PANDAEMONIUM
Reviewed by Harvey Karten USA Films/BBC Films Director: Julien Temple Writer: Frank Cottrell Boyce Cast: Linus Roache, John Hannah, Samanatha Morton, Emily Woof, Emma Fielding, Andy Serkis, Samuel West, Michael N. Harbour, William Scott-Masson, Clive Merrison, Dexter Fletcher, Guy Lankester
There is an ancient critic, Not fond of MTV, "Why don't you like what every tyke Sees while on mother's knee?"
"Oh, that I've tried," the scribe replied, "The editing's too fast, The songs? humdrum; The chatter dumb, I Pick 'Pandaemonium.'
"I hope that doesn't make you cross," The critic then proffered, "Dumb pictures are my albatross, That awful, curs'd bird."
"Enlighten me," said I to he, "Tell me 'bout Coleridge," He said (with mirth); "I'll add Wordsworth, Then ambled to the fridge
He took a beer, then said with cheer, "Get ready to be awed," Projector on, he sauntered on, We saw what he adored.
The film, I'll say, is USA's, A major studio, And now they choose, to spread the news, In entertaining ways.
The audience sees that Julien T's Creation is a gem, 'bout friendship, some; and laudanum, And creativity.
The regisseur, creates a stir, By sharing resonance, Two eras wide, sit side by side, Our own and, too, Romance.
With lacy pace, the yarn takes place In England's Somerset, A chaotic time, in British clime, Two poets face to face.
While Frenchmen fight, two Brits cast light On their alluring world, A vision true of Xanadu, A mariner's tale unfurled.
Imagination has no ration In this poetic story, Jump cuts and fluid rhythms both Enhance the picture's glory.
And so in short, this movie's sort Of entertainment's fine, Competes with Merchant-Ivory's line Of gorgeous scenes of court.
Linus Roache could be a coach Of any Oxford's don, John Lynch's cam portrays this Sam (When drugged he was far gone.)
So reader dear, sit up and cheer, You've got to see this movie, There's quite enough for any buff, "Pandaemonium" is groovy.
Groovy? A period piece about poets who are allegedly not even studied in colleges that have dispensed with dead white males? Yep. Remember that this picture was made by Julien Temple, whose claims to fame include "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle," a 1980 take on Sid Vicious, a cynical doc about the groundbreaking punk-rock band Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols. Among the high points of that charmer is an education in marketing: specifically, how Malcolm McLaren put the group over on the public. This time, Mr. Temple did what he could to shuck the traditional Merchant-Ivory mold of gauze-informed comeliness to show that Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth are not dead white males at all but rather are our contemporaries. Shut out their names and you'd think you were watching a modern version of, say, singing groups who get together, accuse each other of betrayal and fall apart. Think of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis among a host of others who start out with stars in their eyes and end up with back-stabbing perfidy.
When we learned about the English Romantic poets we were taught nothing about their lives. While some say that what writers create should speak for itself, "Pandaemonium" shows how much their lines would be enriched if only we knew what the human beings behind their invention were like. You'd discover that they were not so different from us.
Take Coleridge, for example. As portrayed with wide-eyed ferocity and bemusement by a vibrant Linus Roach, he is both a warning against drug addiction and an plug for its use. How so? When Coleridge took a spot of laudanum, or opium, with water--a drug which was apparently legal in the England of the early 1800s--he saw visions, hallucinations not unlike those experienced by users of LSD. In one nightmarish revelation he spotted a ship returning from a tragic voyage, all its sailors dead of thirst from their inability to reach shore, since their vessel was "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean," and realized that the misadventure occurred when one of its mariners shot an albatross. Since the albatross was a bird of good will, the death of this creature was an attack against nature. Nature fought back and won, compelling the killer to tell his tale to people he met-- obsessively, compellingly. (In a dramatic flash-forward to the present, Temple shows us a quick vision of a seagull, maybe even an albatross, sinking into the muck--a victim of humankind's current rape of nature: Dubya, are you listening?) In yet another drug-soaked dream, Coleridge conjures up Kubla Khan, an emperor from the mystical land of Xanadu, who not only does a stately pleasure dome decree but who makes Coleridge a famous man indeed. Could Sam have done this without the dope? I don't think so. On the other hand, the opium does its best to destroy him.
This tale of friendship, loyalty, betrayal and creativity focuses most intensely on the relationship between a half-crazed Coleridge--who could almost be a being created by the vivid imagination of Ken Russell--and the shy, reticent William Wordsworth with whom he collaborates intending to publish an anonymous book of poetry which eventually gets published as "Lyrical Ballads." Both poets are enraptured by nature, by the sights of England's Somerset which surround them. Wordsworth would eventually put his feelings onto paper with lines such as "The sounding cataract/Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock/The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,/Their colors and their forms, were then to me/An appetite." Yet this man, who could in the same "Tintern Abbey" write in 1798 "That best portion of a good man's life/His little, nameless, unremembered acts/Of kindness and of love," would deceive his naive partner. Wordsworth comes across more like a modern-day capitalist than the communistic idealist who, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, was all for creating a utopia with goats and cows and sheep held in common by the citizenry.
Temple photographs events surrounding this unusual relationship, an affiliation in which Wordsworth's sister Dorothy (Emily Woof), a would-be feminist for her time, makes a big play for Coleridge--notwithstanding's the latter's marriage to Sara (Samantha Morton) and their young child Hartley.
The principal defect in the film is its jaggedness. We get the occasional feeling that we're watching a series of trailers for the movie, but then this is Temple's modus operandi from his "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle" to his most recent "The Filth and the Fury." That cavil aside, Temple portrays the world at the turn of the century as in many ways like today's world in the technological and political changes illustrated by experiments with balloons, electricity and in the case of France with the toppling of the monarchy. In an almost Dogme 95 fashion, he captures the indoor scenes with only the candlelight used by the characters, but when he steps outside, we see the pristine glory of Somerset's hills, whose beauty belies the dirty politics engaged by Wordsworth against his friend and colleague.
Samantha Morton does not have all that much to do as Coleridge's wife and though the villain is supposed to get the best lines, the movie is dominated by Linus Roache's intensity. Emily Woof gets the dominant woman's part in what could be, I suppose, considered villainous, as a Judith-Nathan style family breaker. An bizarre epilogue takes us to the year 2001, an urban center portrayed with a modern, pop soundtrack in contrast to the classical themes throughout the film--yet a final reminder that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Rated PG-13. Running time: 123 minutes. (C) 2001 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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