Byzantium film

The s gave us many sacred pop culture moments and movements; most notably a worldwide frenzy for vampires and ghoulish night creatures like that of the iconic Twilight series. And during this decade of wild music, hilarious celebrity moments, and the rise of subculture fandoms for what felt like every kind of content, playwright and author, Moria Buffinibyzantium film to craft a masterpiece with the film, Byzantium, byzantium film.

They are always a good commercial bet, though. Here, a pair of mother-and-daughter vampires cling and clash throughout the centuries like Louis and Lestat in Interview, evading an organised society of male bloodsuckers who disapprove of their very existence. Whereas the earlier film was an elegant and well-dressed Gothic, this makes even its historical flashbacks seem cold and uncomfortable and imbues all its characters with dread and desperation. Each vampire story has to reinvent the rules. Starting in realist mode with mama monster Clara Gemma Arterton as a contemporary lap-dancer who keeps cheesewire handy to behead unwelcome callers and daughter Eleanor Saoirse Ronan haunting council estates for OAPs to bleed, Byzantium looks to pre-Stoker literature for the early 19th century flashbacks which explain their origins.

Byzantium film

The English seaside town is the end of the line — and the end of the world. And it is by a typically bleak British beach that Neil Jordan has created this florid, preposterous but watchable soap opera of the undead; it's a dark fantasy that contains a trace of his slight weakness for whimsy, but in some ways it's his most effective film for some time, adapted for the screen by Moira Buffini from her stage play A Vampire Story. The seaside town is unnamed, but it appears to be shot in Hastings, making full use of that town's eerie Graham Greeneian spectacle: the charred pier that was torched by arsonists in Its restoration may not be easy. The town may in any case decide the pier is more of a morbid attraction for sightseers and film crews the way it is. Gemma Arterton plays Clara, a hardworking prostitute and lap-dancer with a mysterious past; she's on the run from a couple of nameless individuals and shows up at this wintry anti-Riviera with her daughter, Eleanor, played by Saoirse Ronan. But poor Noel blubberingly fails to go through with it, because his mum has just died. Meanwhile, Eleanor enrols at sixth-form college and horrifies her teacher Tom Hollander by making him think she must be a victim of abuse with an autobiographical writing assignment in which Eleanor claims that she and her mother are hundreds of years old. The story intercuts with sinister, occult events that took place on the same town two centuries previously, with two dashing veterans of the Napoleonic wars: Darvell and Ruthven pronounced "Riven" played by Sam Riley and Jonny Lee Miller. Any story about vampires set in what is recognisably 21st-century reality has to decide how to negotiate the dominance of Stephenie Meyer and her world-conquering creation, Twilight. You either ignore it, or treat it ironically, like the spoof movie Vampires Suck, which had one good line: "In the 80s, coke was all the rage; the 90s, grunge.

Scientia et Humanitas. Starting in realist mode with mama monster Clara Gemma Arterton as a contemporary lap-dancer who keeps cheesewire handy to behead unwelcome callers and daughter Eleanor Saoirse Ronan haunting council estates byzantium film OAPs to bleed, byzantium film, Byzantium looks to pre-Stoker literature for the early 19th century flashbacks which explain their origins.

By Max Nelson on June 25, The enduring appeal of vampire stories has, I think, something to do with their strange dual function as erotic fantasies and wistful memento mori. Jordan films her as an aggregate of seductive details: bright-red lips, exaggerated curves, sharpened fingernails no fangs here , and fishnet-sheathed legs propped up by foot-high stilettos. Every moment in the movie seems designed to make you forget about the ones before and ignore the ones to come. Every image, every visual motif, every object, and every plot device intends to seize you completely, seduce you, envelop you: blood-red hoods, deep blue flowers, bright orange flames, abandoned waterfront theme parks, seedy neon-lit hotels, heaving bodices, stuffy 19th-century bordellos, dissolute military captains, abandoned islands, secret maps, whispered secrets, walls of mirrors, huge swarms of crows, patriarchal vampire clans, crusade-era scimitars, multiple decapitations, mother-daughter screaming matches, stories nestled within stories, nuns marching single file across deserted beaches, waterfalls of blood.

