FROM HELL (2001)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

I concluded my review of the Moore-Campbell graphic novel by writing:

In keeping with its title, FROM HELL is a profoundly pessimistic novel, drenched in a Spengleresque mood of historical futility. Perhaps its most depressing—albeit bracing—aspect is even though no reader is likely to believe that Gull can escape hell through his techniques of derangement, Moore offers no light at the end of the tunnel for anyone else, either.   

Now, the 2001 adaptation of the graphic novel is depressing as well, but without offering any bracing vision of human limitations. The FROM HELL movie was the first cinematic adaptation of one of Moore's key works, and though I don't agree with Moore's past statements that his works should not be cinematically adapted, the idea of wedging this sprawling, rococo narrative into a two-hour theatrical release was not a good one. Even the Hughes Brothers, who co-directed the film, admitted the difficulty of the task in a DVD extra.

One of the co-directors mentioned that they and co-scripters Terry Hayes and Rafael Ygliesias had made the decision to shift the graphic novel's narrative focus from William Gull, a.k.a, "Jack the Ripper," to the inspector assigned to the Ripper case, Frederick Abberline. I would imagine that the producers thought that in contrast to the Ripper, Abberline could be reworked into a "Hollywood leading man" type of character, and indeed that's what FROM HELL gives us, with handsome 38-year-old Johnny Depp standing in for the portly Abberline of the graphic novel, who was of course strongly modeled on the real-life policeman. In addition, Hayes and Ygliesias meld the movie's Abberline with another Moore-Campbell character, problematic spiritualist Robert James Lees, who began as yet another real-life figure tangentially involved in the Ripper case. Whereas the graphic novel's Lees is not a credible psychic, Movie-Abberline has authentic visions stemming partly from his use of opium. This makes him the source of all marvelous phenomenality within the span of the 2001 movie.

Is it possible to do a good film about Jack the Ripper in which the focus is the detective stalking the killer? Both 1965's A STUDY IN TERROR  and 1979's MURDER BY DECREE show that the feat can be accomplished. But although the writers of these movies were not the equals of Arthur Conan Doyle, those scribes used Doyle's famous (but public-domain) sleuth to combat their respective versions of "Saucy Jack." Even derivative versions of Sherlock Holmes have a complex model from which to draw. But Hayes and Yglesias don't make Movie-Abberline a character sufficient to stand on his own merits, for this detective exists to satisfy plot points. He gets addicted to opium while mourning his deceased wife. He's horrified by the grisly murders of the Whitechapel prostitutes and selflessly vows to bring down the killer, even when it brings him into conflict with England's Royal Family. He falls in love, in a rather bloodless manner, with the prostitute Mary Kelly (Heather Graham), which provides moviegoers with a romance between two Hollywood icons. Depp does his best with this unrewarding conglomeration, but he can't make a silk purse from this porcine material.

The writers of FROM HELL are able to reproduce many of the mundane horrors seen in the graphic novel with respect to the suffering of the poverty-stricken ladies of the evening, who are almost as often menaced by their male customers as by roving gangs forcing the women to pay protection money. In such a world, the depredations of Jack the Ripper are just a logical extension of all the sins men commit against "the gentle sex." Yet Graham and her fellow actresses provide FROM HELL's strongest scenes when dealing with daily indignities. Much less effective is the thriller-plotline, in which they become targeted by the Ripper because of their knowledge of royal improprieties. The actual Ripper-murders are handled by the movie's writers and directors with even less creativity than one sees in a FRIDAY THE 13TH sequel.

Like the movie's version of the graphic novel's Abberline, FROM HELL's version of William Gull (Ian Holm)-- the deranged, occult-obsessed physician who becomes a "royal hitman" to silence the five prostitutes-- exists only to serve plot points. It was to be expected that Hayes and Ygelsias would never have been able to duplicate the extremely complex Freemason philosophy given to the Gull of Alan Moore (who was, to be sure, drawing on the theories of various Ripperologists). Yet though Hayes and Ygelsias have their Gull portentously announce that he "gave birth to the 20th century," they have no idea how to make the character assume even a modicum of personal motive for his obsessions with occultism and the murder of women. Had they given Gull a "Norman Bates" persona-- i.e., the psycho kills women because his mommy issues make him impotent with the female of the species-- even that old chestnut would be some kind of motive. It's as if the writers, knowing they couldn't equal Moore on that characterizational plane, just threw up their hands and gave Ian Holm a bunch of cobbled-together high-falutin' lines and left him to do what he could with them.

I only grant this film a fair rating of sociological mythicity because the writers and directors did grapple somewhat the evils endured by the London underclass. However, a lot of Ripper-adaptations trade in the same wares, and FROM HELL is distinguished only by the amount of studio money thrown at this endeavor.