Feature
Dying To Love You
Becky Bartlett lights the candles, puts on The Cure and embraces the romance of the afterlife
Death. Depending on one’s beliefs, it may or may not be the end. In cinema, death is so often gruesome, gory, painful, shockingly unexpected or gloriously inevitable. Death means we tumble off this mortal coil, bid adieu to our earthly bodies and hopefully get a pleasant epitaph and some black-clad mourners. We don’t want to die; it’s something we naturally fear. But sometimes, death is not just about dying. It can be the most romantic thing in the world.
It all began with William Shakespeare. We know the story - two star-crossed lovers, finally united in death. Alive, they could not be together, but in death, Romeo and Juliet were free from the social and familial constraints. The story is the greatest ever told, immortalising its characters forever. Of the many film adaptations, Franco Zeffirelli in 1968 and Baz Luhrmann in 1996 captured the timeless romance perfectly, proving no matter when this doomed couple existed, their tragic tale remains eternal, devastating and utterly, achingly romantic.
Gothic romance transcends death. It transcends horror, revealing its characters as tormented, desperate and erotic beings. Some characters may have lost their humanity, but the romance remains. Nosferatu was not an overtly romantic creature - bald, silent, inhuman - yet his existence was tragic, and his infatuation with a woman caused his demise. Max Schreck was a strange looking soul in reality; legend has it he really was one of the undead. Whatever the truth, Nosferatu was the beginning of one of the most famous characters in cinema: the vampire.
From Bela Lugosi’s piercing gaze and come-hither fingers to Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt’s flouncing campness, vampires are sublimely sexual beings. They are unnaturally beautiful night-time creatures who can offer the kiss of immortality. They are eternal, and their love is equally everlasting; they are not bound by human rules and trap their helpless victims in their gaze until one has no choice but to submit completely. Of course, there are the evil blood-suckers - John Carpenter’s vamps or those in 30 Days of Night are more feral than feeling - but it is impossible to consider vampires without accepting the underlying eroticism of their character. Now, thanks to a teen phenomenon born of a Mormon author and the atmospheric directing of Catherine Hardwicke, the vampire has transcended horror completely. Twilight has embedded the vampire’s roots firmly in romance, with Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart) playing the new, supernatural star-crossed lovers. No mention of stakes through the heart, no coffins and cobwebs or bodies unearthed - just a shimmering beauty and a tightly-wound, erotically-charged self-enforced restraint to make all the girls go giddy with gothic glee.
Romantic death is not just the realm of the vampire. The unofficial rule of thumb seems to be thus: maintain one’s looks (or increase one’s beauty) in death, keep the essence of one’s humanity combined with newfound supernatural power and the crowd’s knees will surely go weak. In 1994 Brandon Lee proved that a reanimated corpse could appeal to heart of the masses in The Crow. It was a tragic story both onscreen and in life - after a gang of men rape and murder Eric Draven’s new wife before unceremoniously throwing him out a window to his death, he returns one year later to avenge his love’s death. Draven is brutal, and his actions the product of complete vengeance and torment more than evil or cruelty - they got what they deserved, is the message here. In reality, Lee died during filming after an accident on set, adding a tinge of true sadness and regret to the film. A generation of angst-driven counter-culture youths grabbed The Crow with both hands and claimed it as their own - the epitome of the misunderstood, tortured soul, with a rousing, heavy soundtrack to boot.
Although the idea of romantic death seems most fittingly aimed at a grownup audience, it is not always the case. If Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze) in Ghost is the spectral love interest for adults, Casper is undoubtedly his young counterpart. He knows they cannot be together, but that doesn’t stop Casper from loving, truly loving, Kat (Christina Ricci). His affection is rewarded, finally, with one brief night as a human again, culminating in a kiss - a more romantic symbol than any raunchy pottery class. Tim Burton, too, creates a gothic world that appeals to both children and adults alike, and his macabre characters are almost always misunderstood, loving beings. From Edward Scissorhands to Corpse Bride, Burton reminds his viewers that dead things can need love too.
So the recurring theme is death and love, but the effectiveness of the concept must be accredited to something else, something immortalised by Shakespeare. The emotion is not found in death, but the impossibility of a happy ending. The romance is in the tragedy of the stories. The characters cannot find peace and their happily-ever-after with obstacles like an aversion to sunlight, a non-corporeal body or a mission of revenge or redemption hanging over their heads. Death cannot be avoided, it cannot be altered, it will not listen to pleas. These characters love, but their love is impossible, unnatural, and just like our original star-crossed pair it is only with absolute death - non-existence on the earthly plain - that they can find happiness in their love. For never was a story of more woe than this of poor Juliet and her Romeo - and the vampires, and the ghosts, and the undead.
Becky Bartlett