This month, Old Academy Anew explores magical realism from Hollywood’s perspective. Isabel Allende’s 1982 novel The House of the Spirits is a masterpiece of Latin American social commentary imbued with rebellious surrealism. Danish director Bille August’s The House of the Spirits (1993) ain’t that. A lot got lost in translation, and the casting tried to compensate for it. Get ready for an investigative ride. Swearing, sarcasm, and shenanigans ahead. You’ve been warned.
(HOLLYWOOD’S) SOUTH AMERICA
Our story begins with narration in the middle of a two-minute flashforward. Old Jeremy Irons, still young Winona Ryder, and a little girl enter a dilapidated hacienda. We don’t know who they are yet. It doesn’t matter.
We return to the proper timeline of the story and encounter a different little girl writing in her diary. A gramophone blares in an expansive receiving room, and the narration continues. Our tiny writer observes Esteban (1993, Jeremy Irons) with googly eyes. He’s come to propose to her older sister. The petite scribbler, Clara, happens to be clairvoyant, and she knows Esteban will be hers, not her sisters. At her mother’s soft request, the gramophone gets shut. Clara comes to sit beside Esteban, and four minutes into the movie, a vase full of flowers slides before the assembled twice. Clara is quietly chided; the conversation continues. Esteban promises to work hard to give Sister a comfortable life. The scene dissolves into our hero sweating with a pickaxe in a poorly lit mine.
In this faraway mine, Esteban finds gold and the promise of a future with his beloved. He painstakingly types a letter that Sister reads in the middle of a party; they are celebrating Father’s nomination as a candidate for the Liberal Party.
THE FIRST STRIKE FOR THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS COMES FROM THE GENERIC CASTING. YOU COULD NEVER DEDUCE THE LOCATION OF THE STORY BY THE ACTORS INVOLVED WITHOUT CONTEXT.
The family’s courtyard is full of people gathered for the occasion. Meanwhile, others have congregated to seek Clara’s advice in a different part of the mansion. Here, the film chooses to do something that rubs me the wrong way. Clara has Tarot cards before her, but she’s not even bothering to shuffle them; she’s just telling people things. She’s reading the people, not the cards. This might seem inconsequential for the average viewer, but it contradicts what the film is allegedly trying to do with Clara. During one of these “readings,” Clara screams, having received a premonition. The whole thing comes to a screeching halt when the parents arrive; they chase the seekers off like JC flogging merchants at the Temple. Long story short, someone’s about to die. Poison meant for Father ends Sister. Dun Dun Dun. I got second-sight questions here, but I’m gonna keep ’em to myself ’cause this happened verbatim in the novel. And Allende is never wrong.
Another thing that grinds my gears is when films break the immersion with botched attempts at exoticism. The story happens in Chile. For all intents and purposes, no matter what we’re hearing, the characters are logically speaking Spanish. In the same way, if you’re watching LOTR: The Two Towers (2002) in French, it doesn’t mean the effing Hobbits are actually speaking French; they are speaking Middle-earth gobbledygook. Here, upon discovering Clara beside a dead Sister, their nanny screams heartbrokenly, “Ay, Dios mio!” Why? This doesn’t happen a lot, but unfortunately, it only happens with characters that look a certain way. #IYKYK
Esteban made the long trip, from wherever the fuck he was, to claim his bride, only to arrive at her funeral. Not gonna lie, Irons’s love confession over the open casket broke me.
THE EARLY 1900S GENDER POLITICS OF THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS WOULD SCANDALIZE THE SOFT HEARTS OF 2025 WORLD WIDE WEB DWELLERS.
We can call Sister’s death the inciting incident. Feeling guilty, Clara stops talking altogether to immerse herself in a world of spirits and elemental magic. We’re told this with no effort to show any of it. Esteban, for his part, returns to his family home; there, we learn he has an ill mother and a creepy sister, Ferula (Glenn Close). The family vignette we encounter is disturbing in visuals and subtext. To shorten another long story, Esteban retreats to the country. Promised wife is no more, so the gold is invested in making a name for himself in the roughlands.
We’re twenty minutes into the film, and we still have two fukken hours to go. Yikes.
(NOT SO) MAGICAL REALISM
In May of 2013, I was lucky enough to attend a Q&A with author Isabel Allende. I asked her why magical realism is usually married with political/military upheaval in Latin America. She looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Escapism.”
As such, Hollywood has never fully grasped the concept of magical realism beyond the absurd. Magic is a way to soften the blow of living under a dictatorship; when two political factions are hell-bent on owning your town, a mechanism to cope with a guerrilla war scorching your fields. It doesn’t matter how much whimsy and wonder prelude that moment; somehow, it always arrives there. A battle to make oppression less oppressive. To Hollywood, it only means to make something weird/cute happen without rhyme or reason.
Twenty years pass, and now Esteban is a properly affluent man. It’s never truly established if, at the start, his family only had “a well-regarded name” but no “fortune.” Nevertheless, he’s back in town to bury his mother. During the funeral, he sees a grown-up Clara (Meryl Streep).
UPON SEEING MERYL STREEP AS THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS ’ PROTAGONIST, WE UNDERSTAND MANY OF THE VISUAL CHOICES THE FILM MAKES. THAT DOESN’T MEAN WE HAVE TO AGREE WITH THEM. STRIKE TWO.
