What an absolute gift for every creative thing ever graced by the man. Udo Kier made everything around him more compelling because he was, and is, eternally compelling. With his passing, current and future films are going to have to work a lot harder to make up his loss. Whatever afterlife there might be, Udo Kier is undoubtedly one of the greatest things about it.

The best kind of fairy tales are the ones where the magic is tinged with melancholy, where bits of fantasy are frayed with the...