Review of The Raven (2012) by Viewer — 26 May 2012

I would advise anyone apt to compare "The Raven" with Poe's illustrious literary canon to do so with minimal solemnity. To understand the relationship between the film and the man, one must take into account the film's artistic objectives.

This film makes no attempt at paying veneration. This film is an unapologetically camp, gothic spectacle that aims to suture the gaps between craft and crux, art and artlessness, beauty and gruesomeness, thriller cinema and macabre literature.

It is also, however, a piece of art that must be separated (to a degree) from its literary source in order that it may stand for something beyond it. To compare "The Raven" and the works of Poe is to compare a raven to a writing desk.

John Cusack's captivating and charming portrayal of Poe (a character that is more a manifestation of a dying art than an homage to the renowned writer) is what holds such a thematically bloated film together.

Despite its many and varied artistic aspirations, "The Raven" offers a fairly coherent representation of the autumn humour. "The Raven" is, most assuredly, an artistic achievement; there are few greater challenges to the creative mind than to address the anxieties of that very intellect in any concrete way---to construct an artistic edifice to the melancholic mind.

"The Raven" looks across art and across time and assembles, from the vestiges of some lost doctrines of the "impos[ed] pattern," a new philosophy that unites two things many artists understand to be at odds: life and art.