By Keri O’Shea
The Great Beast – English occultist Aleister Crowley – has for many years enjoyed an uneasy flirtation with popular culture. He’s appeared on the cover of a Beatles album, which ought to suffice to substantiate the first sentence – he’s inspired numerous homages in poetry and literature, but being such a problematic figure, his relationship with the mediums he’s inspired has long been equally problematic, with cinema no exception. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Crowley was many things to many people; a mutable, volatile persona who still does not lend himself well to linear narratives or neat endings. He was, quite literally, a Law unto himself, and this has caused headaches for many directors who have wanted to represent some aspect of him, without tripping over all the other aspects which contradict the first.
Director Carlos Atanes (see what he did there?) has hit on a novel way to illustrate Crowley’s life story in his 40 minute film, Perdurabo; he’s excised him altogether. In so doing, he’s rid himself of a lot of the risks, whilst still being able – despite a low budget – to bring together an interesting curiosity, a snapshot of life at the so-called Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily, the base of Crowley’s personal religion. Atanes has also managed, without spoon-feeding or sentamentalising, to explore the Abbey from the perspective of its position in place and time. Whilst the Order was crafting and performing its rituals for power, Europe was after all in flux, about to lurch into the Second World War.
Indeed, the film starts with two of Mussolini’s blackshirts, thuggish sticklers, who arbitrarily beat a passing man almost to death for the heinous crime of not carrying the appropriate papers. The man, Joseph, does not die, but he is gravely injured; thankfully, a woman discovers him, dresses his wounds (bandaging his eyes until he is sightless) and tells him he has been ‘expected’. He is then taken to the Abbey – which, unless Atanes has one hell of a set-builder, is the authentic Cefalu site, and hell alone knows how they managed to film there without interference…
Joseph asks again and again for Crowley, for it seems he has come there to pay homage to him, but he is not there. The Master has gone on a journey, the other inmates tell him, and he will return only when he is ready. In the meantime, the Work proceeds, the Scarlet Woman continues to record all subsequent events in her magickal diaries, but death and disease threaten the Order, with the sole male, Raoul Loveday, on the verge of giving up the ghost altogether (with a helpful death prophecy left to him by the Master before he headed off, which will have been a comfort). Although Crowley’s followers have their orders, they are becoming fractious, disorientated and unpredictable. Joseph stays, but without their leader, it seems as though Thelema is unravelling.
A low budget rings through this short film as clear as a bell, and there’s been some artistic licence throughout (not least with the use of Spanish language), but a few rookie errors and minor issues matter impressively little in the overall scheme of things here; Perdurabo exercises some creative decision-making throughout – not least by electing to film a story about Crowley without him in it, a gutsy decision which pays dividends. It’s also able to achieve an impressive amount of atmosphere, and the filmmaker’s knowledge of the key events and players is impressive. Parts of the dialogue are verbatim Thelemic ritual, and to hear them actually being spoken in the Cefalu farmhouse is actually very eerie; I’ll say it again, I don’t know how they managed to film there without at least some opposition from the Italian authorities, but let’s just say that Crowley’s grotesque painted frescos pay no respect to the fourth wall, and the overall effect is unsettling.
Plot is not a priority here, duh, and the sensory aspects to the film are mental rather than carnal, whilst Perdurabo is unashamedly art-house through and through. It probably wouldn’t win any converts to an interest in the history of Crowley’s nefarious career, but for those of you with more than a passing knowledge or interest from the outset, you may well be interested in this one. Perdurabo’s a film with an intriguingly tangled back-story of its own (originally being shelved after shooting at the director’s behest), but it’s good that it’s now seen the light of day – and how good to see a film about Thelema which manages to capture something of that manic strangeness you can usually only glean via the printed page.
Perdurabo (Where is Aleister Crowley?) is now available to watch for free online. You can find it here.