I am a fan of Neil Jordan, there, I proudly said it. If you know anything about movies or well written TV for that matter, you know why I am. Neil Jordan has brought us such incredible films like We're No Angels, The Crying Game, and The Brave One. He's recently brought us the underrated show, The Borgias to cable TV, a show I make it a point to never miss. Now don't get me wrong, Neil has had a few misses in his career, most notably his adaptation of Anne Rice's bestselling novel Interview With A Vampire. Then there was his heavy and tired Michael Collins, and the atrocious In Dreams. Even with those swings and misses, I still think Neil Jordan is an amazingly talented director and it's because of that opinion that I went to see Byzantium. Starring wide eyed Saoirse Ronan as Eleanor and the beautiful Gemma Aterton as sexy and saucy Clara. I do not regret seeing this movie at all. Based on the play by Moira Buffini, who also wrote the screenplay, Byzantium is a tale of two female vampires trying to scratch out a living while staying one step ahead of those that wish their destruction. This isn't your typical vampire tale though. This is something much grittier, something much more grounded in reality, it's something that made me see the whole living forever may not be such a cool thing after all.
Every vampire book I have read and every vampire film I have seen always glamorizes the lifestyle of the vampires. The blood drinkers usually have one amazing power after another. They can run really fast or have incredible strength. They can see really far or into the future, and other than the Twilight books, their biggest weakness is the sun and it's ultra violet rays. None of that is the case here, NONE of that. In Byzantium the vampires don't have any special power at all, the only thing they are blessed, or cursed with is the fact that they will live forever. In Byzantium, the vampires walk in sunlight just as easy as they step through the dark, they don't have fangs either. Yes, you read that right, the undead blood drinkers do NOT possess fangs, what they do possess seems to be far more lethal. They can, at will make their thumbnail grow into an incredibly sharp weapon that can slice open a wrist or puncture an artery in a neck either for draining or just killing. These vampires don't have super speed, super strength, or anything else of the sort. Really these vampires are just like humans, trying to survive in this harsh world using just their wits, cunning, lies, and secrets.
When the movie opens, Clara is stripping for cash, which pretty much illustrates that this is going to be far different a vampire tale than we're used to seeing. Watching vampires walk amongst humans with no real protection in this film was liberating, because it made them so vulnerable. The one thing they do have however is their ruthlessness. Both Clara and Eleanor kill with brutal and efficient ruthlessness. Clara craves attention and human contact, while Eleanor shuns it completely, that is until she meets Caleb Landry Jones who plays the innocent and sickly Frank. Eleanor wanders into a restaurant where Frank works, to play the piano. While Frank really wants to know more about this mysterious girl, Eleanor runs away and it's not until a fateful, and near fatal bike accident that the two somewhat come together. The scene where Eleanor picks up Franks blood drenched rag and sucks on it is as compelling as it is disturbing. Meanwhile, Clara has taken over a hotel run by Daniel Mays who plays the affable and naïve Noel. His mother used to run the Byzatium hotel but she recently died and Noel has basically allowed the place to fall on hard times. Clara becomes a pimp and the Byzantium becomes her brothel. All the while, Clara is trying to stay one step ahead of The Brotherhood, a collection of vampires that want her and Eleanor dead because women are not allowed to be vampires, and they are especially not allowed to create new vampires, like Clara did with Eleanor, who will be sixteen forever.
This movie is just so damn good that I could go on and on about it, like how the vampires are created. It's not done the way you think, it's done in a far more original way, with waterfalls of blood. It's visually stunning. Saoirse seems to have kept the contacts they gave her in that horrible movie The Host, and atones for her acting in that movie by being amazing here. Gemma is given an opportunity to truly act instead of just looking pretty, something she's been relegated to doing in her previous roles. She's deadly, sinister, and so deliciously dark that you almost forget how beautiful she is, which normally is damn hard to do. Scored beautifully by Javier Navarrete, the music is piano heavy, leaning towards classical, with subtle dark undertones. It's the perfect score for the images on the screen, and those images on the screen are at times breathtaking. Shot by cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, there are times when I thought, "That was done perfectly, couldn't have been done any better". This movie was spooky and stylish and moving all at the same time, and the ending was brilliant. I highly recommend Byantium if you love vampires, and even if you hate them, this is still a fantastic movie. So see it, and I'll see you at the theater.
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