Page and Screen - Woody Allen is right to have fun with classic literary figures in Midnight in Paris

Liam Trim with the latest edition of "Page and Screen"...

For the arty cinemagoer, after something more substantial than the resurrection of Rowan Atkinson’s clownish spy Jonny English, there was a choice to make this week. Accomplished actor Paddy Considine’s directorial debut Tyrannosaur faced screen legend Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, in a battle for Britain’s “alternative” vote at posh theatres and screening rooms.

Considine’s story, which stars Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman and revolves around domestic abuse, has been praised to the rooftops by a range of critics. Allen’s film too has garnered praise so that whispers about a comeback have grown into audible chatter. But even though Midnight in Paris has been hailed his best film in years, Allen’s recent track record has been so woeful that all this effectively means is that it’s passably entertaining and perceptive. It’s not great art or great cinema.

It is, however, based on fantastical encounters with some of the greatest creative types in history. Owen Wilson’s disillusioned scriptwriter Gil magically and mysteriously meets the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, TS Elliot and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He doesn’t just meet them either. He interacts with them, whining about his artistic insecurities and the unsatisfactory nature of existence.

We’re often told not to meet our heroes. Our expectations are too high, too inflated by impossibly perfect ideals, for the reality of a flesh and blood human being to match. However Gil, as usual the character Woody would’ve once played himself, is somehow not disappointed by the literary greats he encounters on his midnight Parisian strolls. And he has good reason to feel letdown.

The instantly recognisable authors and artists are charming enough but they are comprised almost entirely of clichés. Scott Fitzgerald says “old sport” a lot, as his most famous creation Jay Gatsby is prone to do. Hemingway’s conversational style is blunt and stripped of convention, much like his economical and observational prose. Dali is reduced to a series of surreal catchphrases about a rhino.

In short these are cardboard cut-out versions of such famous faces. We are left with neither a believable representation of their brilliance or a more human, accessible character that we can “know”. Tom Hiddleston and others are simply fooling around in their roles.

But Midnight in Paris is a fantasy and there’s nothing wrong with the actors evidently enjoying themselves. In fact the tone of the entire film is extremely refreshing. It never takes itself too seriously and doesn’t become dependent on pretentious in-jokes. And it never stops asking intriguing questions about the past, art and the way we live either.

This column is often too focused on the great weight placed on the shoulders of anyone trying to adapt something from the page to the screen, rather than how much fun the intermingling between literature and cinema can be. There’s no doubt that the whole business of adaptation can become too serious a slog. By creating something original but also dabbling lightly in the best literature has to offer for influences, Allen has written and directed a film that is at once thoughtful, bookish and full of fun.

P.S Just because Allen had the easier sell, don’t neglect Tyrannosaur, which looks like a superb, if brutal, example of pioneering British filmmaking.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - The Static and the Cinematic in Beginners

Liam Trim with the latest edition of 'Page and Screen'...

In previous Page and Screens I’ve referred to the book How Fiction Works by James Wood. Last night, after returning home from seeing Beginners, I immediately plucked it off the shelf. Despite all the quirkiness of Mike Mills’s indie rom com, trying so hard to make it stand apart as a unique creation, it was a rather familiar filmmaking convention of montage and voiceover that lodged itself firmly in my mind, because it reminded me of a passage in Wood’s bible for book lovers.

The story, though distinctive, was overshadowed in my mind’s eye by thoughts of the way this film was structured, the way it unravelled. It frequently featured rapid slideshows of sometimes random, sometimes nostalgic images, accompanied by Ewan McGregor’s sometimes melancholic, sometimes profound voiceover. These sections usually provide background information on characters which could be expositional but rarely feels as though it is. They also weave a symmetry and structure through a narrative that jumps around in time.

Beginners begins with McGregor’s character Oliver clearing out his father’s things. We then follow Oliver as he reflects on the last years of his father’s life, his childhood and other regrets. After his mother died of cancer his father, played with relish by Christopher Plummer, reveals that he is and always has been, gay. For the first time in his life he can finally freely embrace his true identity in retirement. Oliver watches on with a mixture of confusion and happiness, feeling his own sense of self compromised by years of deceit and his own deeply rooted trust issues.

Then of course a woman arrives on the scene. They tend to be pretty and this one, a French actress, is no exception. Just as his father had to wait for his moment to truly begin living, Oliver now let’s himself feel that he might not be alone, that someone is there who just gets him. The pair meet at a party, Oliver dressed as Freud jokily analysing people to cover his sadness and she totally mute due to laryngitis. She sees right through his act and a believable, amusing relationship organically forms before our eyes.

So this is a film with colourful characters and plenty of quirky humour that might be too much for some. But what makes these characters come to life? This movie could easily become overshadowed by the issue of repressed homosexuality and older people in love but it does not. Instead all its characters are intriguing, with Oliver himself a particularly strong window onto events.

