X: Art About Art
[Trying to escape the past; image: Bloody Disgusting ] Ti West’s homage to '70s exploitation cinema succeeds in mastering the key technique of absorbing historical fiction: depicting a deeper past in contrast to the period in which it is set, thereby making the setting appear modern, contemporary, and present . The past creeps closer. This ability to evoke an era, to touch history, is mostly accomplished with set design. While coeval events are separated by a simple split screen, the split between past and present is made spatially: inside the old house is a deep past, and outside the old house it is modern times. The house is so convincing as a portal to another time that I am reminded of visiting the house my father grew up in before it was torn down: dark and oppressive with the weight of the previous century, cluttered with dusty brack-a-brac. Full of dust and objects that seem layered in it, the old dark house is a time capsule that sucks the characters into history an...