Countess Elizabeth Bathory (Wikipedia
entry) was a Hungarian noblewoman who was
almost a precise contemporary of Shakespeare (Bathory: 1560-1614;
Shakespeare: 1564-1616). According to common legend, she was a monster.
The Guinness Book of Records, for example, credits her as the top female
serial killer of all time. Some place her body count as high as 650, and
nobody attributes fewer than 36 deaths to her cruel hands. The most
horrific legends, which have no basis in evidence as far as I can
determine, picture her bathing in the blood of virgins in order to remain
perennially young. Popular myth snowballed her reputation as it did for
that of Vlad Dracul, so folklore had already transmogrified her into an
ogress before our time. The B movies of the 20th century completed the
metamorphoses of Bathory and Dracul into the Count and Countess of blood.
There is, or at least there ought to be, some distinction drawn between
the two cases. Vlad Dracul was not Dracula, but he was an extremely cruel
and arbitrarily unpleasant man, so there was plenty of justification for
his demonic reputation. It's not really so clear that Countess Bathory was
really evil. It is the premise of this film that the countess was framed
by rival nobles and Catholic clerics who wanted to grab some chunks of her
vast estates. That may be partially or even entirely true. After 400
years, it's not really possible to sort out the accusations and
counter-accusations to determine where the legends end and the facts
begin. The countess was indeed a very rich widow whose land holdings were
envied by all. It was indeed a time when Catholics and Protestants
slaughtered one another in God's name, and she was the country's most
powerful Protestant, so it is not surprising to hear that she was accused
of blasphemy. Accusing someone of sacrilegious or blasphemous behavior in
those days was like accusing someone of being a communist in the 1950s - a
convenient way to get an enemy out of the way. Although there was some
evidence presented against her and her servants, it was not unheard of in
those days for investigators to extract evidence out of thin air with
bribes, intimidation and torture. It is possible that every single
accusation against her is invalid. And don't forget, some of the most
wild-eyed accusations against her were made by people who believed in
vampires and thought that cancer could be cured with leeches.
In other words, the film's general aspiration - to debunk the grisliest
of the Bathory legends - has merit. The film's specific treatment,
however, is just ridiculous. Instead of debunking the legend with common
sense and verifiable facts, it supplants it with another legend which is
even more preposterous. The new myth involves a witch with miraculous
herbs, and some roller-skating monks with anachronistically advanced
scientific gizmos. To make matters worse, the script presents some scenes
which seem to confirm the dark Bathory legends, only to turn around and
reveal those actions to be either something she did while under the
influence of hallucinogenic drugs, or something she imagined while in the
grip of those drugs. Or not. The script also assigns the countess a
long-term romance in Slovakia with the artist Caravaggio who, to the best
of my knowledge, never left the territory which now forms the modern
country of Italy, except for one trip to Malta. And then there is the fact
that the historical Caravaggio didn't seem to like girls. On the other
hand, none of the love story's authenticity problems really matter,
because even if all the details were true, or at least believable, the
romance would still be a gratuitous add-on to the main storyline. The
sappy love story is not only irrelevant, but it slows the story down to a
crawl for no good reason.
Oh, by the way, the story does try to explain that whole wacky "bathing
in blood" thing. According to the movie, people actually witnessed it -
only to determine later that the liquid was simply water which had been
turned red by some herbs. According to most historians, this is a needless
bit of revisionism because the blood baths never occurred in the first
place. Why didn't the auteur use the forum of this revisionist script to
show that the baths were entirely fictional, as is now believed? Because
the bathing scenes were necessary to get Anna Friel naked.
Far be it from me to question the merit of that!
The wild tone shifts and overall offbeat presentation are not helped by
the fact that some of the supporting actors have a dubious grasp of the
English language and, for that matter, the craft of acting. On the other
hand, the period imagery looks great: elegant balls, bleak battlefields,
lusty wenches, picturesque bucolic views, flashing swords, imposing
castles, and ubiquitous flickering candles. I have no idea whether it is
all authentic, but my guess is that it is not, based upon the existence of
roller-skating monks. Accurate or not, it looks terrific, except for some
cheap CGI effects in a few scattered scenes. The outdoor cinematography is
especially impressive. Some of the pastoral still-lifes are so gorgeous
that you could use prints of them as backgrounds for your desktop.
Unfortunately, those beautiful images should have gone
straight-to-jigsaw-puzzle because the script is utterly trivial, and the
film lasts two and a quarter hours with no apparent artistic reason to
exist.
Nor is there an economic reason. Frankly, one has to wonder whom the
auteur had pictured in his ideal audience. Would the people who relate to
the explicit blood and gore also enjoy the sappy love story, and
vice-versa? Would the people who admire a skeptical approach to legendary
history also approve of superseding a silly legend with a sillier one?
Although Bathory is quite competent in some respects, I am having
difficulty picturing the person who would enjoy this film.
