Guillermo del Toro's "Crimson Peak" (2015) is the Pinnacle of Love and Fear
Love, at its Core, is Pain
Love brings out the best and the worst of people.
That’s the eternal paradox of the most sought after commodity that is as scarce as we allow it to be.
It makes us want to be better, but it can also make us do dastardly things in the pursuit of it. Of all the things in the world that hold true to a binary system, like stars in the sky or True/False questions, love has such extremes for how this primordial feeling is the best and the worst things in the world.
In Guillermo del Toro’s gothic romance film, we have the loves of Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) and Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), of Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam), Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver), and Lady Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain).
Love that overlaps and stings and is bitter to one another, but is such a euphoric feeling as to damn any and all in the way of its pursuit.
Sure; love can be pure, first romances, nervous butterfly kisses under bleachers, smiles on faces so pink and warm a granny apple would be proud.
It can also start wars and demean others and turn the most gentile of men into ravaging, uncouth beasts.
In between the spectrum of life and death, there is love and its absence.
In Crimson Peak, we see so many varied types of love, from philia to eros to storge. Some are healthy and some, as one would expect, are toxic. At the base of this movie, it is love, in its unhealthy wantonness as well as its slow, thoughtful burn.
To be honest, with how grim and Victorian we start out, I thought this movie was about vampires. Stupid me, it’s about ghosts and sex hahaha who woulda thunk?
Edith is a strong, independent woman, somewhat standoffish in her disdain for the frivolities of polite society she must entertain. She wants to be a writer and pursues that in lieu of a relationship.
Enter the handsome trickster god, Sir Thomas Sharpe, who woos Edith by saying what every writer wants to hear: “I’d love to read your writing. Let me see it.”
Panties drop. Immediately. Thomas is handsome, well-to-do, charming and most of all it seems like he actually cares. He may come from a failing family empire, but what kind of draft is that compared to the burning of their youthful love?
Also he’s British.
And when circumstantial events push Edith into his arms, his house, and then his bed, the only real oddity is Lucille. Lucille and the fucking haunted house that gave me mini heart attacks at the most inopportune moments.
Edith is more in-tune with the supernatural than she lets on. Her visions from her youth plaguing her and resurfacing in her writing, and materializing yet again in the hollowed out halls of Allerdale Mansion.
These ghosts don’t go around banging pots and pans and crying in bathrooms— only Edith can see them and only Edith can save them. But she doesn’t know why they’re there, or how to help. Light beckons her eyes as the story progresses and she solves the mysteries, but at the cost of everything.
Love as a Metaphor:
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
That’s just what love is, when we take a step back to admire how fucked up it is.
It brings out the best in us, the worst in us, and the parts of ourselves we never even knew we had.
In its ethereal feelings of happiness and warmth, it has the black ichor of hatred and jealousy mixed in like some paint barrel still swishing its innards together. Every good thing about love, there is a flipside to how it makes others feel, or how it makes you feel when it gets out of control.
We see love at its purest from Edith’s father and her long-time friend Dr. McMichael. Love that isn’t dated and that rings true even in the darkest of hours. At the same time, this love is tainted with fear and anxiety, with worry and anger as the love from Thomas and Lucille come in to taint all that is pure.
The love left at the end is still a love, something softly warm and unachievable, but just like Allerdale’s crimson snow, it has left its mark on the white expanse.
Love is a Poison
Like Edith literally being poisoned in the movie, love is a slow-acting poison that damns even the best of us.
It changes us, makes us do things we never thought we were capable of doing, and while it can make us achieve superhuman feats, it can also drain and stain the feelings we hold so near and dear.
Toxic love, like several characters share in the movie, is erotic and vengeful and vile. Is this still a form of love? To whip out violence and blood in the eventual fallout of feelings?
And to the best of us: with the best of intentions and the wisest of thoughts, love will get us to do the damndest, most foolish things.
Love is the Single Greatest Thing
With all the bad that snowballs in this film to create horrid circumstances for Edith, love is still a saving force for everyone in the film.
Her father’s love tried to keep her safe, and continued to do so after his murder. McMichael’s love drew him to the UK to seek Edith out in spite of her having married someone else. Thomas’ love defied everything he knew to save what he could.
As vicious and vile as some loves were portrayed in this film, the subtle softness of the good love, the kind love, the love that is more a hand brushing your cheek and wiping away your tears, was also very present and tenacious in this movie.
In fact, this goodness in love is the real reason we know that to love and to be loved is always worth it. No matter what.
We Are Creatures of Love
At the end of the day, we are all creatures in the pursuit of love. We want to be loved and we want to love. To lose that or to be denied its gracious feeling is a loss unimaginable, that can only be filled with similar but never the same feelings.
What pushes romantics to murder? What pushes those so steeped in love to commit every conceivable crime and every punishable act in order to have a taste of love?
Every person experiences love differently. Everyone desires different things in their loves, but as broken and dissimilar as everyone is, love is the one thing that confounds us all. Drives us to madness. Makes us better. Gives us our humanity.
“To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.”
-Harry J. Potter