Year of the Month
"I wish I didn't have to believe in prophecy. I do, but I wish I didn't have to."
This essay contains spoilers for the film and assumes you’re familiar with it.
In the wake of their young daughter’s death, English couple John and Laura Baxter come to Venice. John (Donald Sutherland) has been hired to restore a cathedral. He complains to Laura (Julie Christie) about its Byzantine bones: “I’m restoring a fake.”
The day young Christine drowned, Laura, a diligent parent, was looking up how to answer a question she had about how frozen water can lie so flat against a round Earth. She tells John what she’s found—the ice on Lake Ontario curves, following the arc of the world (“Nothing is what it seems,” says John)—but she never gets to tell Christine. The answer stays stuck in her throat, but it’s with her all movie. This enormity beyond our senses is there after all. You can follow it, out on the water.
Venice is out on the water, sinking into the water. There are signs posted about it.
Christine sank into the water too, and it took away the childish, girlish specificity of her; the pond muddied and greened her baby-blonde hair, made her only color the unnatural, vivid red of her plastic mac. It’s fake, but Laura and John chase after it anyway, pursuing it through visions and alleyways.
“The options are restore the fake or let it sink into the sea.” And they can’t have her sink again.
There are bodies dragged from the canals, upside-down and dripping wet. Like Christine, they’re faceless in death. One comes up by her heels, her skirt upended, her underwear showing. Women, not girls.
It’s the memory replayed in another key, but some hauntings are obsessions, the inescapable past. To parents with a drowned daughter, everything is water, and even a blind woman’s eyes become the flat gray-blue surface of a pond. Everything is always giving away to something else. The façade is always crumbling.
“What is it you fear?” an inspector asks John.
This is one of cinema’s most gorgeous ghost stories, and of course, there is no actual ghost. The ghost is in the editing and the camerawork.
To be fair, the ghost is in the editing and the camerawork because the ghost is everywhere, and everything is in the editing and the camerawork. Don’t Look Now is inseparable from its visuals: you could watch this with the sound turned off and follow it fine.
And those visuals are unexpected. This even shows up in the choice of setting: cinematic Italy, when directed by non-Italians, almost always has a lush, warm, sunny romanticism. It’s a country for holidays, but here the holiday is over. It’s winter in Venice—the light is starker, whiter—and John and Laura’s hotel is closing down around them. I’m looking at Italy, but this is not what Italy looks like, not in the movies. Yet here we are.
The estrangement is constant. It’s in the script, too, because one of the most jarring decisions here is to linger on what other movies would ignore and move swiftly past what could be catastrophic. When John tries to tell Laura to ignore the sisters who tell her about psychic visions of Christine, when he asks her to listen to him instead, she says, in a reasonable voice, “I’ve listened to you. You were the one who said, ‘Let the children play where they want to.’” It’s a truth—a memory and a decision to resurrect that memory—that could bring a marriage to an end. Don’t Look Now barely pauses for it. It’s as if it’s saying, They’re stronger than this. This won’t be what ends them. This isn’t what we have time for.
But what do we have time for? Red ink spreading over a slide. A red jacket. The sisters laughing. This all must be what matters, then, so the film has me grasping at it the way Laura grasps at Heather’s (Hilary Mason) visions, the way John grasps at his fears and holds them, Tam Lin-like, until they become his hopes, until they become his death.
The camera’s lingering produces an overload of symbols; its cuts produce an overload of associations. This can be sustaining, almost melodic, as it is in the stunning sex scene that feels like it covers the entirety of the Baxters’ marriage, from their naked desire and intimacy (awkward, natural, like it’s for them and not for us) to the cuddly, giddy afterglow (I always wonder if this is their first time since their daughter’s death) to the resumed business of living (dressing, sealing themselves in their separate skins again, looking around corners rather than touching; the distance and sadness creep back). But in most cases, the profound can’t be held so easily. There’s no vessel for their grief, the way their marriage is a vessel for their love, so it’s always working out around the edges. Filtering everywhere, like water.
The whole film is like the mosaic John’s restoring in the church: he’s had some tiles made to match the originals, and he has to hold one up alongside the its potential fellows to see how it will fit in. Can you make the right picture out of this? It feels like Nicolas Roeg is asking the same thing of the audience, and then providing both stakes and distraction when John’s scaffolding collapses. He was warned, so is this what he was warned about? If you were sorting through all these mosaic tiles, could you tell the new from the old?
That is the core of Don’t Look Now, and it’s the complexity of simplicity, and vice-versa. There are only two horror ideas here, one old—the prophecy itself has sealed your fate—and one so new it only took off, and grew old, much more recently—the real horror is trauma. And there are only two horror sources, two trauma sources—Christine’s death and John’s death. John’s latent precognition has made his death traumatic in advance, made its violence and horror haunt him as vividly as the drowned Christine but, tragically, far less comprehensibly. He doesn’t understand until it’s too late. Few of us ever do, about anything.
Expressing that handful of ideas as thoroughly, intuitively, and sensually as possible is enough to make this a masterpiece. There are only three primary colors, after all.
One of them, of course, is red.
