Watched the new sci-fi mind-bender Elizabeth Harvest last night on Netflix. It’s by the Venezuelan writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez, who also wrote Gothika some time back. I thought this new one was pretty good. Wouldn’t want to watch it again anytime soon.
Without giving away the plot, the acting is good. Ciaran Hinds, the lead male actor, has an expressive quality that can convey either world-weary heroism or amoral villainy (Alan Rickman had a similar “aura”). Hinds plays a renowned scientist with questionable morals; he speaks dubious aphorisms like “the measure of an action is its consequences” and “you’re either a torturer or tortured in life–be a torturer.” The lead actress, Abbey Lee, is lithe almost to the point of consumption. Her appearance may be meant as a sign of the effects of the doting but also controlling attention she gets from her newlywed husband.
The movie reminded me of two works of literature. First is Robert Browning’s 1842 poem “My Last Duchess.” In the poem, Browning offers a dramatic monologue spoken by an aristocrat, based on a real Italian duke, whose wife has died and who is courting another woman. The duke shows his new romantic interest a portrait of the deceased wife remarking, “She had/A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,/Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er/She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.” Then ominously he adds, “This grew; I gave commands;/Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands/As if alive.” Gutierrez’s film similarly deals with a jealous serial monogamist.
But the film also addresses desire for recapturing an idealized past, what Hinds’ character calls the “euphoria” he felt with his first wife. In that, it is reminiscent of The Great Gatsby where the narrator Nick Carraway warns Gatsby about his obsession with Daisy Buchanan, “I wouldn’t ask too much of her: You can’t repeat the past,” and Gatsby replies, “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can! I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before. She’ll see.”
You know how that turned out.