(Warning: Wiki link contains a plot summary with possible spoilers)
I recently read this novel that has been made into a movie to be released in the fall.
This is from the author who wrote "The Remains of the Day" (Kazuo Ishiguro).
It was a beautiful story that I enjoyed very much.
Anyone else awaiting this film with a mixture of eagerness and dread (like I am)?
Based on the preview, it seems like they have inserted some elements that were not in the book and (depending on how they use these elements) could destroy the story (in my opinion).
Posts: 194 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I read the book some time ago, so I don't remember the details that clearly, but I thought the trailer looked really lovely, but also incredibly depressing. Which was kind of what I felt about the book.
Not sure that I could cope with the angst again.
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I really like some of the actors in the trailer and in general it looks like they are capturing the world as portrayed in the book.
The part in the trailer that bothers me is the bit where it shows the students swiping some sort of wrist band when leaving the building. This struck me as really wrong. Of course, I've only watched the trailer, so the film may completely surprise me with where they go with it.
Do you see what I mean?
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The trailer looks to be exactly the book. The whole book. It was a summary of the entire plot in 60 seconds.
Don't watch the trailer until you've read the book.
I read the book in a single day, staying up late to finish. It's fantastic, and it's good even if you know the premise, but I think it's better without it. Great book.
I have an accepting attitude towards movies made from books. The release of the movie doesn't mean that all the books are burned, so it's just another interpretation. It doesn't have to be perfect. Kiera Knightly really bugs me, but it looks like she's playing the character that is SUPPOSED to be irritating, so that works out. I think it could be good.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I started to read Remains of the Day years ago. I don't even remember what it was about--just that it involved a butler. What I do remember was that it seemed incredibly bleak and inevitably tragic to me and I just didn't want to go there, so I never finished it.
It's thown me off Ishiguro since. I didn't click on any links or read the spoiler in this thread, but from what Bella Bee said it sounds like this would be a similar experience. I just don't have the stomach for depressing these days.
Now for a book that covers some truly deep and heavy stuff but somehow manages not to be depressing, I just loved Little Bee by Chris Cleave. I still don't know how he pulled it off; mainly by making it about love and hope and the will of the human spirit, I guess.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: The release of the movie doesn't mean that all the books are burned, so it's just another interpretation. It doesn't have to be perfect.
I completely agree with you on this.
(I dig opera, so I'm used to seeing (or hearing) a particular conductor's interpretation of Verdi's interpretation of Shakespeare's Othello. There is plenty of room for multiple interpretations without any particular one nullifying the others.)
SPOILER WARNING***
I've actually been thinking about the wristband thing that is in the preview:
I think that one of the best things about the book was how well it conveyed a sense that the donations were a completely normal part of life. In other words, it didn't even occur to them to try to escape. Furthermore, when they fantasize about what could happen for a special case, it isn't complete freedom they hope for, but just a few years of deferment. This plays well with what I think is the central message of the book: making the most of your time on earth and the tragedy of allowing pride and jealousy to "steal" your time.
Anyway, when I saw the wristbands in the preview, it implied that the students needed "watching" in case they tried to escape. In the book, there is nowhere to escape to. (Of course, this is was a rush to judgment on my part, and they could be going in a completely different direction with this.)
Re: Knightley
Also completely agree here...she could very well make a wonderfully annoying Ruth. Posts: 194 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Are you as curious as I am about what the song will sound like? I went online in the middle of reading the book to look up Judy Bridgewater and well, you know the rest. Posts: 194 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I'm dying as to what it might sound like. It's a big job, writing something that been described as so touching, but I think it isn't as big a job as, say, writing the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. It will be a bigger job to stage the scene without it seeming twee or sappy, but it's been done.
I agree that Remains of the Day is incredibly, bleakly tragic. It is also one of the influential books of my life. I read that as a freshman or sophomore in college, and it made me absolutely resolve to determine if the things I was dedicating my life to were actually worth it. Before I spent my life on them. I really love that book. It is, however, possibly the saddest thing I've ever read.
