FROM HELL, the movie, tells the tale of the Ripper murders,
from the point of view of Inspector Abberline, a policeman
who gets oracular visions which help him track down the
killer. Unlike Abberline, however, the people behind this
film seem to suffer from a staggering lack of vision.
This movie manages to combine the intellectual depth of a
Harlequin romance with the subtle, understated elegance
of a sledgehammer to the head. Hollywood must be very sure
that its target audience for this film consists of cretins,
since it spells out everything in heavy, unambivalent terms.
Good is good, bad is bad, and never the gray shall be.
The characters quickly devolve into a bunch of cliches, with
little or nothing to give them their own voice. Abberline,
the good, kind, always politically correct policeman,
doggedly tracking down the murderer against all odds.
Godley, the sergeant who's unswervingly loyal to his officer.
Mary Kelly, the hooker with the heart of gold. The brutal London mob.
The supercilious, class-conscious elite. Single-note stereotypes, all.
Horror is depicted more by the addition of copious gore
rather than any acting performance; subtlety is well and
truly disposed of, as far as this film's concerned. The players
are reduced to solid black and clear-cut white, eliminating
any silly, distracting hues of gray.
On the flip side, it does have some beautiful imagery; one
particularly striking one was the Ripper's grapes, which
(in Abberline's visions) begin pulsating, like the beating
of several hearts. The settings are well-constructed, and
the lighting effects excellent. The cinematography is, in fact,
deserving of a much better plot than it's been dealt; the
result being a movie that comes across as all style and
no substance. There are also some decent acting performances
from Ian Holm, Robbie Coltrane and Johnny Depp, working as
best they can within the limits of the roles dealt them.
However, if plot or characterization are of much consideration,
then this movie probably isn't for you.
Viewed as a stand-alone movie, it's a hideously
unsubtle plot, bolstered by some very pretty imagery.
As an adaptation of the graphic novel by Alan Moore
and Eddie Campbell, however, it fails colossally.
In adaptations of books to cinema, it's not unusual
to have some elements dropped, and others added, as
the tale transitions between the two media.
Here, however, the film alters its standpoint considerably,
converting an elegant construct to a gory slasher movie;
and the elements of the book that did make it in
stand out as garish, incongruous additions to the mix.
they make little or no overall sense with regard to the
theme of the film.
"If a gun is on the mantle in the first act,
it must go off in the third." - Anton Chekhov
This adaptation suffers badly from trying to desperately
squeeze in cool points of the original book, without
necessarily seeing if it fits into the new framework
of the film. Take the case of John Merrick, the Elephant
Man. His appearance in the book served to further heighten
the hellishness of that London and further, he served as a
faux-Ganesha to mark an auspicious beginning to Gull's
endeavours. In the film, his appearance serves no purpose
beyond consuming a minute's worth of celluloid; aside from
having appeared in the book, the sequence is an absolutely
worthless appendage to the structure of the film.
The sole redeeming factor to this movie is that it will hopefully
have added to the bank accounts of Mr. Moore and Campbell,
and encourage them to produce more of their excellent work.
By itself, however, it fails on almost every level save an
example of "there-but-for-the-Grace-of-God-go-I".
Review (c) Bala Menon , 2001