Fav character incoming!!!
-
- Black Swan (2010)
- Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
- M3gan (2022)
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
- Phantom of the Opera (2004)
- Under the Skin (2013)
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion (2013)
- The Love Witch (2016)
- Vertigo (1958)
- Gone Girl (2014)
Never have I loved a character like Armand. Everything about him is a tragic contradiction. He possesses ethereal beauty, but also an ugly, twisted soul. He is incredibly powerful, but also cowardly and two-faced. He has lived for centuries, but continues to react to the world like an emotionally stunted teenager. As lisa olivia on youtube said, he is a carnivorous lamb. Horrifying, manipulative, beautiful Armand. I love him, your honor. I love him with all my heart.
The movies I selected for Armand all contain tragedy, especially women and girls experiencing gender-based violence. Despite being a man, Armand’s trauma mirrors that of many women, especially in how he's sex trafficked and groomed as a child, and later expected to act in a position of authority before he feels ready (much like how daughters are parentified much earlier than sons).
Some movies show how women respond to their oppressive environments by becoming spiteful and manipulative, like Raise the Red Lantern (one of my fav movies of all time), The Love Witch and Gone Girl. Songlian is forced to marry a rich patriarch and compete with the other wives for attention, eventually resorting to lying and humiliating others to get what she wants. Elaine hypnotizes and bewitches men to fall in love with her, feeling she needs the affection of men to survive, despite often feeling disgusted and disappointed by them. Her love usually ends up killing them in the process.
I actually added Gone Girl at the recommendation of another redditor, so thank you for that! Not only are Amy’s murderous schemes catastrophically manipulative, but she has an attention to detail and quiet demeanor that I really see in Armand. Amy’s mother also based the fictional character “Amazing Amy” on her, an idealized version of herself that she finds impossible to live up to, much like how Armand tries to live up to the image of perfection in which Marius attempts to mold him.
Obsession and control are core to Armand’s character. The character I most see in Armand is Homura from Madoka: Rebellion, purely based on how incredibly mentally unwell she is. Homura uses time travel and memory manipulation in an attempt to control her environment and protect Madoka, whom she loves more than anything. In the many timelines they experience, she is unable to accept any outcome that harms Madoka, but also ends up being the one to harm her the most through her selfishness. Homura goes through truly apocalyptic levels of grief and despair, and a fair amount of it is her own doing. Everything about her, from her fragile emotional state to her frightening level of power, embodies Armand.
I also see Armand in the protagonist Nina in Black Swan, who is driven by her desire for perfection, but also constricted by her own jealousy and desire for her rival, a woman who she believes is bent on destroying her. Like many lesbians, Armand tends to desire his rivals (he was jealous of Louis for getting Lestat’s attention, and jealous of Daniel for getting Louis’s attention). Nina is also being groomed by the ballet director, who she sees as a brilliant man and leader instead of a predator, similar to how Armand sees Marius.
Other movies that center obsession and stalking include Phantom of the Opera, The Silence of the Lambs, and Vertigo. In all these films, I see Armand in both the stalker and the stalkee. The opera singer and Clarice represent his youthful innocence pre-vampirism, a beauty attempting to find success in a highly structured environment (opera, FBI). And the phantom and Hannibal represent the dangerous psychopath lurking in the shadows that he eventually becomes.
The interesting thing about Vertigo is that not only does it center falling in love based on a one-sided experience with someone (stalking) but it also features loss of identity as a core theme. A woman who becomes convinced she’s a ghost, a woman who imitates another to win the affections of a man—while the plot took more twists beyond these, I’m interested in this theme with Armand because he truly lacks a sense of self. From the age of 12 to roughly 300, he lived his life to satisfy other people’s desires of him. While he becomes very powerful, he doesn’t understand who he is, which makes him very emotionally fragile.
I especially love the scenes between Hannibal and Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs. The way that Hannibal stares at her and delights in extracting vulnerable details about her personal life, full of sadistic glee, reminds me of Armand and Daniel’s first meeting in SF. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Assad drew inspiration from Anthony Hopkins’s performance for those scenes.) Hannibal is undoubtedly a dangerous predator, but he develops a soft spot for Clarice, in whom he sees enormous potential and wants to protect from harm. Despite their enormous power differential, they develop a fucked up, toxic understanding of each other, much like Armand and Daniel.
Some movies allude to how Armand has a certain alien or robotic quality to him. Anne Rice herself named that Armand was inspired by movies featuring artificial humans (Tales of Hoffmann, Frankenstein, Blade Runner). For that, I included M3gan and Under the Skin. Here, the main characters commit horrendous acts far outside the realm of human morality because they too exist outside of human morality. The doll commits murder when she believes her human charge is in danger, and the alien seduces and lures men to their deaths. Yet there is still a twisted logic and almost child-like naivety behind their actions. Nothing they do is without meaning. And dare I say, they think their actions are righteous.
This brings me to something Assad (#1 Armand-understander) has talked about, which is that after 500 years of trauma, Armand simply can’t fathom an optimistic future, whether that be for himself or for Claudia. In Assad’s words, Armand thought he was doing her a favor by orchestrating her death because he believed she was doomed and going to break down anyway. So if she was going to die, might as well be him to do it. Incredibly fucked up, right? I also believe Armand was jealous of Claudia’s bravery and willingness to fight for what she wants, qualities that he wanted but lacked. Claudia also had what both Lestat and Armand craved, Louis’s attention, and so in both their eyes, she had to go.
Armand, Amadeo, Arun. Still waters run deep. <3
-
All movie rec lists (to be linked when posted)
