The sad state of vampires.

Rating: Null/10 (9 August 2014)

'Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles' is a movie helped by the visions of two very creative people. The first is Anne Rice whose vampire novels are full of dread and gloom and try to bring an absolute reality the subject of vampires. The other is Neil Jordan ('The Crying Game'), a filmmaker who is never makes a conventional movie. He always has a nice twist or turn up his sleeve.
The reality is what makes this film work. We sense the day to day boredom and the horror that comes with being a creature of the night that must kill to survive and can never grow old.
The story begins in the present as a 200 year-old vampire named Louis (Brad Pitt) grants an interview to a journalist (Christian Slater). His story begins sometime in the late 18th century. Why have all vampires been born in the Victorian era? Aren't there any that were born a caveman or at least during the renaissance.
Louis it bitten by a fearsome vampire named Lestat (Tom Cruise) and the movie follows his devastation as he tries to come to terms with what he must do in order to live. The two travel from city to city feeding off the living. At one point Lestat bites a little girl named Claudia and her story is one of the saddest and most potent element of the film.
The choice of Tom Cruise as Lestat was not met with much warmth. I, for one, liked his performance here. Cruise has always been an actor willing to let himself look like a jerk but in this one he puts his looks in check. He slips into the character rather well and it never feels like a character role.
But the performance that I was most struck by was that of Kirsten Dunst as Claudia a twelve-year-old who lives her life as a vampire and can never grow up. Her character is positively Shakespearean. Dunst plays a twelve-year-old but we sense that inside her is a woman much older and wiser. We sense that inside this young body the mind of an adult who is living the nightmare of not only being a Vampire but an endless childhood in which she can never experience life.
The reality of the world of these three characters is brought to life by a brilliant set design by Dante Feretti. I especially loved an underground stone nest with holes in the walls for sleeping quarters that resemble and insect hive. The gloomy cinematography by Phillipe Roussellot ('A River Runs Through It') gives us the smoky, dim existence of a life lived at night.
Many critics complained the 'Interview With the Vampire' was slow and dull. I found that its leisure paced worked in putting me into the reality with which these creatures are faced. Because of this the movie isn't heavy on plot. It is about a grim reality that goes on day after day, year after year, century after century living by a horrible code of survival.