Film Review - Don't Look Now (1973)

Nicolas Roeg’s cult classic Don’t look Now begins with a sequence that feels like the silence before a storm, right away there is a lingering feeling of uneasiness. The film keeps us in a spooky trance through it’s ominous but simplistic imagery throughout, and is perhaps the oldest, most calmly hypnotic film I have ever seen. Don’t Look Now also features a curious, (very) poetic non-linear sex scene that feels slightly unnecessary and disturbs our sympathy for the couple (played by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie).

My favourite part about the film is the two extremely creepy sisters, one of whom has the ability to communicate with the deceased; this is never explained in detail, much like most other things in this film. Roeg decides to go with bleak atmospheric tension over dialogue as the film’s main plot device, which could work for some people (it didn’t for me) but the film benefits from it’s seamless editing which crucially helps in constructing a steady tone.

A lot of the sequences in the film have a mysterious, and somewhat confusing sexual undertone along with a subtle craziness that slowly (maybe too slowly for some people) coils around you as the film progresses. In the end Don’t Look Now is a film that feels too long with too little happening, an old-fashioned horror film without any of the scares, or maybe I missed the point entirely?