Thursday, January 31, 2013

Candyman (1992)


Despite a certain critical consensus, Candyman’s lack of genuine recognition amongst the general public has deprived it of any true cult status. Still, it remains one of the key films in postmodern horror and a major contributor in the ongoing (and rather arduous) process of intellectualizing horror cinema. As such, it possesses two major assets: a surprisingly relevant discourse on the dissemination of urban mythologies and a unique social conscience, which manifests in a candid celebration of both the ongoing struggle for race/gender equality, and more specifically, the necessary contribution of women in the realm of cultural studies. Above all, Candyman is a truly collective effort, with everyone in the project carrying out his/her job with the most stellar of professionalism and the most passionate of creative input. The result is a film that should imperatively leave the confines of the slasher sub-genre and enter the respectable arena of upscale, thinking women’s horror cinema.

According to legend(s), Candyman was originally a child born to a rich black industrialist at the turn of the 19th century. After receiving an education fit for a wealthy white youth, he showed promise in the art of painting portraits depicting the decadent aristocracy and their numerous earthly possessions. Notwithstanding the obvious reference to still life painting contained in this description, Candyman would soon prove to be a true prophet of erosion for the people around him. There would be need for a traumatic event to unearth that potential however, and that traumatic event came from a romantic tragedy that occurred soon after the young man was commissioned to capture the virginal beauty of a rich man’s daughter.

Monster or victim? Tony Todd's soft features
make for a sympathetic boogeyman.

As every such story would have it, the painter was so smitten by his subject, that he fell madly in love with her, hence drawing the father’s murderous anger, which would take the shape of a nasty assassination plot. Hired by the old man, a group of thugs then proceeded to corner the young painter and saw off his hand with a rusty blade, much to the indifference of the locals. After depriving him of the initial source of his transgression, his painterly hand, the thugs then stripped Candyman and attacked the second source of his transgression, his youthful body, on which they smeared honey combs stolen from nearby hives. After being consumed by myriads of bee stings, the young man became a local boogeyman, whose legacy is comprised of an untold number of corpses popping up in the projects near the execution site. To this day, his legend has persisted and has struck fear into the hearts of the locals, with little interest invested in his lover, who is about to emerge and claim her due through the body of a gorgeous young scholar, Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen). And so the battle for gender representation rages on…

As with any film with such intellectual breadth, the opening sequence is key to understanding the narrative. Being a series of overhead shots featuring the busy highways surrounding Chicago accompanied by the monumental music of neo-classic composer Philip Glass, this sequence immediately compels us to think about the nature of urban mythologies. The interlocking roads taken by the vehicles and their drivers, the constant intersection of thoughts that they suggest, this amounts to a blueprint of urban existence. Life in the city is thus shown as a series of close encounters giving us a desperately partial understanding of all others, living their lives only through stories and hear-say, but sharing the same reality nonetheless.

A simple and effective opening scene is key to
unleashing the symbolic power of the film.

This idea of hear-say and the broken chain of knowledge becomes even more obvious as the following sequence opens, and we hear Tony Todd’s mesmerizing voice suggesting an apocalyptical truth to a very receptive Virginia Madsen (thus foreshadowing the second half of the film). The young woman herself, despite being cut off from Candyman’s actual voice is totally engulfed in his legend, which comes to her through layers and layers of half-truths, which intersects like the cars on the highway. “Everybody knows the story”, a young woman says to Madsen’s tape recorder before she proceeds to deliver a tale originating from her “roommate’s boyfriend”. Apparently, there was a girl and a baby that were killed by Candyman, who was drawn to the scene when the girl uttered his name five times in front of the bathroom mirror. Now, this story belongs solely to the realm of urban legends, but its relevance lies elsewhere than in its potential veracity, namely in the many layers surrounding the legend: the four degrees of separation between victim and storyteller, the tape recorder that crystallizes the story, and most importantly, Madsen’s character itself, which will later become a physical vessel for the story. All these layers are important because they contribute to keep the myth alive, to enlarge and disseminate it, and allow it to be kept alive at the intersection of several minds (the very same minds that kept brushing each other during the opening sequence).