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Hmm...well, it focuses on different things. The film seemed to focus on the romance more, and how it just...didn't happen, and that was really sad. That aborted romance was in the book as well, but it wasn't the focus of the book and it wasn't the main source of sadness.
OH SO MANY SPOILERS.....
The book focuses more on the butler's adulation of Lord Darlington, and the exposure of him as...a fool, really, or at least not what the butler thought of him, is the big tragedy in the book. I got the feeling that the butler sacrificed his love life because he thought it was worth it, and that sacrifice became bitter when it turned out it wasn't. If his original cause had been what he thought it was, I think he still would have been sad about the lost love life, but he would have considered the cause worth the price.
But that's REALLY HARD to get across in film, and it's considerably less fun than a romance, so I understand why the film went in a different direction.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: It will be a bigger job to stage the scene without it seeming twee or sappy, but it's been done.
SPOILER WARNING...
Totally agree.
That scene in the book was one of my favorites, because it described something I think everybody has done at one point or another (personalizing the meaning of a song despite intellectually understanding that the lyrics really mean something else entirely).
Major spoilers***
It doesn't explicitly say so in the book, but I can't help but think that it was Ruth who took the tape originally...the first of many things she would "steal".
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I've read "Remains of the Day" but never went looking for more works by Ishiguro. Not because I didn't like it, though. It took a long time to really get into the book, because it's never really exciting, but I found it compelling (though depressing, and then MORE depressing).
Is "Never Let Me Go" good? It was up for the Booker Prize, so it must be pretty decent.
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Yes, it really is. The entire tone is one you don't encounter in fiction much - acceptance, covering something horrible. The book itself is well-written, well-constructed, and has solid, real characters and an organic unfolding of the mysteries. It's also only 250 pages, so you can read it in a day.
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One of the many issues the book addresses is the phenomenon of social groups encountering major changes in life's "phases".
It is not exactly the same as peer pressure, but there is a certain momentum when your social group faces life changing events that sort of pull you along with them.
You see it in normal life when it seems that all of your friends start having children at more or less the same time. Or, everyone buys a house around the same time. Etc.
In the book, the characters have some much more significant life changes to deal with, but mostly they meet these challenges together, which I'm sure is a comfort.
When you go against the grain and do things at your own pace, there is a sense of isolation that the book does an excellent job of capturing.
If I had read this when I was much younger, it would have been a very different experience. Posts: 194 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Adapted by "The Beach" writer Alex Garland, it is a drama about boarding school friends coming to grips with their sheltered past as adults in the real world.
This quote from the article really made me laugh. Wow, talk about a strange description.
Fight Club: "A slap stick comedy about soap makers."
Gone with the Wind: "A story about a girl and her horse"
Posts: 194 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: An Affair to Remember: Two prostitutes try to quit the business.
This one was priceless.
Lawrence of Arabia: Quintessential "whodunit" that will leave you guessing...who killed Lawrence..and why?
Posts: 194 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Acting: Fine performances all around. Loved Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield. I thought Knightley did well enough given what she had to work with (The screenplay really made her character one-dimensional).
Screenplay/adaptation: Some strange choices in adaptation that changed the characters quite a bit from the book. Most surprising is the change in the pivotal scene where Kathy listens to the tape. I had wondered how they would depict that and the choice was made to basically change it in a way that avoids the difficulties completely. Unfortunately, while the change certainly makes it clear what each person involved is thinking, for me, it lost all of the poignancy of the book.
The movie was only 1 hour and 40 minutes long and to me, it felt very short and a little rushed at times. For example, it felt like we weren't in Hailsham for long enough to feel any regret or nostalgia once they leave for the cottages, etc.
To sum up: like many book to movie adapations, this is yet another one that is pretty good, but the book was so much better. That being said, it was worth seeing. Posts: 194 | Registered: Mar 2003
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