Review: Byzantium
Review: Byzantium
By Darren Goodfellow
Residents of a coastal town learn, with deathly consequences, the secret shared by the two mysterious women who have sought shelter at a local resort.
Neil Jordan returns for another bite at the vampire genre (sorry) and delivers a film that manages to blend modern-day kitchen sink drama with a century-spanning gothic fantasy to sumptuous effect.
‘Byzantium’ is the story of Clara and Eleanor, a mother and daughter vampire duo, scratching out a living in modern day Britain while they try to keep their secret from the world. Clara is a headstrong and impulsive figure who earns their money by stripping or running brothels while Eleanor is an eternal teenager, forever longing to be able to tell her story but terrified of what that knowledge would do to those she would trust with it. Jordan wisely keeps the focus on the film on the pair, even when exploring the larger vampire mythology, and the result is a deeply affecting tale of the power – and cost – of endurance and secrecy. While we’ve seen films where family members bicker, fight and rebel against the roles that society has imposed on them before, the added kink of immortality, and the implication that some people will never change, no matter how much time they are given, is a nice twist and Jordan uses it well, giving Gemma Arterton a role in which she can really sink her teeth into (I’m not even sorry about that pun).
Saoirse Ronan is fine as Eleanor – she can play someone who appears otherworldly in her sleep – but never really engages the viewer the way Arterton does. To be fair to her though, her character herself references her own, lonely coldness several times, so I suppose she did well with the part. Given her ‘strangeness’ it’s easy to see why JJ Abrams has her singled out for a bad guy role in ‘Episode VII’, if you believe the rumours. Sam Riley and Daniel Mays are both excellent in supporting roles but particular mention has to go to Johnny Lee Miller, who conjures up one of the most unpleasant and vile cinema bad guys in recent memory with only the barest of on-screen time. Sporting thinning grey hair and a variety of facial sores, his Captain Ruthven is by far the biggest monster in the entire film.
Special mention has to go though to the world of the vampire that Jordan has created. While he explored the more traditional style of vampire in his 1994 adaptation of ‘Interview With The Vampire’, here he creates something very unique. Gone are the fangs and aversion to sunlight of old, replaced with sharply elongated thumbnails and a simple preference for the dark but make no mistake; this is no ‘Twilight’. The vampires of ‘Byzantium’ are very much like you and I. If they are cut, they bleed, if they run, they get tired. No special measures need be taken to kill them either – thought the film does seem to have a fondness for decapitation.
Most stunning of all though is the mysterious cairn on a forgotten isle that seems to be the source of their immortality. Never explained and only fleetingly explored Jordan has created something truly mysterious and disturbing. The imagery of the bloody waterfalls that Jordan uses when a vampire is made is fantastic also, all the more so for being something so fantastic and unreal.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I sat down to watch ‘Byzantium’ but the end result was something so much richer and emotional than I expected.
Grade: B+