Byzantium opens today in limited release. The possibilities of the vampire story have become increasingly limited. The story has been around for so long, and has been done so many ways, especially of late, that it's difficult for a storyteller to come in and find a new spin within the predefined parameters of what we all agree is a "vampire": a bloodsucking immortal. In his new film Byzantium , director Neil Jordan has seized upon the "immortal" part and how a vampire would always be, in a sense, frozen in the past and unable to move forward. Consequently, Byzantium has trouble gaining any momentum. As its protagonist moans about telling a story hundreds of times but never finding anyone to listen, the film struggles to find a rhythm and gets bogged down in some cringeworthy dialogue. But the most frustrating aspect of Byzantium is how it fails to pursue a thoughtful, gender-related idea that holds far more potential than another exploration of how vampires are accursed creatures sentenced to wander the earth alone forever and ever anon. Eleanor Webb Saoirse Ronan is miserable being a vampire. She has been sixteen for over years, stuck with her overprotective vampire mother Clara Gemma Arterton , and isolated from the world because she's forbidden to share her story with anyone. She writes it down again and again, but then throws her story away to the winds.

Byzantium film

All I knew going into "Byzantium" was that it marks director Neil Jordan's return to the genre he and novelist Anne Rice helped make viable for Hollywood studios almost twenty years ago, with " Interview with the Vampire. I find the entertainment industry's ongoing vampire gold rush, and pop culture's fascination with sexualized gore in general, to be insipid, boring and ghoulish in a trivial way that's unique to folks who haven't experienced much real violence or loss: goth slumber party. What a pleasure it was, then, to be won over by this exquisite, lovely film, in which contemporary characters struggle to suspend their disbelief in vampire lore while Jordan's eye for formal beauty and truthful performances suspends ours. There is a very true moment in David O. Russell's film " The Fighter " where Amy Adams is trying to stay angry and distrustful of her pathetic junkie brother-in-law Christian Bale but her heart can't help but reach out to him when he pleads sincerely for understanding. Noticing some cake icing smeared on his forearm, she says, "What's that blue shit on your arm? That's how this bluesy vampire melodrama "Byzantium" worked on me. The plot is almost irrelevant, but the way screenwriter Moira Buffini adapting her own stage play "A Vampire Story" weaves threads of history, folklore, feminist spirit and universal themes is striking.

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Caleb Landry Jones as Frank. Tony Lawson. But not as we know them! As knowledge of their secret spreads, their past catches up on them with deathly consequences. Even Evil Has Standards : The vampire brotherhood takes great offense to Clara having stolen the gift of immortality, especially given she's a "low-born" woman. Deliberate Values Dissonance : The Brethren's entire attitude towards women not being allowed to join their ranks, regardless of their merit. Two mysterious women seek refuge in a run-down coastal resort. Focusing on two disparate and dangerous women, "Byzantium" tells a modern story with spurts of flashback and history. Runtime 1 hour 58 minutes. Select your preferred poster. Archived from the original on 24 June Any story about vampires set in what is recognisably 21st-century reality has to decide how to negotiate the dominance of Stephenie Meyer and her world-conquering creation, Twilight. He also rapes a 16 year old Eleanor to infect her with syphilis and subject her to the same slow, agonizing death he faced due to her mother's actions.

Byzantium is a vampire film directed by Neil Jordan. Byzantium had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September , and was released in the United Kingdom on 31 May

Guys literally only want one thing and it's fucking disgusting: To be part of a clandestine patriarchal brotherhood of fashionable vampires with long pinky fingernails. Official Facebook. Bradshaw, Peter 30 May Much to the dismay of Darvell, Clara leaves with Ruthven, who forces her into prostitution after raping her. Dolby Digital Datasat. Hoop-Tober 2. Brooding, graceful, and strangely elegant, Neil Jordan's "Byzantium" is a welcome return to the vampire film for the director. Susie Figgis. Slightly less traditional than his Interview with a Vampire, this is similar in tone but I preferred this less campy and more thought-provoking bit of bloodsucking terror and intrigue. Voiceover haters…. Years later, Clara is dying of what appears to be tuberculosis when the brothel is visited by Darvell, who has become a vampire. Running time. Slovakia Then she runs into a young man named Frank.