A Cinephile’s Critiques

Directed by Nicolas Roeg, 1973 (Color, 9:5, Stereo, 110′)
Starring Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason, and Clelia Matania

Don’t Look Now is a leisurely horror film. The director is going to creep you out, and he’s going to take his time doing it.

Fortunately, there’s plenty to do in-between all the quiet weirdness in this film, like try to figure out what all the quiet weirdness means. And, if that doesn’t suit your fancy, you could also gaze at the slightly decaying, earthy-brown Venice, with its startling splashes of bright red, reflections in the water, and clanking, sometimes shattering, glass.

You’ll also have plenty of time to wonder what all this talk about vision is, too. The title, for instance, instructs us to not look now, and, as the beginning of the film hints, one of the characters will have some problems seeing things that might not be occurring right now. He won’t be the only one, though, because the viewer will also see a disquieting number of sudden flashbacks and flash-forwards, sometimes involving characters who are blind, but claim to have second sight, characters who can see, but can’t quite grasp the significance of the things that they are seeing, characters who might only be able to see with one eye, because the audience is prevented from seeing the other one, characters who wear sunglasses indoors, and probably can’t see very well because of it, and characters who could see just fine, except it’s so dark and foggy out that they can’t tell where they’re going, even if it’s just around the corner.

You’ll see most of the film spelled out for you in the first twenty minutes. You’ll see the brown earth, the startling red splashes of color, the reflections in the water, and the shattering glass. You’ll see people looking at things, but not really recognizing their significance. You’ll see second sight. You’ll see death. You’ll see the character that brings about one of the most unsettling, and chilling, endings you’re ever likely to see in a film. But, you won’t catch the meaning of any of these things. In fact, you’ll even see someone looking something up to find a meaning. But, the film won’t tell you whether she understood the meaning, just like the film won’t tell you what the film means.

Don’t Look Now wants you to try to figure out what is going on and what, for instance, a gargoyle might have to do with it, or why the number of dead children the two sisters have changes when they move a few blocks down the street, or what the blind woman is laughing about, or why someone would stop, while chasing someone else, to close gates behind himself, and prevent anyone from helping him out. Most obviously, the film wants you to try to figure out who, or what, the, casually mentioned, serial killer is. But Don’t Look Now doesn’t want to explain any of these things to you, because if you knew their meaning, you wouldn’t feel so unsettled. And that would just ruin a very good movie.