Don’t Look Now is streaming on Kanopy.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Streaming Shuffle
A beautiful slice-of-life film that helped make a career.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Weapons
Watched with a friend who hadn’t seen it yet. At the end, she immediately picked out what is, to my mind, the biggest structural flaw–the fact that the Paul and James sections barely contribute anything to the plot–but she had a good time with it overall. There are some excellent scares, and the final scene with the children immediately rockets into the horror hall of fame (the theater went nuts at that when I saw it, and it’s me, hi, I’m the theater, it’s me), but the literary structure of this still doesn’t work for me, as much as I love it in mysteries and realism. I feel like this would be more interesting as the kid’s movie, broadening out as necessary. Haunting final lines, though, and Cregger can definitely construct a scare and an atmosphere. The physical details of the withcraft here are so good–exactly the right kind of handcrafted.
Was thinking about this too in regards to Paul and James, the latter is one of the best parts of the movie but they don’t actually amount to much. The kids stuff in regard to Cregger’s life also feels the most personal.
Yeah, the literary structure didn’t work for me either. But the nightmares in the suburbs that are happening as the film is setting things up drew me in.
When the action starts building, it doesn’t really give you much time to think, so the film moves away from psychological horror per se, but the ending gives you plenty to think about afterwards. Like dreams themselves (re: Freud), there is the condensation of a lot of different images: the image of the gun feels as American as the folk music/festival does English in The Wicker Man.
Yes, those rich, condensed images really work for me. I’ve seen people complain that this film doesn’t have a message or isn’t reducible to a single core point, but what it has–a story and presentation from which you can draw multiple meanings–works much better for me. The gun is the perfect example: this isn’t a straightforward metaphor for school shootings, but it’s impossible for an American story about a mass tragedy involving children to not by inflected by gun violence, and making a grieving father the vector for that particular symbol is the perfect choice, too. It’s on everyone’s mind, his included, looming over everything.
Justified, Season Three, Episode Eight, “Watching The Detectives”
“Just between you and me, Raylan Givens is a very angry man.”
Hah – we’re actually doing a classic cop show cliche of the protagonist getting the IAD treatment! This isn’t as transcendent as The Shield, but it comes close, because it’s a perfectly reasonable interpretation of Raylan’s actions even on top of the people framing him. Raylan is too professional for criminals and not professional enough for cops.
Tim will definitely be Art one day. He’s already exactly as funny (“I’m not playing, I’m an idiot. You can ask anybody.”), and he also has Art’s amused irritation at Raylan and his willingness to break the rules when necessary.
Well, there goes Gary.
The sheriff caring about the perp walk for the cameras is a classic Justified character beat – unnecessary but hilarious and making the show more interesting. Definitely something I do in my own writing.
Biggest Laugh: “Is that a real question?” / “It had a question mark.”
Biggest Non-Art Laugh: “Deputy, that just might be the coolest thing I ever heard of.” […] “Might be a lot cooler if it actually worked!” […] “Wait, you’re not gonna throw that one at me, are ya?”
Top Ownage: Wynn Duffy and Raylan squaring off at the end is great, particularly because it’s staged as one shot with them face-to-face. Wynn gets the harder line with the “Did you just accuse me of not being a natural blonde?” shit.
This is maybe one of my top episodes for dialogue. Pretty hard to beat, especially all the moments you cite at the end. I think I’ve used “the [adjective-est] thing I’ve ever laid ears on” in conversation since this.
“Now there is the Wynn Duffy I know and love.”
Frankenstein (2025) – Some amazing images, like Mia Goth photographed by Bava, and Elordi commits to the angry, awed physicality of the Monster*, but this is exhausting, long and loud especially in theaters. Oscar Isaac has at last drowned in the river of ham, sounding like Charlie Kelly on the intelligence serum, while Del Toro is drowning in sincerity. He cares too much about the Monster to commit to the complete tragedy and tone. This results in a horrifically bad “happy” ending awkwardly sewn, like patchwork flesh, onto Shelley’s baroque, Gothic, psychosexual work about death and parentage. Never good when you say out loud at a line of dialogue, “Fuck you!”
* Was reminded of what I originally loved about Del Toro when the Monster watches a leaf float down the river, a playful and human little moment.
“He cares too much about the Monster to commit to the complete tragedy and tone” I fucking knew it.
When everyone was talking about this being too sympathetic to the Creature, I kept thinking, “Well, isn’t the text itself generally sympathetic to him, outside of Frankenstein’s own view?”, but then I looked up the actual plot summary of this and now I’m dying laughing. I’ve always cared about the Creature too, but this is some exculpatory bullshit. Let him be deliberately cruel and monstrous because he’s been treated as a monster! Kill that obnoxious kid! Frame that servant! Murder Elizabeth! “Oh, I can empathize with monsters who are erroneously perceived as monsters because they’re a bit weird”; fuck off, that’s not hard, some of us are out here empathizing with them even as they go down the path of horror and tragedy.
It’s also very clear in the book that the Monster knows he is capable of monstrosity! He is horrified by his own atrocities as he says to the ship captain! But this comes as we see from relentless abandonment and persecution – the most interesting change from the book here is Victor repeating the dynamic of his abusive dad, more of a cruel and neglectful parent at first than totally irresponsible. (Isaac does understand the energy of an intellectual bored with a new toy.)
