Eye of the Storm: Fails to Instrospect

Many contemporary novels and films that examine the demise of aristocratic families tend to reinforce our confidence in an arguably more merit-based, egalitarian society. However, they also point to the existence of a strict (albeit more implicit) social order between the elite and working classes. The Eye of the Storm reveals some of the most painful family secrets to debunk and criticize the unsubstantiated glorification of the aristocratic class.

The Eye of the Storm will leave viewers feeling weak in the knees. This Australian film shows not only a dysfunctional family but represents a long bygone social order coming apart at the seams. The father is entirely absent, and the mother is an insidious, unfeeling woman who isn’t above competing with her only daughter and seducing married men. While it attempts to be a character-driven drama with tasteful metaphors and symbolism, it relies on familiar character types and soap-operatic elements to instill feelings of disenchantment in its audience with the aristocracy.

Elizabeth Hunter (Charlotte Rampling) never really harbored any semblance of maternal instinct or care. She lives purely for herself and thrives on controlling her children’s lives as well as those of her lawyer and household staff. She represents the overbearing aristocrat who buys loyalty and service from the working class and fails to forge meaningful bonds with anyone, especially their own children. Her children are left damaged, struggling to find intimacy in barren relationships. As this matriarch withholds all love and care from her children, it’s no wonder that they sniff around for their allowance and her remaining fortune. Meanwhile, the servants are clamoring to please the aristocrats in some form or another, scrounging for the scraps that their mistress disdainfully tosses on the ground. While brilliantly acted, this story has been told before.

Elizabeth, a very sick woman, starts preparing for death. She depends on her trusty lawyer (John Gaden) to execute her will. Her estranged children, Basil (Geoffrey Rush) and Dorothy (Judy Davis), return only to secure their inheritance. Dorothy has always competed with her mother for sexual and financial power. Because she married into royalty, she is technically a princess but hasn’t a penny to her name. Elizabeth clearly favors Basil, a self-absorbed actor and libertine who patiently awaits his mother’s demise.

These problematic family relationships may illustrate that the modern hyper-individualistic attitude undermines familial and class allegiances. Even on her deathbed, Elizabeth successfully disempowers her daughter every time. On the other hand, we cringe as Dorothy continues to compete with her mother at the expense of her self-respect and finances. As for Elizabeth’s relationship with Basil, she purposefully masks her illness behind a wig and heavy make-up. Both are experts at constructing facades and playing certain roles to get what they want.

While the script successfully articulates internal and external conflicts, this film could have used more nuance and subtlety in terms of characterization. It often piggybacks on familiar character archetypes and tropes of the dysfunctional aristocratic family so that the characters appear less believable and more theatrical. For example, the German housekeeper (Helen Morse), who is also a Holocaust survivor, dances away like a marionette to please her mistress in every single way. Elizabeth’s opportunistic nurse, Fiona (Alexandra Schepisi), dreams of improving her social status by seducing Basil. These secondary characters represent a working class that depends on aristocratic generosity to maintain and improve their social status. These characters endeavor to remake themselves, especially as their employment becomes ever so uncertain with Elizabeth’s impending death. Although some of these secondary characters eventually realize the vacuousness of the elites, the working class is largely represented as desperate, narrow-minded, and purely motivated by socioeconomic well-being. Even Elizabeth, while superbly acted by Rampling, arguably falls into a character type of the morally decadent, dying aristocrat as she reminisces about her various triumphs in a morphine-induced haze.

Moreover, the film dragged a bit as it developed the plot and the main characters. Watching the self-absorbed matriarch and two children claw at one another was at times more frustrating than heartbreaking because all of them excessively indulge in self-pity and showcase very little will to resolve their personal issues. By constantly pitting all these incorrigible character types against one another, the film took awhile to unravel the various conflicts. The blasé saxophone soundtrack further instills feelings of fatalism and hopelessness within viewers.

The film assiduously follows certain motifs and symbols, not limited to Elizabeth’s white dress and her sapphire ring. This fidelity to motifs probably originates from the film’s literary origins. There are interesting juxtapositions, such as Basil telling his mother that gentlemen choose tea, a more civil drink, over martinis, a more intoxicating drink. The scene immediately cuts to Dorothy sipping a martini. It’s almost as if the facetious Basil strokes her ego while Dorothy’s memories reveal the underbelly of Elizabeth’s consciousness, her darkest vices.

Those who are looking for a comedic or uplifting film should pass on this literary, theatrical melodrama. For those who love English period pieces and class-based drama, they might want to look into catching a matinee of “The Eye of the Storm.” I can imagine that many Anglophiles would choose this movie based on its stellar cast, but the film is rather slow-moving and falls short of an engaging BBC drama piece. It’ll do in a pinch if you’re in the mood for this type of film. While I rather appreciated it, It definitely won’t appeal to an audience that favors mainstream, fast-paced, genre-driven stories.