Thinking on Crimson Peak
Perhaps it is because this is the month of October. Maybe the rain and falling leaves have affected my mood. Or it could be that I soon expect a phone call which will tell me that I need to fly out for my Grandma’s funeral, thus I needed a distraction. For whatever reason, the movie Crimson Peak drew my attention and I found myself wanting to go see it even though I generally don’t like horror films. Or rather, I don’t enjoy gore-fest, jump-scare movies that are about murder and death. I do enjoy spooky thriller movies with mysteries to solve. Crimson Peak does have blood, death, and other dark things, but it is more a gothic love story than a horror movie. Gothic heroines do not get happy endings, but they do have beautiful scenery and mysteries to unravel. Crimson Peak has all the dark mystery of Wuthering Heights and matches it for mood. The opening lines say that it is not a ghost story, but rather a story with ghosts in it. I found that to be true and I liked that about it. I liked that the supernatural world entwined with the material and affected it, but the plot did not revolve around the existence of ghosts. The movie was beautiful and dark. I enjoyed it for what it was though it is not a happy story.
Far away my Grandma lays in a hospital bed, tiny and weak. The latest report is that she is eighty four pounds and has forgotten how to swallow or speak intelligibly. There are not many days left. Her room is antiseptic and hallowed, a place where she is getting ready to leave the body she’s inhabited for ninety five years. That room is about love and letting go.
I suppose it makes sense that I’m attracted to a story about loss just now. I’m able to follow the emotion, but all the images are romanticized, beautiful, and clearly fiction. So I sit here in the evening and think of the movie I just saw. I imagine the hospital room where my parents are sitting lovingly nearby so Grandma won’t be alone. And I am glad to live in my world that is more prosaic and less vivid than the one on the screen. I’ll take death as a granter of peace and passage over howling ghosts and crumbling mansions. I’ll take my warm bright home full of video games and laughing. My life is a good place and sometimes I can best see that when I have something for contrast.