Nothing, but I went to a pub quiz where one of the questions was “Name the actor who played the killer in Halloween” and the answer they wanted was “Michael Myers”.
I feel like hearing this happened is going to be villain origin story.
I would have rioted
28 Years Later – for about ten minutes I really loved the ending, a go-for-broke gaucheness that spits in the eye of care and maturity and offers a pissy counterpart to the lessons learned by our lead. Welcome to the world, kid! But then I learned it was not just an open path to a sequel but a direct setup to a concurrently filmed movie and fucking BOO TO THAT, don’t part one my ass you lazy shits. Some very good stuff butting up against very dopey stuff — the music during the emotional climax is wretched and outright killed the mood; a character mostly exists to give an out to other characters from making a nasty moral decision — but if nothing else the movie looks great. Pity it’s not, you know, an actual whole movie.
Scream
Finally got around to this one and wishing I’d gotten to it earlier, because it’s so clearly a victim of its own success. The central gimmick that did so much for it in 1996 — that the characters in this movie have already seen movies like it — doesn’t work as well now that almost every movie is like that. I still enjoyed the unspoken gag where Neve Campbell says she doesn’t watch horror movies because the heroines are always too dumb to walk out the front door instead of upstairs and Ghostface forces her to run upstairs by holding the door shut in the next scene. Fortunately, there’s other good stuff here: the performances, the brutally accurate handling of the particular flavor of cruelty you see in kids this age. And plenty of surprises, even coming in late: I never would have predicted Matthew Lillard would be playing a Quentin Tarantino parody.
Frasier, “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” – At long last, Daphne and Niles find each other. Despite her pending wedding, despite his surprise marriage to Mel, despite seven years of teasing the audience. But the payoff is amazing. The first kiss. And Daphne running to Niles in his dad’s Winnebago, in her wedding gown, the two embracing and it gets to me. This hour long season seven finale is a near perfect mix of farce and emotion, with Daphne’s family arriving, with Martin being given a bottle of rare wine after the death of the building’s doorman, with Frasier for once giving the exact right advice, and with that perfect chemistry between David Hyde-Pierce and Jane Leeves. This has to be my favorite “will they or won’t they, in part because the show is not about them and this arc never becomes the end all and be all of Frasier. And in part because the actors sell it so well. This was the highest rated episode of the show prior to the finale, and I get it totally.
The Practice, “Crossfire” – Eugene and his ex-wife’s custody case, with the judge (David Huddleston) dismissing her suit for full custody for now, but with Eugene really not sure. The arguments on both sides, from Bobby and from guest lawyer Gary Cole, are solid, but this is not a very interesting case. Neither are the other cases this time out.
MASH, “Of Moose and Men” – A colonel who had a run in with Hawkeye is nearly killed, and of course the only man who can save him is Hawkeye. And even that doesn’t soften the colonel’s disdain. Meanwhile, BJ tries to help Zale reply to a letter from his wife confessing an affair, but regrets his aid when he finds Zale has a “moose” (a local woman basically employed for sex work). And Frank gets paranoid about enemy infiltrators and is sure someone has buried a bomb. But it turns out to be a kimchi pot, leading to Hawkeye’s classic “you’ve struck cole slaw.” Lots of interesting character bits but doesn’t really come together.
“It’s the memory replayed in another key, but some hauntings are obsessions, the inescapable past. To parents with a drowned daughter, everything is water, and even a blind woman’s eyes become the flat gray-blue surface of a pond. Everything is always giving away to something else. The façade is always crumbling.”
Superb stuff, this in particular is making me think of Lake Mungo and its drowned daughter (and hmm, fate and trauma – how did I not clock this as an influence?). Great analysis, this movie has brought out the best in our crew: https://www.the-solute.com/extrasensory-parenting-in-dont-look-now-year-of-the-month/
Thank you! And wow, that’s an incredible essay: I missed that then and definitely wouldn’t have dared to write in its shadow if I’d known it existed. Just gorgeous work from Chris.
I love Lake Mungo but also hadn’t thought of that connection; very tempted to rewatch that, maybe on Halloween, with this in mind.
Year of the Month update!
This November, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al from 2018!
Nov. 7th: Gillian Nelson: A Wrinkle in Time
Nov. 9th: Cori Domschot: Book Club
Nov. 10th: Bridgett Taylor: Aquaman
Nov. 12th: Ben Hohenstatt: Bark Your Head Off, Dog
Nov. 14th: Gillian Nelson: Christopher Robin/Mary Poppins Returns
Nov. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Ralph Breaks the Internet
Nov. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Legend of the Three Caballeros
And in December, we’ll be taking pitches on anything from 1948, like these movies, albums, and books.
Between this essay and your Wicker Man last week you are on a roll. Keep watching (and writing about) eerie and ambiguous late 20th century movies.
Thank you so much! (Although now I feel like I need a break from writing about things I’m this emotionally invested in–it’s wild how stressed out I was about these two pieces.) But the eerie and ambiguous late 20th century movies will return.