Death Becomes Her
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| Death Becomes Her | |
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 Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Robert Zemeckis |
| Produced by | Robert Zemeckis |
| Written by | Martin Donovan David Koepp |
| Starring | Meryl Streep Bruce Willis Goldie Hawn |
| Editing by | Arthur Schmidt |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 31, 1992 |
| Running time | 104 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Death Becomes Her (1992) is a dark comedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep and Bruce Willis. It won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.
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[edit] Plot
Actress Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) and writer Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn) are longtime rivals "Mad" and "Hel". Helen's life falls apart when glamorous Madeline steals Helen's fiancé, plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), and marries him. Helen, now an obese, depressed woman, becomes obsessed with revenge.
Fourteen years later, Madeline struggles with her fading looks and bygone acting career, Ernest is a high-end mortician and an alcoholic, and Helen has become an established author with her book "Forever Young". When Madeline and Helen meet again at Helen's book-signing party, Helen appears miraculously rejuvenated, thin, and youthful.
A jealous Madeline resorts to the aid of the mysterious Lisle von Rhoman (Isabella Rossellini), who claims she has discovered the secret of eternal youth. She offers Madeline a potion to reverse the process of aging, on condition that, after 10 years, Madeline must disappear from the public eye forever to protect Lisle's secret. Madeline purchases the potion at a very high price, takes the potion, and is startled to see her body visibly losing the signs of aging as she watches in a mirror, leaving her thin, firm, and young. Then Lisle drops a late-announced bomb--she warns Madeline to take perfect care of her new body.
Meanwhile Helen seduces Ernest and reveals to him a detailed and foolproof plot to kill Madeline, by faking a drunk driving accident. After some initial qualms, Ernest agrees to the conspiracy.
Back home, Madeline is confronted by an angry Ernest, whom she rejects in her newly restored youth and confidence. He loses control and begins to grapple with her, until they reach the head of their grand staircase. Madeline teeters, then asks Ernest for help; however when he waffles, she cannot help saying, "Help me, YOU IDIOT!" In response, he pokes her with a finger, sending her tumbling down the staircase. She breaks her neck but survives, with her neck twisted backwards.
After literally getting her head on straight, Madeline is rushed to the emergency room, where the doctor (an unbilled Sydney Pollack) dies of a heart attack after realizing that her physical body has died, even though she is still walking and talking. Returning home, Ernest uses his mortician skills to restore the natural good looks of his wife.
Helen reappears at their home to bury Madeline - whom she thinks is dead - in Death Valley. She confronts Ernest, who tries to explain that the plan had...unforeseen complications. A livid Madeline overhears the plot, and then confronts Helen with a single shotgun blast to the stomach. However, despite having a large gaping hole blown into her abdomen, Helen does not die: Madeline guesses correctly that Helen was also a customer of Lisle's. As the two undead rivals fight (failing to do any real damage or even inflict pain on each other), Ernest realizes that both women want him purely out of selfish desire, and decides to leave them both forever.
Eventually reconciling their differences after finding out their fighting is pointless and that their own misguided intentions created this mess, Madeline and Helen beg Ernest to repair their incredibly damaged bodies. Ernest is indeed able to cosmetically repair their bodies, but Ernest’s repairs are only temporary: since their bodies cannot regenerate damage, Madeline and Helen will need Ernest to perform routine maintenance to their bodies forever. They then conspire to make Ernest drink the potion as well, knocking him unconscious and taking him to Lisle. Although Lisle makes an impassioned argument for immortality, Ernest looks beyond the short-term benefits to the long-term problems: being separated from the rest of humanity, losing those he loves by outliving them, realizing that immortality inevitably leads to boredom and pointlessless. Referring to the concept as a nightmare, not the dream Lisle spoke of, Ernest vehemently refuses the potion, but flees with the vial in his possession. As he flees through Lisle's labyrinthine mansion, he encounters many celebrities generally assumed to be dead, including Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, Andy Warhol, Elvis Presley, James Dean and Jim Morrison. After being pursued, he finds himself on the roof of the house, cornered by Madeline and Helen, who implore him to drink it...then ORDER him to drink it. At that, he drops the vial over the edge of the roof, then intentionally falls himself, choosing death over the hellish concept of being the eternal servant of Madeline and Helen. He crashes through a glass roof and lands in a swimming pool (where he startles Jim Morrison) then escapes the estate. With Ernest gone, Helen and Madeline realize, much to their chagrin and growing horror, that they are now forced to take care of each other for all eternity.
Thirty-seven years later, Ernest had died; Madeline and Helen attend his funeral, using veils to cover their horribly deteriorated forms--with skills nowhere near Ernest's level of expertise, they have been incapable of maintaining themselves. Ernest is eulogized as having lived a good and adventurous life, accomplishing much more in his mortal lifespan than Helen and Madeline are ever likely to do in their self-centered, isolated immortality. Throughout the service, Madeline and Helen continue to bicker endlessly, but look up at the priest when he describes Ernest as having attained eternal life and youth through his accomplishments, his good works, and his children and grandchildren who carry on his name. Faced with an alternative concept of immortality, Madeline responds with a dry, "Blah, blah, BLAH..."
Leaving the service, Helen slips on a can of spray paint (one they had been trying to find), and teeters at the top of a set of steps in front of the church. Madeline considers helping her, but give her a slight push instead. Helen is able to grasp Madeline before she topples, and takes Madeline down with her. They tumble down the stairs and literally shatter like stone statues into pieces at the bottom. They are, incredibly, still alive, and Helen asks after her decapitated head stops moving, "Do you remember where we parked the car?"
