Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea (53 page)

The film has returned to the snowy soundstage forest. Only now there are many more trees, spaced more closely together. Their trunks and branches are as dark as charcoal, as dark as the snow is light. Together these two elements – trees and snow, snow and trees – form a proper joyance for any chiaroscurist. In the foreground of this
mise-en-scène
, an assortment of taxidermied wildlife (two does, a rabbit, a badger, etc.) watches on with blind acrylic eyes as Anna Darvulia follows a path through the wood. She wears an enormous crimson cloak, the hood all but concealing her face. Her cloak completes the palette of the scene: the black trees, the white of the snow, this red slash of wool. There is a small falcon, a merlin, perched on the woman’s left shoulder, and gripped in her left hand (she isn’t wearing gloves) is a leather leash. As the music swells – strings, woodwinds, piano, the thunderous kettledrum – the camera pans slowly to the right, tracing the leash from Darvulia’s hand to the heavy collar clasped about the Countess’ pale throat. Elizabeth is entirely naked, scrambling through the snow on all fours. Her hair is a matted tangle of twigs and dead leaves. Briars have left bloody welts on her arms, legs, and buttocks. There are wolves following close behind her, famished wolves starving in the dead of this endless Carpathian winter. The pack is growing bold, and one of the animals rushes in close, pushing its muzzle between her exposed thighs, thrusting about with its wet nose, lapping obscenely at the Countess’ ass and genitals. Elizabeth bares her sharp teeth and, wheeling around, straining against the leash, she snaps viciously at this churlish rake of a wolf. She growls as convincingly as any lunatic or lycanthrope might hope to growl.

All wolves are churlish. All wolves are rakes, especially in fairy tales, and especially this far from spring.

“Have you forgotten the prayer so soon?” Darvulia calls back, her voice cruel and mocking. Elizabeth doesn’t answer, but the wolves yelp and retreat.

And as the witch and her pupil pick their way deeper into the forest, we see that the gypsy girl, dressed in a cloak almost identical to Darvulia’s – wool dyed that same vivid red – stands among the wolves as they whine and mill about her legs.

Elizabeth awakens in her bed, screaming.

In a series of jump cuts, her screams echo through the empty corridors of Csejte.

(This scene is present in all prints, having somehow escaped the same fate as the unfilmed climax of the Countess’ earlier trek through the forest – a testament to the fickle inconsistency of censors. In an interview she gave to the Croatian periodical
Hrvatski filmski ljetopis
[Autumn 2003], the actress who played Elizabeth reports that she actually did suffer a spate of terrible nightmares after making the film, and that most of them revolved around this particular scene. She says, “I have only been able to watch it [the scene] twice. Even now, it’s hard to imagine myself having been on the set that day. I’ve always been afraid of dogs, and those were
real
wolves.”)

In the fourth reel, you find you’re slightly irritated when film briefly loses its otherwise superbly claustrophobic focus, during a Viennese interlude surely meant, instead, to build tension. The Countess’ depravity is finally, inevitably brought to the attention of the Hungarian Parliament and King Matthias. The plaintiff is a woman named Imre Megyery, the Steward of Sávár, who became the guardian of the Countess’ son, Pál Nádasdy, after the death of her husband. It doesn’t help that the actor who plays György Thurzó, Matthias’ palatine, is an Australian who seems almost incapable of getting the Hungarian accent right. Perhaps he needed a better dialect coach. Perhaps he was lazy. Possibly, he isn’t a very good actor.

INT. COUNTESS’ BEDCHAMBER. NIGHT.

Elizabeth and Darvulia in the Countess’ bed, after a vigorous bout of lovemaking. Lovemaking, sex, fucking, whatever. Both women are nude. The corpse of a third woman lies between them. There’s no blood, so how she died is unclear.

You sit up straight in your reclining theatre seat. You’ve needed to urinate for the last half hour, but you’re not about to miss however much of the film you’d miss during a quick trip to the restroom. You try not to think about it; you concentrate on the screen and not your aching bladder.

INT. COUNTESS’ BEDCHAMBER. NIGHT.

The Countess sits in her lion-footed chair, facing the open balcony doors. There are no candles burning, but we can see the silhouette of the gypsy girl outlined in the winter moonlight pouring into the room. She is all but naked. The wind blows loudly, howling about the walls of the castle.

Slowly, the Countess looks back at the girl. Snow blows in through the draperies, swirling about the child. The girl’s eyes flash red-gold. She takes a step nearer the Countess.

