FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Underrated The Line, The Cross and The Curve
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush whilst filming The Line, the Cross and the Curve in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
A New Look Inside the Intriguing Short Film
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THIS is in my mind…
as the premiere for The Line, the Cross and the Curve premiered on 13th November, 1993. Just over thirty years ago, this new project came to life. Late-1993 was an interesting time for Kate Bush. Her final studio album until 2005, The Red Shoes, was released. During a relatively quiet year in terms of singles and activity (compared to previous years), she put out two big releases in November 1993. It is something you would get more now. A visual album. Bush releasing a studio album and short film more or less at the same time. It was a one-off that I think is a lot stronger than people make out. I have looked at this short film before, though I am compelled to revisit it. Thirty years on, it is not discussed that much. It intrigues me greatly, as it was Kate Bush acting and directing. She had directed some of her music videos and took on some quite ambitious shoots (Cloudbusting from 1985’s Hounds of Love springs to mind). This was a new level! Starring alongside Miranda Richardson, there was moderate appreciation from some for this underrated gem. I am going to continue on. First, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia provide details about the excellent The Line, the Cross and the Curve:
“The Line, the Cross and the Curve is a musical short film directed by and starring Kate Bush. Released in 1993, it co-starred Miranda Richardson and noted choreographer Lindsay Kemp, who had served as dance mentor to Bush early in her career. The film is essentially an extended music video featuring songs from Bush’s 1993 album, The Red Shoes, which in turn was inspired by the classic movie musical-fantasy The Red Shoes.
In this version of the tale, Bush plays a frustrated singer-dancer who is enticed by a mysterious woman (Richardson) into putting on a pair of magical ballet slippers. Once on her feet, the shoes start dancing on their own, and Bush’s character (who is never referred to by name) must battle Richardson’s character to free herself from the spell of the shoes. Her guide on this strange journey is played by Kemp.
The film premiered at the London Film Festival on 13 November 1993. Kate got up on stage before the screening to thank “everyone who’d been a part of making the film” and to speak of her trepidation because her opus was following a brilliant Wallace & Gromit animation by Aardman called ‘The wrong trousers’. Subsequently, the film was released direct-to-video in most areas and was only a modest success. Soon after its release, Bush effectively dropped out of the public eye until her eighth studio album Aerial was released in November 2005.
Two years after UK release, due to the late promotion in the US, the film was nominated for the Long Form Music Video at the 1996 Grammy Awards. The film continues to be played in arthouse cinemas around the world, such as a screening at Hollywood Theatre in 2014 where the film was screened along with modern dance interpretations to Bush’s music”.
When I wrote about The Line, the Cross and the Curve about a year ago, I did suggest pluses and minuses. Officially released on 6th May, 1994 (its premiere was in 1993), there is a lot of symbolism and interesting visual references throughout the film. In spite of the fact Bush’s acting was not as strong as some cast members like Miranda Richardson, it was a glimpse into what could have been. Someone who, with a director behind her, could have had a film career. I think she has inspired modern artists who step into film. Lady Gaga for one. She is one of the great ‘what-ifs’ when it comes to stepping into film. I think that about Tori Amos and Gwen Stefani – two great artists who really could have been fascinating on the big screen. This fascinating article breaks downs the songs that appear through The Line, the Cross and the Curve:
“Introduction:
Red shoes function as a folklore motif rather than as a full-fledged "myth." But their manifestation in the Kate Bush film signals a need to read the entire film itself archetypally, or mythologically. The nice feature of this film is that it's a rare instance of mythology for women: female identity is at issue, and it doesn't hinge on finding a man. Instead, what is this about? What is the problem represented by the shoes, and what advice or wisdom emerges for when one experiences this crisis?
Background:
Hans Christian Andersen, "The Red Shoes."
In this fairy tale, a girl named Karen (the Danish form of Katherine) desires and therefore must be brutally cursed and mutilated (depeditated?).
The Red Shoes (1948).
In this film, a ballerina is torn between her career and a man and therefore must be killed by a train.
