whollybooks‡
“The House was modelled on the Cabinets of Curiosities of Europe”, Guillermo del Torro tells us as he gives you a brief tour of what he calls ‘Bleak House’, a vast collection of objects strange, wonderful, eerie and horrifying (as befits the director of some of the best and most original horror movies made in our time, Cronos being one of them.) “Each object is meant to try and provoke a shock to the system and get circulating the lifeblood of the imagination, which I think is curiosity.”
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Curiosity and imagination were qualities Sir Thomas Browne did not lack, but had in abundance.
In the Bibliotheca Abscondita, his imagination wandered to places and subjects human beings at that time were not yet able to visit or inspect or explore.
To some extent you might say both his imagination and curiosity ran away with him, but the journey he undertakes is still a fascinating and fruitful one. In an era when knowledge, of the scholarly and esoteric variety moved round a relatively closed and restricted circuit, his writings quickly became sought after in Europe.
And in later times (Thomas Browne lived 1605 – 1682), the same flights of fancy, and scientific and technological developments, would gradually lead to the realization of what in the 17th century could only be fantasy and dream.
An example from the Chapter ‘Rarities in Pictures’:
“Large Submarine Pieces, well delineating the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, the Prerie or large Sea-meadow upon the Coast of Provence, the Coral Fishing, the gathering of Sponges, the Mountains, Valleys and Desarts, the Subterraneous Vents and Passages at the bottom of that Sea ; the passage of Kircherus in his Iter Submarinus when he went down about Egypt, and rose again in the Red Sea. Together with a lively Draught of Cola Pesce, or the famous Sicilian Swimmer, diving into the Voragos and broken Rocks by Charybdis, to fetch up the golden Cup, which Frederick, King of Sicily, had purposely thrown into that Sea.”
The etching is by Albrecht Dûrer
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“Bleak House” intrigues me. And nice to see “Cronos” namechecked; it doesn’t happen often.
“Pan’s Labyrinth” remains a film imprinted on my memories, such was its juxtapositioning of Civil War and grim [sic] Fairy Tale.
Same goes for del Torro’s “The Devil’s Backbone” and its redefintion of ghost stories in cinema.
PS: Perhaps more disturbing than “Pan’s” itself is that it’s already seven years old. Woah.
Del Torro is also the only director who, in my humble opinion, can bring Lovecraft successfully to the big screen.
He is quoted as saying he hasn’t given up on his ‘dreamproject’ ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ and that he was going to “try one more time. Once more into the dark Abyss. We’re gonna to do a big presentation at the start of the year and see if any studios are interested.”
Fingers crossed!
It was Universal (in spite of James Cameron as producer) who wasn’t prepared to risk so much money on a ‘hardcore’ horror movie.
Fingers crossed indeed. A cinematic adaption of “At The Mountains Of Madness” has been a pet wish of mine for many years, and you’re right – if del Torro helms it there is a greater prospect of not going the way of popcorn exploitation cinema such as the Brian Yuzna/Stuart Gordon Lovecraft efforts.
I can only think of Mr Lynch as another potential candidate, but that’s probably unlikely now.
By the way, the snippets from the “Ghost Town London” project are deliciously fascinating. I can readily taste and smell the 80s aura dripping from them.
Thinking further, Cronenberg could be a shoo-in. Anyone who successfuly adapts Burroughs for a mainstream audience must surely have a few tricks and ideas up their sleeve for selling a faithful HP project to the big suits. But twenty years have elapsed since “The Naked Lunch”, and the execs play things much more ‘safely’ now, sadly.
Cinema needs a shake-up and injection of risk again – in much the same way that a pack of fresh directors reinvigorated the early 70s scene off the back of the 60s cultural explosion, enjoying unprecedented freedom of choice with minimal studio tampering.
(No doubt the Beat writers were a massive influence on this shift, themselves just as rebellious twenty years earlier, the successful mid-60s “Naked Lunch” trial a vital turning point for freedom of expression in both literature and film.)