We come back to James Wood and his chapter on character. He says that there is “nothing harder than the creation of fictional character”, citing the telltale sign of debut novelists describing photographs of the protagonist’s family members; “the unpractised novelist cleaves to the static”. Good and great novelists know how to “get a character in”, to get them moving in a story, keeping obvious and ugly information dumps to a minimum.

In Beginners however montages of still images successfully get characters “in”. This got me thinking about the use of the static by filmmakers. In the cinema we are used to immediately seeing characters on the move but that does not necessarily establish them. In books we often see them just thinking and not moving. Perhaps by going against expectations in either medium we gain a refreshing perspective on character?

Certainly Beginners takes a minimalist approach, stripping away much of what we’re used to from a film at times. Much is made of Oliver’s relationship with his father’s dog, which is given some hilarious subtitles. Oliver’s meeting with his French actress is mostly gutted of dialogue. He also never truly reacts passionately to his father’s homosexuality, never choosing to fully support or fully disagree with it at any point, never really showing outrage or annoyance. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian hits the nail on the head when he singles out Oliver’s passivity as a factor holding the film back, not allowing audiences to truly love the film.

However Bradshaw also points out Beginners’ most interesting element, describing it as “literary” and likening Oliver to a “novelistic narrator”. This film really does blur the boundaries between the page and the screen. It might be a sign of unimaginative weakness to rely on weighty sketches of the static on the page but in the cinematic universe Beginners proves that still pictures really can speak a thousand words. Coupled with well written voiceover (hard enough in itself) and placed at the right points, a series of pictures can flick the narrative pace up a notch or scale it down for a profound pause.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Liam Trim with the latest edition of 'Page and Screen'...

This feature often asks whether some novels really are completely impossible to adapt for the screen. Usually diehard fans of much loved books being made into films are concerned primarily with one thing; the characters. They worry that the actors won’t fit their mental images of them or that the script will fail to accurately vocalise their defining thoughts and feelings. But occasionally a story will depend on the spark of its narrator rather than character, plot or setting.

Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being is just such a book. In the last Page and Screen I discussed the recent adaptation of One Day and during the opening chapter of that novel English student Emma has a copy of Kundera’s book in her room. The male half of One Day’s story, Dexter, immediately forms judgements about Emma at their first meeting, based partly on her owning the Czech novel.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being can certainly be seen as pretentious. It’s a book about love, politics and ideology, set during the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. Its themes are high minded and perhaps far too ambitious for some. It tackles unanswerable questions about what it means to “be”, what it means to love and which ways to find satisfying purpose in life.

Aside from the book’s content its form is also thoroughly postmodern. It begins with musings from the narrator on the implications of the concept of eternal return, espoused by Nietzsche. At times it discusses and admits that the events being described are a fiction played out by imaginary characters. Two central love stories make up the narrative of the book and often, once we view key scenes from their lives, the narrator will wryly deconstruct and analyse them.

It’s the wit and self depreciating tone of the narrator that saves the book from becoming an overly serious tale, and makes up much of its appeal. The actual events of the narratives are often told in a simple style and the reader skips rapidly through time on the backs of basic sentences:

“They had spent scarcely an hour together. She had accompanied him to the station and waited with him until he boarded the train. Ten days later she paid him a visit. They made love the day she arrived. That night she came down with a fever and stayed a whole week in his flat with the flu.”

In contrast the narrator’s sections are laden with references to philosophical works, religious texts, classical myths and even the music of Beethoven. These passages ought to be random and rambling but in fact range from the profound and insightful to the honest and humble. The problem for any film adaptation is that the voice of the narrator, which perhaps can be viewed as the authorial voice of Kundera himself, hints at a far more interesting character than those in the stories he describes and dissects.

Recently on BBC iPlayer was a 1988 transformation of the book, starring critically acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis, who seems incapable of turning in a bad performance. He plays Czech surgeon Tomas, easily the book’s key figure besides the narrator. He is a womaniser, who feels compelled to sleep with numerous women. But he experiences a crisis of identity and ethics when he falls in love which prompts him to draw a distinction between his desire to make love to women and his need to sleep with, literally fall asleep next to, the one woman he truly loves.

This personal dilemma is the best image of the conflict that shapes the whole book, that between lightness and weight. Is it better to be free as a bird in life or to be tethered to something with meaning? My words cannot do Kundera’s justice and crucially neither can those of the film’s script. The author’s ideas, forged from intense experience of 20th century occupation and thought, make the stories of the lovers in the book standout as something special. Even if Daniel Day-Lewis can convey something of the character of Tomas through a brilliant gesture or look, he cannot replace the heart of the story, which comes from the narrator.

