Heavenly Creatures - DVD Review

MOVIE
VIDEO
AUDIO
EXTRAS
OVERALL

One Disc
2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Director's Cut
Theatrical Trailers
Run Time: 104 Minutes
Keep Case

MOVIE
Rated R for violence, brief nudity, under aged sexual situations and language

Man, how about Kate Winslet, huh? It's hard to imagine today, but way back when she was first starting out, she actually remained almost fully covered up for an entire film. I say almost because, in Heavenly Creatures, you see a glimpse of her breasts in a bathtub. I mean, this is nothing new, though. Those of use who know her work know how difficult it must be to keep clothes on this woman. She, along with Julianne Moore before she started making big Hollywood films, seemed to get naked in every film they did. And I'm not just talking Joey Lauren Adams in Mallrats flash in the pan naked, I'm talking completely naked. I've seen more of Kate Winslet than I did of at least 80% of my ex-girlfriends. If you don't believe me, just rent Hideous Kinky or Holy Smoke or Jude. Want more proof? How about Quills or Iris? And you know, several of these are after she "went Hollywood." Just look at Titanic. Ahh, Kate, you're the hero of fifteen year old boys everywhere.
Yeah, so, I'm a guy. And I'm a geek. And you put guy and geek together you find people who see a certain person in film and think, Man, I wonder what they look like naked. I'm just saying it. You're all thinking it. You all know I'm right. And don't you go telling me that this is just the guys that do this, we're on to you women with your Sex in the City and your romance novels. We know you like sex just as much as we do, and we know you look too. Why else would every rental VHS copy of All The Right Moves be worn out at that moment when Tom Cruise does all the right moves to show the audience his penis? Don't laugh, I bet several of you even know the counter time. The days of making us feel bad about that voyeuristic thrill we get when we see someone we like as an actress (and think is hot, I won't lie) take off her clothes are over.
So. Long. Yeah. Well, I believe this is the film that started the lovely Kate's obsession with highly sexual roles. Before this, she'd been in two TV movies and a series, so this is Kate's first movie movie. And bravo to her for choosing such an off kilter film, for taking a very unsafe career move and just having it pay off in spades.
Heavenly Creatures is a film about the bond between friends during the transition from childhood to adulthood. Specifically the bond between two adolescent New Zealand girls in the fifties. Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) is the somewhat under privileged, gawky young woman, the misunderstood artist in school, that quiet girl that sits out at gym because something happened to her bones sometime long ago. You can see that she is terribly lonely, even at home with her parents, sister and a never-ending stream of borders that rent the extra rooms in the house. Then there's Juliet (Kate Winslet) the new girl at school, exotic, foreign, rich. Her family travels around a lot and that's how she wound up in New Zealand. Pauline is interested in getting to know Juliet from the moment she first notices her, correcting their French teacher's grammar, something that infuriates the teacher and delights Pauline. The girls bond in gym class, when Juliet too is exempt from the foolish gym program due to bad lungs. They become fast friends. Their friendship grows and they begin to write a novel about a far off kingdom, with princes and evil stepbrothers, writing both of themselves in and giving themselves noble protectors. Their novel infects them and they begin to believe it themselves, slowly descending into a horrible madness.
With all of that above, you might imagine that the film is dark and gothic, while in actuality, Jackson has infused it with the same playful humor (on a much more restrained scale) that he showed us in Dead Alive. Heavenly Creatures is terribly funny and brutal at once, a fitting description of the true story of one of the most famous murders in New Zealand history. The film is one of few that show us a different point of view of insanity, from the inside out. How rare it is that portraits of insanity deal with the beautiful as much as the horrible. Not every crazy person sees things from Dutch angles, with dark figures lurking everywhere. Sometimes they see clay men come to life, castles in the fields near their houses. Sometimes they retreat into their insanity due to the fact that it is much better in their than their pitiful reality. Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet are tremendously effective, both fairly young actors, still under 20 at the time. They are very believable and convey the feeling of attachment that develops very quickly between kindred spirits. The script written by Peter Jackson and his long time writing partner/wife Fran Walsh, begins with a title card informing us that this film was taken from the diaries of Pauline Rieper, instantly telling you that the narrative is told by an unreliable narrator. This is an important factor and is key to much of the brilliance of the movie. Not everything here necessarily happened, Pauline may have been treated better by her family than we're shown, Juliet may not have been this beautiful or wonderful, but we're seeing her, and everything else through the eyes of a young girl losing her mind. Hypnotic and beautiful, filled with stunning set pieces from the very dawn of computer graphics in film, released the same year as Jurassic Park, WETA (Jackson's special effects company right up through his current Lord of the Rings trilogy) demonstrates that, even half a world away from Hollywood, great things can be done. The film is magical.

VIDEO
This is the first opportunity I had to see Heavenly Creatures the way Peter Jackson intended it, in its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio. It was worth the wait. Jackson's use of 2.35:1 as of late has been nothing short of spectacular through The Frighteners and then, of course, with The Fellowship of the Ring. Here, his technique is ramping up, a playful visual style that, while calling to mind many of the great uses of that aspect ratio, from Jaws to Halloween. The picture looks good, though a bit grainy and dark at times, but as I recall, it's always looked like that. The film is definitely lower budget and shows a bit in this transfer. At the same time, the usage of color, cold blues in reality and the rich color palate of their fantasy world is tremendous and the DVD transfer reproduces them faithfully, rich and beautiful, and does it so well at points that when Pauline wakes up in the field and looks at her own private castle, it looks like an oil painting.

AUDIO
This is a fan favorite, film geeks are thrilled, so why the low rent DVD edition. This man did just direct a series that has enthralled critics and film geeks alike, and we all know how hard that is to do, so why do we only get an okay Dolby Digital 2.0? The fidelity is fine and the speakers are filled, but one knows that much more could've been done with a 5.1 mix, especially in the dream sequences. That being said, though, the mix is effective, consistently good, but feels an awful lot like the mix that I've been listening to on my VHS copy, that we all know is NOT a good thing.

EXTRAS
Well, the Heavenly Creatures extras, now that's an easy thing to review. I'll bet, if asked, Peter Jackson would've taken two hours of his time and recorded an audio commentary for Miramax. Perhaps nobody asked. In any case, we're left with an original theatrical trailer and the card inside the DVD case that tells us the chapters. Oh, glory be. And these are considered extras according to the sleeve.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
I never would've thought Peter Jackson had this in him, starting from almost any of his other films. Still, watching Dead Alive, Meet The Feebles and Bad Taste, it's hard to believe that this is the same man who made two Oscar contenders (Heavenly Creatures for best original screenplay and The Fellowship of the Ring for just about everything) and a very mature and creepy horror comedy called The Frighteners with Robert Zemeckis. But he did, and proved to Hollywood and the rest of the world that he can be mature when he wants to and still wallow in the depths of low budget goofball gross out horror. How many other directors can do that? The DVD's SRP is under $20, so even though there are no extras, this is still a way to see the original cut (not otherwise available in America) in widescreen, and that's worth it as far as I'm concerned.