would work very well in animated, video game, and or radio drama productions).
Yet Cruise has proven to me time and time again that beneath his ungodly wealth, celebrity persona worthy of the Looney Tunes cast, and status as a box office marquee name to be feared and respected, he is an actor who understands his craft. He is perfect for Lestat. This mysterious vampire, claiming not to know who sired him, is eccentric. A creature of instinct and habit by centuries of bloodsucking and doing as he pleases. He has no moral compass or direction to his actions. Louis claims Lestat helped sire Claudia because he was lonely, which makes sense. He mentored his new companion, trying to get Louis to feed on human blood, yet they never really connect no matter their intimacy; like Lestat is too distracted with frivolities or some timeless issue to act any other way but too intensely.
My compliment to Cruise's career is that he never gives a forgettable performance. He can be a goofy fool or astonishingly realistic, but he always acts with a full-hearted, no-holds-barred attitude. So, when Lestat is angry, Cruise is furious. When he is pathetic, like during his and Louis' last conversation, Cruise is very vulnerable. When Lestat is having a psychotic episode, Cruise gives one of his signature freak-outs that shocks my sense. Cruise also manages Rice's language, never hammering up the dialog or struggling with lyricism phrasing. Once again, Cruise overcomes any claims of generic work with classical charisma and evident passion in the latest role I have seen him in, more lively and worthy of his salary than most big-name stars.
Kirsten Dunst, another celebrity-actor, is, in fact, a high-caliber performer. She is popularly framed as another pretty starlet who became a rich, Hollywood babe after prominently appearing in the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man trilogy. But Dunst, who I have long grown-up watching in various childhood films, always gives impassioned, personalized, and open performances. Her self-control makes her one of the few big-name actors I have an artistic respect for, akin to my comments to Carey Mulligan in my Shame entry. She, like Cruise, clearly understands her craft.
Here, as a child in her first major film role, Dunst plays Claudia, the ten-year-old whose mother just died of plague when Louis finds her. Soon, she will perish, too. Unable to resist the temptation to drink human blood anymore, Louis drank from her. To keep him by his side after too many spats, (they are like an old married couple), Lestat completes the process of turning Claudia into a vampire. She is forever ten. At first, this killer enjoys all the power of her new life and the privilege her two fathers provide her. Yet, after thirty-years, she understands she will never grow into a woman. Claudia resents her sires and makes plans to find her own satisfaction.
The anime series, Hellsing, featured a girl vampire who longed to be an adult, too. But that show was of very poor quality, and she was only a minor character, so this fascinating concept was never fully realized for me. Here, Claudia's curse is explored with full attention and adult complexity. She is a cold-blooded killer; cunning, spoiled, and without morals. Yet she is also a girl with a very horrific problem. As time goes on, she mentally becomes an old woman longing for some control over her life, some fitting state for her unnatural form. Claudia also adores being Louis' surrogate daughter, and fears to lose him. Dunst's performance shows she has always possessed great acting ability. She plays this difficult role of an immortal girl easily and with searing truth through subtleties, big expressions, and, sometimes, both at once. She and Pitt work well together as a tender, immortal pair, and the young Dunst is arguably even better beside Cruise as their characters grow to hate one another. Together, the trio are one of the film's better parts.
This overall filmmaking well-presents Interview's meditations and plotless story. The film is somewhat like Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy in being less about a story and more about the events, objects, and content one sees; the style being the substance. Yet that definition ignores Interview being a character-driven piece by nature. The film's events are thoughtful and filled with the kind of good dialog I always longed for when I acted on stage. The tone is ambiguous, often shifting within a single scene not like a troubled adolescence but a withered adult who is just . . . too . . . old.
At first, Louis' life is predictable for one who has just become a vampire. He vividly remembers the last sunrise he ever saw; hesitates to drink human blood; tires of living off rats; and loses his fortunes to his rebellious slaves who know his vampiric nature by old knowledge. (A side note: Louis pronouncing his slaves' freedom as he burns his mansion means nothing without a receipt). Soon, hates Lestat for turning him. But the film's intriguing, ambiguous parts focus on what I have always wanted to see a vampire story explore.
I am not sure why Louis chooses to be an immortal vampire after only wanting to die for being a widower. Encouragingly, I am left to wonder. I also love the concept, later in the film, that vampires see their first "sunrise" in centuries thanks to cinema; I have never thought that idea before! These vampires are also not obsessed with blood but something far worse and more interesting: what to do with their time, and how to deal with the mounting pains of their undying lives. Like the Tuck Everlasting musical, there is no judgement upon these immortals. Despite Louis constantly fearing so, other vampires assure him they are not damned to Hell or forsaken by God. Or, at least, as the four-hundred-year-old Armand tells him, no vampire knows their true origins to confirm or deny his anxieties.
