The narrative structure is built around the idea of overlapping storylines. Each character has their own story and their intersection with other characters is brief but significant. The plot is backstory heavy and exposition light. We are interested in the idea of a story being formed in the imagination of the spectator by connecting the dots in order to build a conspiratorial fiction. The character arcs hang on a wider orbital scaffold stretching across millennia that can only be glimpsed by any given individual.
Having been asked about the reasons for some of the elements making up 'The Sons of Ra', I have decided to attempt to answer some of those questions here.
Why is there a vampire in the story?
There are a number of reasons for that, my teenage years being distracted by horror films.
Growing up in the Aldershot area, 'Home of the British Army', when on Wednesday evenings the local army cinema would screen horror films for the troops. Some of my friends and I would go and nobody asked us questions about our age. I remember seeing "The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb" there.
Having been asked about the reasons for some of the elements making up 'The Sons of Ra', I have decided to attempt to answer some of those questions here.
Why is there a vampire in the story?
There are a number of reasons for that, my teenage years being distracted by horror films.
Growing up in the Aldershot area, 'Home of the British Army', when on Wednesday evenings the local army cinema would screen horror films for the troops. Some of my friends and I would go and nobody asked us questions about our age. I remember seeing "The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb" there.
I always felt some empathy for Christopher Lee's Dracula character. He was like the kid who could never get enough ice cream and needed to find devious methods to get other peoples, only in Dracula's case it wasn't ice cream he was after it was blood.
Of course satisfaction was always fleeting and the compulsive repetitive cycle of consumption was excruciating and endless. This driving thirst is Elisavita's primary motivation.
The journey to the bar through a media saturated tunnel of neon advertisements toward a frustratingly recessive destination imagines the lack in the empty promises of self fulfilment through advert driven capitalist consumerism.
The journey to the bar through a media saturated tunnel of neon advertisements toward a frustratingly recessive destination imagines the lack in the empty promises of self fulfilment through advert driven capitalist consumerism.
It's hard to recall what the initial spark was that triggered this project. I had met Tony Green who plays the part of the priest in an alternative comedy club called The Clinker. Tony has a stand up character who goes by the name of Sir Gideon Vein; a throwback to a parallel Victorian period, so in a sense a resurrected figure who furiously meditates on late Twentieth Century history. Sir Gideon is reminiscent of a character who can be encountered wandering the imaginary world of a Hammer Horror film and the nocturnal sleaze basements of Soho. In 'Ra' he is transformed into a troubled priest who is often seen nursing a brandy balloon. His faith is built on doubt and the consequential resonating polarity drives his quivering passion.
The character of Doctor Gordon Stevenson grew from a series of acting workshops guided by the inimitable drama teacher Giles Foreman. Emerging out of a practical in depth study of Yermolay Lopakhin, a central figure in Anton Chekov's play 'The Cherry Orchard'. Lopakhin rises up the social ladder from a barefoot peasant boy to being in a position to buy the Cherry Orchard (under threat from being cut down) from the Aristocracy who are struggling to maintain their feudal grip in the revolutionary shifting social and technological terrain of early twentieth century Russia. A similar figure informing Stevenson can be in seen Harry Enfield's 'Loadsamoney' character personifying the stereotypical barrow boy culture that arose from street markets to invade the City of London financial edifice of Thatchers Britain.
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Francis Bacon's series of paintings the Man in Blue serves as a visual inspiration for the character.
In the context of the occult tropes woven into the film, Stevenson spins an incendiary web across the planet by means of algorithmic sorcery.
Paul, the man Lisa meets in the bar, serves to illustrate her conflicted desires and emotional needs. He also maps out the context of manipulative domination that is perpetrated by imperial powers driven by dark forces as James, the bartender, sells Lisa the enticing fantasy of a summer evening in the form of a chilled cocktail. Meanwhile Lisa's Animus Demon lurks in the shadows itching to pounce and gratify her thirst for blood.