Interestingly enough, these layers soon start to dispel once Helen starts delving lower and lower in the social strata, and closer to the source of the legend, that is the crass poor neighborhood of Cabrini Green, where the execution site is located, and where the story of the mirror originated from the real-life murder of one Ruthie Jean. The fear-gripped poor are apparently more sensible to the idea of a boogeyman than the well-thinking rich. But this proves to be another false lead in the pursuit of Candyman, as we begin to understand that the poor and the rich share more than what first appeared. Rich and poor, despite their contrasting lifestyles, which are amply polarized within the narrative, all share a common humanity and with it two major tenets that allow the stories surrounding boogeymen to take roots: fear and spirituality.

It is no coincidence that the film is set in Chicago, the birthplace of American sociology, and the stomping ground of the US’ only black president. After all, it is primordially interested in the effects of segregation between the black poor and the rich white. By reuniting them in fear, director/writer Rose manages to break boundaries and enlighten the narrow mindset of the common horror film spectator. By using the depth of field to highlight the social cleavage between the people living in the projects (shown in the foreground) and the people living in the downtown skyscrapers (shown in the far background), he greatly emphasizes the distance between people of different economical backgrounds, the poorer of which are all black and the richer of which are almost all white. By further framing the squalid interiors of the projects to a large extent, almost all of which are textbook examples of urban deliquescence, director Rose creates a very grim portrait of life in the slums, especially when compared with life downtown. On the other hand, by likening the architecture of the protagonists’ apartment complex and the Cabrini Green projects, it becomes clear that the cleavage between the rich and poor is merely plaster-thin (or skin-deep) in some regards. This fact is reiterated by Helen’s visit into the cute, middle-class apartment of Anne-Marie McCoy, protruding from the dirty projects like a healthy thumb amidst a series of sore fingers.

Only through the world of myths are
the rich and poor united.

And while the question of class cleavage is eventually resolved through the universality of fear and the human condition, Helen’s initial contention to the effect that the Candyman legend is a way for the disenfranchised poor to cope with the horror permeating their daily lives (while it is simultaneously dismissed by well-thinking white scholars) is even more interesting. Obviously, myths are universal and quite deeply ingrained in the human psyche, but historically, they’ve been more closely associated with the ignorant poor, who struggle to find a reason for their situation while the knowledgeable rich manufacture those myths so as to keep the poor at their mercy. I don’t mean to sound like a bigot, but I’m certain that if one were to make a survey, they would surely realize that faith is greater amongst the disenfranchised, uneducated poor than in the rich, educated communities. Obviously, this would seem to provide a fertile soil from which myths could sprout. But the truth of the matter is, as we are led to understand, that no matter what attitude one might entertain toward any myth, both rich and poor are equally determined in the dissemination thereof. If the rich man (or woman) would rather learn of myths through essays and lectures, then the poor could still liven them orally, through street art, etc. In that sense, we realize that the lecture given by an eminent professor during a dinner party at an upscale restaurant is of equal relevance than the many graffiti featuring the foreboding warning “Sweets for the sweet” or the shit-covered arrow that points to a toilet bowl for of buzzing bees. They all contribute in their own way to the livelihood of the Candyman legend. They all express a common reality that we come to share through the simple, and universally human act of believing.