CLOSE UP – THE COUNTESS:

The Countess’ face is filled with a mixture of dread and defeat, exhaustion and horror. She shuts her eyes a moment, muttering silently, then opens them again.

MEDIUM SHOT – THE COUNTESS:

The Countess sits in her chair, head bowed now, seemingly too exhausted to continue arguing with the girl. From the foreground, the gypsy girl approaches her. Strange shadows seem to loom behind the Countess’ chair. The child begins to sing in a sweet, sad, lilting voice, a song that might be a hymn or a dirge.

FADE TO BLACK.

This scene will stay with you. You will find yourself thinking,
That’s where it should have ended. That would have made a better ending.
The child’s song – only two lines of which are intelligible – will remain with you long after many of the grimmer, more graphic details are forgotten. Two eerie, poignant lines:
Stay with me and together we will live forever./Death is the road to awe.
Later, you’ll come across an article in
American Cinematographer
(April 2006), and discover that the screenwriter originally intended this to be the final scene, but was overruled by the director, who insisted it was too anticlimactic.

Which isn’t to imply that the remaining twenty minutes are without merit, but only that they steer the film in a different and less subtle, less dreamlike direction. Like so many of the films you most admire – Bergman’s
Det sjunde inseglet,
Charlie Kaufman’s
Synecdoche, New York,
Herzog’s
Herz aus Glas,
David Lynch’s
Lost Highway
– this one is speaking to you in the language of dreams, and after the child’s song, you have the distinct sense that the film has awakened, jolted from the subconscious to the conscious, the self-aware. It’s ironic, therefore, that the next scene is a dream sequence. And it is a dream sequence that has left critics divided over the movie’s conclusion and what the director intended to convey. There is a disjointed, tumbling series of images, and it is usually assumed that this is simply a nightmare delivered to the Countess by the child. However, one critic, writing for
Slovenska Kinoteka
(June 2005), has proposed it represents a literal divergence of two timelines, dividing the historical Báthory’s fate from that of the fictional Báthory portrayed in the film. She notes the obvious, that the dream closely parallels the events of December 29, 1610, the day of the Countess’ arrest. A few have argued the series of scenes was never meant to be perceived as a dream (neither the director nor the screenwriter have revealed their intent). The sequence may be ordered as follows:

The Arrival: A retinue on horseback – Thurzó, Imre Megyery, the Countess’ sons-in-law, Counts Drugeth de Homonnay and Zrínyi, together with an armed escort. The party reaches the Csejte, and the iron gates swing open to admit them.

The Descent: The Palatine’s men following a narrow, spiraling stairwell into the depth of the castle. They cover their mouths and noses against some horrible stench.

The Discovery: A dungeon cell strewn with corpses, in various stages of dismemberment and decay. Two women, still living, though clearly mad, their bodies naked and beaten and streaked with filth, are manacled to the stone walls. They scream at the sight of the men.

The Trial: Theodosious Syrmiensis de Szulo of the Royal Supreme Court pronounces a sentence of
perpetuis carceribus,
sparing the Countess from execution, but condemning her to lifelong confinement at Csejte.

The Execution/Pardon of the Accomplices: Three women and one man. Two of the women, Jó Ilona and Dorottya Szentes, are found guilty, publicly tortured, and burned alive. The man, Ujváry János (portrayed as a deformed dwarf), is beheaded before being thrown onto the bonfire with Jó and Dorottya. The third woman, Katarína Beniezky, is spared (this is not explained, and none of the four are named in the film).

The Imprisonment: The Countess sits on her bed as stonemasons brick up the chamber’s windows and the door leading out onto the balcony. Then the door is sealed. Close ups of trowels, mortar, callused hands, Elizabeth’s eyes, a Bible in her lap. Last shot from Elizabeth’s POV, her head turned away from the camera, as the final few bricks are set in place. She is alone. Fade to black.

Anna Darvulia, “the Witch of the Forest,” appears nowhere in this sequence.

FADE IN:

EXT. CSETJE STABLES. DAY.

The Countess watches as Anna Darvulia climbs onto the back of a horse. Once in the saddle, her feet in the stirrups, she stares sorrowfully down at the Countess.

CUT TO:

EXT. ČACHTICE CASTLE HILL. WINTER. DAY.

Anna Darvulia racing away from the snowbound castle, while the Countess watches from her tower.

FADE TO BLACK.

FADE IN:

INT. COUNTESS’ BEDCHAMBER. NIGHT.

The Countess in her enormous chair. The gypsy girl stands before her. As before, she is almost naked. There is candlelight and moonlight. Snow blows in from the open balcony doors.