Clara Van Gool's The Beast in the Jungle is showing January 30 –February 28, 2020 on MUBI in most countries as part of the series Direct from Rotterdam.
When I read The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James for the first time I was deeply moved, but there was also something elusive about it. Precisely this poetic mixture intrigued me, the novella is pure, impressionistic, but also psychological with a hint of gothic. While reading I saw a kind of "choreography" in the underlying dynamics between the lines: the whole story revolves around what May Bartram and John Marcher fail to say. I could come to grips with the story by reading it like a duet and this has urged me to turn it into a film.
In my previous films I have always been exploring the balance between acting-dialogue-movement-dance. These were short films at various lengths and it was now time for me to create a completely choreographed feature film, with dialogues, a storyline, and characters you can identify with. A film at this length in this style was not done before, so in that sense this film has been an experiment. I have tried to listen to what Henry James’s story wanted to tell itself, finding a truthful balance in every facet during the process of filmmaking between storytelling and poetry, between objective and subjective, between construction and emotion, between realism and Romanticism.
Written in 1903, it is above all the modernity of the original story that has inspired me. A story about language and miscommunication, a tragedy of missed opportunities. The main theme of The Beast in the Jungle could be called a quest for John Marcher’s self. Failure, loneliness, and nothingness caused by essential fear were issues of 19th century industrialization and urbanization, but these are still themes we can relate to—perhaps more than ever. What appealed to me in the story especially is the nonconformism of John Marcher and May Bartram’s relationship. It is their conscious choice to wait together, for many years. They seem unmoving against what must have been a background of a stream of major social and also technological developments. This contraposition against time makes me see them as two recalcitrant, rebellious heroes. So it was essential to me that the film would not simply be regarded as a costume drama. While the time span of the novella is spread over about twenty years in late 19th century, in the adaptation the storyline has been stretched over a full century—spiraling from 1903 to the 40s, the 60s and the present time - evaluating the meaning of a ‘Beast’ against various periods. John and May have thus become "classic" characters, detached from Time, moving within a choreographic, repetitive, composition. Both movement/dance and text form the glue in this multidimensional dramatic structure, transcending time and space.
This way Henry James’ story has continued to intrigue me in the way it moves from psychological to almost supernatural territory. At the same time, the warning that comes from it is crystal clear: to be mortal is to live one’s life and to love—that is where meaning lies.