Flicker (novel)

infobox Book |
name = Flicker
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = "Flicker"
author = Theodore Roszak
illustrator = Rachel McClain
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Novel
publisher = Chicago Review Press
release_date = 1991
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = 155652577X
preceded_by =
followed_by =

Flicker is a novel by Theodore Roszak published in 1991.

The novel covers approximately 15-20 years of the life of film scholar Jonathan Gates, whose academic investigations draw him into the shadowy world of esoteric conspiracy that underlies the work of fictional B-movie director Max Castle. Director Darren Aronofsky's name has long been associated with a possible film adaptation.

Reception

Ty Burr, later film critic for the Boston Globe, reviewing the novel in 1991 for Entertainment Weekly, praised Roszak's writing: "Still best known for 1969's "The Making of a Counter Culture", a book that sought to explain '60s youth to an older generation of intellectuals, the writer proves to be a spellbinder when it comes to fiction." However he criticises Roszak for losing stamina: "A little past the halfway mark, Flicker shifts its sights away from classic-film appreciation and toward modern-day moviemaking. Here Roszak starts telling us that the movies are going quite literally to hell and taking us along for the ride...Sadly, as he bears down on that shrill message, Roszak loses interest in his characters. The writing turns rushed; the sense of time and place becomes confused. By the final pages the mutation is complete: The "novel of ideas" has become the rant of an academic disenchanted with a medium he no longer comprehends." [ [http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,314798,00.html Fade to Black] a review by Ty Burr, Entertainment Weekly, July 12, 1991, accessed January 29, 2008]

Film adaptation

In early 2003, Darren Aronofsky, director of the low-budget success, π, signed a three-year contract with Regency Enterprises. One of the first projects mentioned was an adaptation of Flicker. [ [http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117879646.html Regency new home for 'Pi' guy] by Dana Harris, Variety, January 28, 2003, accessed January 29, 2008] Jim Uhls (best known for his adaptation of Fight Club) was hired to adapt it. [ [http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117892678.html 'Hard' time for 'Fight' duo] by Dana Harris, Variety, September 18, 2003, accessed January 29, 2008] In 2006, Aronofsky moved to Universal, and the Flicker project was still in gestation. [ [http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117938319.html 'Pi' guy getting into U] by Gabriel Snyder, Variety, February 15, 2006, accessed January 29, 2008]

Plot Summary

Jonathan Gates is a student at UCLA in the early 1960s, where he begins his love affair with film at The Classic, a rundown independent movie theatre. He begins an affair with the theatre's owner Clarissa 'Clare' Swann, who tutors him extensively in the study of film history over the course of their relationship. It is through Clare's pursuit of classic films to show at the theatre that Gates stumbles upon the work of Max Castle, a B-Movie director of German origin whose work uses subliminal imagery and unorthodox symbolism to achieve a powerful effect over the viewer.

Gradually, Gates rises through the academic ranks to achieve a professorial chair, becoming most respected as the rediscoverer and champion of Castle's work. Through Gates' extensive research, the reader learns of Castle's considerable influence over the great films of his time, culminating in a collaboration with Orson Welles to make the acclaimed movie Citizen Kane, followed by a failed attempt to adapt Conrad's Heart of Darkness to the silver screen. Also revealed, however, are his shadowy connections with a religious group known as the Orphans of the Storm, as well as his disappearance in 1941.

Clare, meanwhile, has become a respected New York film critic, entrusting the Classic theatre to her one-time projectionist Don Sharkey, who stops showing artful films in favour of shallow entertainment for a new generation of moviegoers. Among the up-and-coming directors Sharkey showcases is one Simon Dunkle, whom Gates learns belongs to the same religious sect as Max Castle. Gates begins to investigate the Orphans, despite their own attempts to stifle his research and the adverse effect that the constant viewing of Orphan-made films is having on his personality. He learns that they are Gnostic dualists, living in secrecy since the Catholic persecutions of Catharism in the Middle Ages. Gates begins to suspect that the Orphans are using an extensive influence in the film industry to subliminally promote their religion while they enact their plans to bring about the Apocalypse in the year 2014.

Eventually, Gates turns to his former lover Clare for help. She introduces him to a Father Angelotti, a Cathar in disguise as a Catholic priest. Angelotti persuades him to 'infiltrate' the Orphans' church, so as to obtain the conclusive evidence that will allow Gates to publish what he has discovered. The Orphans put him on a private plane, ostensibly to meet the elders of their faith. En route, they drug his coffee and he awakes, imprisoned on a tropical island in the Indian Ocean. Living in a nearby hut is none other than Max Castle himself, more than 30 years after his disappearance. Gates and the film director he once idolised use scraps and castoffs from a waste-heap of old celluloid to splice together one final film, while they wait for Armageddon to come.

References