5. Heavenly Creatures

Peter Jackson’s use of Orson Welles as intertext in his creepy, psychosexual deconstruction-of-fantasy, Heavenly Creatures, helps to map out the socio-ideological framing of the two real-life girls on which the film is based. Centering on Pauline Parker (the marginalized Melanie Lynskey) and Juliet Hulme (a pre-Titanic Kate Winslet), the allusion to Welles, by including clips of him as Harry Lime in The Third Man, further articulates the danger of the girls’ obsessive-cum-desperate personalities that are becoming more and more evident by the time the two would-be ingénues sit in on a repertory showing of Carol Reed’s classic film noir.

The perfect symbol of their badness, Lime is an American expatriate, as angry and isolated by the acculturation of his native land as the girls are by their parents.
Jackson’s use of dialogism is Wellesian in itself, as Welles constantly played with the idea of putting multiple discourses into dialogue with each other. Pauline and Juliet dialogue, not just with Welles but also, with most-things simultaneously insurgent and expressive (the rich operas of Mario Lanza, waking dreams, invocation of spirits, ideas of freedom in a repressive milieu).

With Heavenly Creatures, Jackson took the lewd style of his earlier works Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles, combined it with the stark horror of his Dead Alive and a pastiche of deep-focus, long-take, roving camera-style cinema, and came away with the essence for what would become the CGI-abused style of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy -- which broke him out of marginalization and put him in the mainstream. LOTR, in terms of recognition, is everything Heavenly Creatures should have become (though I’m not suggesting it can match its epic elements).

Upon its release, Heavenly Creatures received rave reviews, was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and subsequently won an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. The film continues to gain critical esteem.

Opening on only two screens and perhaps due to the lack of Americans’ desire to see a film about two silver-spoon girls conspiring to kill the mother of one who was trying to keep them apart, Heavenly Creatures amassed a dismal opening-weekend gross of slightly more than $30,000.

1994, the film’s year of release -- post-Cold War; post-U.S.-economic recession -- was dominated by comedies (Dumb and Dumber, The Mask, Naked Gun 33 1/3), films of history as self-help reassurance (Forrest Gump), family films (Lion King, The Santa Clause, The Flintstones) and action films (True Lies). But edgier material sold as well (Pulp Fiction, Interview with a Vampire, Natural Born Killers), making the scant public appeal for Heavenly Creatures a curious one.

Whatever the pathology, Heavenly Creatures is a treasure waiting to be mined for cinephiles and casual moviegoers, alike. With certain escapist elements -- its musical composition, mesmerizing cinematography and the star iconography of Winslet – this is a movie for all audiences. It’s one of the true hybrids of intellectual and fun cinema. One need only consider the film’s title, Heavenly Creatures, to presuppose the wry duality of which I speak. (Jon Lap)