Who Would Want To Live Forever?

Immortality (or The Wisdom of Crocodiles) 1998

Dir: Po-Chih Leong

Rated: R

Okay, I give. I'm a big fan of vampire movies and I've been trying to find one as unique as Near Dark for a while now. And, while I love 30 Days of Night and its constant level of "this really sucks for these people," I do enjoy the more subtle vampire story even more.

This happens to be damn near impossible to find, by the way.

Jude Law as a vampire? This was too interesting to pass up.

That's better, Jude.

I only stumbled across The Wisdom of Crocodiles (Immortality to those of us in the US) because I've been on a Jude Law "binge." I think I sat here and watched eXistenZ about five times in a row (I'll review that one later). My brain wandered off into La La Land while he chowed down on some truly disgusting looking fish in one scene and I ended up ticking off movies I hadn't seen with Jude.

This one popped up.

It took me ages to find a copy of it—and even then it's only a digital file. But it is available through Amazon.com and (I'm assuming) Netflix.

Jude plays this guy named "Steven Grlscz." That's pronounced "Grill-sh."

No, really. He has no vowels in his last name.

In the opening of the movie, we're introduced to him and his goofy hair as he watches his girlfriend's car get pulled out of a tree. In the background, you can hear one of the mechanics wondering out loud to someone "where all the blood is."

Steven seems to take this news rather well and goes off in search of a new girl. He finds Maria on the Underground platform and stops her from jumping in front of a speeding train. Long story short, Steven gets her to fall in love with him, then kills her all vampire-like, and disposes of the body on the coast when the tide is out.

OH MY GOD, JUDE, I WOULD NOT HAVE GONE THAT DIRECTION WITH THE HAIR.

There is an interesting moment where he demonstrates just how fast he is by sitting way across the room from her at one point, telling her to close her eyes, and BAM! He's right in front of her. It's your basic "I'm showing off" scene that is strangely charming.

He's finally rid of the awful hairdo the next time we see him. He's sketching a lovely woman named Anne (played by Elina Löwensohn) who is an engineer at a building site where she's giving some kids a tour of the place. He strategically sets up a guarantee that he'll meet her later and they end up starting a relationship.

I say "relationship" because Steven doesn't try to trick Anne—he's actually himself quite a bit around Anne. Not like the act he put on for Maria.

The thing is, the police found Maria's body. And they have a link between her and Steven. It's enough of a link that the Inspector (Timothy Spall in a rare "non-creepy-dude" role) and Sergeant (Jack Davenport) question Steven about their relationship. They also follow him for at least a week or so.

Hi, Admiral Norrington!

LOOK! PETER PETTIGREW/BEADLE BAMFORD IS NORMAL FOR ONCE!

Steven keeps an entire hidden library full of scrapbooks with information on the women he's seduced and drained like Slurpees. He also keeps a wooden box with these crystals in it—each one is labeled for the woman it was essentially created from. As Steven mentions later on, he's writing a study on how the human body can actually create crystals when put under high amounts of stress. He postulates that each crystal can have its own emotion attached to it.

How does he get the "memento" crystals after feeding off his victims?

Think "kidney stones."

Yeah, they all look like this, too.

That one hurt me.

Again, like Near Dark, the "v" word is never said aloud. In fact, I'm not even sure if this counts as a vampire movie. Yes, he drinks blood (but says he feeds on the emotion in the blood). Yes, he is ageless. Yes, he's incredibly fast and gifted. But he also has a reflection, no aversion to crucifixes, and can walk around in daylight. That last one is handy considering Steven has a job at the hospital as a medical researcher ("I solve problems"). We do have a scene where he's comforting a young girl while he uses radiation on a cancerous mass in her abdomen. It's very sweet, actually. It shows how he can care for human life—he distracts her and makes her focus on his eyes as he works the machine.

See? Things don't seem so scary when your medical technician looks like this.

Despite his growing attachment to Anne (to me he was clearly in denial of his own feelings) he continues with the somewhat magpie-like act of picking up things she's doodled, writing notes on her character, and drawing portrait after portrait of her. He even tries to copy a swirling doodle she did on some engineering notes but can't quite get it right. So he staples the original in the creepy scrapbook.

He staples his finger.

The next day, on another date, Anne points to the band-aid and asks him what happened.

"This? I cut this saving a puppy from drowning." SMOOCH.

Then there's a scene involving a gang of hoodlums that Steven and the Inspector encountered earlier, but that's more fun to watch without knowing what the hell is going to happen.

Anyway, before I give even more of the plot away to all of this, I have to mention at least two more things. One is the Song Of Solomon. He and Anne recite it to each other and I cannot think of any other instance in film where the poem is used. It's romantic the way they speak it. Not a "lusty" type of romantic but a closer kind of attachment that really feels like it could be love. So it's all the more tragic when you see him later on after they've had a fight and he's folding a rubber sheet to get ready for eventual clean up and body disposal.

Then there's this... Bleeding from the ears is never a good sign. Especially when a new paper cut could make you bleed out.

No, no, no... That's not any better, Steven. That's actually the opposite of "better."

The other thing I need to mention is his depleting strength. He's gone so long without blood that his finger doesn't heal. He has to remember to breathe and keep his heart going. His body is literally eating itself and at one point he loses his eyesight.

See? NO GLITTERING. Much better.

Okay, since the movie is so hard to find, I will give away a little bit of the ending. He can't kill her. Not because he's too weak, but because he just likes her too much. He's spent more time with her than the other women. She's become a part of his life (if you can call it "life") and he forces himself to stay away from her even as he gets hungrier and his cut finger stops clotting altogether. The plot of Steven and his struggle with his survival instincts and his genuine care for this woman is not the only one. The cops are still looking for Maria's killer.

He even gets pulled into a line-up for the toll operator (WHO SAW HIM DRIVING THE "BODY-DUMPING" VAN) to identify at one point.

The secondary plot of the Inspector and Sergeant investigating Steven is actually just as interesting as the primary plot between Steven and Anne. Sometimes this kind of thing can leave one plot thread less wound than the other, but in Immortality both spools are full. It is equally as suspenseful to see Steven grow closer to Anne as it is to watch him speak one-on-one with the Inspector.

The original title comes from a conversation Steven and Anne have about how the brain works—which worms its way from the following block quote into a story Anne has about a watch she stole when she was little. She could afford it, but she just took it—and kept it to remind her of her shame.

"I once knew this doctor—a neurologist. He told me that we don't have one brain. We have three... One that is human built over another that is mammalian built over yet another that is reptilian. So when a psychiatrist asks you to lie down on a couch, you're being asked to lie down with a horse. And with a crocodile."

Steven also does this:

I dare you to try this and not fail.

Draw a portrait with one hand and write the Song Of Solomon with the other! IMPRESS THE LADIES!

I've watched it about three times in a row by now and have come to the conclusion that this story isn't just about how Steven is this odd immortal creature who kills women after he seduces them to keep looking young. It's more about his struggle to accept "letting go." And not from the female perspective at all. This is about Steven letting go. He mentions a childhood memory about falling out of a tree and snagging onto a branch and holding on until his arms were nothing but pain. He doesn't remember landing on the ground at all—he just remembers "the agony of holding on and the wonderful feeling of letting go." It's what he spends the entire time trying recreate and he can only do this by really letting go of the existence he's made for himself. Lonely, painful, and pretty darn illegal.

Proper vampires don't have only ONE facial expression. Some can cry.

And a normal woman gets freaked out when her boyfriend confesses that he wanted to kill her/tries to actually eat her.

This is another one for the "Jenn Recommends It" pile. I need to start reviewing bad movies, don't I?