[edit] Cast
- Meryl Streep as Madeline Ashton
- Bruce Willis as Dr. Ernest Menville
- Goldie Hawn as Helen Sharp
- Isabella Rossellini as Lisle von Rhoman
- Ian Ogilvy
- Adam Storke
- Nancy Fish
- Alaina Reed Hall
- Michelle Johnson
- Mary Ellen Trainor
- William Frankfather
- John Ingle
- Clement von Franckenstein
- Petrea Burchard
- Jim Jansen
[edit] Special effects
Like most of director Robert Zemeckis' films, Death Becomes Her was a technically complex movie to make, and the production had its fair share of mishaps. For example, in a scene where Helen Sharp and Madeline Ashton are battling with shovels, Meryl Streep accidentally scarred Goldie Hawn's face. Streep admitted that she disliked working on a project that focused so heavily on special effects, saying:
| “ | I think it's tedious. Whatever concentration you can apply to that kind of comedy is just shredded. You stand there like a piece of machinery— they should get machinery to do it. I loved how it turned out. But it's not fun to act to a lampstand. 'Pretend this is Goldie, right here! Uh, no, I'm sorry, Bob, she went off the mark by five centimeters, and now her head won't match her neck!' It was like being at the dentist.[1] | ” |
[edit] Setting
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The film has been noted for its deliberately Hitchcockian elements, such as its use of a blonde protagonist and dark visuals. Composer Alan Silvestri's score is also similar to Bernard Herrmann's work for Hitchcock.[citation needed].
All of the central plot and important events surrounding it occur at night. The root of the plot, when Helen acquaints her fiance to Madeleine, happens at a rainy theater evening. All we know of the goings-on between Madeleine and Ernest prior to their wedding is that they have a dinner together. They meet Helen again after years on an evening where she presents her book. From then onwards almost everything occurs at night up to Ernest's escape. The sun only dawns 37 years later to show Madeleine and Helen's decay. Also, a permanent connection between meteorology and the different moments of the story has been noted, since in almost all significant events it is raining or stormy.
The use of colour is further elaborated in clothes. In all scenes when Madeleine and Helen are together prior to their 'reconciliation' Helen will invariably be wearing red and Madeleine white, notably in contrast with the dark backgrounds, with only three exceptions: their first meeting when Helen is still dull and unable to compete in looks with Madeleine, so she is not yet wearing red but black, but Madeleine is wearing white; their meeting fourteen years later, when self-conscious Helen delights in her provocative red robe whereas Madeleine is the one who has chosen a much less flashy black outfit; and Helen's imaginary dinner when Madeleine is poisoned, when they swap. Furthermore, once the murderous merry-go-round starts, they will wear these colours in their tops with black trousers. After they are both dead, they will only dress up in black, being Lisle's party the last time we will see them in their flashy looks. On Ernest's funeral, they will be exposed by the sunlight as decrepit, being now themselves the dark shadows against the gleaming background. General claim that black is the colour preferred by unsure people, whereas self-conscious ones like to wear red, is obviously reflected in the movie (it may be noted that no one ever wears yellow which is supposed to be the colour of those who are most sure of their beauty). It is also ironic that Madeleine should wear always white, which is the colour of virginity; and that Helen should switch to white precisely for the scene when she fictitiously kills Madeleine. Ernest also wears white on the same scene and when he really kills Madeleine, which ironically makes all three murderers to be wearing the colour of innocence as they kill one another. Madeleine and Helen's rivalry is portrayed by the red-white confrontation, since after they are 'reconciled' we see them in very similar outfits, although with subtle differences of style which reveals that they only appear to be reconciled.
Another symbolic use of colour is in the strident red lipstick marks stamped by Madeleine and Helen on each each other's cheeks at different moments in the story, in first place as an attack to each other's looks to render their appearance ridiculous; next as a presage of their forthcoming damage to each other's ego, and ultimately, their murder, thus uniting the symbolic use of the 'death kiss' with an immediate effect of 'aesthetical attack'.
Other aspects of the setting that have been noted as helping to give the movie its intendedly dark atmosphere are the medieval decoration and architecture of Madeleine and Lisle's mansions, Madeleine's in a pseudo-Romanesque style, and Lisle's in pseudo-Gothic, making them both artificial but Madeleine's symbolically more primitive and less elegant (Madeleine is despised by most characters in the movie for being 'cheap').
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- Helen takes the potion on October 26, 1985. This is the same day as the "present" date used in Back to the Future (also directed by Robert Zemeckis).
- Kevin Kline was originally set to play Ernest Melville; when he demanded to be paid the same salary as Hawn and Streep, however, he was dropped and the part was recast with Bruce Willis.[2]
- Catherine Bell made her movie debut in this film as Isabella Rossellini's body double, for which she was given a rare credit. Rossellini has a scar on her back from an operation meaning that she would be unable to be shot from behind for nude scenes.
- Tracey Ullman appeared in the trailers as a bartender who is also Ernest's girlfriend. After filming what director Robert Zemeckis referred to as a "saccharine ending" (in which Ernest and Ullman's character escape to Europe), Zemeckis decided to opt for a darker ending, and Ullman's character was one of seven or eight actors with speaking roles that were cut.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Death Becomes Her at the Internet Movie Database
- Death Becomes Her at the TCM Movie Database
- Movie stills
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