Tarsem’s visionary directorial debut The Cell cannot be confined to a single genre: it is a cerebral detective, a psychological thriller, and a psychedelic dark fantasy turned horror all in one. A schizophrenic maniac, portrayed by the distinguished Vincent D’Onofrio, killed five blonde women before he was caught. When he falls into a coma, there is a mystery with a timer put on it: where is his last victim hidden? The FBI sets out to find her while she is still alive, calling for aid from a psychiatrist named Catherine (Jennifer Lopez) who agrees to enter the murderous maniac’s subconscious but soon realizes that it is too easy to get lost in this world of dreams and hallucinations, monsters, and tortures.
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This visually stunning movie is itself an immersion into the eerie and mesmerizing minds of Tarsem and Eiko Ishioka (the great art director and costume designer), and as such caused a deep divide among the viewers. For some reason, the movie completely went over audiences and critics’ heads and still remains universally unnoticed and underappreciated, with few people arguing that it is an intellectual and innovative hit, and even those who considered it a good-looking dud have practically forgotten this great anomaly of a film.
About The Cell’s Creator: Form Over Substance
New Line Cinema
The brain behind The Cell is visual virtuoso Tarsem, a debutant in big cinema who was known for directing elaborate music videos and commercials. To get an idea about the bold experimental style of The Cell, one can watch his music video for R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion.
Tarsem is preoccupied not with the intricacies of plot or clever dialogue but with creating a game of perceptions and associations, a potent sensory encounter through the generous use of tableau vivant. From dark dungeons with a naked giantess to the imperial palace, to crucifix imagery and holography, in his works, art pieces and still photography come to life; it’s an exercise in extravagant spiritualism that is, in essence, a moving picture.
His cinematic inspirations for the elaborate staging of each shot are the works of directors like Tarkovsky and Paradjanov and their unique narration through visual metaphors. The era of tasteful minimalism is dying out, so perhaps there is no better time to appreciate Tarsem for his maximalist excess, theatricality, and pervasive symbolism.
The Art of The Cell
To begin with, Tarsem decided that the main image of serial killer Karl Starger’s dark mental kingdom would be depicted as an impassable cyclopean labyrinth, consisting of huge royal halls, dark corridors, and eerie alleys, acting as a metaphor for his sick soul. Tom Foden, production designer for the luxurious visual sequences of The Cell, filled the canvas of the serial killer’s mind with a range of references, from the Christian innuendos to the raw and unsettling feel of Francis Bacon paintings and William Blake etchings.
For instance, the sinister scene with a dismembered horse, each segment of which is preserved in a separate glass cell, is an homage to Damien Hirst’s installation Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything. The scene in which an FBI agent enters the psychopath’s mind and sees three women sitting in a field with their mouths open is inspired by Odd Nerdrum’s painting Dawn. The shot of the killer sitting next to a dead girl in the bath is a direct reference to the work of the art photographer Jan Saudek, “a window in a wall” motif being a very common feature of his work.
The Cell’s Costume Design: The Brilliance of Eiko Ishioka
In line with his vision, Tarsem collaborated with the costume design sensation Eiko Ishioka, who had recently been awarded an Oscar for her magnificent work in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Ishioka is widely commended for her surreal eroticism and sublime talent for visualizing fabric texture and its flow on the human form, so there was no better choice really. In an interview with W Magazine, Tarsem says: “Eiko would say that red is the most difficult color, but in many ways, red was Eiko: strong, intense, brilliant.”
The director gave Ishioka carte blanche and the result exceeded any expectations. In one of the interviews, Ishioka said she returned to her mindset during working on Der Ring des Nibelungen to create a whole world that a director can work with, and to Dracula to give that world a raw, dark sensuality. There’s even a small reference to that, as lab suits that resemble muscles on the human body resemble Count Dracula’s famous red armor in the Francis Ford Coppola film. These suits symbolize the nakedness of one’s mind in this lab.
The worlds of reality and dreams are clearly distinguished only in the finale, signifying how the maniac’s mind bleeds into a psychiatrist’s, the latter’s previously unremarkable outfits and gey blouses being exchanged for a bright poncho. The serial killer is also a stark contrast to his vision of himself. In his dreamscape, he is the monstrous emperor (Vincent D’Onofrio actually took an active part in developing the costumes of his character).
The maniac turns ‘ordinary, boring’ girls into bewitching sculptures. The longer Catherine stays in his world, the more she also ‘turns’ from an ‘ordinary’ woman into a mysterious diva in a mask, or “a cyberpunk sphinx”, as reviewer Charlie Fox describes her. The only point of disagreement between the director and the costume designer was Catherine’s armor in the final part. Tarsem wanted to make it metal, like a knight, and Ishioko insisted on a more sensual version, made of leather.
Polemical General Reception: Convoluted or Ingenious?
Watching The Cell is an experience not unlike visiting a surrealist exhibition, and the impression certain scenes evoke is akin to the feeling of watching paintings that affect abstract thinking and force you to switch on your imagination and your own subconscious. The movie is undoubtedly memorable, a feast for the eyes, and offers some food for thought. It is still very original and serves as a very good example of a film where an impeccable external side is sometimes able to completely prevail over the semantic component.
Of course, as is the case with such films, this will always become a reason for criticism. Was the dismissal of The Cell related to this ‘style over substance’ mentality? Was it because Jennifer Lopez had difficulty being recognized as a good actress despite her great previous performances?
Or was it because of the inevitable comparisons with Silence of the Lambs, Seven, and The Matrix? In any case, The Cell did not make much of a splash. Critics reacted to it with restraint, noting the external elegance and cinematography but pointed to the flat script and wooden characters, or as Empire Online wrote: “strangely devoid of meaning.” In terms of prestigious awards, the Academy snubbed the work of production designers and costume designers, with the picture being nominated for makeup only.
The public also did not make the film a big hit, domestically bringing in $61 million (though making $104 million worldwide). The rating on Rotten Tomatoes is below average, with most of the comments disregarding the movie as a confused eye-candy. Nevertheless, there is no way to write off the film as a commercial or artistic failure, making three times its budget and containing some of the most haunting images ever filmed.
On the other hand, the film’s anarchical unconventionality has at the same time received beyond favorable reviews from some cultural authorities. For instance, Roger Ebert thoroughly disagreed with the ‘pretty empty shell’ sentiment, even giving this picture his perfect rating. He offers an explanation for prevalent hate: perhaps The Cell is so “challenging, wildly ambitious and technically superb” that it “just overloads the circuits for some people.” The only way to get an opinion is to go through this journey yourself and watch it.
