The Wolfman
2010, directed by Joe Johnston
I’m very fond of werewolves and I’m not sure why. Hollywood has never done a particularly good job at portraying them. Lon Chaney Jr.’s Universal The Wolfman (1941) isn’t a good film. It’s laboriously long with little to thrill over and a rather daft looking werewolf who only makes brief appearances. And Universal’s countless sequels and spin-offs were no better. If anything, it’s the atmosphere of these early films that captured my attention: the foggy sound stages full of black twisty trees, the stark black and white photography, the blinding moonlight and deep shadows, and the melodramatic, trilling music. If the content could have followed the form, these films would have been gothic masterpieces.
Universal’s new Wolfman is a heavily revised retelling of the original film. Our ill-fated hero, Lawrence Talbot, played broodingly by Benicio Del Toro, is still an American accented son of a wealthy British landowner who returns home to his father’s vast mansion, but this time it’s because his brother has been mysteriously and gruesomely murdered. The love interest has changed from a random village girl to the dead brother’s fiance, who is in mourning, but also seems to be increasingly interested in Talbot. As Lawrence investigates, he finds that a strange monster is loose on the grounds, and murdering everyone it can get it’s claws on. His father, played by the great Anthony Hopkins, is unperturbed by the whole series of events, and after Lawrence is infected by the werewolf’s bite, tells his son the awful truth. This plot twist, which I won’t reveal here, is new to the 2010 version and adds a level of drama that was non-existent in the original film. Lawrence is locked up, escapes, and terrorizes an increasing number of hapless victims as the feared Wolfman. He confronts his rival in a goofy battle reminiscent of a WWF smack-down, and is finally hunted down by the police, dying tragically in his lovers arms. Pretty standard stuff.
The Good:
I really liked the visuals in this film. There were a series of lunar time lapses that were clearly CG but were still quite stunning, and the classic werewolf images from antiquity were all there, bound in large leather volumes that the heroine studies in a sequence respectful of the historical aspect of werewolf mythology. (They actually used some of the same images that I used in my werewolf film!) The set design was fittingly gothic, with large dark cobwebbed halls and primal moonlit forests, and I was particularly pleased by a scene in the heroine’s London antique shop, copied with loving detail from the original film. The acting is also quite good, with Hopkin’s delivering a particularly humorous and haunting performance, and Benicio Del Toro playing a fittingly likable yet tragic hero.
The Bad:
The violence is way over the top. I kind of admire the “guts” the director and his team had to go so far. Based on the werewolf mythology I’ve studied, werewolves really were said to be quite ferocious, tearing their victims to tiny pieces. Creatures of demonic power, their violence was supposed to be supernaturally terrible. This then may be the most “accurately” rendered werewolf film, but that doesn’t make the violence dramatically effective or realistic. A lack of realism is what really kills the violence here. The CG crew had a lot of fun showing every muscle and organ that the werewolf’s tearing claws reveal, but realistically speaking, none of these organs would be visible under such bloody wounds, The sharpness and detail of these renderings scream “fake.” Also, the violence is so extreme that it ends up being more humorous than scary, the random dismembering of victims reminding me of the black knight in Monty Python and The Holy Grail. I almost expected one of the victims to shout “It’s only a flesh wound!”
I think overall the CG nature of of The Wolfman compromised it’s believability and drama. Though Del Toro’s werewolf costume was mostly prosthetic make-up, his super-human pace and flying leaps were clearly animated. His London escapades in particular were quite “pixely.” I think the reason people have always been enthralled by the original Wolfman is because of it’s physical realness. Lon Chaney Jr. is the Wolfman, make-up, movement and all. His humanoid limitations, and slow lopping pace made him that much more human, and that much more frightening. When Del Toro and his rival werewolf go at it, bouncing off walls and flying through the air like super-human martial arts warriors, that humanity is lost, and only the unreal movie monster remains.