Three figures loom large in Solomon Kane: Lucifer, Cain (with a 'C'), and Jesus.
The main antagonist is Satan, who wants to claim Solomon's soul for hell because of his debauchery and murder. But Solomon himself is a mirror image of the story of Lucifer, his first sin being that of disobeying and leaving his father; in the very first scene he says "I'm the only devil here".
Solomon's second sin is that of Cain, when he kills his brother. And no, I don't think the name is a coincidence.
And finally, well, he gets crucified.*
So of course, the fourth act is very clear: he has to reconcile with his father (he does), redeem his brother (he does, after a fashion), and, of course, be resurrected.
The fact that I was sat thinking about these parallels probably means I was engaged with the film to the utmost, and there was far too much ostentatious cloak swirling for me to take it seriously, but I like that the filmmakers made an effort to include some subtext and some metatext in what is essentially a story about a Puritan mercenary who loves to kill people.
They fluffed the ending, going for a show down with a CGI monster which they didn't have the budget to do really well, which was an especially strange decision given that there was a CGI monster with character from the beginning which they could have used. At least they decided it would be creepy to have him marry the 19 year old damsel in distress, and instead sent her off packing to America.
I enjoyed Solomon Kane very much, it's a jaffa cake on the food-as-a-metaphor-for-films scale: pleasurable, but not a full meal.
*Although would crucification really work in rainy, rainy Devon? After all, it's the dehydration which kills... ok, I should not be worrying about this.
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1 comment:
I loved these stories when I was younger and was very keen to see the film. Sadly it finishes tonight so it will be Sky Box Office for me in the fullness of time. As John Lennon said 'Life is what happens while you're making plans'.
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