by Jessica Pyle
Discussing how the films Quills and The Libertine challenge and alter the heritage film debate.
A certain cycle of films made in Britain in the 1980s have been classified by critics as heritage films, films which use “an English, southern middle class past” and rich period detail and settings in order to allow middle class, conservatively minded audiences to “flee from the troubled present into the imaginary stability and grandeur of the past”. As a genre title it is generally thought of the word heritage “that the term is a critical invention of recent years” created by derogative critical readings of films such as Chariots of Fire and A Passage To India as films in which “the balance between narrative and spectacle shifts in favour of spectacle” in order to reinforce conservative ideology. There are numerous problems associated with this critically defined genre, notably that it takes little interest in films as individual works rather than as a homogenous whole and that debate is couched in derogative terms and often comes from a position already prejudiced against these films. The debate often focuses on those films of the 1980s made in a Thatcherite Britain in which heritage was becoming an industry, however films portraying the past that delight in period detail and adapting classical English literature that were made in the 1990s and 2000s are interesting in the way they differ to those made previous. Two such films are Quills and The Libertine. If “the significance of heritage culture is located in its fascination with the past and the role which this plays in relation to the present” then it can be argued that the genre is inherently progressive in contrasting the current world qith that of the past meaning much can be gleaned from the way specific films present history. It is unfortunate that a great deal of heritage films seem to cling to a rose-tinted view of the past however in a world of Post modernity and intertextuality these films have the ability to engage with the heritage debate itself.
The Libertine engages with heritage films and the heritage industry’s use of the literary canon as one of many “cultural reference points which assume a certain amount of ‘cultural capital’ on the part of its audience”. As part of the idea that heritage films construct an upper class, exclusive version of the past, they are intrinsically linked to the adaptation of high profile and culturally important works of literature such as novels by Jane Austen. Often these novels are critical of the time in which they are written and the criticism has been levelled at their adaptations that “what, in the originals were the subject of the attack can easily become, in the films, the object of nostalgic pleasure.” Both The Libertine and Quills engage with this criticism and reject the traditional literary canon by centering on the writers the Earl of Rochester and the Marquis De Sade, both of whom are directly confronted with censorship by their rulers and love of their work by the common public in the films. The deliberate use of sexually explicit and crude writers who disregard and criticise the monarchy explicitly in their work – for example Rochester who is exiled for reading a poem critical of the King referring to him as “the cunny of Britain” to the king himself and writes plays for the mass market – both reminds the audience that the writers of the past were not all genteel and restrained and directly objects to the idea that costume drama plays only lip service to the problems of the time in order to evoke nostalgia in its audience. It is claimed that the style of the heritage film “is much better suited to oblique suggestion than explicit portrayal of erotic desire” and that it praises restraint above all yet both the writers in these films wrote explicit content often using foul language. Heritage cinema often desexes the very real people of the past and these films atempt to redress the balance. In the opening scene of The Libertine Rochester speaks directly to the audience telling them that he “puts it around” in explicit language which, he says, we will watch and lust after and stating; “this is my prologue, nothing in rhyme, no protestations of modesty, you were not expecting that I hope”. This is a direct statement to the audience that both degenerates the traditional literary prologue and states from the outset that the film will not be reserved in terms of sexuality. Esther Sonnet writes that in cinema in general “the spectators of the ‘literary film’ genre might be offered specific pleasures which nonetheless conform to the same principle: to an intentionally solicited experience of repression.” The film not only breaks conventional narrative by breaking the fourth wall in the prologue but indicates that it will be mocking the traditional way in which the repressed nature and strict rules of the past are fetishised by the heritage film. Within a genre of “adaptations of culturally prestigious and canonic literary and theatrical properties” the deliberate decision to choose historical figures famed for their vulgarity, explicitness and criticism of the establishment explicitly rejects the canon and the idea of middle class, respectable art equated with the heritage film.
