Either you expect an on- screen Gothic novel or From Dusk Till Dawn, this movie has nothing to do with the latter and very little in common with the former. I liked it, but it is a slow, pensive piece of cinema, and definitely less horror-like than you may think. There is a lot of poetry and melancholy- a good deal of despair, too. Saoirse Ronan' s Eleanor Webb is perhaps the sweetest, most courageous and compassionate creature of her kind I have ever seen. Much of the story is about love, solitude, and the struggle to bear the burden of a secret that haunts you, stealing from you every freedom, every hope for love or even domestic peace. The photography is neat, the music hypnotic- some scenes a real pleasure to the sight. The actors are good- all of them. At the end, I was left in a haze of sweet sadness, with many questions and lots of ideas in my head. It might be neither perfect nor a classic within the genre, but Byzantium certainly gifts its spectator with something magic and unique: imaginative worlds to explore, even after credits have faded on the screen. Watch it when you have time, when you can simply sit down and enjoy the story her protagonist wants to tell you. Consider it a crooked, dark, yet delicate fairy tale.
Review of Byzantium
