In the middle of superheroes and mainstream literature characters making the jump from the page to the silver screen, filmmakers are digging deeper to come up with the next blockbusting mega-earner.
At least, that is the premise with “The Raven,” presumably based on no other than Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem, whose metering and exquisite musicality almost single-handedly lifted the Baltimore drunkard from oblivion to literary Aidenn.
But the John Cusack starrer is not about the literary heavyweight’s night in bleak December, and whatever raven we see in the film does not croak words of hopelessness that drive the narrator into madness. The bird is, however, omnipresent in the film, and paints it with its ominous color—an allegory of evil, if you will—one that surrounds the fatal circumstances strung along the storyline.
Which reminds us—the story is much like that other film expanding the world of a certain London detective, with one mysterious death or circumstance, followed by another until the hero catches up in the end, although, “Raven” is about Poe, the author himself and not his literary character, and capitalizes on the actual mysteries surrounding the writer’s death by filling it in with a fictional rendering of its cause.
Macabre smorgasbord
We know that Edgar Allan Poe was found in a dire state of health on a Baltimore park bench, and died a few days after. We know that before his last breath, Poe was supposed to have kept uttering the name “Reynolds.” The medical records would disappear, sealing the writer’s macabre immortality both in literature and history.
Real Poe fans will delight in that “Raven” makes allusions to a number of Poe’s gothic murder stories. The script is a smorgasbord of unsolved murders, using scenes from “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Mask of the Red Death,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Black Cat” and “The Premature Burial,” and involves names that were actually connected to the author in one way or another during his lifetime.
This overload of literary citation has for its center Poe, who is called in to help solve the murders that are based on his stories, and his number one fan, the perpetrator. But whether the title’s referent is Poe, a ravening madman of a drunk for all his writing genius, or the dark, unnamed predator, is not clear.
Masquerade
Cusack is no stranger to playing literary puzzle-solvers, having played Ed Dakota in the Agatha Christie-inspired “Identity” (2003) and Mike Enslin in “1408” (2007), based on the Stephen King novel of the same title.
But in “Raven,” it may take a while before viewers used to Cusack feebly attempting to jump across the historical language barrier. Of course, the lines of poetry and prose are saved by the fact that they are mere recitations of literary brilliance, but the conversational script is evidently 21st century masquerading in 19th-century clothes.
Removing history from the picture, “Raven” does make for a nice trip down memory lane for those who grew up with the stories. Moviegoers can expect outbursts of gleeful excitement as Poe fans see familiar scenes in the silver screen flesh. Removing history, we say, because while familiar names and events are involved, the script saw it fit to rewrite their involvement for its purposes.
Nameless nevermore
In the end, “Raven” is a fun work of fiction, one that revisits what today might be lesser known creative work by weaving a story around the chapter of the author’s unexplained demise.
In doing so, the film by director James McTeigue [whose other works include “V for Vendetta” (2005) and “The Matrix” (1999)] ensures that Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy is not forgotten among today’s audiences, whose recent fare of film adaptations has so far been limited to the comic book variety.
So the mystery of Edgar Allan Poe remains alive. Expecting reprints of his carefully calculated tales of grim murder, quote this writer: in this era of Facebook, Poe will not be nameless here forevermore.