Kate Bush, The Red Shoes (1994).
This album (the last before a long hiatus that ended only at the end of 2005 with the release of Aerial) includes all the songs of the film and others.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, The Red Shoes.
A self-help videocassette whose catalog description reads: "With a gift for penetrating the shadows that darken our lives, Dr. Estés helps us grasp how the starvation for inner life corresponds with disastrous outer choices, and the way to recover and restore your critical inner balance. Using a fairy tale deeply rooted in our psyches -- "The Red Shoes" -- Dr. Estés illuminates how people are driven to excessive behaviors. In our culture, she begins, we may travel life's path in one of two ways: in hand-made shoes -- crafted with love and care according to the unique needs of the individual soul; or in red shoes -- initially promising instant fulfillment, but ultimately leading to a hollow, painful, split existence. Drawing from real-world examples, Dr. Estés analyzes the deep-seated hunger that leads to addictions and explains how to tap instinctual forces that offer strength and life direction. Cassette / 90 minutes.... $10.95." This is certainly more recent than the Kate Bush film and probably derived slimily from it in fact.
Summary:
"Rubberband Girl" --
"If I could learn to give like a rubberband, I'd be back on my feet."
[A Buddhist notion, until the straitjacketing. Who is controlling the dance such that one must bend "like a rubberband"? After the song, electrical power problems suspend practice. Kate seems unhappy or dissatisfied. She retreats to a room.]
"And So Is Love" --
"We used to say, 'ah hell, we're young.' But now we see that life is sad."
[In the mythology of some cultures, the black bird represents the soul. The bird here flies around the room frantically searching for a way out when it slams into one of the windows and dies. According to some dream interpretation, the blackbird represents misfortune or the failure of one to utilize his or her full potential. The bird is laid on pages of music (associated with the cross later). As one mythology student (Tahoma) read this scene, "This action may signify a connection between the dead bird and the character's heart -- because later the cross appears on the sheet music to represent her heart returning. The bird may be a manifestation of her heart and her own feelings of being confined in her ability. Other than that the bird could have just been the key to open up the portal between the worlds, foreshadowing bad fortune to come."
Abruptly, in runs a woman with bandaged hands and noticeably connected eyebrows: "I'm not meant to be here. I don't understand how this has happened.... You must help me.... I was trying to find my way out." Claiming a fire, she says, "I can't use my hands; I can't use my hands. I have to get back ... home. There's only one way left for me to return, and it lies in your hands now." Kate agrees to help: "We'll get you home." At the instruction of the woman, Kate finds three pieces of paper on the piano and obediently draws a line, a cross, and a curve. The scraps fly to the hand of the intruder. In thanks, she offers Kate "my pretty red shoes. Take them. They're yours, as a gift."]
"The Red Shoes" --
"I'd love [not "want"] to dance like you; put them on and your dream will come true."
"You can dance the dream with your body on."
"It's gonna be the way you always thought it would be, but it's gonna be no illusion. It's gonna be the way you always dreamt about it, but it's gonna be really happening to you."
"The moment I put them on, I knew I had done something wrong."
"It's the red shoes -- they can't stop dancing."
"The shoes do a kind of voodoo; they're gonna make her dance 'til her legs fall off."
[The two women become doppelgangers, with the fiend woman singing in Kate's voice and the two being blurred choreographically. The woman's bandages unwrap themselves as the ribbons on the shoes tie themselves to Kate. The song identifies the curve as Kate's smile, the cross as her heart, and the line as her path, which she has apparently lost now. Kate is compelled through the looking-glass by an odd male character. We end up in a cheesy-looking underworld hell with flames, skulls, and red devils. A fiendish-looking male character seems to function like a director, stamping a stick on the ground and shouting intensely. After the song, while the evil woman escapes by running through a tunnel, Kate's legs are kicking wildly and she is desperate to stop them, calling to the male character whose back is turned, "Get a knife. Get a knife and cut them off." He insists repeatedly, "It's really happening to you." He calms the feet temporarily and tells her, "She tricked you, you know. You must sing back the symbols." They go see Lily, a grandmotherly woman dressed in blue and sitting in a rocker. She explains: "You are under the spell of the red shoes, but to break the spell you are not helpless." Kate confesses that she is "scared," and Lily comforts her: "There is no need for you to be scared." Lily tells her she must "sing back the symbols." (The man said that, but it means something coming from Grandma.) "Your four angels will guard you and protect you." Lily offers a prayer to the earth, calling for the spiritual sun to be revealed.]
