By Keri O’Shea
When I see ‘based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe’ attached to a film, I can’t be the only person who goes through a few different emotions. Ditto ‘based on a story by HP Lovecraft’, actually, as each writer has had such a mixed history in film – when they’re good, they’re very very good, and when they’re bad… Still, I’m always on the look-out for interesting adaptations of Poe’s stories, so my first feeling is usually pleased, then a bit more reserved, and then finally I find myself saying over and over, ‘Please don’t mess this up’.
Poe is always appealing to filmmakers, but it hasn’t always proved so easy to transmit his strange aesthetics, warped protagonists and yeah, sickly humour to the screen. It was gratifying, though, to see that the director attached to Stonehearst Asylum, Brad Anderson, was the guy who directed The Machinist ten years previously – a film whose tortured lead character wouldn’t have gone amiss in a premature burial or undergoing the agonies of the Spanish Inquisition. Hell, he already had the persecution mania and the mental debility, so he was most of the way there. Anderson has some good pedigree as a TV director, too, so with his prior experience and a strong, high-profile cast – with the decent budget to match, I’d bet – the pieces were in place for a worthwhile watch. The resulting film is undeniably well made; it looks glossy, the locations are excellent (though clearly not shot in England where it’s set!) and by and large, the performances are decent. So why does this film fall short of the mark?
The plot is as follows: we’re taken to a post-Poe era, but a very interesting one considering the subject matter of the screenplay – 1899, where we start by witnessing a demonstrative lecture on female hysteria for the benefit of trainee ‘alienists’, a term which used to mean doctors specialising in insanity. (The first alienist we encounter here, by the way, is Brendan Gleeson, and it’s bloody criminal that he only gets what amounts to a cameo in the film, as he’s one of the best things in it.) One of the newly-qualified doctors, an Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess) wants to make a career in alienism, so to further his clinical experience, he travels to the imposing Stonehearst Asylum. He’s met there by an equally imposing and unfriendly bunch, but once they identify that he’s in earnest, they invite him to stay, with the superintendent Dr. Lamb taking him under his wing. Incidentally, Ben Kingsley (Lamb) must like the feel of the white coat, because he played a very similar role to this in Shutter Island…
Dr. Lamb introduces Dr. Newgate to the unorthodox system of care at the asylum: no one is confined to their rooms, and they can entertain themselves as they see fit. This, Lamb believes, will help the inmates to find happiness, though he accepts that this isn’t so much a cure as containment. It’s progressive, yes, but a bit hopeless too. Newgate is guarded in accepting all of this, but he agrees to work with Lamb, and begins to interact with the patients. One who really catches his eye is a Mrs. Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale), the woman we saw at the beginning in a ‘hysteric fit’ (this seemed to be a catch-all diagnosis in the Victorian era for any woman using her body for purposes beyond pliantly knitting or giving birth). She certainly seems calm enough now, though, and ethics be damned – Dr. Newgate soon takes a bit of a shine to our Eliza. She’s not so sure, herself, and begs him to leave, leave! Bloody hysterics. Confused, Dr. Newgate wants to know why she would be so keen to send him away; well, he soon discovers exactly why, and it seems that the civilised facade of the asylum is just that – a facade.
So far, so serious: perhaps in keeping with the darkly-comic Poe story used as the basis for this screenplay (‘The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether’) it seems in certain places like we’re encouraged to giggle at the patients – like the man who thinks he’s a racehorse, for instance – but when the lead actors are on screen, the film mostly sheds any ironic or comedic aspects. Kingsley and Sturgess discuss treatments, and do their rounds, and talk shop. Equally serious is Michael Caine, turning on one of the strongest performances here, though again – somewhat frustratingly – in little more than a cameo role, although he does at least contribute to the film’s first ‘big twist’. And then there’s Kate Beckinsale, who’s front-and-centre in the publicity material, but spends rather less time on-screen than you may expect, particularly given that ‘Eliza Graves’ was the film’s original title. She’s…she’s not exactly in her element here, enacting every emotional state the script demands by simply being breathy and open-mouthed; it’s a lesser case of Keira Knightley Jaw, that absurd bloody pout that no one did back then. It doesn’t half mitigate her believability.
As for the aesthetics of the film, which ought to be bang on for such a well-documented era that overlapped with the burgeoning age of photography and film and in whose houses we often still live – well, it starts reasonably strong, but very quickly I began to see a kind of picturesque, sanitised Victoriana creeping in. At first, the imposing location for Stonehearst looks good; get indoors, though, and it’s all too neat and clean, more Arkham Asylum for gamers than House of Usher. It just needs more gloom and rot – or, it needs to go fully in the other direction and embrace a sort of lurid, Corman-style colour palette and OTT stylistics. ‘The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether’ was originally adapted as a Grand Guignol performance in Paris: that says it all for me. There’s little of that approach here. The vision we get of an insane asylum is altogether just too cosy, quaint and accessible, which – together with the actually very tame, Certificate 15 adult content – keeps any real horror at bay. Furthermore, there’s ample missed opportunity here to really pass comment on the barbarism inflicted against mental health patients during the era; we’re not really asked to think about it in too great a depth. Some questions are raised in the script, sure, and the question of ‘what constitutes a lunatic’ pops up, but ultimately treatments are invoked simply to add more drama, not because we’re meant to fully engage with the plight of the characters.
I think it’s such a shame that Stonehearst Asylum isn’t a far better film than it is. It’s an okay film. It’s pretty easy on the eye, and it has some decent performances. But given a bit more sparkle, a bit more atmosphere, it could have been great. Unfortunately, it’s far too much in the ‘mild peril’ category; pretty, yeah, but too light-touch, and as such any real links to the sardonic energy of Poe are few and far-between.
Stonehearst Asylum is out in DVD and Blu-ray on 22nd June 2015. Trailer contains spoilers.