Stories we want to find
May. 13th, 2010 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieBecause occasionally Netflix can read my mind, today it suggested the film version of Possession to me. I'd seen it before, about seven or eight years ago, but had absolutely no memory of what had been changed from the book, so I gave it a go.
They did an okay job condensing the Christabel LaMotte/R.H. Ash storyline. There were a few hiccups, like having Christabel say, "If there had to be a dragon, I'm glad it was you," with no context (unless you had read the book, in which case you would know that was a very significant, built-up-to line), but in general they made it work. (I think Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle had a lot to do with it.)
The present-day storyline, though...oh, dear. The movie ripped the soul out of it. So many things were wrong, but the most important, I think, was leaving out the part where Maud and Roland go to Boggle Hole because they like the name, and to get away from LaMotte/Ash, not realizing that the poets had been there for similar reasons. (I originally thought that was more sad than anything, but I think I've changed my mind a little. It is sad that these people can't get away from their obsession even when they try to, but at the same time it indicates an interesting, necessary, even beautiful sort of continuity that puts me somewhat in the mind of Stoppard's Arcadia.) What Byatt was doing in the novel, I think, is encapsulated in that incident. Instead of commentary on theory and text, we get Relationship Drama, and Gwyneth Paltrow sobbing in a bathroom, which I do not think is a good trade.
The other big problem was the horrible miscasting of Roland. Paltrow just barely manages to pull off a scholarly air, and I could, if I squinted hard enough, see her Maud in front of a classroom or working on an article. Aaron Eckhart, though...noooot so much. I bought him as the holder of a PhD in English exactly once, and that was when Maud is complaining about how Fergus had used Yeats's "For Anne Gregory" to give her a hard time about her blonde hair. She starts reciting the poem, and by the time she gets to "Love you for yourself alone / And not your yellow hair," he joins in, and that, I found convincing.*
On the other hand, I can, sort of, see a rationale for why the filmmakers produced this particular film. (Well, the Eckhart casting is unforgivable, but anyway.) As an examination of romance--aside from the more overwrought moments--it works somewhat well. I did like the way they used the medium of film to suggest the connections between the two couples, such as having one do a scene in a room or at a waterfall, then letting them go out of the frame and the other couple come in. It gets at that continuity I mentioned above, albeit for a different purpose and to a somewhat different effect. We all find the stories we want to read in books, at least in ones with enough subtlety to support multiple readings. I read this book and found a story about obsession with another carried out through academic inquiry. The filmmakers found a story about obsession with another carried out through physical action--kissing, sex, and crying in a bathroom.
* For obvious reasons, that's just about my least favorite Yeats poem.
They did an okay job condensing the Christabel LaMotte/R.H. Ash storyline. There were a few hiccups, like having Christabel say, "If there had to be a dragon, I'm glad it was you," with no context (unless you had read the book, in which case you would know that was a very significant, built-up-to line), but in general they made it work. (I think Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle had a lot to do with it.)
The present-day storyline, though...oh, dear. The movie ripped the soul out of it. So many things were wrong, but the most important, I think, was leaving out the part where Maud and Roland go to Boggle Hole because they like the name, and to get away from LaMotte/Ash, not realizing that the poets had been there for similar reasons. (I originally thought that was more sad than anything, but I think I've changed my mind a little. It is sad that these people can't get away from their obsession even when they try to, but at the same time it indicates an interesting, necessary, even beautiful sort of continuity that puts me somewhat in the mind of Stoppard's Arcadia.) What Byatt was doing in the novel, I think, is encapsulated in that incident. Instead of commentary on theory and text, we get Relationship Drama, and Gwyneth Paltrow sobbing in a bathroom, which I do not think is a good trade.
The other big problem was the horrible miscasting of Roland. Paltrow just barely manages to pull off a scholarly air, and I could, if I squinted hard enough, see her Maud in front of a classroom or working on an article. Aaron Eckhart, though...noooot so much. I bought him as the holder of a PhD in English exactly once, and that was when Maud is complaining about how Fergus had used Yeats's "For Anne Gregory" to give her a hard time about her blonde hair. She starts reciting the poem, and by the time she gets to "Love you for yourself alone / And not your yellow hair," he joins in, and that, I found convincing.*
On the other hand, I can, sort of, see a rationale for why the filmmakers produced this particular film. (Well, the Eckhart casting is unforgivable, but anyway.) As an examination of romance--aside from the more overwrought moments--it works somewhat well. I did like the way they used the medium of film to suggest the connections between the two couples, such as having one do a scene in a room or at a waterfall, then letting them go out of the frame and the other couple come in. It gets at that continuity I mentioned above, albeit for a different purpose and to a somewhat different effect. We all find the stories we want to read in books, at least in ones with enough subtlety to support multiple readings. I read this book and found a story about obsession with another carried out through academic inquiry. The filmmakers found a story about obsession with another carried out through physical action--kissing, sex, and crying in a bathroom.
* For obvious reasons, that's just about my least favorite Yeats poem.