Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)

Rating ... A (92)

(Found the intro I wrote when I saw the film and stitched it in)

I had a good laugh and unexpected surge of positive anticipation towards Lemony Snicket when I woke this morning, tuned into the Ebert and Roeper cast, and listened to the following snippet:

ROEPER
... and then I think the film just REALLY struck a wrong chord
during that part when Count Olaf marries his own daughter...

ME
This film sounds AWESOME.

What made this lamentation doubly hilarious is the Goldilocksian hot-porridge-cold-porridge manner in which the duo understandably grumbled about tepid youth-oriented films released earlier that year like Raise Your Voice, A Cinderella Story, and Sleepover and then proceeded to be so taken aback when they found what through implication they seemed to be seeking. This sounded like some ridiculous Gilliam-esque macabre farce so I resolved to see the film the moment it opened. As fortune would have it, the pitch was even better; what actually occurs during the scene is that Jim Carrey's Count Olaf bestows permission on himself to marry his own fourteen year-old adopted daughter in order to seize her deceased family's sizeable fortune while simultaneously disguising the endeavor as a makeshift gothic burlesque stage play. And it turned out this bit of twisted tragedy was representative of the film on the whole.

But Lemony Snicket isn't depravity for the sake of depravity. Told in three parts, the hysterical, PG-rated perversion may be feverish and unrelenting, but it's matched dollar for dollar by the film's earnest desire to depict how people recover from tragedy and cope with grief. In Lemony Snicket's introduction the Baudelaire children are informed that due to a singularly unfortunate event, their parents have perished and their home has been reduced to cinders. Determined to marry lyricism to distress in its storytelling, the scene closes with exquisite cinematography (courtesy the always reliable Emmanuel Lubezki) where a long shot of Violet and Klaus is filtered through a slated palisade in the foreground, symbolic of newfound peril, that sans benefactor the children are in danger of slipping through the cracks of society.



This is merely the beginning of Lemony Snicket's menacing elegance. The film's visionary set design gives way to a surprising depth and economy of mythos. In a scant ninety minutes, the filmmakers achieve the desired atmosphere of sinister fairy tale with compassionate undercurrent that pokes fun at conventionality but at the same time feels sincere and insular. The numerous eyes that populate the film's trio of episodes reinforce the sensation of penetration and discomfort experienced by the children obliged into maturity before it's time while craftily placed signs that offer ominous queries (e.g. "When did you last eat?", "Does anyone know you're coming this way?") evoke how externalities can often assume the roles of absent parents. Even more visceral are the film's numerous seen-to-be-believed set-pieces, none more harrowing than an early scare featuring an oncoming train, skillfully foreboded with the shaking of soda bottles cleanly segued into chittering laughter and a barrage of unearthly sound effects, all expertly edited into a single pulsating rhythm.

We're introduced to Count Olaf in part one of the movie ("The Bad Beginning"), a talented, diabolical, severely deranged stage actor who volunteers to "raise [the Baudelaire children] as though they were actually wanted." Upon meeting he feigns ignorance as a way of mocking their misfortune with hammy acting, thereby revealing his own emotional immaturity and envy at what remains of their privilege. You could call Lemony Snicket the original adults-as-children movie because the implicit comparison here (and make no mistake, it's certainly not explicit, much less horrifically eponymous) is the children's yin-yang embodiment of knowledge and application to Olaf's pure affectation. Where Violet and Klaus strive to be learned and specific, Olaf debases other cultures for his own amusement ("Roast beef! It's from the Swedish for beef that is roasted!") and can only acheive cumbersome pretense when he loses custody of the children and follows them around in various disguises. (Upon emulation of a herpetologist he declares his aim to be "to faciliate and remain observatory.")



Even the well-meaning adults can be considered childish. Billy Connolly's Dr. Montgomery Montgomery - a snake fanatic who resides in a peat bog seemingly like something Andy Goldsworthy would create for Rivers and Tides - and Meryl Streep's basket case Aunt Josephine are far too trusting and timid, respectively, to qualify as adequate guardians for the Baudelaires. Both are sadly deemed inappropriate not simply in their demises but because they choose to withdraw from pain rather than overcome it. Lemony Snicket's second episode delves into poetry when it likens tragedy to the ascension of a staircase thinking one more step exists than actually does - an unshakable metaphor for the disorientation that follows loss - but it's Meryl Streep's third episode entrance that threatens to steal the show from Carrey's suitably zany Olaf. A former explorer and lion tamer, Streep imbues Aunt Josephine with superbly measured sorrow and amusement with her fidgety apprehension, emblematic of the retrograde motion people can adopt in response to calamity, under the impression they're responsible for the disaster and that diametric behavior could have prevented the "mistake." That Josephine's persistent admonitions eerily come true when Violet and Klaus escape her precarious, cliff-side cottage is marvelous literalization of the vast distance cruelties of the adult world seem from the vantage point of a child.

As the story progresses Aunt Josephine divulges a hazy scheme of good and evil that links the film's misfortunes together, but her juvenile world view is ultimately outed as a product of the clashing needs of individuals. Carrey's Olaf is strongly portrayed as a walking vanity project, though the film really only condemns the imbalance of how he seeks to satisfy his excessive wants. His last scene of dialogue puts him squarely in the realm of a child when he bellows at his theatre audience of supposed adults, "I'm the monster? ... YOU'RE the monster!" Though the retort registers as a hilarious serve of stale household drama, the use of such an obvious stereotype reveals Olaf as sheltered and immature. Violet and Klaus are the only people who really change over the film's duration and a return to the burnt out Baudelaire vista, magically recreated in pristine fashion until the illusion fades, heralds the decision to deal with actuality over delusion and memory. Their quest for sanctuary, a place of stability, comes up empty-handed because the film recontextualizes the concept to something less tangible - a state of mind, gracefully portrayed in the conclusion where the Baudelaires are shown sleeping with their heads rested on one another en route to their next destination. A spyglass signifies the passage into adulthood for the weary youngsters. The comparison here is that the childlike Olaf is only looking out for number one, while the Baudelaires devise a system that benefits everyone: the creation of emotional bonds to withstand the forces of persistent hardship, even though they deserve otherwise. If the film's haunting and dizzying ending credits are any indication, that day may never come for the Baudelaires, yet some certainty does exist in the sequence; namely, that in a film of extraordinary power and lyricism, the best has been saved for last.