The characters in the book are vehicles for Kundera’s thoughts and feelings, and in the film it’s as though they have been stripped of their engines. The occasional ironic bit of writing on screen to introduce a scene cannot make up for what is missing and is a lame attempt to find the balance of the novel. The film is too reliant on the image of sex and is far too long, coming in at just under three hours.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in my view, can truly be classified as impossible to adapt. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s recent success has proved that intricate, sprawling novels can be successfully transformed if the filmmakers focus on mood and try to make something independent of the book. However in the case of The Unbearable Lightness of Being they made something that bore little relation to the feel of its source material, which perfectly illustrates how some works of art are inextricably linked to the voice of the artist.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - One Day (Part Three - In Praise of Jim Sturgess)

Liam Trim discusses the cinematic adaptation of David Nicholls' One Day in the third of a three-part feature (read parts one and two)...



Anne Hathaway’s performance in One Day may be flawed and ultimately a letdown, for cinemagoers and fans of the book alike, but she has one huge advantage over co-star Jim Sturgess; people know who she is. The film needed an enticing lead for audiences in countries where the book is less popular and Hathaway is undoubtedly the star on the billboards. Having seen the film though, it’s Sturgess who is the star lighting up the story. Even if you’ve read One Day or you’re intending to see it, you may well be wondering “Jim who?” and typing his name into Google.



However chances are that anonymity will soon be a thing of the past for Sturgess. One Day’s sprawling fan base will only grow with the release of this month’s adaptation. Legions of existing fans will either love or loathe his portrayal of arrogant but good natured charmer Dexter Mayhew. It’s the sort of role that can transform an actor’s lifestyle as well as their career, catapulting them from regular work in relativity obscurity, to a recognisable and desirable face of the mainstream.



Already Sturgess has appeared in a number of national newspapers, giving interviews to promote the film. In The Telegraph in particular he gives some revealing answers about his origins and his filmmaking philosophy. In 2008 he flirted with Hollywood, appearing in films like 21 and The Other Boleyn Girl, only to draw back for the next few years to make independent films, like 2009’s Heartless, which he truly believed in.



Sturgess came to prominence in Across the Universe, a love story told through the songs of the Beatles. His director for that film, Julie Taymor, is full of praise for him still, hailing his “movie star looks”, “reality” and “strong sense of self”. Taymor’s film provided the perfect breakthrough for Sturgess, harnessing and fusing together interests that until then had competed for attention and focus in his life.



At the age of fifteen, Sturgess formed a band with a group of schoolmates. He had grown up immersed in the musical world, turning to acting only for distraction at school. Then at university in Manchester he fell into making short films whilst trying to become a musician. Deciding to become an actor he moved to London at the beginning of the new millennium, only to accidentally join a band again. Although Sturgess admits to disliking his character Dexter at first in One Day, it’s easy to see where he might have been able to draw inspiration from when playing a character unsure what to do with his life.



After impressing in Across the Universe, Sturgess starred alongside Kevin Spacey in the gambling thriller 21. He played a gifted MIT student who is recruited to a group of bright young things, manipulated by Spacey, that intend to make a fortune in Vegas counting cards. 21 is a slick and enjoyable watch but still our leading man remained under the radar, choosing to take a step back from big budget productions. This is despite an accomplished performance as a big-headed, youthful genius of the sort Jesse Eisenberg would later play in The Social Network to far wider acclaim.



What now for Sturgess, after the game changer that is One Day? Will he step back into the shadows again? As I’ve been writing this article news has broken which suggests that this time he will embrace the mainstream, whilst not abandoning his principles.



According to Total Film Sturgess has joined the ever swelling cast of Cloud Atlas, an adaptation of David Mitchell’s genre blending epic. He’ll star alongside Hollywood A- Listers like Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, as well as fellow promising Brit Ben Whishaw. All the actors will play multiple roles in a film that will tell several stories, interlinked by reincarnation and other themes, across time and space.



In taking on another transformation of a much loved, highly praised and commercially successful novel, Jim Sturgess is once again willingly accepting a heavy load of responsibility and risk. But with Cloud Atlas he is joining an even larger scale project than One Day, with greater creative ambitions too. Even if it really does prove “unfilmable” Cloud Atlas will cement his reputation as both a brave and talented actor, surely destined to continually outshine the likes of Anne Hathaway.



Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - One Day (Part Two - Alternatives to Anne Hathaway)

Liam Trim discusses the cinematic adaptation of David Nicholls' One Day in the second of a three part feature (read part one here)...



In Part One I reviewed One Day and compared it to the phenomenally successful book it’s based upon. This is Part Two, in which I suggest alternatives to Anne Hathaway.



I know, I know. There is no alternative to Anne Hathaway, I hear you cry, members of the “I need Anne Hathaway like oxygen” club. She is undoubtedly a very pretty lady. I certainly did not object when she took her clothes off in Love and Other Drugs and she’ll no doubt look superb in leather in The Dark Knight Rises. She is also talented. She’s won deserved critical acclaim for her performances in Rachel Getting Married and The Devil Wears Prada etc, etc. Whatever her limitations in the accent department, Anne is what you’d call a hot Hollywood property, if you were the type to say such things.



