Byzantium begins with two very different deaths.. Stripper Clara (Gemma Arterton) applies a garrote to a man and brutally slices off his head. Sensitive teenager Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) on the other hand eases the suffering of an old man by gently piercing his wrist and drinking his blood. As it turns out, these two are vampires (or in the film’s parlance, soucriants). Clara is Eleanor’s mother, and they’ve spent the last two centuries living in secret among regular people. Clara’s penchant for decapitation, however, forces them to move to a new location.
It’s a pretty compelling start that quickly establishes the connection and the differences between the two characters. It is almost incidental that the characters are vampires, and the film seems to like it that way. Byzantium isn’t a vampire movie in the way that most people would understand it. It isn’t too concerned with the trappings of the mythology, and mainly uses some of those elements to explore a couple of intriguing themes. The film at times collapses under the weight of its narrative, but it is a welcome alternative to the largely vapid vampire fiction that has filled our cinemas in recent years.
The story continues with Clara and Eleanor ending up in a sleepy seaside town. Clara finds a benefactor in Noel (Daniel Mays), a lonely john who happens to own an abandoned hotel. Clara convinces him to let her use it to run a brothel. Meanwhile, Eleanor forms a connection with teenager Frank (Caleb Landry Jones), and she takes a creative writing class with him. Their closeness urges Eleanor to tell him her whole story, and the revelation of her secret life brings all sorts of complications.
The nuts and bolts of the plot aren’t all that interesting. Nothing really big happens for most of the film, much of it mainly concerned with Eleanor narrating her mother’s story. It is in the bigger picture that the film gains its appeal. It puts together this fairly fascinating portrait of sex and power viewed through the lens of two centuries worth of perspective. It crafts a fable of women putting their faith in men only to be betrayed, and of an entirely unjust world that forces people to do terrible things just to survive. Vampirism is used as this potent signifier for power and control, a strange, monstrous form of freedom from a world that is inherently monstrous.
It takes a while to get there, but the result is pretty compelling. Neil Jordan’s moody direction builds a cumulative effect, the oily, shopworn imagery suggesting a world in decay. He skillfully blends the film’s romantic core with its cynical exteriors, finding the odd beauty that remains even in the most rotten surroundings. Gemma Arterton is kind of a revelation in this role. She conveys a steely ruthlessness that comes straight out of Threepenny Opera. Saoirse Ronan’s oddly alien delivery contributes to the film’s overall portrait of otherness.
Byzantium could be a lot tighter. It just takes too long to get to the blood of the matter, the film overly concerned with saving its most crucial points for the end. It results in a narrative that lingers far too long in vague melancholy. But the overall effect is still pretty interesting. At its best, the film finds potent allegory in its vampiric trappings, creating this depiction of a world so inherently cruel that it is almost a mercy to drain someone of his or her life. Almost. It is that uncertainty that ultimately fuels the film. It hardly ever settles for easy answers, the dichotomy between the two main characters constantly providing uneasy tension.
My Rating:
