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Lost Souls
***
Rated on a 4-star scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Bromborough)
Released in the UK by Entertainment on January 12, 2001; certificate 15;
97 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Janusz Kaminski; produced by
Meg Ryan, Nina R. Sadowski.
Written by Pierce Gardner; from a story by Pierce Garden,
Betsy Stahl.
Photographed by Mauro Fiore; edited by Anne Goourstaud, Andrew
Mondshein.
CAST.....
Winona Ryder..... Maya Larkin
Ben Chaplin..... Peter Kerlson
Sarah Wynter..... Claire Van Owen
Philip Baker Hall..... James
Elias Koteas..... John Townsend
John Hurt..... Father Lareaux
"Lost Souls" is a triumph of style
over substance -- if the photography had not been so strangely bleak and
grainy, and the sound design so disturbingly raw, then it might have inspired
giggles. It has all the clichés, melodramatic announcements, cheap
tricks and contrived creepy noises of other Satanic thrillers… but the
manner of the filmmaking gives it realistic edge. The exact same material
could have been laughable if filmed with conventional studio polish -- but
when it feels like it's dangerously close, it's effective.
The director is Janusz Kaminski, the inventive
cinematographer who won Oscars for giving us the bleak monochrome Holocaust
of "Schindler's List" and the dizzying, newsreel-style battle scenes of "Saving
Private Ryan". Here, working with lesser-known cameraman Mauro Fiore, he
again strips off lenses and filters, and develops his negative using
unconventional processes, to give his picture a look of penetrating bleakness.
Washed-out colours run into each other, the lighting is unbalanced, and grain
hangs over everything. For the desolate ambience of this movie to get under
your skin, all you have to do is open your eyes.
The story begins when a New York City serial killer
gets a rare certification from the Vatican -- one of genuine demonic possession.
The exorcism is botched so badly that the killer goes into a coma, one of
the priests involved becomes so drained he has to confine himself to bed,
and the secular advisor, Maya Larkin (Winona Ryder), who was possessed once
herself, is left to scramble through the clues of the event to discern what's
going on with the leftover spiritual activity.
Her conclusion is that the Devil is soon going
to assume human form in best-selling crime writer Peter Kerlson (Ben Chaplin).
The movie follows Maya's quest to convince Peter of the fact and deal with
it, and there are a lot of stone-faced confrontations, long-winded theological
explanations, creepy rumblings in the dark, and events of plain bizarreness,
like when Peter goes into a church and a huge crucifix falls from its position,
leaving Jesus hanging upside down and staring at the man's
eyes.
This would be so silly in a picture of regular
Hollywood sheen. It would seem ludicrous, unbelievable, over-the-top. But
thanks to Kaminski's style, we have to believe it, and things seem nakedly
sincere rather than silly. There are moments of genuine inspiration, too
-- the ending is hauntingly anti-climactic, instead of the chases and shoot-outs
we expect, and the exorcism scene suggests horrors rather than showing them,
preventing it from looking like a bunch of special effects, and granting
it much more power than similar scenes in "The Exorcist", which of course
is a superior film.
The last thing the world needs is more movies
like this. "Stigmata" and "Bless the Child" were disasters, and "Lost Souls"
itself could do with a sharper, more sober screenplay. But with it Kaminski
shows how to elevate dodgy material into something impressive -- professional
filmmakers have such great technical resources at their disposal that they
might as well use them, instead of shooting flat, stodgy images and punctuating
them with cheesy digital effects. Already I'm looking forward to Kaminski's
next picture -- with a good script, this guy could be
dangerous.
COPYRIGHT© 2001 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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