Tainted Love
- Madeleine Mendell
- Mar 14, 2015
- 3 min read
Sightseers is available to watch on Netflix. I strongly urge you to Netflix. Netflix. Netflix, Netflix, Netflix.
Sightseers - Written by and Starring Alice Lowe and Steve Oram - Prod. Edgar Wright - Dir. Ben Wheatley
In Oram and Lowe’s take on provincial British vigilantism, Sightseers, Chris almost inadvertently embarks on a killing spree with his new girlfriend, Tina. It is unclear from the beginning whether Sightseers has decided to be a comedy or a very calm thriller, and it is through that uncertainty that it emerges as one of the best disguised comedies. The combination of veteran comedians Oram and Lowe with Ben Wheatley, a seasoned horror/thriller director (Kill List, The ABCs of Death, and A Field in England), makes for a very darkly humorous film that uses escalation as its primary mechanism for the comedy.
The first murder of many that happens in the film (13:00), is portrayed as gruesome, emotionally affecting, and, although foreseen, surprising in its gore. The slow-motion and the eerie, morose music cue us in: this death is not funny. There is a family losing a dad and husband, and Tina is visibly disturbed by the accidental manslaughter. The only two aspects that do not fit in to this portrayal are Chris’s facial expression – is that possibly satisfaction? – and the floating red balloon that seems a bit too emblematic of loss and death. The cut to black signals the end of the introduction to the film, and although Sightseers evolves into a more clear-cut vigilante film – Chris tends to murder people who piss him off – this first murder leaves it a bit unclear and open-ended, but it certainly was not funny.
The film quickly picks up and soon the violence is interspersed with more and more visual comedy, building up to the first truly comedic act of violence that preludes the rest of the film. The second act of violence, the murder of the hipster writer who owns Tina’s dog doppelganger, finally portrays Chris as a perpetrator, a murderer (44:30). The second murder happens, and Tina discovers Chris’s predilection for killing people. The comedy of the film comes mostly from the reactions of the characters to the deaths. The killing of the guy who tells Tina to clean up Poppy’s poo is also in a dramatic slow motion, which matches Tina’s expression. But it is the overlay of William Blake’s “Jerusalem,” which describes the Divine Countenance that shines down on England in the presence of Jesus Christ’s footsteps, that really offsets the violence and compliments Chris’s ecstasy in murder. The comedy easier to spot is how the nondiegetic sound of the music and voice over poem cuts out just before Chris smashes the man’s head into the rock and pushes him away, saying “Report that to the National Trust.” We have a one-liner and a comedic play with timing and sound.
The other aspect of comedy comes in the complete development and character arc of Tina. Chris is already established as a psychopathic murder, and we only have to find out about it, but the film really chronicles Tina’s descent into a similar and perhaps even more twisted headspace. Chris seems destined to self-destruct, but Tina’s fate is uncertain because of her reactionary violence. In the culminating scene (1:22:00), Chris and Tina run, euphoric joy in their smiles and howl into the wind like wolves before coming across the perfect place to commit suicide together. The overwhelming song that preaches the power of love masks Tina’s descent into madness with love. The song cuts out just as we hear the dull crunch of Chris’s body hitting the ground. Tina is left alone at the top.
The violence in Sightseers is not funny on its own, but the extreme circumstances surrounding the violence and the reasons and reactions that swirl around the instances of violence heighten the ridiculousness of the violence. Wheatley takes the violence seriously, but in doing so he strengthens the comedy within the film through this extreme juxtaposition. The ending, although Tina is still alive, gives the audience some glimpse of redemption. Perhaps Tina has just killed the source of the violence, or perhaps she has taken it on.
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