"Lily" --
"I said 'Lily, oh Lily, I don't feel safe. I feel like life has blown a great big hole through me.'"
[Lily choreographs from her chair on the back of which hangs her cane, indicating that guardian angels protect one "walking in a vale of darkness" -- for Kate: Gabriel ahead (with flower), Raphael behind (with staff), Michael to the right (with sword), and Uriel on the left (with globe). Lily draws with her cane a protective circle of fire, but ultimately must go. At the end, a line appears in the snow, suggesting that Kate may be singing back the symbol for her path. But she is still stressed: "I can't go on. I'm torn between what I was and what is to become of me. In these shoes every step I take is laced with madness. They fill me with pain and confusion and with thoughts that are not my own. I have danced their dances. I see streets and buildings I know so well, although I have never been to these places.... I see me falling. I feel my fear. And yet, I was never here. I am torn between what I was and what is to become of me. These shoes are all anger and passion. I am possessed. And I no longer have the strength to fight them." A voice tells her: "Call upon those you love."]
"Moments of Pleasure" --
"Just being alive -- it can really hurt. These moments given are a gift from time. Just let us try to give these moments back to those we love, to those who will survive...."
[Kate spins in the air through the entire song, the high point and most spiritually reassuring song of the video and album. After brushes with friends and family in a snowstorm, she hits a wall of snow and ice, but appears to have sung back her heart since a cross appears burnt in a sheet of music. The witchy woman appears and we get more doppelganger material. Kate asks, "What have you done to me?" "Only what was done to me.... We have a lot in common, you and I." Kate insists, "You're scared because you know you're losing your power over me." But the woman taunts Kate: "You are so weak, so stupid." She says that Kate has no path, no heart, "and I don't see you smiling." Kate insists, regarding the symbols, "They belong to me; they know they're mine." Kate chases the woman to retrieve them.]
"Eat the Music" --
"Split me open, with devotion, / Reach your hands in, and rip my heart out." "All is revealed."
[At the end of a colorful Dionysia, a fruitopia, Kate is exhausted. But silently, she realizes that she's in her own shoes again. The red shoes are back on the feet of the other woman, and the scraps of paper fly back to Kate. The man tells her to run back through the mirror -- the last barrier -- but the woman jumps in the way and hisses. An explosion is coming, and when the woman stumbles backwards and breaks the mirror, the realm through the looking-glass collapses. Kate is outside, where the power has returned. Inside, the red-shoed feet whip manically from beneath a pile of rubble. The man looks at them and says, "Hello."]
Someone else's shoes indicate someone else's dance, and if you find yourself doing someone else's dance and that you've lost your smile and path and heart, then you are leading an inauthentic life. There's no "sin" here for which Kate is being punished, nor for you when you find you've adopted someone else's notion of how to think, how to worship, what's a practical major in school, what's the right kind of job.
Help comes from mentors, who may even be gone now. But whatever remains of them, perhaps only the spiritual presence or the vestiges inside you, they are there for a reason when you need them. Call on memories of "moments of pleasure" -- these are meditations but with healing personal content. Lose yourself, or shed your old self in a dionysian ecstasy which in one sense is being torn apart by Maenads but in another is a dismantling in order for rejuvenation or rebirth.
It's all going to be okay”.
