In Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,” the Old World of Europe is dark, crumbling, and incestuous, populated by parasites who live off of titles and the labor of others, while the New World of America is bright, full of life, promise, and people who live by their own labor. Del Toro makes this distinction in the film’s color palette. Bright yellow dominates the opening scenes in Buffalo, but the scenes in England are grey, dark blue, and an unsettling green. The great aristocratic house is falling apart and literally bleeding. But this distinction between the past and the future is not as simple as it seems. There are ghosts on both sides of the Atlantic.
“You’re always looking to the past, Thomas,” American Edith tells her new English husband while they take shelter in an inn during a snowstorm. “You won’t find me there,” she says. Edith lays on a bed in warm, golden light, while the snowstorm casts a cold green light through the window. Thomas is lit in both gold and green, fitting for a man conflicted even before the story begins, a man of the Old World who wants to embrace the industrial spirit of the New World. It would be easy to read the film as a warning against living in the past.
Yet “Crimson Peak” has a far more nuanced view of the relationship between the Old and the New. As much as Edith’s father claims that America values hard work instead of privilege, the American aristocracy in this film worships the Old World: see the awe with which they observe Thomas’ demonstration of the “European style” waltz. And the unsettling green light occasionally appears in America, usually to herald the arrival of a ghost.
The film itself is drawn to the past. Del Toro’s camera is as in love with the European style waltz as the characters are. The story fully embraces the trappings and emotions of an old genre: Gothic Romance. Twilight has demonstrated how elements of that genre have filtered into modern pop culture, but Del Toro is not after an updated Gothic Romance. He’s trying to recreate the real thing. He also draws on fairy tales. The story of a young woman being whisked away to a mysterious castle evokes the Gothic Romance of Jane Eyre, a novel that drew from “Beauty and the Beast,” which in turn drew from Apuleius’ story of Cupid and Psyche. The addition of a husband who has murdered his previous wives evokes “Bluebeard.”
“Crimson Peak” is also filled with references to cinema history. The use of a secret key that the heroine must steal evokes “Bluebeard,” but it also evokes Hitchcock’s “Notorious,” as does the attempt to poison the heroine with tea. There are also numerous similarities to Orson Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons,” another film with complicated feelings about the ending of one world and the beginning of another. The turn-of-the-century setting and the presence of one of those newfangled motorcars are perhaps minor connections, but the use of irises to open and close scenes is so striking that it is easy for a cinephile to be reminded of Welles’ film. The film may be frightened of the past, but it is also in love with it.
Paradoxes are often more interesting than simple declarations. It is far more interesting for Del Toro to present a nuanced view of the past than a simple condemnation of obsessing over it. The depiction of an American aristocracy that values hard work over European privilege yet worships European culture is particularly striking. Fundamentally, the film depicts the past as ugly and beautiful, frightening and alluring, something to escape and something to love.