However I think there were stronger candidates for the role of bookish Yorkshire lass Emma in One Day. This is categorically NOT because of her dodgy accent. Ok maybe it is a bit. But there was something disappointing about her performance that went beyond her misguided Emmerdale education.



Director Lone Scherfig has said that whilst One Day: The Book was in love with Emma, One Day: The Film is fascinated by Dexter, and whether he’ll pull through as an alright bloke in the end. For much of the film Jim Sturgess is acting like a dick on telly or being staggeringly ignorant of the emotions of his friends and family. Nevertheless it’s his story, his need for redemption from himself, which drives the movie. In the book we feel, or I felt, more anchored to Emma’s cruelly suffocated potential and deflated ambition. We’re waiting for Dexter to get his act together and save her from her own low confidence.



Perhaps the fact that the film is more centred on Dexter is not just down to changes in emphasis, tone and content Nicholls had to make in the script. Maybe Hathaway’s miscasting also had a role to play in that, in my view harmful, shift. Sturgess excelled as Dexter Mayhew despite the weaknesses of the big screen version. Hathaway was not bad as Emma Morley. But these three (coincidentally British) actresses might’ve been better...





1. Carey Mulligan worked with One Day’s director Lone Scherfig on her breakthrough picture, An Education. In my opinion she was perhaps the best Emma on offer. She is usually seen as more middle class characters with prim English voices but she would have nailed the studious, quietly creative and brilliant nature of Emma. You can imagine her hunched over a typewriter or book, looking shy, cute and inexplicably alluring. Basically she could play a convincing bookworm with strong principles. She also has the acting chops to deal with Emma’s heartache and traumas later in life. And when she whips off the glasses and comes out of her shell towards the end, when things start going right, audiences would be plausibly wowed at the blossoming beauty. Hathaway looked like a movie star dressing up as geeky and common.





2. Rebecca Hall starred alongside James McAvoy in Starter for Ten, another David Nicholls book he adapted himself into a movie, with considerably more success. Starter for Ten works well as a whole. It’s predictable but extremely enjoyable stuff. Hall’s character is a constant figure in the background, a determined student activist, who McAvoy’s University Challenge contestant eventually realises he’s meant to be with. She’s adept at being a student and shows an Emma Morley-esque kind nature throughout but the two characters are oceans apart. Could Hall do shy Emma? Her flourishing acting career shows her diversity. My bet is she’d have been as good as Hathaway at least.





3. Gemma Arterton has been a Bond girl, as well as mastering the regional dialect of the West Country to play frank seductress Tamara Drewe. She’s got double the amount of ticks in the accent column thanks to her role as another Dorset heroine; Tess in the BBC’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbevilles. After Tess, Arterton will be no stranger to epic romance but like Hathaway she might be too conventionally pretty to pull off library lover Emma, who got a first in English and History from Edinburgh.





Let’s hope Hathaway makes a better Catwoman...



Continue to part three.



Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - One Day (Part One - The Review)

Liam Trim discusses the cinematic adaptation of David Nicholls' One Day in the first of a three part feature...



Novels can be described as “cinematic” for different reasons. The prose might have a lush, vivid attention to detail that would translate into award winning visuals on screen. There might be a twisty, zippy, unpredictable plot on the page probably perfect for a gripping thriller. The author may have managed to conjure a succession of particularly fresh and engrossing action scenes or mastered the art of quick witted dialogue. Just because a book is successful and it earns the description “cinematic” however, does not necessarily mean it will work well as a film.



The adaptation of David Nicholls’ 2009 word of mouth sensation One Day has encountered a great deal of critical hostility with its release this week. Some will muse wisely that such disappointment is inevitable with cinematic renderings of much loved books, especially when so many people have read it. And One Day really has been a sensation, reaching into almost every demographic. In 2010 it was the highest selling British novel and its distinctive orange cover continues to be a permanent and prominent landmark in Waterstones stores everywhere, even without the help of the star studded film.



One star in particular, of course, has stolen the headlines. The moneymen behind One Day will be hoping that there really is no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to the ever swelling chorus denouncing American beauty Anne Hathaway’s erratic Yorkshire accent. Most critics have labelled it “distracting” at best and for those that have read the book, falling head over heels in love with lead character Emma in the process, Hathaway’s looks will be no consolation, as her casting in their view trampled on the beloved protagonist’s origins.



For the few of you that haven’t somehow heard about the book’s premise, One Day follows students Emma and Dexter, or Em and Dex, as they graduate from Edinburgh University in 1988, right up until the late noughties. But the unique selling point is that we only drop in on their lives, together and apart, on the same day each year; July the 15th, St Swithin’s Day. It’s on this day that Emma and Dexter almost “do the deed” after graduation and the date continues to have significance throughout their lives and the friendship that follows.



The reviews and summaries of One Day universally categorise it as a protracted “will they, won’t they” rom com. Fans of the book though will expect more than that from the film because of its qualities on the page. David Nicholls wrote something that was not only immensely readable but perceptive, poignant and powerful too, taking in a panorama of growing up and culture in the late 20th century.



