Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 25-April-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Angels and Insects (1995)

I want to tell you now about the insects to whom God gave 'sensual lust.' ... All we Karamazovs are such insects, and, angel as you are, that insect lives in you too, and will stir a tempest in your blood.

-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (trans. Constance Garnett)

Angels and Insects is based on a novella by A. S. Byatt titled "Morpho Eugenia," but it addresses a question that has long been posed by thinkers and authors concerning the battle between man and nature, intellect and instinct. Set around 1860, the film offers a stunning view of a society on the brink of change and a man caught in a web of the highest class and lowest desire. It's a period piece, yes, but definitely not your average bodice ripper.

The title sequence shows a white man taking part in an Indian dance that appears to involve fertility. As the film opens we find this man, William Adamson (Mark Rylance), staying at the manor of a wealthy English patron after his return from a scientific expedition in South America. With an awkwardness borne of humble station and years in the jungle, Adamson admires the luxuries of genteel culture and sees the embodiment of all that is beautiful and refined in his host's eldest daughter, Eugenia (Patsy Kensit). Quite unexpectedly, this enigmatic Venus returns his affections, and he soon finds himself one of the family. However, Adamson's enjoyment of his good fortune does not last long; first, he is openly affronted by his arrogant brother-in-law (Douglas Henshall), and second, his wife displays a strange ability to run hot and cold, sometimes welcoming and sometimes repelling his embrace. As she begins a career as a two-legged brood mare, he studies and writes about a colony of ants in the company of the household governess (Kristin Scott Thomas), while trying not to succumb to a growing sense of futility.

One of the strengths of Angels and Insects is the way the characters stand for concepts and yet retain the fascination of individuals. Eugenia, her brother, and her mother represent the insulated irrelevance of the aristocracy, but Eugenia also possesses a particular fragility and magnetism (largely related to a secret in her life that few in her position would share). Scott Thomas starts out with the stereotypical frigidity of the female with unwelcome intelligence, but she gradually reveals a personality that includes both mettle and softness. Most of all, Rylance carries the show as an inherently noble person in whom modesty, brilliance, kindness, passion, and weakness commingle. The movie's ending satisfies because we care what happens to him and wish to witness his personal revelation and liberation.

Still, images and ideas make up the major substance of Angels and Insects, and director Philip Haas (who wrote the script with wife Belinda) packs every scene with something to give you pause. He draws wonderful visual connections between the insect world, in which there is no such thing as morality or propriety, and the upper-class human world, in which these things are only trappings. As befits a tale set in the age of Darwin (and released in an era of increasing stupidity), Angels and Insects concludes that although the beastlike urges of nature can dominate even where they are most overtly flouted, true intellect (curious, scientific, unafraid) can rise above our basest instincts and, in fact, even assimilate them. As both a drama and a philosophical piece, the film provides an engrossing, unique, and thought-provoking experience.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.