Don't Look Now (1973)

I'm so glad I don't have kids. People who have kids (with all due respect) are insane. It's like multiplying your potential for an emotional Armageddon by a quadrillion percent. Maybe I'm just a worrywart; I don't understand how you'd ever let a kid out of your sight in the super deadly, arbitrary, calamity-baiting obstacle course that is our world. I have enough on my plate fretting about the fates of my felines. And I'm not talking about legitimate concerns like kitty cancer and urinary tract infections; I'm talking about if they sit in the window facing the street I fear somebody is going to throw a Molotov cocktail at them or maybe some teen rapscallions will shoot them with a BB gun or hit'em with a machete or… a flamethrower. Everybody who has seen THE EXTERMINATOR can back me up, flamethrowers are dangerous.

Even more troubling is the vague idea that somewhere under the sweet icing concern for the well being of my beloved fur babies hides the darker worry that if something should happened to them, I wouldn't be able to handle it and I would completely LOSE MY MIND… forever and ever and ever. That may sound overly dramatic but I've dealt with death before and I can tell you, that bitch is a bionic grizzly bear from the basement of hell. I don't remember fully and I don't want to. All I know is the whole universe cankers and everything wilts and then some callous, miasmic Demon masquerading as God snickers while cramming the entire planet into a cosmic trash bag for a couple dozen months. It's a bummer.

DON'T LOOK NOW is a masterpiece and don't even bother with it if you're the type that thinks that horror movies are all about finding your inner strength and foiling murderers with booby traps and karate chops. This flick is seeping in grief and its got real, legitimate death floating around in it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the best movies are not movies at all, they are spells and this particular spell is a doozy. If you're ever of the mind to publicly accuse a person of witchcraft, let that person be NICOLAS ROEG (not that DAPHNE DU MAURIER's hands are zestfully clean). I swear a billow of smoke appears in this film and it's all that billow of smoke can do to not morph into a screaming skull. I know it wants to, it knows that I know it wants to… and thank all that is holy that the scene ends before it does.

DON'T LOOK NOW features two acting greats, both of whom deliver career high performances. DONALD SUTHERLAND and JULIE CHRISTIE are John and Laura Baxter, distraught parents processing the recent death of their young daughter Christine. The couple's differing methods of dealing with the tragic loss slowly creates a chasm between them. The two travel to Venice for John's work and as Laura finds solace in two strange, questionable sisters (one of whom claims to be receiving assuring psychic messages from Christine), John's repairing of a church mirrors his frustrating attempts to piece back together his faith. It's as if Laura's embracing of the unknown allows her to move on and John's inability to accept the unexplainable tethers him to the ground. Laura is not exactly religious (She offers, "I'm kind to children and animals" as an apology to a priest) but she finds a way to allow hope back into her life. John's stagnation (not to mention his outright rejection of his own warning intuition) seems to only invite more of the darkness we all try to avoid.

Because yep, DEATH does indeed return as if responding to an engraved invitation, as if John's spiritual wavering is the ultimate red carpet. DEATH (I won't be too spoiler-y ) pretty much shakes its head at how very, very off base John's been for at least as long as the run of the film. And yeah, the end of DON'T LOOK NOW still to this day, gives me an ice wedgie, gives me a doom noogie, gives me an existential purple nurple. ROEG's devious shuffling of time and his abandonment of the linear evokes an infinite bad dream concoction that leaves you thinking that the adage "In the midst of life we are in death" may be a gross understatement. Do our lives flash before our eyes when we die or are our lives ONLY a flash before our eyes as we die? I don't even know what I just said but I do know that I don't like the sound of it. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a flashback montage.

Clearly this flick is crazy making. I better snap out of this solemn swamp mood before I attract a hooded ghoulie. Maybe it'll help if I focus on ROEG's brilliantly subtle gaslighting skills or how lovely it is just to take in CHRISTIE's elated face exclaiming, "Christine is still with us!" after Laura's fainting spell or the exquisite cinematography that makes the entire city of Venice look like a haunted house or the fact that this monumental movie marks the great PINO DONAGGIO's very first feature length film score! Ha, take that death troll!! Can you believe that the first time I tried to watch this baby as a dumb teen I fell asleep? I blame it on the rain. Anyway, if you've given this one a chance before and it didn't float your gondola don't sweat it. I promise you it will come back to finish the job later. In the words of Wednesday Addams when asked why she dressed like somebody died, "Wait."