From Hell

"From Hell," a new cinematic adaptation of the story of Jack the Ripper, fails at everything it sets out to do except one: It is the grossest film of the year, by far. The movie teems with almost effortlessly suggestive imagery of the foulest possible deeds. The Elephant Man and a new procedure known as the lobotomy both make cameos. Most of the minor characters copulate with beastly men, vomit, or get Ripped - or some combination of the three - at some point during the film. Every single little bit of dramatic impact this film has comes from the overwhelming disgust we feel at what's being shown to us. But while this grossness has a certain magnetic interest for those of us who like to be shocked, it's not much to base a film on, and "From Hell" doesn't have anything else to offer.

You know the basic story: crazy psycho slashes prostitutes in London low-rent district called Whitechapel, police try to apprehend him, can't do it, crazy psycho becomes media sensation and ushers in modern tabloid culture which leads us to the present day. In his graphic novel "From Hell," Alan Moore added a Crown conspiracy to the old tale, and it is this graphic novel that Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias adapted for direction by brothers Albert and Allen Hughes.

What we see is Inspector Fred Abberline (Johnny Depp), who "chases the dragon" down a smoking opium pipe to enter reveries that provide clues to perplexing cases. But even the demon poppy can't find him a solution here, so Abberline enlists the help of Sir William Gull (Ian Holm), a surgeon to the Royal Family, to figure out why these bodies are slashed the way they are. He also poses lots of questions to Mary Shelley (Heather Graham), who just happens to be the largest-breasted and most American, not to mention the most vapid, of a group of five prostitutes whose ranks are being thinned by the Ripper's knife. Both she and Gull know things they aren't telling, and these things seem to be related to the continued oppression of Britain's lower classes by The Man, in the person of Queen Victoria. Abberline tries his best to solve the case, but ends up falling in love with Mary instead, and thus has to try to be Freddy-on-the-spot when it becomes clear that Mary is next in line for an involuntary surgical procedure.

You may have noticed from this summary that "From Hell" has not escaped the tidal pull of certain cinematic clichés, such as a romance between the two highest-paid actors, a conspiracy going all the way up to the head of state, and prostitutes galore. Suspense falls by the wayside, because once you notice the plot falling into the standard Hollywood ruts, you never suspect that you might even possibly be surprised by anything, and you never are. The atmosphere of urban decay and amorality which the Hughes brothers were renowned for providing in "Menace II Society and "Dead Presidents" never shows up here; the whole thing feels too imagined and unrealistic, and the sets feel a bit too new and photographable to be true unlivable slums. Despite the best efforts of Depp and Holm, their characters come off more as metaphorical representations of ideas than as people, and the secondary characters, most definitely including Shelley in Graham's performance, are laughably shallow.

So only the gross stuff really holds your attention in "From Hell." At least there's something; if you're dragged to this film by someone with a crush on Johnny Depp, it won't be a totally tedious two hours. But while a little grossness goes a long way, a lot of grossness doesn't go very far at all. At first, the images shock; after all, they're expertly framed and timed for maximum impact. But eventually we expect the images, and then we demand them as something to make up for having sat through that crap about the Freemasons.

"From Hell" tries to mesmerize your mind and entice your heart, but ultimately all it can do is upset your stomach for a while. And if that's what you're after, you should just buy some movie-theater popcorn to take into another movie.

INSIDE THE SCREWUP OF A MOVIE REVIEWER

This was the text of an e-mail I sent my editor a week before I wrote this review:

For some reason, I didn't look at the "From Hell" pass and see that the 10:30 am Friday screening was at Mazza Gallerie rather than the MPAA. So I went to the MPAA and was surprised. I'm going to see one of the showings on Thursday and we can have it in the paper on Monday, if that's okay. That type of confusion has never happened to me before and I hope it doesn't happen again anytime soon. Just to be sure, I killed some brain cells with alcohol, so that an atmosphere of random terror would be established in my cerebral cortex and my hippocampus would straighten up and fly right.

