Day 182: Interview with The Vampire: The Vampire Chroncles (September, 7)

The first things first: I haven't seen Interview with The Vampire before this day. Why state this right at the beginning of this post? Because I'm not sure why I didn't watch it on 1994, when it premiered.

At that time, I had graduated one year before. As final project, one friend and I had presented a work about Vampires. We weren't obliged by the curriculum do to that. It was a recent requirement at our college, and we thought it would important writing a monograph, even if it wouldn't be considered as a final project. Looking from now, I see that we did really good, and without any supervisor, just with our wish to research about a  myth that was intriguing. A work wrote by four hands, by handwriting, in my friend's kitchen table, during great debates about the subject. Because Dracula had such an impact on us in 1992, we decided to write about the symbolic image of vampires at our own time, confronting it with the movie. In order to write it, my friend and I had to recur to a German Language School library to see Murnau's 1992 movie. Vampires were not so popular at the time, the access to some productions was nonexistent (we weren't able to reach the amazin Dance of The Vampires, 1967, by Roman Polanski, for example), the class in front of which we presented this work  could not believe we were talking about this subject. It was such a good time, though. My friend and I are very proud of this paper until today, and it had an important role in our academic and personal lives. Not for nothing, it is a fond memory to me. 

Well, all that came back while watching Interview with my beloved niece Fla. She is so dear, she usually calls me asking if I had watched the day's film and if she can see it with me - it is so sweet that she had incorporated this dare. OMAD can looks like a banal thing, but it has been a compass by which I guide myself through my days. That my beloved nieces and friends are able to recognize it is precious to me. Besides that, her argument to watch Interview, a movie that she already has seen two or three times (I would bet four :), was that it made sense that we would see it together, for how we really enjoy vampire stories.

So, this movie now to me is this shared experience of a mythic creature that has so many fundamental symbolic  humane features. Interview is based on Anne Rice's book from 1976, and we can confirm many popular aspects related to the vampire today and that led to what is even a commonplace today regarding this myth. So much that I already knew about backstage trivia or facts on the story for reading about them in reports about the movie or interview with the actors. Those are interesting, and are appointed on the imdb.com trivia, as Anne Rice putting a two page ad on Vanity Fair and The New York Times stating the movie was a masterpiece.  Fla also feed me some important facts about the story that are told on Rice's books. With all that background, my time with this movie was an entertaining and interesting experience.

Kirsten Dunst is impressive in her debut in a movie, I was really amazed by her Claudia. Stephen Rea  was unrecognizable to me as Santiago. Tom Cruise is a lunatic Lestat (we were laughing in many of his scenes), very convincing. Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas are so young, and Fla and me couldn't stop to estate that in awe. Christian Slater replaced River Phoenix as the (un)lucky reporter, after Phoenix death (Fla, the mystery of the dedication on the final credits is over).

At last, Neil Jordan. Of course he would chose to direct such a story on that time. His The Company of Wolves,1984,  is on my list to see again movies. On his careful set to tell mythical tales (the details in Interview are incredible), he debates its fundamental presence in human imaginary. Nowadays, vampires are alluded as silly creature, mostly for its popularity in more recent years. Every cultural phenomenon suffers with a contempt by those that associate popularity with low quality. The thing is that all the faces of a myth in the different fictional stories about are part of the way we see the world. Myths are representations of the most essential humane traits, and the stories guide us through characteristics that we are usually not aware of. 

And in what concerns the mythic vampire, Anne Rice has an important role in creating images that stay current in different forms 40 years after presenting Lestat and Louie to the world for the first time. 

Thank's, Fla, for making me see this movie. Finally! (The DVD was still sealed).

Interview with The Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles. Directed and written
by Neil Jordan  from the novel by Anne Rice (the author was credited as the
screen writer, but it was actually by  Jordan). With: Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt,
Kirsten Dunst. EUA,  1994, 123 min., Dolby Digital/SDDS, Color (DVD).

PS: I'm also in debt with Fla for her patience with me when I paused it in order to see the score on the Federer/Isner game on the US Open :)