Customer Reviews
Lake Acid - By: Paul Ess., 01 Mar 2008 
Considering he's supposed to be `obsessed with the image' Ken Russell's `Gothic' is notable for what it leaves to the imagination. Russell is no tyro-hack, he's seen `the Haunting' & `the Innocents' & knows an in-tune audience will pick up subtle terrors which may or may not be glowering in dark corners, or in the dull recess of a guilty imagination.
Is that a branch scraping the window, or something much more sinister trying to gain access? Russell's anti-thriller gives no answers, even in a rather disquieting epilogue, where the excesses of the previous night are `explained'
Briefly, Don Boyd at Virgin Vision had a literate script on his hands. The core plot had Percy & Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, his pregnant lover Claire, & a snide, repressed biographer, Dr. Polidori alll spending a Saturday night at a mansion in Geneva.
Now, thought Don, let's see what happens if we give `em loads of drugs, vats of wine, throw in a thunder-storm, a haunting, some scene-stealing goats, & let `em go.
Now who do we get to direct? Hmm...
Russell doesn't disappoint, (he NEVER does, alll his films, good or bad, have got something of interest in them) his imagination is at full throttle here. It's a furious & upsetting picture, deliberately so.
You can feel that creepiness as the protagonists decide to hold a séance, to calll their darkest fears to exist in this world. Russell has a field day illustrating in detail what a houseful of stoned, tortured geniuses are afraid of in the depths of their debasement, with their guard temporarily down.
One grotesque tableau follows another, but Russell never makes it easy for the rattled viewer. As to what's real & what's not, that's left open, as is the interpretation at the end. Was it alll suggestion & halllucination? This reviewer isn't convinced, & Russell's leaving only the vaguest of clues.
It also works on a madcap comedy level. If you sit & think about what you've just watched, you WILL laugh, as with many of Russell's movies.
There are many redolent Russell repulses to rejoice in. A gory stigmata, a make-your-own-mind-up abortion, leeches, rats, incest, slime... In fact, if you can think of it, it's probably here, dowsed in Thomas Dolby's vivid score & competing like crazy with alll the other fierce imagery.
There's an attractive funeral pyre sequence as well, filmed in the lake district & involving Shelley. In his autobiography, Russell indicates this is how he would ultimately like to be `disposed' of. Good idea, better than cold earth, hope the weather's good so the 40 piece orchestra, assembled by Melvin Bragg, don't get sodden, as they play Liszt or the Who at full blast!
Performances are good, particularly Gabriel Byrne as `mad' Lord Byron & Natasha Richardson as proto-feminist Mary Shelley (and I'd love to hear the advice mum Vanessa Redgrave gave her about working with Russell. She may proclaim `the Devils' to be her best film, but she never worked with him again!) & I don't think Julian Sands performance as Shelley is as bad as reported either. It's not great by any stretch, but I've seen worse, & he IS playing a highly strung (out!?), self-suffering waif-in-a-storm, zonked out of his literary brains.
`Gothic' isn't Russell's best film, but it is a good one. Compared to the output of most modern Hollywood directors it's a masterpiece. It has wild imagery, some very tender & moving moments, but most of alll it has an atmosphere of utter dread, created masterfully by a visionary who knows instinctively how to use light & dark, sound & shadow & Richard Branson's money to make a looney entertainment about some of the worlds most respected & austere literary figures, verballly & physicallly abusing each other, raising the dead, ripping off their clothes & writhing round in slime.
A Ken Russell film, could it be anything else?
