|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
Somewhere in Europe, some time in the past: Janick (Josh Ebel) has just
successfully completed a series of experiments to bring the dead back to
life, but when he presents his findings to the science community, he is
ridiculed and his experiments are labelled blasphemy - and instead of
making him famous, his experiments just ruin his reputation, so much so
that he goes into hiding immediately after the presentation. Soon
enough, the plague hits town, and among the victims is Janick's girlfriend
Esmeralda (Kelly I.Lynn). Of course, Janick, who now wears a mask, being
disfigured after some acid attack, has her dug up and revives her - but
alas, at first she is nothing but an empty shell, with no memories at all,
and only slowly can he make her remember. When she starts to remember who
he was though, problems arise, because the above-mentioned acid attack has
turned Janick into a monster (on the outside), and when she tears off his mask, she is
suitably frightened - but ultimately, love conquers everything. Above
all else, Promotheus Triumphant, a blend of Frankenstein-
and Phantom
of the Opera-motives, is an exercise in recreating the look
and feel of silent cinema - and in purely recreating silent cinema, I
guess this film is a success. But that's also the film's biggest fault,
because Promotheus Triumphant's approach to the silents is purely
academic, it's just an empty attempt to recreat the cinema of old,
there seems to be neither a real understanding of the source material nor
a reinterpretation of it - in short, the film lacks playfulness, and
that's what any good movie should be, playful ... and if you want to see the
techniques and motives of silent cinema in a new playful context, people
like Guy Maddin show you how it's done. There is another problem with Promotheus
Triumphant though: It's dead boring. It's basic story shouldn't take
more than 10 minutes to tell, and yet the film is 80 minutes long, and
everything is padded out by trying to mock the slow pace of silent movies
- but despite their different rhythm there is one thing that good silent
movies never were, and that's boring ...
|