That was the first and last time that happened. But if I hadn't screwed up, I wouldn't have seen this:

WHY IN THE HELL WOULD YOU TAKE YOUR YOUNG CHILD TO THIS FILM? AN INDIGNANT INQUIRY

During one of the many, many scenes involving prostitutes in bars (more on this below) in "From Hell," I heard what seemed to be a child wailing. "Oh great," I thought, "now they're going to tell us that one of the prostitutes in the bar has a baby, and it's hideously deformed, due no doubt to rogue Freemason action." But the wailing persisted even after the film left the bar, and then moved around in back of my seat, and I realized that some piss-poor excuse for a parent had taken his or her small child to see a movie about history's most famous serial disemboweller of prostitutes and the drug-addicted detective who tries to stop him.

Okay. I've heard babies at various films which were completely inappropriate for babies to attend, such as "Face/Off," but parents who take babies to inappropriate films can at least make the (completely lame, in my opinion) excuse that the babies don't understand that people are trying to kill each other for that film's entire running time. But this was a small child, who no doubt knows enough about the world around him or her to know that when people insert knives into each other, they are rarely doing this out of love, and it really, really hurts. I try to avoid moral indignation normally, as it tends to create more indigestion than improvement (at least for me), but adults have no business procreating if they're going to take the resulting child to see "From Hell." It's not like it was even a good film. I was tempted to call Protective Services right there but I had to make sure that the film was going to be as bad as it looked like it was going to be, which it was.

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY PROSTITUTES IN HOLLYWOOD FILMS? A PUZZLED INQUIRY

I'm getting kind of tired of watching films whose main characters are prostitutes. On reflection, I suppose there are not so, so many of these; it just seems like the main character is a prostitute when you watch an Estella Warren film. But there are certainly more prostitutes in Hollywood films than most of us ever meet in our day-to-day lives, which I suppose says something about our day-to-day lives as well. Let's stay on topic, though: Prostitutes are overrepresented in Hollywood cinema.

Why is this? I came up with some theories:

1. The capitalist system has a vested interest in depicting the sex act as something easily commodifiable, because that implies that certain products can be purchased which greatly enhance one's chances of enjoying the sex act. Since Hollywood is the capitalist system's biggest propagandist, it falls into line by featuring lots of prostitutes. Plausible, but lacks a certian visceral explanatory power.
2. Prostitute-laden films make more money. I see no consisten evidence to support this idea, and I am sure "From Hell"'s box office receipts will provide an effective refutation.
3. In writing scripts which give major, life-changing roles to prostitutes, Hollywood screenwriters are following the hoary dictum to write what they know. This has the ring of cynicism that makes things sound true to me, so I am officially adopting it as my explanation.

But if you all have any theories, I would be happy to entertain them.

TREAT HER LIKE A PROSTITUTE (a couple weeks later)

I got three responses to my call for theories about why so many Hollywood movies feature prostitutes in prominent roles, despite the fact that prostitutes do not play major roles in our everyday lives, at least as far as I know. My godfather Mark agreed with my theory that when screenwriters give prostitutes major, life-changing roles in movies, they are just writing what they know. The other two people displayed such common sense and wit that I decided to quote their responses in their entirety.

Mike Castle:

Men write Hollywood movies. Wish fulfillment for the male fantasy to have a young, large-breasted woman who is a tiger in the bedroom. Movies usually don't revel in the actual acts these young women are forced to perform and spend their time trying to fulfill the flip side of the (madonna/whore) complex - rehabilitating themselves so they are no longer prostitutes. Now we have a young, large-breasted tiger in the bedroom who stays at home and waits for us to come home - nice deal if you can get it.

Do strippers count as prostitutes?

The answer to the latter question is "yes," by the way. Here's what my mom thought:

Because prostitutes fascinate men and women alike, although for different reasons. Men have a vested interest in thinking it's OK to be a prostitute (commercial transaction theories; hey, they're paid "well" for what they do) OR that prostitutes are no good and so you don't have to think of them as persons (they "deserve" what happens to them). Women can have feminist theories about them endlessly. For everybody, it's a dark side that has ambiguity (not like child abuse, for example) -- what if they enjoy it or have chosen it? are they victims or free agents? should they be slashed or redeemed?

These theories both make a lot of sense, but in the end it's Andrew's Theory 2, Their Theories 1 apiece. I win. Glad we cleared that up.

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