DEATH ON THE SCREEN

             Death has always been someting of a puzzle, for me. It is the thing I fear the most. I fear it because, the way I see it, it is the end of all things: of life, first of all, of physical sensations, of consciousness and thought. The end of a living being as a whole. Unlike many people, I do not believe that we move on to a better world and we continue our lives free from our mortal coil. I believe, though, that science will be able to explain the entire mistery of Life and Death, eventually... Meanwhile, I have a rather romantic approach on the subject, where my personal experiences are concerned. I see Death as a character.
For that reason, perhaps, I always found it fascinating how Art in general, and Cinema in particular, portrays Death. 

       If one pictures Death as the end of all things, a realistic portray, one immediatly thinks of movies from a certain period. Actually, such periods come in clcles. In 1939, Bette Davis portrays an hedonistic woman who ends up suffering from brain cancer, in Edmond Goulding's Dark Victory. Then, in 1983, James L. Brooks directs Terms of Endearment about a married woman, played by Debra Winger, with three children who is disapointed in her unfaithful husband and finds out she has breast cancer. Then, in 1993 Jonathan Demme overwhelmes the audiences with Philadelphia, a drama about a homosexual man, a oscar winner performance by Tom Hanks, who contracts AIDS. 

Debra Winger starring in James L. Brooks, Terms of Endearment

         In these movies, Death is not offered the role of a character. It is a mere condition. People know they will die from the disease they suffer from. They will die and they will be no more. The world will go on without them. These plots were meant for tears and suffering of the audiences who will not be rewarded, in the end, with a miracle cure. 

        Then, there is a variation on the same theme. People will die, the world will continue without them but their spirit will go on and, in some cases, it interferes with the people they leave behind, for the better or for the worse, In 1945, David Lean presents Blithe Spirit, a delightful comedy about a happily married widower, Rex Harrison, who finds himself haunted by the wicked spirit of his dead first wife. As the story progresses, his second wife suffers the same fate as his first, dying in a car accident. The two wives, now, haunt him and will not rest until he joins them, as a ghost himself, after a fatal crash. Later, in 1989, Steven Spielberg directs Always, a loving romantic drama about a firefighter pilot, Richard Dreyfuss, who dies in the line of duty, leaving behind an unconsolable girlfriend. Realizing that he is dead and a spirit, he is explained by a deity that he must, now, use his energy for the good of others, which means inspiring a young pilot and finding a new love for his girlfriend. Finally, in 2001, Alexandro Aménabar releases The Others, a horror movie about a woman, NIcole Kidman, living alone in an old victorian house with her two children, who suffer from a rare disease. When a group of servants ask her for a job, she starts to suspect that the house is haunted and the servants keep it a secret. The climax is reached when she discovers that she is, in fact, haunted by the living, being herself, her children and the servants dead as the result of a horrible tragic event. As she discovers that her dead children are no longer sick, for their spirits are free from earthly sufferings, she finds the happiness she had long lost. 

Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond and Rex Harrison in David Lean's Blithe Spirit

         Again, Death still does not appear as a character, in these movies, but a condition from which no living being can escape. In fact, in neither of these three movies Death comes as something fearful, terrible. There is a continuation of the individual in a dimention where thought and freewill still exist. 

           

           As a character, Death comes in several forms. Traditional or less traditional, it has haunted the screen for many decades. It even comes in imaginary forms, for actual characters, a product of their fears or group histeria. An ordinary indivudual can be seen by the rest of a group as the encarnation of Death, as Manuel Guimarães portrayed in Crime da Aldeia Velha (1964, Murder in the Old Village): a young beautiful woman, played by Barbara Laage, is coveted by all the men in a small village. At first, she is welcomed by the other women in their everyday lives. But, then, men become violent fighting over her and strange tragic deaths begin to occur to people she relates to, including a small baby she holds for a moment. The people from the small village now believe she encarnates Death and is a danger to any person who comes near her. Another similar approach, though Death comes as something good, appears in the French mini-series Les Misérables (2000), directed by Josée Dayan, based on Victor Hugo's novel.  As Jean Valjean, played by Gerard Depardieu, lies dying in his bed, an old man, he perceives his adopted daughter, Virginie Ledoyen, in her white night gown and long dark hair, lighting candles. When she turns to smile at him, Jean Valjean mistakes her for Death and comments on her beauty. 

Barbara Laage (on the right) in Manuel Guimarães' Crime da Aldeia Velha

                Martin Brest presents a slightly different view on the theme, in 1998, with Meet Joe Black. Death, played by Brad Pit, comes in a Human form and turns into an actually flesh and blood person, for a while. He uses the body of a young man, whom he kills in a runover, to be able to interact with the living. Death is the taker of life but also the giver of life. By realizing the dead young man was to become the love of a girl's life, he releases the body and brings it back. In Lubitsch's Heaven can wait, 1943, Death comes in the humanoid figure of the Devil himself, played by Laird Cregar, a rather nice and understading character, with no tolerance, nevertheless, where ugly women were concerned. Ingmar Bergman also uses a Human shape to represent Death, perfomed by Benkt Ekerot, in The Seventh Seal, 1957. The entire movie builds around a chessgame, during which, the life or death of a knight is decided.

Brad Pit in Martin Brest's Meet Joe Black

         In 1948, Orson Welles's Cinema version of William Shakespeare's Macbeth show the Morai -- the three witches from Greek Mithology who controlled the mother thread of life of every mortal from birth to death -- appearing in the opening scene. They represent Death, in fact, since Death and Murder are the theme of the drama. Half Human, half strange creatures, they are frightening for they hold the power of life and death and their terrible physical aspect is a reminder of the fact. John Carpenter also prefered the terrible aspect of Death's impersonation in 1980's Fog, a horror movie that pictures a small village haunted by the ghosts of dead sailors who rise from the sea to revenge their doom, taking the lives of the villagers. Like Death itself, they do not take lives by chance. In a way, they kill those who are meant to die, knocking on every door and only attacking people who opened it. By opening the door, the character is answering the call of Death and Fate. The symbolism of Death as a character is there by the use of the scythe that one can guess by the silluette of the killer veiled by the fog. And last, but not least, Woody Allen's Death and Love, 1975 shows Death as the conventional character covered in a whote sheet, carrying a scythe, in a non-conventional comedy inpired by Tolstoy's War and Peace masterpiece. Death appears not as something evil, nor good, nor compassionate, nor resentless, but simply indiferent to the living to whom he simply leads the way -- the closest impersonation of my own image of... Death.

Woody Allen, on the left, in Woody Allen's Love and Death