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Baroque Manson

The Blood Countess, Báthory, is back
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 16th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
"You're soaking in it": Anna Friel plays the infamous bathing beauty.
Bathory


Directed by Juraj Jakubisko
With Anna Friel, Karel Roden, Hans Matheson, Vincent Regan, Franco Nero and Bolek Polívka
Was the Countess Erzsébet Báthory one of the great serial killers of history, or was she the victim of political intrigue? Báthory has many fans but few defenders, though Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko is certainly one of the latter. His lush, confusing epic on the life of the “Blood Countess” puts forward the idea that the stacks of virginal corpses that littered the countryside around her estate were murdered by Báthory’s political enemies, rather than being the discarded blood bags that supplied the secret ingredient to her rejuvenating baths.
Wiccans refer to Báthory’s age as the “burning times,” when a woman who possessed any suggestion of knowledge or power could easily be gotten rid of in a public bonfire. As Báthory was, undoubtedly, the most powerful woman in Hungary in the early 1600s, her male peers might have felt she needed reminding of her place — and what better way to undermine her than to turn her into a monster? So a blood-bather she became, though one of royal stock, which meant she was spared the stake (her servantwomen weren’t as fortunate) in lieu of the corrective leisure of immurement.
A simple, feminist theory that has some ring of truth to it. Why, then, is the opposite image, that of the insatiable gore goddess, so much more potent?
Báthory as a Baroque Manson is a popular figure of film and fiction. The strange fascination she casts over Latin American writers, including the great Julio Cortázar, is obviously grad thesis material (there is an Aztecan aspect to her tale). Her purported crimes served as one artery feeding the Dracula myth, and she herself has fostered many impersonators in the annals of sinister cinema, perhaps the greatest being Delphine Seyrig in the moody Daughters of Darkness, where Seyrig passes through the film’s gloom-laden atmosphere like a satanic Marlene Dietrich.
Jakubisko’s desolate pohádka isn’t short of its own gloom, even in its defense of Báthory. He expertly makes the case that, even were she using young girls as bath-beads, the standard horrors of the time were such that almost anyone could be forgiven for having gone off the rails.
Filmed in English (though most copies playing in Prague will be dubbed) and rumored to be one of the most expensive films ever financed by Czechs and Slovaks, Jakubisko’s film has much to recommend it, though his own script is not among the attributes. It is, as you would expect from the famed director, sumptuously filmed, though Jakubisko seems to have become a bit too enamored of his title as the “Fellini of the East.” As with the great Italian at his most mannerist, Jakubisko can’t quite control his craze for tableaux, however much it impedes his narrative. Also, the budget evidently couldn’t accommodate state-of-the-art CGI equipment, so some of the matte work is amateurish.
Báthory (Anna Friel) strives to hold her husband’s lands together while he’s out defeating the Ottoman horde. On a drunken visit home, husband Nadasdy (Vincent Regan) rapes the pregnant Báthory, leaving her as a bloodied pile on the bed. What solace she finds is with her pet painter, one Caravaggio (Hans Matheson), whom she manages finally to seduce away from men (a fact that would have shocked Derek Jarman). Báthory is equally pursued by her husband’s best friend, Thurzo, the future Palatine of Hungary (an excellent Karel Roden). It is the spurned Thurzo who will orchestrate her downfall, though Báthory has been warned by the witch Darvulia (Jakubisko’s wife, Deana), a matronly seer who wanders through the film with phylactery plastered to her forehead, and who is given to Masonic hand gestures.
Jakubisko insists Báthory is innocent of harvesting the district’s maidens, yet does a poor job of explaining how so many corpses are generated at the castle. The countess proves that her red bath is simply herbs. Yet one of her serving women is given to opening a vein for Báthory’s pleasure on occasion. It’s all a jumble, and Jakubisko, fixated on composing his next still-life of plump breasts with dwarf, seems not to have noticed the confusion.
The performances run the gamut. Friel, a subtle actor, is always interesting to watch. Yet the film is stolen by Bolek Polívka as a monk of Da Vinci–like brilliance who manages, within the scope of the film, to invent the parachute, the telephone and roller skates. Polívka is in his element.
Like a certain Romanian count, Báthory is difficult to keep in a crypt. The countess is due to arrive on screens again next year in a film written, directed and starring Julie Delpy. The bloodline continues.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (16/07/2008):

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