For all its merits, One Day does undeniably share similarities with chick lit or trashy airport fiction. However despite its enticing plot and moving emotion, it almost always feels real and complex. Its dialogue is lifelike and witty, its characters’ feelings convincingly muddled. Heavy themes are softened by wry humour. It’s a book about youth simultaneously slipping away unnoticed and lingering problematically well into adulthood. No matter what happens to your career or shifting ambitions or inspirations, sometimes the people you care about most are the ones that were there from the beginning. Most of all it’s a story about life; every dizzying high and sickening low.



So do I think it works as a film? Twenty minutes in I had written it off. From the start there were bad signs. The actor’s names appeared scrawled across the screen in an atrociously pretentious font, completely at odds with the tone of the source material. Aside from such minor aesthetic quibbles though the inescapable fact was that the concept, dropping in on just the one date every year, did not make a smooth or effective transition from ink to celluloid. I began to form an opinion that didn’t even rate One Day as an average romantic comedy.



Back to that word “cinematic” then. It was the fresh idea of parachuting into the story via the same date annually which many book reviewers had labelled “cinematic”. On the page it did feel filmic, partly due to the pace but mainly because of the added intensity. Emotional punches usually came from nowhere because we’d skipped twelve months of Emma or Dexter’s lives. With the written word we also steadily accumulated information, so that we literally got to know them. But the first few years flash by at the cinema and we don’t care at all.



Why doesn’t the novel’s unique selling point work on film? One reason is simply the economy required by the runtime. Nicholls wrote the screenplay, as he was too reluctant to hand over control of Emma and Dexter to anyone else, but he has had to be ruthless with their experiences. And he did a much better job adapting his own Starter for Ten, which is currently on BBC iPlayer, starring James McAvoy and Rebecca Hall.



We miss out on the heartfelt letters between Em and Dex that both cements their friendship and hints at a stifled romance. Emma goes straight to work at a Mexican restaurant on screen, whereas in the book after graduation she tries to chase a dream working with a theatre company, whilst he, equally unsure about his future, travels in India.



The other key reason the jumps in time don’t work is because we lose the inner voice occasionally provided on the page. Nicholls does not resort to it often, preferring to let events and dialogue suggest meaning and propel the plot along, but now and then we see inside Emma’s head. We’re reminded how caring and clever she is but how confused and scared she is too. And we also glimpse Dexter’s heart now and again; he cares about her beneath the raving, off the rails exterior. I began to understand why some critics had called for a jumbled order to events, as in 500 Days of Summer.



Thankfully for the film it ends strongly. There are enjoyable performances from both Rafe Spall and Romola Garai, as Em and Dex finally grow up too late. The years gradually tick over and we do get to know the characters that seemed alive almost instantly in the book. The dialogue gets less expositional because the background has been established with the disappointing opening. For me the turning point was a moment when Dexter, superbly played by Jim Sturgess, lifts his mother, who is suffering from cancer, up the stairs to bed. It’s the first time in the film that heartstrings are properly pulled and the first convincing scene of character development.



There are a number of scenes in the film where I cried and several more in which I laughed. Like the book, the film is both sad and funny. However as diehards will be quick to point out you do not laugh as much or cry as much, at the film. It also lacks the depth of its literary parent. But by the end the narrative was certainly hitting some strong emotional notes.



One Day the movie ended as an above average, emotionally involving romantic comedy, which ultimately didn’t do the book justice. And I’m not sure those that haven’t read the book will even think it’s above average.



The final word then is, of course, on Anne Hathaway’s accent. She apparently watched Emmerdale to school herself in Yorkshire tones. She would not fit in on Emmerdale. Her accent is off-putting and her overall performance is incomplete. Hathaway is a very fine actress but there’s no doubt she was miscast here.



Keep an eye out for Part 2 of this One Day feature and I’ll explain who might’ve done a better job. And in Part 3 I’ll sing the praises of Jim Sturgess, who overshadows Hathaway throughout.



(In defence of the beautiful Anne, her voice makes no detrimental difference to the film once she stops trying too hard.)



Continue to part two.



Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - Must Baz Luhrmann’s forthcoming adaptation of The Great Gatsby be set in the Roaring Twenties?

Liam Trim with the latest edition of Page and Screen...



Some stories will always be set in certain times and places. It’s impossible to imagine most Dickensian tales grounded in a world without workhouses and industrial poverty, for example. Similarly Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes would feel out of place investigating crime anywhere other than a London stuffed with Victorian villainy. Hang on though, wasn’t last summer’s hit Sherlock on the BBC, created by Doctor Who show runner Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, set in the present day?



Of course some will say that the likes of Sherlock, transplanted from the usual setting and loved by audiences and critics alike, are the exceptions to the generally reliable rule. As the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. But if that is the case, then why make yet another Jane Austen or Charles Dickens costume drama? If nothing else, Sherlock proved that changes in period setting, previously unthinkable, could be just as true to the original creations and successful to boot.



