Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Twixt’: Exploring Late Style, Grief and Gothic Minimalism

The concept of late style is seldom discussed seriously in cinema. This idea, frequently dedicated to dissecting the work of ageing playwrights, musicians, and authors, has been touched upon in a few scattered articles, comments online, and an essay on Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ by Laura Mulvey. Theodor Adorno’s key text, “Late Style in Beethoven,” describes art created in an artist’s late period as “devoid of sweetness, bitter and spiny, they do not surrender themselves to mere delectation.”

These works defy the traditional aesthetics cultivated by the artist throughout their career. Edward Said expanded on Adorno’s concept, describing the late style as a moment when an artist, fully in command of their medium, abandons communication with the established social order.

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Few directors embody these definitions more than Francis Ford Coppola. In the final years of his life, Coppola spent his last three films— ’Youth Without Youth’ (2007), ‘Tetro’ (2009) and ‘Twixt’ (2011)—reconstructing his aesthetic style and thematic obsessions in a highly distinctive way.

These films followed a decade of silence after ‘The Rainmaker’ (1997), a John Grisham adaptation that received a lukewarm response. The most recent of these films, ‘Twixt’, is a poetic depiction of an artist overcoming grief and finding new inspiration for their art.

‘Twixt’ follows Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer), a horror novelist whose initial success has drastically waned, reducing him to public appearances in sleepy American towns. The local sheriff, Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern), refers to him as a “bargain basement Stephen King,” foregrounding the film’s meta-narrative. Baltimore’s lack of critical success mirrors Coppola’s fading relevance in critical reception and box office success.

Baltimore’s publisher, who dictates that his books should have “a lot of story, none of that style bullshit,” reflects Coppola’s tumultuous relationships with producers. The most poignant element of Coppola’s life reflected in Baltimore is the haunting spectre of grief; Baltimore’s daughter passed away in a tragic boating accident, mirroring the circumstances of Coppola’s son Gian-Carlo’s death.

Throughout the film, Baltimore struggles with what his next novel should be about. Desperate for inspiration, he takes an idea from the eccentric LaGrange: replacing his traditional stories about witches with a vampire tale, loosely based on a local murder.

LaGrange has a body in the morgue, which Baltimore is invited to see, but Coppola never reveals the victim’s identity or explains further. Baltimore’s new story unfolds in lucid dreams, where he wanders the town at night. These dream sequences are drained of colour, save for vivid red curtains or the orange glow of a lamp, creating a highly evocative atmosphere.

In these dreams, Baltimore encounters a mysterious young woman named V (Elle Fanning) and an ominous hotel, the site of a brutal murder by a priest. The film alludes to the fact that V escaped this massacre. V, whose full name is Virginia, symbolises Baltimore’s (and Coppola’s) own deceased child, Vicky, with Baltimore using their names interchangeably.

Baltimore’s fatigue with writing and stagnation of ideas is clear; he uses his dreams to explore the inner fragments of his mind, seeking meaning and inspiration.

To guide him through this creative journey, Baltimore creates a simulacrum of Edgar Allan Poe (Ben Chaplin). This character helps him navigate his new creative process. Through ‘Twixt’, Coppola delves into themes of grief, inspiration, and the struggles of an artist, using the film as a medium to reconstruct and explore his own aesthetic and thematic concerns in the twilight of his career.

-Sushmita Sarkar