Introduction

Back to Heavenly Creatures Page HEAVENLY CREATURES - YEAR 13 VISUAL TEXT** Introduction ** Peter Jackson's film //Heavenly Creatures// was released in 1994 to widespread critical acclaim, including an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Though the characters and events depicted in the film are based on a real and deeply disturbing murder committed by two young girls, the film must be seen as a work of fiction, since it is Jackson’s and screenwriting partner Fran Walsh’s interpretation of published information, rather than the “truth”. At no stage were the major participants consulted, though many other people alive at the time were.

However, Jackson was meticulous about using actual locations, artefacts and even archival film footage in //Heavenly Creatures//. He aimed to recreate as accurately as possible the environment, the known facts and the real people involved in the case. But he has not made a documentary, not even a 'docu-drama.' And he gives no simple answer to the central question of why these two girls murdered Pauline’s mother. What the film is doing – and using some stunning effects in the process – is exploring the inner world of the two girls, creating an unforgettable portrait of troubled adolescence, showing the world as they saw it, and at the same time showing us the reality of it. The sheer speed and onward momentum of the narrative carries the viewer; but the complexity, the subtleties, the sophistication of the film, make it ideal for deep study. It is one of those rare films that get better every time they are seen.

A movie is a work of fiction, and thus should be measured by the standards of fiction. However, when the stated aim is to be as close to the truth of the real events as possible, then it is fair to ask how accurate it is. This is unlikely to be a fruitful area for study in preparing students to answer the sorts of questions asked in examinations; however, it may well be a useful area for class discussion, as a way of deepening their understanding of the film-making process. For this reason, some background material is included. Much, much more is available from the website. **A Heavenly Trip Toward Hell **  **Teenage obsession animates a thrilling film from New Zealand **   Obsession, when it takes hold, is not a fragrance but a lethal gas. It envelops and consumes us; it is all the air we breathe. It should make for an ideal film subject. But filmmakers rarely know what to do with obsession. They make it trivial, cartoonish. A superfiend itches to blow up the planet - big hairy deal. An id-monster like Freddy Krueger dices and slices kids as they sleep. Zzzzzz.  Those scenarios are timid next to the real thing: the power one person has over another - the puppy love, say, that turns rabid as two souls merge in a toxic rapture. For most kids this is just a part of growing up; somehow they learn to cope with the glandular and emotional convulsions that accompany the transformation from child to teenager. Yet the threat of surrender is always there. The teenage girls in the wonderfully unsettling movie //Heavenly Creatures// create their own fantasy world out of youthful obsession, and then it spins out of their control. The result is murder. You should know - actually, for complete, suspenseful enjoyment of the film, you very much should not know, but the word is out, so we're obliged to tell you - that //Heavenly Creatures// is based on a notorious murder case.  In 1954 in Christchurch, New Zealand, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme were convicted of bludgeoning Pauline's mother, Honora, to death. The girls were "detained at Her Majesty's pleasure" until 1959, when Juliet left New Zealand and Pauline went into hiding. It was recently revealed that Juliet became a best-selling mystery novelist who lives in Scotland and writes under the name Anne Perry. She claims to remember little of the murder; the hero of several of her novels is a detective, William Monk, who occasionally suffers from amnesia.  Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) and Juliet (Kate Winslet) are children of two different cultures. Juliet's father is an English canon, and the girl is blonde, worldly, brash; she was hospitalised for lung disease and has been brought to New Zealand for the climate. Pauline, whose father manages a fish store, is dark and broody; she has leg scars from the ravages of osteomyelitis. Juliet sees their wounds as badges of spiritual aristocracy; "All the best people have bad chests and bone diseases. It's all frightfully romantic."  //Heavenly Creatures// is frightfully romantic too, and romantically frightening. It ascends and plummets with the girls' mercurial moods. As they fall into a conspiracy of affection, the film lures the viewer into the girls' fantasy world, as elaborate as that created by the Brontë sisters: a kingdom called Borovnia, where the clay statues they have moulded come to life as blue-blooded versions of their favourite "saints" (Mario Lanza and James Mason) and demons (Orson Welles, "the most hideous man alive"). But demons can also be sexy. When a fellow makes clumsy love to Pauline, she pays him no heed and imagines herself ravaged by her fantasy Welles.  Director Peter Jackson, whose three earlier features (//Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles// and //Dead Alive//) make clever use of puppetry and //guignol// splatter effects, here is like a physician who assumes a patient's fever in order to understand her illness. He visualises the landscape of Pauline's and Juliet's minds as a fetid garden, where fairytale plots of courtly love and castle intrigue blot out their edgy lives at home and school. The girls' vision of Borovnia utterly mesmerises them. Anyone who would break the spell - like Pauline's sweet, anxious mum - must be a witch. Must be sentenced to death.  Screenwriter Frances Walsh based the script she wrote with Jackson on interviews with those who knew the girls and on the bits of Pauline's diary that were submitted in court. As quoted in //Heavenly Creatures//, the daybook is a monologue of a fertile mind racing gaily toward madness. At first Pauline takes some blinkered notice of the outside world: "We have decided how sad it is for other people that they cannot appreciate our genius.” Later, after the girls make love to their saints (and each other), she writes, "We have learned the peace of the thing called bliss, the joy of the thing called sin.” And the morning of the murder she notes, "I felt very excited and night-before-Christmassy last night."  The film's triumph is to communicate this creepy excitement with urgency and great cinematic brio, while neither condescending to the girls nor apologising for their sin. A serendipitous stroke was finding Winslet and, especially, Lynskey, who is a first-time actress. They are perfect, fearless in embodying teenage hysteria. They declaim their lines with an intensity that approaches ecstasy, as if reading aloud from //Wuthering Heights//. The giggles that punctuate the girls' early friendship are not beneath Winslet and Lynskey. The screams that end the film are not beyond them.  In her diary Pauline wrote this verse: "It is indeed a miracle, one must feel,/ That two such heavenly creatures are real.” In //Heavenly Creatures// the sad creatures Pauline and Juliet must have been in real life are alchemised into figures of horror and beauty. They become the stuff of thrilling popular art.   <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho';">Richard Corliss, TIME, DECEMBER 19, 1994  <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho';">Later that month, Corliss named //Heavenly Creatures// as number 2 on his list of the year’s 10 best films. (//Pulp Fiction// was No. 1) <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-NZ; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">
 * So How Accurate is it? **