Tag Archives: Death

Tales of Despair: Cup of My Blood

In a dark, cold apartment, two young men stare at the small box in front of them. One, at least, is clearly very afraid. The box must never be opened, one says. We must, the other replies. And so they do.

Moments later, a man and a woman burst in. One man is found in a closet – burned to ash. The other, cowering in the bath. The woman takes the box, and in cold blood kills him.

Jack Fender used to be a renowned photographer, famous for his stark black and white style, and the subtle eroticism of his work. Used to. Three years ago, his wife – his soulmate and his muse – committed suicide. Now he shoots soft porn. Locked off and dead to the world, Jack wanders around in a haze, filled with the dark visions of his wife’s final moments. Then one day, nearly run down in the street, he witnesses the fatal car crash of the woman who took the box. With her dying breath, she bids him to take it, and never to look upon it. And he does.

Jack locks the box away; turns back to his empty life. Continues to pile the cash from his porn shoots on a shelf, never spending a dime. His previous life made sure he doesn’t need to. He puts the box out of his mind – until dark and disturbing visions begin to appear before him. Those around him – the few he interacts with, that pretend to care about him – are certain he’s going insane.

And then – emptying his mind late one night at the pool – he meets Iona. And she listens to him. She speaks to him. And finally, she breaks through to him. They become close, and they begin to love…and after so long, his muse returns. Slowly, his creativity returns, and he begins to feel that he might finally be able to leave the demons behind him.

Janina Gavankar as Iona.

Little does he know that the demons are, in fact, yet to come, lying in wait. As the darkness closes in around him, he begins to realize that Iona may not be all she seems – and the powers of evil are intent on the contents of the box. As everything he knows comes crashing down, he discovers the box holds an ancient and unimaginably powerful relic: the holy grail. And the terrible visions that continue to fill his mind hold an even darker secret from his past.

Cup of My Blood is not a great movie. Mediocrely acted, poorly color-graded and uncomfortably scripted, it is a low-budget B-movie in every possible sense of the word. Yet the editing is strong, and it manages nonetheless to be both visually striking and stylistically unsettling. It is graphic, violent and disturbing, mysterious and frightening, and ultimately charts an artist’s descent into madness in the face of unspeakable horror. Had it had a bigger budget and better actors, it could have been a significant film. As it stands, it’s a visceral depiction of sex and death, haunted by despair.

Some of you may find this film disturbing or upsetting; some of you may simply laugh at it. Either way, approach it with caution: it isn’t as simple as it appears.

Tales of Despair: Pélleas et Mélisande

Love incites bitterness; revenge leads to death, and the world descends into madness. From the chaos is birthed the new, the pure, and the harmonious. And so the cycle continues.

La Mort du Fossoyeur – Carlos Schwabe

The symbolists of the late nineteenth century were consumed with the goal of depicting the world not in itself, but as a representation of a deeper meaning, of dreams and ideals; life, and love, and death. In painting, angels, demons and death abounded, uniting love, death and despair. A beautiful example of this is Carlos Schwabe‘s La Mort du Fossoyeur (The Death of the Gravedigger). An angel – not white, but dark – looks upon the old man, deep within the grave he has dug for himself. The world is cold and frozen, blanketed in pure snow, and as the angel’s wings curl around the man, ready to bear him hence, she lights a green flame in the palm of her hand, the unearthly glow lighting her face. The angel is death, and transformation; the man is of the weary and aging world, longing to be taken from his agony.

It was against this symbolic background that Maurice Maeterlinck wrote the tragic play Pélleas et Mélisande – a tale of darkness and doomed love. Goulaud, a prince of Allemonde, discovers a young girl by a stream in the woods, lost and afraid, with no memory of who she is, but for her name: Mélisande. Goulaud falls in love with the girl, and they are soon wed in secret. Despite his fear that his grandfather, named Arkël and ailing king of Allemonde, would not approve, word eventually reaches him via Pélleas, who is Goulaud’s brother. Arkël would have his grandson return home nonetheless, and is smitten by the beautiful girl, and gives the couple his blessing.

Soon, though, Mélisande discovers a deep love for Pélleas, and the two begin to spend ever more time with each other. Deep in the woods, Mélisande loses her wedding ring in a well; fearful to tell Goulaud the truth, she tells him it was lost in a dark grotto. He bids her retrieve the ring, and again Pélleas accompanies her, providing her comfort in the terrifying darkness.

Growing ever suspicious, Goulaud brings a warning upon his brother: deep under the castle, he leads him to a great chasm, and darkly tells him to beware: Mélisande is with child, and is not to be his.

