culture, history, musings, occult

That Ain’t No Angel

Guardian angels. “An angel on your shoulder.” Cute little cherub postcards and watches. Angels are not only a part of popular culture, but they are serious business to your grandmother, or that strange man who lives down the street and is convinced he sees them everywhere. A comfort to us all. Right?

Not quite.

The literature on angels is exhaustive, and much of it depicts them as awesome, even fearsome creatures. Whether they are messengers (Gabriel telling Mary she’s knocked up), soldiers (Michael kicking fallen angel Satan to the curb), or part of the rank and file, angels — in Jewish and Christian tradition at least — are God’s emissaries. And they come in many varieties. Some bear multiple wings (seraphim); others, multiple faces (cherubim). Some fight. Others fall. There are nine specific types (or “choirs”), to be exact. And every one of them has a job.

Guardian angel detail
Guardian angel protecting a soul (15th-century French Book of Hours, Morgan Library and Museum, New York).

In apocryphal, kabbalistic, and occult texts, calling upon angels for services, like protection, or gifts, like wisdom, is laid out in complex rituals involving circles, incantations, or bizarre scribbling. Even when you don’t call them, they still show up. In all four gospels in the New Testament, for example, angels appear to speak to many of the women who visit Jesus’ tomb. Yet, angels are not confined to the Old and New Testament. They may, in fact, have come from Babylon.

During the Babylonian exile (between 597 BCE and 538 BCE), Jewish scholars incorporated the celestial beings of their captors into what would become the first books of the Old Testament. Though tradition places Moses’ writings  to around 1400–1300 BCE, most modern scholars believe the stories to only have been written down by the 6th and 5th centuries BCE — during the time of exile (after the fall of Jerusalem. It would only make sense, then, that those who first began to write down the history and beliefs of the Jewish people would work into their texts those things that influenced them during their time in Babylon. In fact, Jewish authors of the Old Testament were inspired not only by Babylonians, but the Assyrians and Sumerians as well.

Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth, for example, has many similarities with Genesis. And the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh recounts a massive flood that may have influenced the story of Noah and his ark. Harut and Marut, two supernatural creatures named in the Quran, are sent to earth to test humanity — and where else, but the ancient city of Babylon. Lamassu. Shedu. Apkallu. The Babylonians had many angelic-type creatures, or gods depicted with bird / angel wings. As did the Assyrians. The Mesopotamian sun god Shamash (also known as Utu) is often depicted as having angel-like wings. Oh, and he fights monsters, much like Michael, who, in some kabbalistic traditions, is likewise often linked to the sun.

Babylonian god Ninurta
The Babylonian god Ninurta hunting a chaos monster, the lion demon Tiamat.

Knowledge of the Babylonian influence on Judeo-Christian mythology, however, does not diminish the majesty and grandeur of seraphim, cherubim, and the other types of angels. In some ways, it legitimizes them as being part of a larger, deeply human need for the divine to reveal itself. Or kick some ass, as they do in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). Inspired by biblical accounts of angels, Milton adds terror of an apocalyptic scale to his celestial beings. His are not kind messengers with bird-like wings. They are formidable warriors.

Fast forward to the twentieth century, cinema, and the boob tube. Angels are softened during the first half of the 1900s. They are stripped of their ominous nature and terrifying appearance. In television and movies, some angels are kind, writing wrongs and warming hearts (“Touched by an Angel”). Others are somewhat dull and bumbling (THE BISHOP’S WIFE (1947). And then there are guardian angels who are actually somewhat annoying (see James Mason aggravate Lucille Ball in FOREVER, DARLING (1956).

Angel Paul Bettany
Angel Paul Bettany holds off an invasion of his brethren in LEGION (2010).

But sinister angels? Leave it to the latter part of the twentieth century and beginning of the 21st for such cynicism. Christopher Walken as Gabriel in 1995’s THE PROPHECY, for example, is an asshole. Then there are angels like Paul Bettany’s Michael in LEGION (2010) that fight other angels who, at God’s command, are prepared to destroy the earth. Turns out, ironically enough, that God has lost his faith in humanity.

Regardless of their depictions, motivations, powers, and abilities, angels serve. But it’s not just service to God — a belief of those who, well, believe — it’s service to us. Not as lapdogs doing our bidding. But as symbols showing us that there’s a bridge between heaven and earth. Metaphorical as that may be, that bridge might also inspire some to live better, be kinder, and serve each other in order to one day cross that bridge. Or — as is the case apparently with some of the more indignant angels — blow it up and go to hell.

 

film, musings

Don’t Go Home Again: VAMPIR (2009) and STRIGOI (2021)

Taking their titles directly from Eastern European folklore, both 2009’s VAMPIR and 2021’s STRIGOI are, perhaps, the only two out of many thousands of vampire films that have tried as much as possible to ground their productions in the lands where these monsters “live.” As such, their settings are uniquely tied to the mythology of the vampire, and are crucial to understanding the people, politics, and palpable presence of supernatural beings in the small villages that gave rise to the legends.