However, both The Libertine and Quills argue not that literature is irrelevant but that all literature, even that which is crude, is worthwhile. Rochester’s words have immense power, to have him exiled, to aid the king by turning public opinion in parliament and to create emotion and passion on stage in front of the general public. Both Rochester and De Sade are also portrayed as emotional and passionate people who express their emotions freely, and the audience is made to feel for them as distressed and powerless people not as literary paragons or symbols. While in the traditional heritage film “it is characters who stand outside of or lack full integration with polite society […] who possess the honesty or vitality which is missing in other characters” these two films do not attack this idea through portraying the working classes exclusively and criticising the elite but by creating characters who are Earls and Marquis who live love and die in a tiring, dirty and dangerous world just as those around them. We see both characters break down and weep and experience their losses in a personal not a distant way. Extending this and equating the two protagonists with the literature they create, these films call for the inclusion of all literature into a space where they can be discussed and venerated upon their own merits.
Another way the high esteem in which the literary canon is held is mocked but also the way the power of words is emphasised in The Libertine is in the way the theatre is presented and explored. The centrality of the theatre to the film can be connected with the way that traditionally in the heritage film “the display of refined English diction and the theatrical use of language is clearly a significant source of its appeal.” England’s long theatrical tradition is founded on the plays and reputation of Shakespeare and actors such as Judi Dench and Maggie Smith build their reputations on the esteem starring in the theatre brings and are famous for their roles in heritage films playing on the respectability and the social cache that great works of literature have. The Libertine however stars Johnny Depp, Johnny Vegas, a large, sweating and vulgar comedian and a host of other recognisable English comedians; the rejection of the established acting conventions is clear and a connection is drawn with low brow comedy and mass media not austerity and the elite theatrical experience. This is further emphasised by the portrayal of the theatres in the film. They are filled with a baying crowd who heckle the actors and Rochester, calling him a “cunt” and prostitutes plying their wares openly in the hallways; they are also attended by the king. The audience is reminded through the scenes set in the theatre of the beginnings of the institution, when it was played for a mass audience and contained crude jokes and stilted acting. Again there is a theme of inclusion, Shakespearian theatre is being reclaimed as something for every class to enjoy and equated with the mass media that heritage film attempts to distance itself from through adaptation of only the most revered literary works. Quills also attacks the idea of theatre as a form of entertainment for the elite through its use of the stage. The Marquis De Sade writes a play while imprisoned in a lunatic asylum which stars the lunatics he lives with, in the ultimate inclusion of the disenfranchised into the institutions of British art and culture. If “one of the central pleasures of the heritage film is in the artful and spectacular projection of an elite, conservative vision of the national past” and the construction and reassertion of canonical works of literature, then a chaotic and disorganised stage production performed by lunatics to the upper classes directly attacks the idea of an elite theatre by making a mockery of it. The stage production in The Libertine makes a similar point; after being tasked to write a play in order to impress the French ambassador Rochester stages a crude play in which actresses ride enormous dildoes around the stage and sing songs about them. It is also harshly critical of the King and his rule. Again the stage, a place expected to be one of quiet, respect and high art, reclaims its bawdy past and is used to critique the current elite – those whom the heritage film attract ans satisfy – and again art is portrayed as down to earth, all inclusive and often coarse in spectacular and exaggerated form.
The casting of Kate Winslet and Geoffrey Rush as central characters in Quills is significant when placed within the larger tradition of theatrical actors being a heritage staple. Winslet starred in Sense and Sensibility and Hamlet before Quills, both films based on canonical literary works and her appearance is of the traditional ‘English Rose’ archetype with pale dewy skin and red lips, representing, perhaps, “a particular version of the national past which is associated with the privileged lifestyles of the English upper classes” and the heritage film’s supposed mission to enforce that past. It is therefore key that she is brutally murdered as a result of the influence De Sade’s erotic writing has on one of the inmates of the asylum. Hers is a symbolic death representing the old conception of the heritage film and how “they were said to project and promote a bourgeois or upper-class vision and version of ‘the national past’ which was organised around a narrow ‘Englishness’ rather than any notion of hybridity or regional diversity.” Her death caused by the raw power of the written word emphasises again the importance of embracing literature in all its forms as well as rejecting an idea of an exclusive English national identity. Geoffrey Rush has previously starred in Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love, both films considered to be progressive heritage films with postmodern elements by critics and both films which portrayed historical figures as icons and rock star like figures. His presence indicates a link to the heritage film in the same way other recurring actors do but also a link with a particular type of film with a certain postmodern bent and tendency to question heritage conventions.
