Of Grief & Ghosts: The Plot of Don’t Look Now (1973)
“The story evolves like a mosaic with the important pieces missing, just like one of those that John is restoring. Not unlike how the dissolution of the sealing material destroys the structures in the church, the reality of Baxters' life is falling apart, too. These cracks either should be mended, or they allow the forces from beyond and under to creep through them. The latter is especially true for John with his gift of clairvoyance, although resisted, or maybe especially because he resists it.” "” from Film Obsessive article by Magda Mariamidze
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.""” Gospel of Thomas
John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) bear the mark of a curse, a chilling revelation hinted at at the film's outset. Don't Look Now is a film about grief and loss. This is the most potent horror there is. Aside from the killings in Venice, it is these principles that are the true nature of this horror film. Roeg's masterpiece, the specter of death, and its companion grief are palpable and agonizingly real. The titles in quotations are baptized by the torrential British rain that licks the screen.
A Tragic Prelude: or In the Wake of Loss: The Opening of Don’t Look Now:
John Baxter: What are you reading?
Laura Baxter: I was just trying to find the answer to a question Christine was asking me: if the world’s round, why is a frozen lake flat?
John Baxter: Huh. That’s a good question.
Laura Baxter: [flipping through a book] Ah-ha. “Lake Ontario curves more than 3 degrees from its easternmost shore to its westernmost shore.” So, frozen water really isn’t flat!
John Baxter: Nothing is what it seems.
The juxtaposition of these images is Roeg’s way of highlighting the profuse symbolism consciously scattered throughout key scenes of Don’t Look Now. Here, I found a visible but not readily apparent cue signaling the dichotomy between the forces at work. Laura and the Red Devil, with their backs, turned to us.
Though it's a sunny day, we get a sense that it is a typically damp English morning mist in the yard of a country estate. The film cuts back and forth between the Baxters and their two children, playing outside by the pond. Christine and Johnny's parents are lost in a world of idle contentment within the house. The air hangs heavy with a bourgeois harmony. Both are tuned into their work, though, with an unhurried cadence.
Laura is reading Beyond The Fragile Geometry of Space, a book that can be seen on the sofa, so that she can answer Christine's question about the earth’s shape. John comments, " Nothing is as it seems."
Alongside du Maurier's narrative, the film begins with Laura investigating the answer to Christine's insightful curiosity: ” If the earth is round, why is a frozen pond flat?” This question highlights a paradox, as both statements can be seen as valid yet fundamentally contradictory.
The remnants of a lazy Sunday lunch linger: dishes abandoned, forks and knives scattered, while a thin ribbon of smoke rises from a forgotten cigarette in an ashtray, painting a picture of contented indulgence.
Their two young children, Johnny and Christine, continue to play around the pond on their bucolic property. Christine (Sharon Williams), an angelic little blonde girl in a shiny red Mac with the bright look of fresh blood"”red like a bleeding heart"”wanders around the pond pushing a wheelbarrow and chasing a bouncing ball. The sunny blue day surrounds the murky surface of the pond choked with reeds. The pond doesn't reflect the sky, but the water is like a mirror to Christine's red raincoat as she skirts her playful path. Meanwhile, her brother weaves through the trees on his bike, a silent fluttering moth against the verdant backdrop.
Christine’s playful moments with her ball create an unsettling visual dance. The little sphere, adorned with a crimson geometric design against the hazy day, seems to pulse and warp as it tumbles across the ground into the pond. This optical illusion subtly disturbs our perception, adding to the film’s undercurrent of unease without drawing attention to itself. She is holding her brother's toy soldier, Action Man, who, when you pull the string, possesses the recorded voice of a woman calling out strategic military commands.
As soon as Christine tugs the string on her doll, it utters, “Enemy 1000 feet…fall in.” In that instant, Johnny topples over his bike, is felled by a rock, and is cut by a shard of broken glass after he has ridden his bike over a pane of glass, shattering it beneath the with of his tires.
In this stunning opening sequence, architect John Baxter is prepping for a restoration of a church in Venice. He scrutinizes his projector loaded with slides"”of an Italian church. Laura Baxter reads her books, and John is studying his slides of the medieval church he will be reviving. He focuses on one slide, in particular, of a stained glass window; the façade of piety is splendid, with the figure of Christ adorned in red robes. However, he has no solid faith or spirituality of his own to cling to.
It is the shadowy corner of the slide that catches John's eye"”a small, enigmatic red form huddled in a pew, cloaked in a red coat and hood. The sight triggers a sudden, curious feeling. This intruding presence, small, perhaps childlike in appearance, becomes the catalyst for John's sudden, horrifying vision"”an intuitive warning to him that Christine is in danger.
John accidentally knocks over a glass of water and watches with curiosity as a red stain emerges from the small figure, like blood, creeping across the slide. A seemingly unremarkable mishap ignites an unsettling vision that John's mind conjures. The red figure melts into a disambiguated crimson swirl that coils around the church's stained-glass window. By the time it settles, it is almost fetal in shape; the veiled red figure, once a mere curiosity, now takes on a sinister aspect. A vision of Christine wearing the same evocative color, red, becoming submerged in the murky depths of the nearby pond.
He leaps to his feet and heads for the door. Laura asks him what is happening. "Nothing," he tells her.
Laura tosses a slide onto the book on metaphysics as the image continues to bleed.
John runs out of the house, hurls himself at the pond, past his son, his hand cut from the piece of broken glass; he screams, "Dad!"
When John reaches the water, it feels like it takes forever for him to reach Christine; frozen by his anguish, he then plunges in and pulls his red angel from the watery nothingness, her lifeless body wrenched up into his arms as he agonizes over her limp body with drenched blonde wisps. Roeg intercuts this moment of visual artistry with the harrowing sight of John trying to trudge through the water until he breaks through. Christine’s lifeless body is cradled in his arms as time and reality blur – in an unreadable mixture that will become past and present.