Pélleas kisses Mélisande’s beautiful tresses (courtesy of Ken Howard and Metropolitan Opera)

Yet Pélleas and Mélisande cannot deny their love, and in a desperate attempt to save her, Pélleas tells her he must leave, lest they bring Goulaud’s wrath upon them. But even as he departs, Goulaud confronts Mélisande, and in his anger, casts her violently to the ground. In tears, she flees in search of Pélleas, determined to be with him one last time. Once more deep within the woods, they meet and embrace in love – unaware that Goulaud had followed her. Descending upon them in fury, Goulaud runs through his own brother, and in casting him lifeless to the ground, deeply wounds his own bride.

Growing now ever weaker, Mélisande gives birth prematurely to a daughter; upon seeing her face, she bids the nurse to take her away from her, as she is nothing but tragedy to her. And so, in tears, she dies also.

Throughout the play, the story is rife with symbolism. In flirting with Pélleas, Mélisande loses her wedding ring – an symbol of the infidelity to come. The strength of women is also implicit in the grief their loss wreaks upon their men. Arkël, king of Allemonde, has lost his own wife; Goulaud is a widower when he discovers Mélisande; and of course, he brings the death of his second wife, Mélisande, upon her himself.

Maurice believed firmly in the cycle of destruction and rebirth; Eros, mythical god of love, and Anteros, his counterpart as the god of revenge, are at the heart of Pélleas et Mélisande. In the great darkness, love is slowly dying; the kingdom is ravaged by famine, waters are foul, and death surrounds our characters. In seeking forbidden love, Pélleas and Mélisande culminate this, and revenge is visited upon all, now leaving the world ready to begin again.

Pélleas et Mélisande has been influential since in a number of media; best known are Claude Debussy‘s opera, and Jean Sibelius‘ incidental suite. This latter is a wonderful musical journey of beauty and tragedy; I would highly recommend discovering and listening to this masterpiece.

Tales of Despair: When the Walls Begin to Crumble

Imagine you are not who you say you are. You are something different, something other, that no one else sees. Something that no one else can be allowed to see, for fear it will destroy you both.

So many years ago, you became this other you. Like a slow tide, you were unconsciously inundated, uncertain when the first cold touch of sea first came, but knowing that the depths were rising. Before long, all that remained were dead eyes, remaining above the surface – and soon, you sank below, and the deep and the black swallowed you whole.

The dark became your life; it threatened to take your life; it was around you, and in you, and through and through, it was you. And the drowning was a bliss, because as slowly the breath was stolen from your lungs, all things became unimportant, and thought left you mind. Day upon day passed, undistinguished, and the very light of the sun was darkness to your eyes.

And then, like all things, it came to pass; the waters receded, and the world returned…but it was not as before. You were changed, irrefutably, and irreparably. The world became always dark, and the thrills and joys were muted and grey. And you began to notice the ways of the world, and cynicism and spite grew like poison thorns in your mind. You pitied – and envied – the thoughtless, empty, blissfully unaware souls that surrounded you, deluding themselves with false happiness and toiling ignorantly towards insignificant goals.

And you came to realize that you had to survive. There was no place for one like you anymore in the world. And so, piece by piece, you crafted your mask – you built the walls.

And you built them high, and strong, and through the windows came the smiling light of a joyful soul. The walls were whitewashed, and the roof was tiled, and the shutters painted, and the garden neatly tended. What a beautiful house, they all said – what a wonderful person. There is humor, there is wit, there is drive and there is compassion. You looked around, and you observed, and your false house became a mirror of those among whom you now live. Always careful – only a small piece from here, a tad from there – just enough that they all believe you are your own, original, colorful creation.

What they don’t know – what they can’t know – is that inside, the lights are out, and the floor is dusty, and on the walls the cobwebs hang thick. Here is where you go at the end of each and every day. And the worst is that, on your way home, you see that bright, friendly house you built, and for a moment – just a moment – you believe in it. You built your walls so convincingly that you have fooled yourself.

How were you to know what was to come? How could you have known that those walls wouldn’t last forever? It almost seemed you could live in that fantasy, and as long as you stayed on the outside, the dark might not actually be real. And then – now – the walls are beginning to crumble. Brick by brick, you see them fall away. There are days when you try to patch, support and rebuild, but it is insidious – like that first, callous tide that pulled you under and changed you forever.

Soon, the walls may fall away, and there, huddling amid the rubble, is you – the true you, the twisted and deformed you, the you that was made, all those years ago. And there will be no hiding, and no rebuilding. And then, the tide will come in again, and it will wash away the ruins…and perhaps, it will wash away you.