Byzantium (2012)
Country: US/GB/EIRE
Technical: col/2.35:1 118m
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Daniel Mays, Jonny Lee Miller, Sam Riley, Tom Hollander
Synopsis:
Having gatecrashed her way into a vampire brotherhood, a former prostitute leads a checkered existence down the ages with her daughter, evading their pursuers, and relying on the oldest profession to make ends meet.
Review:
Yet another variation on a theme (here the thumbnail is the bloodletter of choice, rather than the fangs), with the real innovation being that these female usurpers of the right to immortality exercise their powers with greater circumspection: working class radicals and proponents of euthanasia. While this reverses the aristocratic bent of much vampire mythology, and removes the stigma of vampirism as a transmissible disease in favour of a process of initiation, it is hard to say what any of it has to do with 21st century Margate. All the same, one does end up rooting for them rather.
Country: US/GB/EIRE
Technical: col/2.35:1 118m
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Daniel Mays, Jonny Lee Miller, Sam Riley, Tom Hollander
Synopsis:
Having gatecrashed her way into a vampire brotherhood, a former prostitute leads a checkered existence down the ages with her daughter, evading their pursuers, and relying on the oldest profession to make ends meet.
Review:
Yet another variation on a theme (here the thumbnail is the bloodletter of choice, rather than the fangs), with the real innovation being that these female usurpers of the right to immortality exercise their powers with greater circumspection: working class radicals and proponents of euthanasia. While this reverses the aristocratic bent of much vampire mythology, and removes the stigma of vampirism as a transmissible disease in favour of a process of initiation, it is hard to say what any of it has to do with 21st century Margate. All the same, one does end up rooting for them rather.
Country: US/GB/EIRE
Technical: col/2.35:1 118m
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Daniel Mays, Jonny Lee Miller, Sam Riley, Tom Hollander
Synopsis:
Having gatecrashed her way into a vampire brotherhood, a former prostitute leads a checkered existence down the ages with her daughter, evading their pursuers, and relying on the oldest profession to make ends meet.
Review:
Yet another variation on a theme (here the thumbnail is the bloodletter of choice, rather than the fangs), with the real innovation being that these female usurpers of the right to immortality exercise their powers with greater circumspection: working class radicals and proponents of euthanasia. While this reverses the aristocratic bent of much vampire mythology, and removes the stigma of vampirism as a transmissible disease in favour of a process of initiation, it is hard to say what any of it has to do with 21st century Margate. All the same, one does end up rooting for them rather.