2023-11-23 15:03:35
Although Carmilla remains his best-known and most prestigious novel (and with a sublime film adaptation, Vampire of Carl Theodor Dreyer), Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu He left other wonderful works of suspense and terror to literature, such as Uncle Silas, a formidable gothic horror novel, generous when it comes to unhealthy environments and toxic family relationships. With the formulation of feminist theory at the end of the 18th century and the proliferation of authors who denounced the social discrimination of women as Jane Austen or the sisters Bronte, the Gothic novel was heavily nourished by those morbid and macabre environments, where the female characters were cloistered and subject to the will of the male characters. Concepts such as the “madwoman in the attic” begin to proliferate in the narrative to reflect the physical and psychological abuse to which the women were subjected.
THE CRAZY IN THE ATTIC
The reference to those beginnings of feminism is not trivial. The legacy It is a free adaptation of the work of The Children, necessarily reductionist in the face of the extension and complexity of the literary work, but also taking the concepts of the novel to parameters more in line with the current perspective, encouraging the indomitable and rebellious character of the protagonist, Maud Ruthyn. The actress Agnes O’Casey It is quite a discovery in this film, tackling this role with integrity and holding the entire dramatic weight of the film on his shoulders. The Legacy, by Lisa Mulcahy
Under the tutelage of his Uncle Silas (an also excellent David Wilmot), Maud will see her authority as heir demolished by the male power of her guardian, subjected to all kinds of abuses and aberrations in order to take away Knowl’s property, the family estate, and also counting on the complicity of other prominent men such as local doctor.
The female component of the film is strongly reinforced by its director and screenwriter, Lisa Mulcahy y Elisabeth Gooch, but also by a production predominantly made up of women (photography, editing, artistic direction). Her interest at all times points to that feminist revision of Gothic literature present in other titles of cinema and current literature, which more clearly and resoundingly demonstrate the elements pointed out by 19th century writers.
WE WILL BE A PLACE
One of the fundamental aspects of the Gothic novel and this type of novel is the presence of the environment and, most especially, the value that houses acquire both as a representation of the sublime (locus amoenus) and the oppressive (locus eremus). For this adaptation, and for the sake of this concretion of the original work, the plot is developed in Knowl and not in Bartham-Haugh, as in the novel by The Children. This change is fundamental and is perfectly articulated by Gooch y Mulcahy. In this way, the presence of the house becomes a gauge of the relationship between the characters.
Maud is initially presented as a lonely person jealous of her privacy, not particularly interested in social interaction. In this sense, Knowl acts as a welcoming and protective space, a metaphor for the figure of her recently deceased father. With the arrival of Silas and his children, Knowl is infected by her presence and, gradually, becomes a threatening and dark space.
Recovering the previous atmosphere in the house will mean for the protagonist also recovering her freedom, although along the way there is a painful loss of innocence. In all this, the exquisite photography of Eleanor Bowmanturning each sequence into a pictorial work, with clear influence of nineteenth-century British landscapers such as William Turner o John Constable.
LOOKING TO THE PAST
The legacy It is not a reliable adaptation, due to duration needs and the value of the female gaze from the 21st century. He takes many liberties with the lyrics of the novel; However, these sacrifices and infidelities, far from distancing her from the work of The ChildrenIn our opinion, what it does is safeguard the most important values. The result is a small, modest, but exquisitely made film, with a splendid cast of actors and an intelligent rereading not only of the classic The Children, but of that British romanticism that found the sublime within the dark. The Legacy, by Lisa Mulcahy
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