Thirty years ago, The Line, the Cross and the Curve was premiered at the London Film Festival. It would get wider release in the U.K. in May 1994. I think that it is a shame there are not more photos from the premiere and much beyond that. There are some great behind the scenes and on-set photos that Guido Harari took (I have used some in this feature). Some of the very best of Kate Bush. I hope that one day, The Line, the Cross and the Curve gets a 4K HD remaster. It does deserve to be seen by a new generation of fans. Whilst not something everyone loves, there are some clear highlights and magic moments! Taking on so much at this time, Bush was feeling a bit of strain writing, directing and acting (crew and people on the film reported she would get headaches and was flagging at times). As the film that inspired Bush’s short film (and her studio album of the same name), The Red Shoes, is seventy-five this year. I want to revisit a feature from Collider from last year. In light of Netflix’s Stranger Things taking Bush to the top of the U.K. singles chart with Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and, in the process, making the song cinematic, they looked back at Bush’s sole cinematic outing. There are reason to revisit it:
“Bush had long expressed a desire to collaborate with famed British director Michael Powell, director of 1948's The Red Shoes, itself an interpretation of the classic tale told through the lens of a modern ballet company. However, the two were unable to work together before his death in February 1990, though the inspiration she drew from the film is clear. In essence, the film is en extended music video; it would end up receiving a 1996 Grammy nomination for Best Long Form Video. A recording artist first, Bush's primary storytelling convention is the music itself, and her material is successful in helping express the short's larger narrative arc, taking us through sonic and visual peaks and valleys.
Lead single "Rubberband Girl" kicks off the film—its percussive, steady beat catches the viewer's attention immediately, accompanied by Bush being virtually puppeted by a fellow dancer through a series of simple but effective movements.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush whilst filming The Line, the Cross and the Curve in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
The whole setup is decidedly unglamorous, a stark contrast to what awaits us shortly. Following the power outage, Bush lights a single candle, drawing us into the atmospheric and moody timbre of "And So Is Love," which also features first-rate guitar work by Eric Clapton. Sensual and dark, it's in direct opposition to the chaotic energy of Richardson's character, a vision in red and black who we meet at the song's end. As she woos and convinces Bush to help her, we hear the album's title track, "The Red Shoes," all Irish jig and pan flute, filled with frenetic and enticing rhythm. Soon, Bush is cursed with the shoes, becoming her own red and black vision, venturing into the mirror dimension and pleading for help. "Lily," named after the wise elderly woman who helps guide Bush on her journey, is a prayer of strength, promising to help Bush "protect herself with fire." Soon, we hear the instrumental strings of the title track once more, and all hope seems lost until Kemp's specter implores Bush to "call on the strength of the ones you love." This leads to the most beautiful song in the film, "Moments of Pleasure," whose lyrics about, "Just being alive/It can really hurt/And these moments given/Are a gift from time" hold perhaps even more significance in light of a world still in the clutches of a pandemic. The final track, "Eat the Music," is a joyous ode to self-expression, self-love, and falling under the spell of the drum, accompanied by Bush swaying along to the sound of an ebullient chorus and visuals of abundant fruit—a signal that the spirit has once again bloomed in her, breaking the curse and allowing her to return to this mortal coil.
Though Bush was reportedly displeased with the final product, it's an artist secure enough in her own power and vision that can create an ambitious piece of film alongside an equally ambitious album. Not one afraid of revisiting her old work, Bush would rerecord a majority of the album's tracks for her Director's Cut project in 2011, and "Lily" would serve as the opening number of her 2014 residency Before the Dawn. As more and more people begin to discover the Kate Bush library, this is the ideal time to take in this fascinating, unique piece of cinema featuring of one of music's most unique artists”.
It is a short film that I really and think should be repackaged and released again. Get a proper televisual outing. I think it has been on the BBC fairly recently, though the YouTube videos of The Line, the Cross and the Curve are not great quality. If Kate Bush herself has dismissed the short as bollocks and something she would rather forget, there are plenty of that would love to see this brilliant and underrated exploration! Whether you see it as one of the first visual albums/comparison to an album or something that was a two-part project inspired by The Red Shoes film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve is compelling and, at times, stunningly beautiful and imaginative! If you have time to see it, set aside some time and enter…
THIS majestic world.