 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Byzantium • Year: 2012 • Country: UK, USA, Ireland • Director: Neil Jordan • Main cast: Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Arterton, Sam Riley • Runtime: 118 minutes • Production company: Demarest Films, Lipsync Productions, Number 9 Films • TRAILER |
Maybe I am wrong, but if we did a questionnaire in the street with the question “What is your favorite vampire movie?”, we could pile up all the answers in 5 different blocks: Of course there would be the people who say they don’t like them at all, which is already a group. Others, and not necessarily old people, would say the best portraits of the myth of vampirism are the classics like Nosferatu (1922) or Dracula (1931). Then the massive younger generations would go for something like the Twilight saga or mainstream products like that. Some others, more into the action and gore than the cult behind the creatures, would choose stuff like John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998) or the Blade franchise. And finally, the romantic or nostalgic children of the 90s would drop their stakes for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1993) or Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994). So let’s stay with this last film, also directed by Neil Jordan, the man behind Byzantium, and let’s go into subject.
Irishman Neil Jordan was one of the big names of the 90s thanks to films like Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) or Michael Collins (1996), which contributed to set the foundations of their own different genres for a new generation of movies with a strong historical or novelistic background. But since then he has vanished into oblivion with other productions that never reached the popularity his biggest pictures had. Byzantium kind of tries to bring back the spirit of his most remarkable work and place it in the current time. In this nowadays world there is no time for true romance, no time for poetry and epics; these are dirty times so they demand dirty solutions. This is the story of 2 lady vampires, mother and daughter, who face their inmortal fates in the 2010s, over 200 years past their time. Lies, abuse and prostitution are the cards the adult vampire wondefully portraited by Gemma Arterton plays just to try to survive together with her eternal companion incarnated in a sweet and delicated Saoirse Ronan. The two main actresses are great and give the sentiment and strength necessary to hold this story. But somehow that’s all Byzantium has to offer. Narrations of the old times, their dawn into being vampires casted away from the real world, and their survival into this new period so different to the one they are from.
I found Byzantium not very easy to watch. The images are pretty and they are treated with lots of care. The performances give to the characters the profiles and dimensions they need, but the tempo and action are quite slow to follow. It can’t have the attractive punch Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) had because they are very different stories, with very different characters and distinctive backgrounds, but still it is helpless not to try to compare them. And in that comparsion Byzantium will always lose. Yet again, this film is a good modern times romantic vampire story, but surelly not for everyone; not for the action goers and the adrenalide junkies, that’s for sure.
And yes, about the first statement of this review, I am aware I might not be the most accurate of the divisions, but it is not so wrong, isn’t it? Did you find yourself to be part of any of the groups? I hope so.
RATE: 5/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1531901