More important than the racial/social question here is the question of gender, its reality within academia and its importance within the world of myths. In our discussion thereof, we shan’t overlook the importance of Virgina Madsen’s body and classical beauty within the narrative, as opposed to the plain, ethereal look of her professor hubby and the hulking, yet disembodied presence of the specter himself (Tony Todd in a star-making performance that focuses on his soft, mesmerizing voice and imposing stature rather than any real acting chops). From the very beginning of the film, it is obvious that protagonist Helen and co-worker Bernadette Walsh (Kasi Lemmons) are stuck in academic limbo, struggling to remove scraps of information from horny undergrads in deserted classrooms, while constantly remaining in the shadow of influential male professors, such as Helen’s husband Trevor (Xander Berkeley, Todd Voight from Terminator 2). It makes for a shocking contrast to see Helen exit a quiet pint-sized classroom to enter a large auditorium full of avid students laughing at the witty remarks made by her husband. It is especially shocking to see that both husband and wife share the same field of interest, namely the study of urban myths. But it is even more shocking to realize that Trevor is actually feeding off Helen’s research, proving once more that behind every great man is a great woman. But that woman will eventually take to the foreground by achieving some truly hands-on research and engaging the myth in a truly self-sacrificing way. The result is a true rise to grace, a revolutionary liberation from the shackles of flesh and the ultimate induction of the protagonist in the disembodied world of ideas.

Helen stuck in "academic limbo".

As embodied by the gorgeous Virginia Madsen, Helen proves to be quite a woman, both in her fearlessly inquisitive mind and her voluptuous body. Because while the male scholars in her immediate surroundings have all managed to trade their ingrate corporeal selves for purely intellectual selves, Helen is very much the prisoner of her own flesh as both the object of the male gaze and of male violence. Her nude or bloodied body is constant proof of her finite existence, especially when confronted with the dire perspective of falling into “academic limbo” (hence having her intellectual self truly vanish along with her physical self). By toiling to achieve some legitimate hands-on research in the slums, she eventually puts her physical self at risk, trading the reality of her corporeal existence for a lasting place in academia. Unfortunately, her bruised sculptural body trumps her intellectual worth in many regards, making her an object of desire for Candyman, and an object of curiosity for the press (with her essay gaining popularity right after she is attacked by Cabrini Green thugs). In the end, Helen literally sacrifices her physical shell for a place in urban mythology, reaching the world of ideas through a necessary roundabout. Such a conclusion necessarily prompts many questions as to the actual sexual politics of the film, but these are all necessary questions, engaged in creating a truly open ending that will luckily refresh the crucial debate concerning gender representation in horror cinema.

It would be hard to review the film without mentioning some technical points, starting with the nearly necessary contribution of Philip Glass’ memorable score to the haunting atmosphere cultivated by director Rose. By drawing from liturgical litanies, it gives the film a truly epic quality, allowing our contemporary myths to gain an everlasting quality while simultaneously highlighting the tragedy inherent to life in the slums. It’s also rare to see a “vulgar” horror film befitted with the work of such a renowned composer as Glass. As I mentioned in my opening statement, it’s rare for a film of this ilk to include such a high amount of stellar craftsmanship. Aside from the sheer depth of the screenplay and its earnest concern for social symbolism, Candyman also benefits from the inspired work of its many different artisans, starting with the actors, who all contribute their fair share to the creation of complex, true-to-life characters. With wondrous locales, which perfectly capture the decay inherent to the slums, the film is also a marvel to look at, and a testament to both efficient photography and art direction. The creation of an impressionistic mindscape for Helen, achieved through symbolic editing, further transforms the film into a reflection of her own interiority, thus highlighting her crucial presence as both a vessel and disseminator of ideas. All of these elements vie to create a rich landscape on which to inscribe the rich symbolism inherent to the screenplay.

 Helen eventually escapes the shackles of corporeality,
but what does that say about the film's gender politics?

All in all, Candyman is a truly superior entry in the canon of postmodern horror and one of the key films of the 1990s. Its refreshingly complex and socially conscious screenplay adapted from Clive Barker’s The Forbidden gives unforeseen depth to the narrative and the obvious dedication of the crew gives it the appropriate framework in which to expand. With both Virginia Madsen and Tony Todd contributing memorable figures to the ever-growing roster of film specters, Candyman will forever hold some staying power. Its further contribution to the academic discourse surrounding gender representation is also highly commendable, and far removed from the normal concerns of slasher films. A great success by any stretch of the imagination.

4/5   A haunting film with a real social conscience that encompasses both race and gender issues, Candyman proves to be a major entry in the canon of postmodern horror.