Rochester’s relationship with the actor Lizzie Barry within the film is also significant; we first see her playing a part along other actors playing Shakespeare in the traditional manner of stage in the past and the heritage film in which “acting involves neither an immersion of the actor into a part nor a subordination of a role to their star image so much as a ‘performance’ of the role, involving a clear display of ‘actorliness’”. Lizzie is not successful at either moving or entertaining the audience, a criticism of the theatrical acting heritage is accused of and its lack of emotional engagement, and Rochester takes on the responsibility of making her into a star. His method of choice is to encourage her to connect with the characters she plays and to express real emotion which results in her becoming one of the most celebrated actors on the stage. This expresses the sentiment on behalf of the filmmakers that while Shakespeare and literature still has the power to move emotionally, it is in an inclusive not exclusive environment and needs a true emotional connection with its audience based on humanity and not performative spectacle.
The opening prologue of The Libertine is interesting when considered as a declaration of intent regarding the rest of the film. As media saturation increases, so do intertextual references, pastiche and parody within cinema and it is important to consider “post-modern culture as one in which differentiation between high art/low culture, art/entertainment and knowledge/pleasure is held to be increasingly irrelevant.” This loss of differentiation can be seen in the way both films attempt to remove the barriers between mass culture and that considered elite but also in the presentation of the character of Rochester. One alternate title for the film was The Libertine: Sex, Drugs and Rococo and this encapsulates the mood of the film as one chronicling the life of a rock star or wild child rather than that of a staid literary figure. In a world obsessed with celebrity and the lives of rock stars and their wild lives it is understandable that rather than being nostalgic for a conservative past, audiences feel a form of nostalgia for the lives of those with the money, time and ability to fulfil their every desire. If “heritage film has finally caught up with post-modern practice” then it will inevitably blur the distinction between mass media and the rules and exclusive qualities of high art. The transformation of literary figures into characters more comparable to Iggy Pop than the traditional view of Jane Austen is a predictable consequence of Postmodern technique, as is “a critical distinction between ‘historical films’ and those [Fredric Jameson] identifies as definitively postmodern in their display of ‘historical pastiche’”. If “audiences generally accept and indeed expect, a degree of historical license in films which seek to recreate the past” then films such as Elizabeth and The Libertine indicate that audiences no longer have much interest in “bourgeois heritage films” as a place of interest but prefer a celebrity lifestyle as a place to lose themselves in a type of nostalgia and therefore the liberties these films take with history veer more towards the latter end than the former. In The Wings of the Dove “the credits show us that this is not to be a traditional heritage film” but “deliberately modernist” and the breaking of the fourth wall in The Libertine’s opening also deliberately and clearly tells the viewer that it is a Post-Modernist piece of work. It is evident that the heritage film rather than being a “fairly tight and self-contained cycle” is an area of film which uses a historical setting to distance itself from its audience in order to allow it to induce feelings of nostalgia –defined as a feeling of escapism from day to day life into a life which has desirable components. As society has progressed, so have audience expectations, from “a restrained aesthetic of display” to a portrayal of sexual, foul mouthed and outspoken characters. Heritage cinema has moved from films which “exhort characters to break free of inhibition but as films are themselves inhibited due to the good taste and good manners that their approach to filmmaking involves” to films which use their historical setting to celebrate candidness through inclusion of prostitutes, masses of the poor, dirty and muddy streets, heavy drinking and venereal disease. Visual display and spectacle is not used as “a museum aesthetic” but rather the opposite, a way to empathise the humanity of the main characters and surrounding extras through portrayal of visceral mud, grime and realities of day to day life.