STRIGOI, filmed in Romania, tells the story of Vlad Cozma (Cătălin Paraschiv), a med school dropout who had been living in Italy but  returns to the village where he was born. Soon after his arrival, the elderly local mayor / crime boss, Constantin Tirescu, turns up dead — murdered by villagers who, upon the fall of communism, sought to reclaim their land, only to find Tirescu controls it all. Another seemingly accidental death in the village motivates Vlad to try investigate the goings-on, only to find that Constantin and his wife have both turned into strigoi (a Romanian word for an insatiably hungry, flesh-eating revenant). By the end of the film, the villagers, in an act of vigilante justice, cut out Constantin’s heart and burn it. Vlad eventually comes around to the realization that these supernatural creatures are real (and really disgusting). The end of the film is Vlad, carrying a shovel, standing at a crossroads (where suspected vampires were buried in order to possibly confuse them), next to a cock, ready to crow in the early hours of morning. He is seemingly ready to carry on — not as the doctor he thought he would be — but an unconventional and somewhat reluctant vampire hunter, resigned to his new role in a community that has vastly changed since he had been away.

Strigoi Poster
“Real Vampires Don’t Just Drink Your Blood”

Written and directed by Faye Jackson, a British filmmaker married to a Romanian producer, STRIGOI is a UK / Romanian co-production. Mostly in English, it is not a traditional vampire film by any means. Its main theme of greed in the wake of communism uses vampirism mostly as metaphor (albeit a graphic metaphor… especially when Constantin’s wife gobbles up everything in a woman’s kitchen, including the woman!). More so, beyond greed, there is the suggestion that the West turned a blind eye to the real-world horrors of Nicolae Ceausescu.

Vampir Poster
The posters for VAMPIR made it clear that this was “A Serbian Vampire Film.”

While real-world horrors drive the plot of STRIGOI, the Serbian-British-German production that is VAMPIR is a more traditional — but unconventional — vampire film. Vampir is, in fact, a Serbian word, from which (no surprise) we get the word “vampire.” As such, a Serbian village is the perfect place to set this tale of a Arnaut, a Londoner of Serbian heritage who witnesses a crime and must return to the homeland of his family in order to lay low. Shot in the municipality of Trstenik, Serbia, VAMPIR delivers on an authentic Eastern European community that is both welcoming and secretive. A place where a man can definitely hide. And lose himself.

Branko-Tomovic
Branko Tomovic, here from a similarly disturbing movie called RED, wrote, directed, and starred in VAMPIR.

Hired as a cemetery caretaker, Arnaut — played by Branko Tomović, who also wrote and directed the film —soon has terrible nightmares. He is guided by the elderly Baba Draga to try to understand his dreams and the odd behavior of the townspeople. A priest tries to help, but it is inevitable. In the last reel, Arnaut becomes a blood-sucking vampire.

Even more so than Jackson’s STRIGOI, Tomović’s VAMPIR is an allegory for the modern West clashing with the mysterious East. In this regard, it is much like Bram Stoker’s DRACULA. Like Jonathan Harker before him, Arnaut is even left at the crossroads by his cabbie, a man who will not go into the village because of its reputation. At least that’s what Western viewers would assume. Mostly in English, STRIGOI uses the Serbian language — never translated on screen — sparingly but effectively. Thus, we don’t know what the cabbie says, and are further distanced by the film, which makes it clear that Arnaut isn’t in London anymore.

Unlike Harker’s expedition in DRACULA, however, Arnaut’s journey is one of self-revelation that he is becoming not only a man of Serbian blood, but one who drinks it as well.

The message in both films? You can go home again, but shouldn’t! One cannot escape where they come from, even if the reason is one of DNA. And in their dissimilar but similar tales, both STRIGOI and VAMPIR effectively take the trope of “the return of the hero” and invert it. Instead of receiving the rewards of a quest, these heroes have fled from the West with their only reward being one of renewed purpose in STRIGOI, and horrible transformation in VAMPIR. In this regard, they are very different films. The same goes for tone. Jackson infuses STRIGOI with plenty of humor, while VAMPIR is as serious as a heart attack.

A whole lot of arthouse meets a little bit of grindhouse in these films (with a healthy dose of folk horror). Slow, Deliberate in their pacing, they are slow-burns that deliver with wildly different finales. Both stand as fine examples of offbeat vampire films that should be sought out by fans that want immersion in the real “old” world — where folklore truly informs the experience. Viewers are left with a sense that these monsters are real, because the people are so real. Villagers both inviting and secretive, raised on the legends of things that suck blood in the night. Steeped in Eastern European folklore, they deserve their place among the best vampire films of the 21st-century.