Moral outing

Christian Century, Nov 7, 2001 by Karl Stevens

FROM HELL begins with Jack the Ripper's infamous claim that he gave birth to the 20th century. The prominent position that the filmmakers, Allen and Albert Hughes, give this claim implies that they intend to offer proof of it as the movie's action plays out. Their subversive film takes seriously the idea that the seeds of Auschwitz and the cold war were sown in the bigotry and secretive violence of late Victorian society.

In the opening sequence, the camera pans down a building into the streets of Whitechapel, pausing at windows to look into scenes of squalor. When it reaches the street it pans over prostitutes on the corner and drunks urinating against the walls of buildings, entering the metaphorical hell at the film's center. We are introduced first to Mary Kelly (Heather Graham) and her cadre of fellow prostitutes, whose livelihood has been put in jeopardy by a local gang's demands for protection money. They are threatened, insulted and beaten by the people around them.

When they emerge into the daylight we are introduced to the one prostitute for whom life seems to contain some joy. She has a child by a rich gentleman who is supporting her. Within moments of her appearance on the screen, she is interrupted in a tryst with her lover and whisked away by mysterious men. That the men are well-dressed gentlemen is not lost on Mary Kelly, who witnesses the abduction.

The Ripper murders begin shortly after, with Mary and her friends as the targets. The citizens of Whitechapel blame the Jews who live among them, and the police seem entirely willing to sanction this scapegoating--with the exception of Inspector Fred Abberline (Johnny Depp), who is convinced almost from the first that the murders are the work of an educated member of Britain's ruling classes.

From Whitechapel the action moves into the sanctuaries of the rich, a transition that does nothing to lighten the mood of the film. As the rooms become more spacious and beautiful, the horror they conceal becomes more pronounced.

At a society fund-raiser for a hospital, a man with profound physical deformities is brought out so that the ladies and gentlemen assembled can gasp with pleasurable titillation at this horror in their midst. The human evil that is so obvious on the streets of Whitechapel is equally present in the most aesthetically pleasing of settings, and its viciousness is only sharpened by the patina of beauty placed over it.

This current in the film becomes most obvious when Abberline and Mary enter a museum, the traditional temple of beauty, then walk up marble stairs under the shocked and sneering eyes of rich patrons and pause in front of a portrait of Queen Victoria. Rather than remarking on the loveliness of the painting, Mary shivers and comments on how cold and cruel the queen's eyes look.

Starting with critics like Lytton Strachey after the First World War, there has been a tradition of blaming the Victorians for the woes of the 20th century. The horrors of two world wars, brutal pogroms and repeated mass slaughter have been blamed on the Enlightenment belief that scientific and technological progress will necessarily be accompanied by moral progress. In the Victorian world presented in From Hell, the gentlemen of the aristocracy believe that moral progress is symbolized by the very fact of their wealth and power. There is little in this world that can be called beautiful or good, but the film makes a strong argument for stripping evil of its social covering--a process of moral outing that the 20th century can, at least, make some claim to.

Karl Stevens, a student at Seabury Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.