The casting of the American star Johnny Depp as the Earl of Rochester in The Libertine can be said to perform the same function as literature is said to in the heritage film, as a “cultural reference point[s] which assume[s] a certain amount of ‘cultural capital’ on behalf of its audience.” Depp’s previous roles include Chocolat, Pirates of the Caribbean and Edward Scissorhands creating a star persona of the pretty boy heartthrob who stars in quirky fairytales and often plays a bad boy or misunderstood love interest and gaining him a legion of female fans. His casting further indicates the rock star persona that the film attaches to Rochester and invites the audience to indulge in the visual pleasure of watching him on screen in the same way they are attracted to “the usual delight in English houses gardens and landscapes, the ostentatious display of period detail and the careful tracking of the camera around the lovingly recreated interiors.” The camera does, in fact, often focus closely on his face and not retreat to mid range shots which allow the audience to indulge in his surroundings which both increases the immediacy of the emotional content and allows the audience to take pleasure in his good looks. Equating Depp’s good looks with the visual pleasure audiences feel when watching period film by using his star persona and the camera allows the film to intensely critique this pleasure. Andrew Higson writes of the heritage film that; “several of them are set in the early decades of this century, when the culture of the country house was already in disarray – hence the almost pervasive sense of loss, of nostalgia, which infuses these films.” He implies that nostalgia in the heritage film is in part from a sadness from the audience that these worlds no longer exist and this is why they enjoy the visual pleasure offered by films portraying them in intricate detail. However, in The Libertine the pleasure of Depp’s face is slowly ruined by venereal disease as his teeth turn black, his skin rots and his nose eventually falls off. Here the dirty and dangerous reality of past times destroys the visual pleasure of the audience and the film disparages both the idea that the heritage film can only be used as a vehicle for arresting period detail and the prevalence of “the monolithic nature of the critique and its tendency to trample over significant differences between films at the textual level.”
The choice to film these two stories in the style of heritage film, set in a distant past replete with “the iconography with which the genre is most associated: buildings, properties, costumes and landscapes” is an important decision which allows the filmmakers to exploit visual cues and costume as a signifier of emotional state. In the traditional heritage film “the emphasis on visual display […] undermines plots characterised by liberal or ‘progressive’ sentiments” and the detailed sets and costumes of such films distract from the story they surround and its potential progressive elements. The Libertine and Quills however use set design and costume as an additional layer of meaning in a similar way as in Elizabeth in which the way “her clothes have altered during the course of the film, the sensuous revealing dresses in silks and velvets replaced by stiff, concealing garments, over-elaborate and near-theatrical” exposes Elizabeth’s changing mental state as she sacrifices her humanity and personal life in order to rule England as a single woman and an icon. When we first meet the Marquis De Sade in Quills his cell in the asylum is filled with comforts of the age, he drinks wine, reads his large collection of books and wears elaborate clothing. Despite being ostensibly locked up in an insane asylum the viewer is still treated to a display of period detail and spectacle, however, by the end of the film De Sade’s clothing and surroundings begin to signify to the audience aspects of his emotional struggle and gain meaning that they would be denied in the traditional heritage criticism. De Sade is banned from writing but he continues to find ways to express himself, by writing in wine on his sheets, in blood on his clothes and, eventually in his own excrement on the walls; as this progresses, his room is stripped of every item that may provide the audience with visual pleasure and he is stripped of his clothes and chained in a small stone pit. The power of words is emphasised by De Sade’s compulsive need to write and express himself, through the lengths he goes to to be able to write and the madness his inability to do so causes eventually leading to suicide. De Sade literally covers the period detail of the film with his writing because he cannot survive without being able to create, the audience see him wearing a costume covered head to toe in writing and, in his final cell, words in crude capital letters written in excrement cover both the walls and the screen. The takeover of the screen and the aspects of visual spectacle expected from heritage cinema including costume by a visual manifestation of non-canonical literature is highly symbolic and represents the importance the film places on literature of all types and self-expression without censorship. The materials he use to write – bodily fluids emphasise that his work is part of him and a natural expression of himself which he is unable to hold in. His costume and surroundings here are far from being irrelevant or solely something for the audience to delight in viewing, they express his inward feelings and the importance of being able to create to the audience – the more desperate to write he becomes, the cruder the lettering and the ink also become. The idea that the set dressing and costumes are extraneous in the heritage film has been turned on its head as they become strong signifiers to the audience of developments in the characters in a similar way as in Elizabeth.