Sure, they must kill to live functionally, but their amorality does not come from evil but just, well, age. Time. Humans are fleeting compared to them who have grown detached from whatever morality that bounded their mortal days. Sadly, I understand this idea. Once, I consciously reminded myself never to judge anyone I did not truly know. Now, I unconsciously judge others based on their passing remarks and displayed iconographies that too easily pinpoint them as hateful, mean, arrogant, hurtful, and rude people. I have been around for too long. Likewise, Louis eventually drinks human blood because there is no point in denying his quenches. He has just been around for too long to bother otherwise.
Which is really the frightening aspect of Interview: the lack of distinction in the vampires' lives. They are carnal, flamboyant, scheming, and or depressed, yet continue living when they could kill themselves by stepping into the sunlight. There is nothing to them. No before / No beyond. Maybe there is God in this story, maybe there is not. Maybe they are doing evil and maybe they are not. The vampires are obligated to no discernable creed or purpose, save the ones they invent. So, when Armand meets Louis, he desires him because he is new and different from the other vampires. Armand fears being alone anymore and needs some fresh, driving force in his immortal life, even if Louis' intrigue is, inevitably, only temporary.
The aimlessness of infinite time, along with the compiled sorrows, is what grows heavy on Armand and Lestat's lives, driving them to violence they ultimately commit towards Louis and Claudia. That endless-child's desire to be an adult can never be satisfied, and her story develops towards an unhappy ending by her understanding that there is nothing anyone can do to reverse what has been done to her. Her longing is eternal, just like Louis' grief over his wife's death. Even in one of the film's last scenes, the weight of one vampire's pain literally anchors them down to a chair. Armand says the only lesson he can teach Louis is to live without regret. A tempting offer. But Louis denies this chance, for to regret is to forgive; forget; let go of what was lost. Louis' beliefs remind me of a lyric from the Marilyn Manson song, "Infinite Darkness": You're dead longer than your alive. Maybe Louis holds onto regret because otherwise he puts a finite touch to his immortal memories; forgives himself for his own sins; forgets the unexpected cruelty of his own kind.
There are some good memories in this vampiric life, of sorts. The film's best part is the era when Louis and Lestat become, really, married fathers to Claudia, their surrogate daughter. They create a strange, funny, and oddly likeable, even sweet, family together. I love Lestat chastising Claudia's instinctive killing of their tailor because now they must find a new one who understands her fashion styles, and Louis responding like an embarrassed, loving father to her question, "You ate rats?" Lestat and Louis' pseudo-parentage, (along with them first sleeping together in the same coffin plus other examples), meaningfully, rather than shallowly, allows the film to easily be examined with LGBTQ analytical lens, giving further depth to the film.
Yet these good times do not last either. The trio's growing arguments are realistic, destroying their unity. Louis' suffering only increases. Seeing no glorious sunset at the end of 1978's Superman changes that fact. Melancholy always circles back to him, best represented with the film's opening shot. At first, the film begins unremarkably with an aerial shot of the Golden Gate bridge at night. Yet this same evening subject is the film's closing shot, ending the film in a loop. Even the choice to become a vampire, one which Lestat insists he never had like some mantra I do not understand, is repeated. The film amounts to the same point of Louis' narrative: nothing.
I was satisfied with this film but did not know what to think of the piece at first. I could be cynical and say that the film is just about a loser vampire whining about the past two-hundred years. But there is more to this story than just a tired vampire who, perhaps sooner than the year 3000, may long for sunlight. I could not tackle such ideas in this entry alone. One must see the film for themselves, craft their own takeaways from Louis' story, and perhaps cross-examine them with other interpretations to dig deeper into Rice's ideas. Such open interpreting is wonderful. I love stories with clear points so long as they are true in essence and development. Yet seeing a traditional narrative, rather than a deliberately surreal piece, invite so many viewpoints and not tell the audience what to say or think is uncommon. Add underappreciated nineties filmmaking goodness to that ambiguity, and I call this piece a good, spooky movie day.
Summary
Featuring terrific production design, a passionate leading cat, and a multi-layered, grown-up story, Interview with the Vampire is a surprise. The tale finally explores the characterization, not function, of vampires in ways I have longed to see. Importantly, this film is one I could see my future-self returning to. Finding such a piece is one of the hidden wonders of these Film Journals.