by Pirx » Wed Sep 13, 2006 8:24 am
The Horror in the Clay<br>The Call of Cthulhu is inspired by old-time cinema<br><br><br>by Kevin Crowe<br><br>"My people don’t hold with no police in normal times,” says the bayou man in the cinematic interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu. “But they’s something bad out there. Evil. This ain’t jest some voodoo cult—this is the devil hisself.”<br><br>Lovecraft, who died back in 1937, is remembered for his ability to mix disparate styles into a coherent metanarrative. As is the case with much of Lovecraft’s work, he constructed his own historical mythos by layering multiple narratives on top of one another, an effect he was fond of calling the “Yog Sothothery.” It can be slightly disconcerting to read through Lovecraft’s narratological strata, because his works force his audience to find the subtle similarities, to make their own connections. It’s disconcerting at times, but always worthwhile. Because of this densely packed and often-esoteric approach to storytelling, it’s been argued that Lovecraft simply does not translate well onto film.<br><br>His fans argue that, ever since the invention of the talkies, any cinematic adaptation would immediately lose Lovecraft’s signature wordplay, which would ultimately sacrifice the haunting, dark passages that make his fiction so timeless.<br><br>“What has risen may sink, and what has sank may rise,” Lovecraft once wrote. “We hear its call and await our inevitable doom.”<br><br>The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, headquartered in Glendale, Calif., has made a noble attempt to bring The Call of Cthulhu to life on the screen as a newfangled silent film, adapting ancient silver-screen wizardry to use in conjunction with modern, computerized movie magic.<br><br>They called it “Mythoscope,” as they redressed their high-quality digital video as grainy, faded film stock. Many of the techniques used not only give this film a bygone cinematic feel, they also saved the filmmakers money because they were able to use miniatures to simulate the hellish city of R’lyeh and the cultic pyre in a Louisiana bayou. Every scene has a well-worn, archival feel, like it’s something you’re not supposed to see, like you’ve stumbled upon forbidden documentation of cosmic barbarism, and the end of mankind.<br><br>“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh,” the cultists roar, totally incomprehensible, “Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’ nagl fhtagu.”<br><br>A common theme in many of Lovecraft’s stories is the belief that the human mind cannot fully comprehend the cosmos. But, at the same time, the desire to know, to piece together the vast intricate tapestry of time is always driving us. Metaphysics are never terribly far out of Lovecraft’s mind.<br><br>The same questions are never far from the filmmakers’ minds either. And the slideshow quality of silent films, the breakdown of the ongoing narrative into manageable vignettes interrupted by brief, prosaic slides, allow for Lovecraft’s distinct voice to guide the story as our minds attempt to piece together and connect the various layers, always searching for that brief moment of clarity. The question throughout the movie is, quite simply, will there ever be any real meaning? Will we be shown an interpretation of the cosmos that finally makes sense?<br><br>The movie jumps from the present to 1925, to 1908, finally oscillating at regular intervals between 1925 and the present. Psychotherapy sessions, newspaper clippings, the geological timescale, research notes, journal entries, cultic practices, dreams, backwoods rumors, cuneiform tablets, human sacrifices, an island in the south Pacific, alien substances, a Norwegian named Johansen and, just when you thought that Lovecraft couldn’t jam anything else onto his plotline, we get beings that come from the stars, eons before mankind. Each element rides different storylines, daring us to search for entropic equilibrium when it all comes together. In the end, we’re left with the same questions. Maybe there is no meaning. Maybe that’s the point of it all. Those who spend their lives searching for the infinite connections only find paranoia and more crippling uncertainty.<br><br>The reoccurring theme is, Burn it! The journey isn’t worth it.<br><br>To bring everything together, there is no catharsis, no great beatitude—all revelations fade into a babbling stream, washed clean to a blank slate. Lovecraft was always messing with our heads, proffering ephemeral moments of clarity, those moments when we think we actually know something profound. For Lovecraft, there’s only a warning: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate its own contents.<br><br>“Someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light to the peace and safety of a new dark age.”<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.metropulse.com/movies/guru.shtml">link</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