Censorship is a theme in both these films and, in a different manner, a main theme of the heritage film in the form of censorship of the self. Although not all critics agree and some argue that “restraint is invariably depicted in these films as a recipe for personal unhappiness and something that should be rejected in favour of personal, usually sexual fulfilment” the prevailing critique has been that “the emphasis on visual display […] undermines plots characterised by liberal or ‘progressive’ sentiments.” Both the character of Rochester and that of De Sade is one of ultimate indulgence and, according to those that surround them, immorality, and they therefore represent the opposite of the traditional uptight Britisher who follows social mores that audiences may expect from the heritage film. It can be argued that, just as “the heritage film prefers decorum and restraint to the uninhibited expression of libidinal desires” both Rochester and De Sade are gruesomely punished for their freedom in a way that allows the audience to indulge through watching their excess but not condone them. Their punnishment also represents a more accurate and visceral portrayal of the consquences of an alternate or rebellious lifestyle throughout history than the sanitised seeming traditional heritage film. Just as the heritage film may “indulg[e] the spectator in the pleasures of the past but also provid[e] them with a kind of alibi to do so.” However, De Sade’s downfall and torment, and the death of the woman he nearly loves comes not from his writing as it may seem but from that fact that his writing has been censored by the emperor, the church and the social mores of the time which championed restraint. His books’ popularity with the common people and, it can be assumed, some of the upper classes indicate a society which is suppressing itself and punishing De Sade for his deviance whilst enjoying it in private. Madeleine’s death comes about not because De Sade’s writing is inherently destructive but because in order to release it to a public clamouring for more he must evade censorship by filtering it through a chain of violent asylum inmates to her. The idea of restraint and censorship causing destruction in heritage films has been espoused by more recent writers who claim them to be “a continuing and comprehensive critique of the ethic of restraint, repression and the stiff upper lip, of the surrender of personal happiness to higher notions of duty and self-sacrifice, hitherto key elements of the national character” and in a Post Modern world it is understandable that as audiences desire the celebrity and rock star lifestyle the excesses of the characters in heritage film become more and more outrageous.
Both The Libertine and Quills utilise the perceived genre conventions of the heritage film in order to challenge the negative perception of them that many critics have. They turn on end the concepts of visual spectacle and reverence of canonical literature which are said to reinforce a middle class and elite “vision of the national past” through the use of the heritage conventions of detailed historical set dressing, costume and “a repertory company of key players, many of them drowning on the heritage of the English theatrical tradition” portrayed with a post modern twist. More and more critics are beginning to write of the heritage films of the 1980s as “profoundly subversive” and it seems that any subversiveness present has matured throughout a strain of films in what may be loosely termed the heritage genre beginning with films such as Chariots of Fire and ending for the time being with films such as The Libertine which exploit the intertextuality postmodernism allows by subverting and playing on previous films in the cycle. Both films do not discount the importance heritage films place on the literary and theatrical canon but argue for a more inclusive attitude to art and history that allows characters to be played with more visceral humanity whether they be upper or lower class and whether their stories are restrained and elegant or dirty and dishevelled.
Punk Academia. 