Nevertheless a certain mould of classic novel would perhaps not work at all if ripped from its historical birth place. Often the events of the narrative are meaningless without the context they play out in. Many truly enduring fictions from the page last not because they are well written or engrossing but because they also say something definitive about the world in which they were hatched. Shunting a beloved story about Italian merchants into the setting of a modern stock exchange, for no other reason than to claim an original slant on the tale, is tantamount to cultural vandalism.



The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of those books that is no longer thought of in terms of its plot, but as the symbol of an era. It distilled the excesses and immoralities of the Roaring Twenties, which would eventually lead to the devastating Wall Street Crash of 1929, into not much over a 100 pages of exquisite writing. In no time at all Fitzgerald says so much, beautifully and ambiguously. On the surface it’s the story of the jealousies and loves of a group of wealthy socialites, detached from real life, but it’s so much more than the sum of its parts. Perhaps that’s why any attempts to adapt it for the screen fall so short of what the book was really about.



The most famous big screen version of The Great Gatsby is Jack Clayton’s 1974 picture starring Robert Redford as Gatsby. Wherever you read about this film it is described as “one of the most hyped movies of the summer of 1974”, in a way that strongly implies that the expectations far exceeded the results. On paper it had all the ingredients of an excellent adaptation but ultimately it’s a desperate pretender compared to the book’s brilliance.



Baz Luhrmann is the latest filmmaker to try his hand at The Great Gatsby. He already has a suitably titular actor lined up for the lead in Leonardo DiCaprio, along with a strong supporting cast in Carey Mulligan as Daisy and Tobey Maguire as narrator Nick Carraway. Mulligan in particular could be crucial, given the misjudged caricature of a performance given by Mia Farrow as Daisy in the 1974 version. Farrow was whiny and hysterical, failing to show the audience any reason at all why a man such as Gatsby would be in love with her. Mulligan has the talent to provide a far deeper portrayal.



In fact, despite delivering recent turkeys like Australia, there’s no reason why Luhrmann can’t dramatically improve on the letdown that was the 1974 version. Robert Redford was ok as Gatsby but DiCaprio, with some bolder direction, can probably do a better job. But the script will have to be top notch. Francis Ford Coppola’s screenplay in 1974 almost tried hard to do the novel justice, quoting large sections of dialogue and even chunks of Carraway’s narration in voiceover. In the end though trying to transform the magic from the page so straightforwardly led to a very literal film. It told us rather than showing us the feel of the book, hammering it home so that we felt unable to connect with the characters. The book was immensely symbolic and atmospheric. The film explored almost none of Fitzgerald’s key themes and gave its characters very little depth. Bruce Dern, as Tom Buchanan, was the only actor to come close to the essence of his character.



Luhrmann’s film is likely to land up with similar disappointments for those that have read the book though. The Robert Redford film focused firmly on the look of the story and The Great Gatsby is very visually written at times, especially in terms of lighting. But it is primarily about what we cannot see or know or express, like the mysteries of Gatsby’s character, the might-have-beens of the past, private lives and telephone conversations with distant “business associates”. The 1974 made a fetish of grand appearances. Visual details are so important that in every scene every single character is sweating, the lights twinkling off their brows. All this succeeds in doing is illustrating how artificial an adaptation it is, with everyone involved literally sweating with the effort of doing the book justice.



Perhaps then a Sherlock style time shift would help get back to the true roots of the story. Seemingly The Great Gatsby is a story forever tied to the 1920s but many of its themes would translate to the modern day. Fitzgerald was fascinated by technology, from telephones to cars, from the cinema to the street lamp. Today the world is coming to terms with social networking, new methods of communication and technologies like the iPad. There are still huge inequalities in terms of wealth and opportunities. We are still fascinated by enigmatic and elusive stars. We have just emerged from an economic crisis caused by banking excess and a rampant culture of consumerism, born in Fitzgerald’s time.



Luhrmann loves his fancy productions and like Jack Clayton in 1974, may end up worshipping period details rather than the characters and the meaning of the story. Changing the setting in some way might help counteract this temptation.



Alright, my argument to transport Gatsby through time is forced and there remain many reasons to leave him be in the 1920s. But my point is essentially that there is no reason for yet another remake for the sake of it. Especially in the case of The Great Gatsby, where the captivating soul of the book is probably impossible to transform to film, there is no point playing it safe to produce something mediocre. Remakes should be better than what went before and say and do something different to shed new light on the original story. Otherwise they do little more than fuel the fires of Hollywood money making machines, which trample on the talents of undiscovered storytellers with new messages and ideas.



Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - Black Shorts at the Edinburgh Fringe (Part 1)

Liam Trim with the latest edition of 'Page and Screen'...

This week’s Page and Screen doesn’t actually feature any screen as such. In fact it’s little more than a completely shameless bit of self promotion on my part. Nevertheless I’ll try to justify it by claiming that what I’m about to shamelessly advertise fits in with the “ethos” behind this feature.

