The Neverending Story

Rating: Null/10 (10 June 2004)

I guess we'll continue to get ever more implausible solutions to the mystery of Jack the Ripper. We don't seem to be getting any about Dr. Palmer, but Jack soldiers on. Maybe it's the name -- "Jack the Ripper," or his location, "from hell." It must also be the sex and the gore. Here's a guy slicing and dicing, and poisoning isn't a patch on butchery. It's probably also because, after all, the crimes were never explained. And the human mind has a tendency to recall uncompleted tasks better than completed ones. (In psychology it's called somewhat grandly, "the Zeigarnik effect.") Anyway, if we don't know the real answer, then ANY answer can be proffered.
This one's fairly routine in its general outline -- something to do with syphilis and marriage beneath one's station among the Royals -- but to tell the truth, I got some of the characters a little mixed up. The hookers, for instance, were hard to tell apart except for Mary Kelly (Graham) with her mane of gloriously curly Irish red hair. The others didn't seem well differentiated, possibly because so much of the movie takes place in the dark.
The elaborate set that represents Whitechapel in 1888 was built on the outskirts of Prague. The art direction is quite good, as far as a viewer can tell, but again, the sets might have been half as well done without most people realizing it because the shooting doesn't give us much in the way of grand sweep. There isn't enough fog, either. Or -- let's call a spade a spade -- not enough industrial smoke because that's what it was. I wish the director had taken more care to give us a sense of place. The murder scenes, including the positions of the bodies, are accurately reconstructed, but -- well, take for instance victim number three, I think it was, the one who died in the back yard of a scruffy tenement, positioned next to a fence made of boards. This barren tiny yard was reached through a passageway that ran under a crummy building. Several windows opened onto that back yard. A door led from the tenement to the outhouse at the yard's far end. (I feel I know this place well because it's the stuff my nightmares are made of, and it's always tinted a dull orange for some reason.) But none of this dismal atmosphere is brought on screen. We aren't prompted to wonder why none of the windows were opened by the tenants, or why there were no screams heard, or why on earth the Ripper would entice his victim to stand against a fence that anyone wanting to visit the loo would have to walk past.
Part of the popular appeal of Jack the Ripper goes beyond the homicidal maniac and his victims. It includes all of Victorian London as well, especially the East End, its delapidated brick buildings, its toxic air, its blurry streetlights, its rain, its gin-soaked whores, its ordinary pedestrians, its entire physicality, its eidos as well as its ethos. And that's what's missing. Most of the scenes are shot from middle distance, and a lot of the circumstances are lost for this reason. The setting isn't really SCARY enough.
As if to compensate for this, there are many cuts to dripping blood, scintillating knife blades, and gurgling cut throats. There are several blazing frames of women screaming. And when a knife is shown you can be sure there is the "slinkkk" of blade against blade even when there is no other knife in sight. (What a cliché.) Inspector Aberlinne's use of opium and booze gives the director and editor a chance for yet more confusing fuzzy quick shots of events which may or may not have happened, be happening, or will happen. There is quite a bit of blood on screen without the murders being all that graphic. The producers didn't seem to mind the blood but they insisted that the horse manure be cleared from the cobblestone streets so the family audience wouldn't be offended. Note: you can show throats being cut, but you can't show horse s**t.
While we're at it, the movie is based on what is now called a "graphic novel" but which we used to call comic books. (Actually, it was "funny books" where I grew up.) When "The Man Who Would Be King" was released thirty years ago, it was accompanied by the release of a "novelization" of the film -- as if the original story by Kipling were too demanding. I thought that was pretty insulting. Now, with dozens of books in print on Jack the Ripper, we have a movie for adults based on a comic book. The speech balloons are limited to a few words in each panel. Sometimes just one word -- a shriek or imprecation. A generation ago it seemed that a story by Kipling might be too demanding. Now it's prose itself that is endangered. And I can see the logic behind the trend. Why demand more effort of the consumer than he is prepared to offer? Why ask him, for instance, to walk a few blocks to a store when he can harness the three thousand horsepower engine in his SUV and DRIVE back and forth? Why ask him to learn that the expression "a lot" consists of two words, an indefinite article and a common noun, instead of just one word, "alot"? This raises a question that is at least as interesting as who committed those murders 120 years ago. The question is, exactly how lacking in curiosity and cognitive stamina can consumers be, and exactly how dumbed down the demands made on those consumers, before a civilization collapses of its own ignorance?
Geez, will somebody help me down off this soap box? It's so high my nose is beginning to bleed. Thank you.