Esteban decides to ask for Clara’s hand in marriage. Why is he so determined to become part of that fukken family? Your guess is as good as mine. Remember, this is a weird woman who hasn’t spoken since the other funeral in the movie. Still, they sit together, and Esteban doesn’t know how to approach the subject. Clara, after two decades of silence, helps him out, “You’ve come to ask me to marry you, haven’t you?” “Clara! Don’t be impertinent,” calls Mother from the other end of the receiving room. “Mama, I want to know. I don’t want to waste time.” The same stupid song from the beginning of the movie blares. Mother and Father exchange incredulous glances after a heartbeat. Happiness explodes as the room realizes Clara has uttered words. Even the nanny (still alive but silver-haired) exclaims (in English heh-heh), “She speaks! Oh, she speaks!”
Thus far, Ferula has been presented as a creepy, rigid, and domineering woman. However, Esteban never put up with her shit. So, in what we know has to be a supreme act of groveling, Ferula invites Clara to lunch. We understand this is to plead her case; to avoid being relegated to an empty house now that she has no one to take care of. She doesn’t have the chance to beg. Our soothsayer sees her need and embraces it with open arms. “We will be like sisters, my dear Ferula.” This (up to this point) frigid woman breaks down, effectively softening all the coldness the film has bestowed upon her. Clara will request that Ferula live with them without mentioning their meeting at all.
SPRINKLES OF TELEKINESIS AND THE SUPERNATURAL, LURKING IN THE BACK OF THE PICTURE LIKE A SHUNNED GINGER STEP-CHILD IS ALL THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS GIVES– AS IF AFRAID OF ITS OWN TITLE. STRIKE THREE.
Our aged sweethearts get married in the city, and Ferula welcomes them home in the country. Now, Esteban did not wrestle his fortune as a rancher from the rough environment by being nice. Every single thing Ferula has been accused of flourishes tenfold in her brother’s actions. Plus sexual crimes. Frigid sister is a virgin spinster, and brother has deflowered more than one country girl. One particular fruit of his loins shows up now and again, creepier than Ferula herself.
And speaking of loins, Clara is suddenly (or perhaps years later) pregnant. The love Esteban never allowed Ferula to pour on him after adulthood is fully transferred to Clara, to the point that it might seem Sapphic. Oblivious, Clara accepts the doting ministrations, but Esteban ain’t a fan.
The newborn is a daughter who will become Winona Ryder and fall in love with Antonio Banderas. Still an hour and thirty minutes of fucking movie left when these chucklefucks fall in love.
(FALSE) PLURALISM
Around this time, Esteban fully unleashes his Supreme Asshole Persona. He’s been stern at home and a cliché villain patron on the grounds; now the whole thing goes nuclear everywhere. Ferula gets kicked out for her obsessive behavior; Anthony B is hunted for deflowering W; and he demands that Clara love him.
In the Universe, civil unrest is a-brewing thanks to shitty landowners abusing their workers. Liberal versus Conservative tiresome rhetoric rears its ugly head. Communist ideas imported from another land take root.
Enough already.
THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS VEERS HARD FROM “FAMILY DRAMA” TO “DOWNFALL OF A NATION.” WHATEVER MADE IT PALATABLE IN THE SOURCE MATERIAL IS LOST, ONLY TO BE SPICED WITH ANTI-COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA. THERE ARE NO STRIKES LEFT TO CALL.
Nevertheless, we’re gonna ask the Old Academy Anew question. Is it possible to make this film today? I think “possible” is not the right word. “Logical” seems more appropriate. Why would you make this movie today? I mean, beyond the lack of creativity rampant in Tinsel Town, the obsession with rehashing the 80s and 90s, or an excruciating fear of the new.
Current Hollywood shows disdain for “source material.” One thing is to be “inspired” by something; another thing is to do your own shit and cosplay it as a known IP. Never mind that customs change. Sherlock Holmes cannot go around “ejaculating” instead of “saying.” (This is true; look it up). Certain words are now taboo and/or trigger people. Old quirks are recognized as pathologies. So-called illness had been decanonized and understood as part of Nature. We get it, the world keeps moving forward. That doesn’t mean everything created before “our time” is faulty.
Those in charge of this movie basically adapted A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens, 1843) without the fucking ghosts; sent Tiny Tim to die in a war; and turned one sister into a life of sex work. Who does that?
Said numbnuts removed 93% of magic and added 57% more realism. And that 7% of magic left was transmogrified into mere parlor tricks. The only thing this accomplishes is another THE BOOK WAS BETTER. That cannot be the goal when you invest in an adaptation.
“BEAUTIFULLY SHOT” AND “SUPERBLY ACTED” DON’T COMPENSATE FOR THE LACK OF SPIRIT (BOTH LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE) IN THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS.
We have talked about the difficulties of translating from one medium to another before; yet, it isn’t impossible. Sadly, today, “faithful” rings like a bad word. The need to bend everything we touch to our will is crippling. We cannot channel the soul of a text because we refuse to be mediums. (There’s a size joke here, but I’ll keep it classy) Most want to be creators, not understanding that creation doesn’t come from nothing but builds upon what existed before.
I tend to block from memory things that disturb me. Whatever happened in the novel once the story enters the dictatorship arc is lost to me; Latin America has lived under too many military boots masquerading as nice Oxfords to enjoy seeing it in text. And there wasn’t any real reason for the movie to go so hard there.
We promised an investigation, but the part of which movie August was trying to out-sadden hid like revolutionaries underground. The film makes a point to show that both Father and Esteban become representatives of the Liberal Party. A party that spawns the military dictatorship through their shitty decisions. Can you imagine the visuals for that in 2025? Yeah, you can.
Let’s forget for a minute that this is based on a novel. It isn’t much to see as its own thing; not even music by Hans Zimmer could save it. A 6 out of 10 for me; I could’ve gone lower, but Winona, Antonio, and even Jeremy Irons were too fucking hot in the 90s.
The House of the Spirits is available for free on Pluto TV