Friendship and romance in Heavenly Creatures
August 4th 2008 01:36
Juliet (Kate Winslet) and Pauline (Melanie Lynskey)
'Tis indeed a miracle, one must feel,
That two such heavenly creatures are real.
Hatred burning bright in the brown eyes, with enemies for fuel;
Why are men such fools? They will not realise
The wisdom that is hidden behind those strange eyes.
And these wonderful people are you and I.
--poem from Pauline Parker's diary (heard in voiceover in the film)
Before he became world-famous for the Lord of the Rings films, and after he made cult favourite Meet the Feebles, Peter Jackson directed a genre-bending drama called Heavenly Creatures (1994). Starring Melanie Lynskey (best known these days for playing the sympathetic step-sister in Ever After and Rose from Two and a Half Men) and Kate Winslet in their first lead roles, the film draws stylistically from melodrama, romance, fantasy, and documentary conventions to tell the true story about two teenaged girls' doomed friendship. The girls' relationship proves to be too strange and intense for their parents' comfort; when finally forced to separate, they plan and execute a murder in order to stay together.
Living in 1950s New Zealand, fourteen-year-old Pauline Parker (Lynskey) is a social misfit. She is sheltered by her working-class parents--father Herbert (Simon O'Connor) is a fish store manager and mother Honora (Sarah Pierse) is a housewife who rents rooms in their modest house to boarders. But when English girl Juliet Hulme (Winslet) arrives at Christchurch Girls' High School, Pauline finds a kindred spirit. On the surface, the girls are opposites: Pauline is dark, dowdy, and self-conscious; Juliet is rosy-cheeked, willowy, and lively. In contrast to Pauline's upbringing, Juliet has travelled all over the world with her upper-class parents Hilda and Henry Hulme (Diana Kent and Clive Merrison, respectively). Yet the girls share a love for melodrama and fantasy that belies superficial differences. Upon discovering that both were ill in childhood--Juliet had tuberculosis, Pauline had osteomyelitis in her leg--Juliet proclaims cheerily, "All the best people have bad chests and bone diseases. It's all frightfully romantic!"
Sociologically, a girl in Pauline's position is probably more likely to be drawn to crime than one in Juliet's; however, class is less a factor than social and emotional alienation. Juliet says bitterly of her parents, "They sent me off to the Bahamas 'for the good of my health.' They sent me to the Bay of bloody Islands 'for the good of my health.'" And the remote colony of New Zealand must seem even more alien to the intellectual Hulmes. The literal and figurative smallness of 1950s Christchurch--from the quaint travelogue footage that starts off the movie to the provincialism of teachers, doctors, and family members--emphasises their insularity. The girls, with their big dreams, cannot fit in. Even their siblings (Pauline has an older sister and Juliet a younger brother) play almost no part in their lives.
Although Juliet is the (relatively) outgoing one of the pair, both girls live almost wholly internally. The girls' rich internal life is realer than reality; however, they are not depicted as mentally disturbed. Rather, they are intelligent, articulate, and creative. They invent a fantasy kingdom called Borovnia, ruled by a family with dramatic and bodice-ripping tendencies. They make plasticine models, role-play, write novels, and draw pictures about the Borovnian adventures. Pauline and Juliet also claim the existence of a Fourth World, to which only they are privy. This world is a haven for them, especially when they are threatened by external stresses. It is a seeming paradise overseen by "saints" James Cagney, Orson Welles, Mario Lanza, and other Hollywood actors of the day. Yet despite what they seem, these are no ordinary fantasies; the detail and work that the girls put into their fevered fictions are so deep that they soon take to calling each other by their Borovnian names, Gina (Pauline) and Deborah (Juliet). They also seem to believe that they can sell their writings to Hollywood, though maybe their dreams owe more to youthful self-confidence than self-delusion.
Indeed, Pauline and Juliet believe themselves to be misunderstood geniuses (as shown in the poem quoted above), and this feeling of shared specialness strengthens their bond. After all, many adolescents believe, or want to believe, that they are somehow different from their peers, unique in a way that few or no one can understand. Pauline writes in her diary, "How sad it is that no one can appreciate our genius." (A good example of this theme in girl-centric narratives is the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series. Other movies that come to mind are the indie Fun, which situates two girls in the banality of 'senseless' and random suburban crime--as opposed to the passionate crime in Heavenly Creatures)--and Ghost World, which deals with quirky, anti-social behaviour, and growing up.) Unlike these other movies, however, Pauline and Juliet's friendship is dangerous not just because it is intense, but also because they are girls.
Despite Henry Hulme's fears of "unwholesome" or "wayward" goings on, the girls' friendship is akin to a great romance, especially when one considers the burgeoning hormones and sexuality at their age. (Pauline and Juliet are not shown to have a sexual relationship, but they are implied to have sex as a role-play.) Pauline's first visit to Juliet's idyllic mansion is shot with a sweeping zoom-in, the romantic mood underscored with Pauline's longing look and soaring music, and the girls' reunion after a temporary separation is tearful and joyous. Jackson inserts visually remarkable sequences--from the girls frolicking in the Fourth World and Borovnia, to being chased by a leering Orson Welles-- to evoke and externalise the romanticism inherent in the girls' fantasies. When Pauline loses her virginity to a male boarder, she momentarily escapes the experience by imagining herself in Borovnia with Juliet.
Violent or murderous lovers in pop culture and fiction fascinate us. They endure; think Bonnie and Clyde, Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, and even Mickey and Mallory in Natural Born Killers. In Heavenly Creatures, Pauline is the dominant force: she is studied and calm before the murder, writing in her diary that she feels "the night before Christmas-ish", whereas Juliet is fidgety and sweaty. But this places too much blame, as it were, on Pauline's shoulders. As with other similar stories, one may wonder of Pauline and Juliet: What if these two had never met? Their uniqueness, as depicted in the film and in their own minds, assumes that their meeting effected a dark alchemy that, tragically, could not have existed otherwise.*
*This seems to have been the opinion in real life as well. The girls were given relatively light sentences and were forbidden to contact each other again after release.
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Natalie 2, I felt the same way--Jackson knows how to create a fantasy world, and this was way before he had all those big budget special effects at his disposal. I loved this movie when I first saw it, though the ending...arghhh. It disturbed me deeply.
Peter Yang, thanks! If you haven't already, I hope you get to see this movie.
Brenton, I know what you mean. The buildup is great, but by the time they're at the teahouse, with the music and the unsteady camera and all, the tension is intolerable. Even though I've seen the movie numerous times, the ending still gets to me.