Earlier this year I wrote a sketch called “Lessons in Salesmanship”. I submitted it to a York based Theatre Company, quirkily named Mary’s Sofa, with no real expectations of it being selected. But I had to give it a go because the prize was a writing credit for a show, entitled “Black Shorts”, which was heading to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. Cue surprise and childlike excitement when they actually liked it.

The Fringe is well known as a Mecca of comedy. It’s where the next big things make their breakthroughs. It’s where the industry insiders pick who to back. It also sounds like a month of awesome fun. I am only going for four days but I am looking forward to a packed itinerary, coupled with hidden gems I’ll only find with a little exploration. Aside from the best established and undiscovered comedians around, there’s theatre, music, cabaret and streets full of colourful entertainment.

Then there’s the city itself. Apparently I’ve been there, as a four year old. My father paraded me on his shoulders up and down the Royal Mile. I say paraded but I mean lugged. Family legend has it that I was terrified by the sheer amount of legs jostling for supplies on the high street, hence the need for an elevated position. That didn’t help much either though. I imagine the barking Scottish faces dangled my infant nerves over the abyss of a tantrum. Into which I swiftly plummeted.

I digress. The city sounds wonderful. Of course there is the added excitement of my own work on show and the tales of entertainment ecstasy I have both read and heard about, from the likes of Michael McIntyre and Stephen Fry. But if I were simply visiting Edinburgh there would be plenty for historian me to salivate over and digest, plenty of simultaneously European and British culture and architecture to absorb. Think of the great enlightenment figures from the city, the economists and doctors, the writers and philosophers. Think of the great works of atmospheric literature conceived and set there.

Let’s get back to my vague and tenuous link to the usual Page and Screen offerings. In June I went to see a preview of “Black Shorts” in York. I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea how many changes had been made from my original creation. I wasn’t sure how long it would last and how it would fit into the show as a whole. I’d never met any of the Mary’s Sofa team and I had no idea if they’d be good or bad, terrific or terrible.

Looking back with a little perspective, a few less jangly nerves and temporarily becalmed excitement, I realised this was my first taste of it. Of a creative process I hoped to see a lot more of. Of a collaboration I wanted to be a much bigger part of in future. I felt the surrender that screenwriters must feel, handing over a project helplessly to a Hollywood studio.

Yes there was enormous anticipation and a sense of satisfaction and achievement. But there was also something more akin to peril. Would it still be what I had intended? Even if it was, would it work in practice, and would other people like it? It wasn’t quite transforming a novel to film but it was making an idea work from the page as part of a whole. I hadn’t seen the rest of the show, didn’t know the other writers and they hadn’t met me to gauge my precise preferences face to face. Such is the magic and mystery of the web.

“Black Shorts” was split into two acts that night. The first act destroyed any doubts I had about Mary’s Sofa. Not only were the other shorts intelligently written but they were charismatically and skilfully realised. There were some really impressive themes about storytelling itself running through the show, along with some fine moments of black comedy and drama. These weren’t just talented, arty and interesting people, like many I hope to casually meet at the Fringe; they also explored themes that I found fascinating. I felt relieved.

But my moment was still to come. There were new worries to ponder during the interval. The show had a coherent structure and interconnected themes. The first act had a particular tone. I wasn’t sure how my sketch would fit with the flow and the feel.

Then all too quickly it was over. I couldn’t have been happier with how it was realised. If memory serves me correctly, uncorrupted by ego, people laughed just seconds into the fast paced dialogue. The characters I’d imagined had been fleshed out but they were still mine. The qualities of the performers conjured laughs from lines I hadn’t even envisaged to be that funny. There was no doubt my sketch was more conventionally comedic than other shorts in the show but it seemed to provide suitable light relief, deflating some audience tension, rather than feeling out of place.

I spent the rest of the evening glowing and trying not to mention how well it had went in every sentence I uttered. Stress did return as I worried about whether Mary’s Sofa had been happy with it and how it would do at the Fringe itself. But mostly I just enjoyed the moment and looked forward to Edinburgh. It will hopefully feel like a huge step in the right direction. Briefly I’ll indulge myself, thinking that I’ve “arrived” or something pompous. Really though I know it’s only the beginning, fingers crossed a promising one.

You can find details about “Black Shorts” and Mary’s Sofa here. If you follow the link there’s a video from the preview. You can glimpse the contribution of this Flickering Myth writer (“Lessons in Salesmanship” remember) at 19 seconds and 28 seconds. If you’re attending the Fringe you can see “Black Shorts” at Finnegan's Wake (Venue 101) at 16:45 on August 4-5 and 8-12.

I’ll report back after my Fringe experience with Part 2. Thank you for indulging this sales pitch. But it was obviously so much more than that, looking at the passion and emotional rollercoaster behind the process of adaptation etc, etc, blah, blah, blah...

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - What is the real legacy of Slytherin from Harry Potter?

