Most murders are committed from rage, or even hate; still, rare, but not unheard of, is the true crime of the heart, the murder of love.
Such a deed is at the center of the brilliant New Zealand film "Heavenly Creatures," opening today at the Rotunda. It's an elaborate representation of, as its own subtitle decrees, "a Crime That Shocked a Nation."
In 1954, in Christchurch, New Zealand, two passionately entwined schoolgirls floated so far off into their own private realms that reality became first an intrusion and then a threat. By the twisted lights of their own logic and in perfect accordance of the rules of their own universe, they decided to eliminate their problem, which was the mother of one of them.
When they applied a large rock to the crown of Mom's skull, they were amazed that A) blood came out, in great quantities, and B) she had some objection to dying in furtherance of their romantic fantasies.
It was hardly a well-thought-out crime, which to some degree separates Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme from, say, their seeming American analogues Richard Leopold and Nathan Loeb. The famous Chicago boys murdered, cold-bloodedly and for profit, under the Nietzschean delusion that as superior intellects they had a right to supersede conventional bourgeoise morality and that they could get away with it. Juliet and Pauline planned only the crime, and that crudely: They had no alibis, they had no plan of escape, and they had no excuses.
Peter Jackson is their exegete, and his film is based on, and quotes extensively from, Pauline's lurid, honest, somehow sweet diaries. Jackson is aided immeasurably by stunning performances from Melanie Lynskey as Pauline and Kate Winslet as Juliet. With their collaboration, he's particularly deft at evoking the silky dynamic of the relationship, which probably was undercut by lesbian longings that had, in the stultifyingly orthodox mock-British society of past New Zealand, no vessel of expression.
Pauline was the dowdy one, the bright but frustrated daughter of a couple who ran a boarding house. She always felt out of it at tony Christchurch Girls' High School, among the swells who considered themselves the daughters of the British Empire (it's the '50s, remember?). But when the beautiful and high-strung Juliet, English and the daughter of a sophisticated set of academics, enrolled, Pauline at last found a soul mate. Each girl was creative, yet an "outsider," and initially the two bonded on similar passions in pop culture: a love for the great Mario Lanza, a hatred of the weird Orson Welles, whom they called "It."
But Juliet, with her suspiciously too-bright smile and her nearly desperate body language, had the more intense inner life, and she soon ensnared Pauline in the tendrils of her fantasy world. Indeed, some of what passes between the two will remind American audiences of a similar phenomenon involving the game Dungeons and Dragons, in which some smart young people are simply absorbed until they lose all contact with reality.
Juliet soon was traveling with Pauline into "Borovnia," a fabulous romantic and violent medieval land where each was a queen. Jackson, using some computer effects, is able to re-create the majesty of Borovnia to its intimate details. This goes a bit far: One or two trips would be enough, but somewhat like a product reel, the technical process is deployed far more than is strictly necessary.
Other influences impinged. Juliet, with tuberculosis, had a health collapse; then her promiscuous mother was caught in flagrante delicto by her stuffy father and a divorce was planned; both girls had trouble at school. Soon it was decided by Juliet's parents, with the connivance of Pauline's, that the girls had to be separated. Juliet would be taken to South Africa with her mother. So intense is the love between them -- and sexual or not, it indeed seems to be love -- that they could not bear to part. Out of such heated adolescent yearnings was the crime planned.
But the most piercing thing about "Heavenly Creatures" is Jackson's refusal to forgive the girls. He indeed understands them and empathizes with them. But when he has to, he exposes the horrid squalor and ugliness of the crime, which, after all, was a blood-soaked execution, crude as anything done in Rwanda.
That accountability actually has continued into the real world: It seems that many years later, her debt to society paid, Juliet moved to England and began a career writing mystery novels under the name Anne Perry. "Heavenly Creatures" effectively outed her, to its shame or glory, depending on one's point of view.
"Heavenly Creatures"
Starring Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet
Directed by Peter Jackson
Released by Miramax
Rated R
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