Heavenly Creatures
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jed Brophy, Lou Dobson, Moreen Eason, Pearl Carpenter, Peter Elliott (III)Primary Contributor: Winslet, Kate
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 109 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-09-24
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Miramax
Movie Reviews of Heavenly Creatures
Movie Review: An impeccable film that captures the heart and chills the soul...
Summary: 5 Stars
Peter Jackson's savagely brilliant `Heavenly Creatures' has to be his finest cinematic moment. Sure, he astounded millions (and won Oscars) for his `Lord of the Rings' trilogy, but he has never been as honest and as human as he was with his delicate handling of this startling true life story.
The film opens with a sequence as shocking as its conclusion; the image of two blood soaked teenage girls floating across the screen. This opening lays a solid foundation for the masterpiece we are about to witness. `Heavenly Creatures' tells the story of young Pauline Parker, a social outcast who lives under the strict rule of her parents Herbert and Honorah. She has no friends and truly no life until she meets Juliet Hulme, the beautiful and interesting new girl. The two girls bond quickly and that bond grows deeper and stronger with time. That bond is threatened though when their parents begin to suspect that maybe the girls are too close and attempt to separate them. What happens as a result is as horrific as it is heartbreaking.
Peter Jackson's visual styling here is marvelous; the way he interjects colors and shapes to deepen the meaning behind many events in the film and to embellish the relationship between Pauline and Juliet. This is especially evident when studying the fantasy world the two girls create for themselves.
`Heavenly Creatures' truly sinks into the minds of these two girls, sheltered from the outside world and jaded by everyone around them except one another. As their devotion towards one another grows they retreat into their fantasy world, a world where they can be together always. They have alternate identities (Pauline is `Gina' and Juliet is `Devora') and they gallivant around clay figures and sing Mario Lanza songs and are ultimately free from the confines of their natural born existence.
This film also marks the big screen debut of both Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet. Both girls are flawless here, utterly flawless. Lynskey captures the desperation and loneliness that engulfs her character, a loneliness that could lead someone to kill. Her relationship with her parents is fleshed out beautifully, and Lynskey portrays the perfect emotions at the precise time to make her character not only believable but truly sympathetic. Kate Winslet is a revelation as Juliet. She embodies her character with confidence and sophistication and natural charm. It's apparent from her first role that she would become a legend, and look now, just fourteen years later, and she has five Oscar nominations to her name. Alongside Winslet and Lynskey there is also a stunning performance given by Sarah Peirse, who plays Honorah, Pauline's mother. Her performance is brilliant, controlled and commanding and breathtakingly honest.
`Heavenly Creatures' is a wonder of a film; at times soft and delicate, charming and sweet and then savage and brutal; a film that will capture your heart and soul and tears it to pieces. As some have mentioned, there are no villains here, only victims, and I think that Jackson's handling of the sensitive material helps translate that important point. By filming almost entirely on location (that is exact location of events) as well as having exerts from Pauline's actual diary read throughout, Peter Jackson helps create a sense of honesty, a sense of truism that permeates this impeccable film. `Heavenly Creatures' may be hard to watch, especially as the film draws to its shocking conclusion, but there is no denying that film this powerful is nothing short of heaven-sent.
Summary of Heavenly Creatures
A starkly original film-going experience based on a true life story, this film from New Zealand director Peter Jackson (Dead Alive, The Frighteners) is a stirring drama that offers up the unexpected. The story concerns two girls, outcasts who become best friends, whose bizarre fantasy life becomes more intense as their bond becomes increasingly more obsessive. When the mother of one of the girls tries to intervene and split the girls apart, they kill her and stand trial for murder in what is to this day still a celebrated and controversial case. Kate Winslet (Titanic) and Melanie Lynskey create two sympathetic and yet uncomfortably eerie characters in riveting portrayals. Featuring some startling and unique moments of visual brilliance as well as a disturbing love story between the two girls, Heavenly Creatures is at once both unsettling and beautiful to behold. --Robert LaneDrama DVD Video
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