Liam Trim with the latest edition of 'Page and Screen'...

Warning: This article contains spoilers that may induce suicide.

When I finally saw Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 2, just a few days after its release, I was ecstatic to find that the franchise bowed out by reclaiming its magical mojo. For me it was the best film of the series by a long way. Debating my enjoyment with friends I conceded it may just be that I have forgotten the omissions from the books that used to irritate me or that I simply no longer care as long as the film is good. And this was definitely good, so good I’m tempted to use the word “sublime”.

The tone was perfectly judged. The film starts with a tense and atmospheric scene of dialogue, still drenched in the grief of Dobby’s death and the impending doom. From then on the contrast is expertly maintained, with unique action sequences following moodily shot moments of explanation and reflection. There are clichés and cheesy emotional dramas aplenty but the successful history of the series earns its self indulgent payoff. Well for someone of the Potter generation like me at least.

I simply cannot cram in everything I liked about The Deathly Hallows: Part 2. As a film experience it seems to have everything, from a dark and beautiful style, to gags and heartbreak. I rarely feel completely and utterly amazed and transported in the cinema, but I did watching this. I don’t want to diminish my enjoyment by writing a proper review, which would be biased by my personal Potter journey as well as inadequately conveying its many, yes magical, moments.

Besides there were only two moments I can remember that irritated me. One of these was when Harry grabs Voldemort and they fly about for a bit pointlessly (Voldemort is too powerful to grab!). The other was more puzzling than annoying. It wasn’t the epilogue, in which the actors play their older selves on the platform at King’s Cross. I simply laughed for the entirety of that.

It was a throwaway moment in the Great Hall, when Harry reveals himself to Snape and the Death Eaters now in charge of Hogwarts. Voldemort quickly knows Harry is there and uses some wonderfully sinister and psychological scares on the students. He speaks to them from inside their heads, assuring them that they’ll live if they give him Harry Potter but if they fight they will die. At this point some girls from Slytherin house demand Harry is seized. Maggie Smith’s Professor McGonagall, head of the courageous and good Gryffindor house, then orders the whole of Slytherin to be confined in the dungeons until the battle is over.

Now the Harry Potter series is well known for its moral messages and Voldemort’s hatred of half bloods. There are some far from subtle Nazi parallels as the bad guys constantly insist that Muggles (non magical folk like us) and half bloods (children with only one magical parent) are inferior to pure bloods of true magical families. J.K. Rowling appears to be sending the typical “don’t judge a book by its cover” and “everyone deserves a chance” messages. But these common goods have always been at odds with the Hogwarts tradition of the Sorting Hat.

For the uninitiated, when first year students join Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry they are “sorted” into houses by a magical hat placed on their head. Every house is associated with different attributes. A quick (and simplified) summary would read as: Gryffindor = brave, Hufflepuff = kind, Ravenclaw = clever and Slytherin = evil. Yup essentially if you’re in Slytherin you turn out to be bad.

And yet there is the ending to this conclusion to the series, which reveals the true intentions of slippery Severus Snape. If you ignored the spoiler warning at the top and you haven’t either seen the last film or read the last book, now is the time to abort. Snape basically loved Harry’s mother Lily. He has been looking out for Harry all along. But wait... he killed Dumbledore! Yes technically, but Dumbledore was already dying from a wound he sustained destroying a part of Voldemort’s soul called a Horcrux. Confused? Very sorry if you are, I’ll get back to my point about inconsistency.

In the epilogue Harry’s son worries about getting put in Slytherin, before he sets off to Hogwarts for the first time. Harry reassures “Albus Severus Potter” that one of his stupid names belonged to a former head of Slytherin, who was the bravest man he ever knew. Both Rowling’s books and the film series end by hailing nasty Snape’s undying unrequited love as the true, silent hero of the whole thing.

In a recent interview for Empire Magazine, Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves admits his favourite character is not Harry, but Hermione. If your favourite character is Harry you’re a bit weird and boring. My favourite character was always Snape, first for his vile putdowns and mystery and finally for his valiant but unrecognised and unrewarded selfless sacrifice in the name of love, a love that was never realised. He is a bitter dreamer so easy to sympathise with.

We are left with two very different legacies for the house of Slytherin. On the one hand the people that appear to be the villains on the outside can sometimes be the greatest heroes of all. On the other, never trust a rotten apple, even if it has the potential to taste great with a bit of work.

I’m sure some of you are probably thinking that it’s a bit stupid to be ruining a great film and phenomenally successful series with such picky analysis. I do not intend to spoil the enjoyment of the last film, which is a fantastic and fitting ending as I have said, or the creative achievement of the whole Harry Potter universe. Rowling’s muddled messages over genetics and the morals of condemning someone over something other than their actions, does illustrate that Harry Potter’s magical world is far from perfect though. Her imagination is superb and she is capable of powerful poignancy and elegance, as illustrated in the largely unaltered scene in the final film when Dumbledore praises the magical power of words. But perhaps Slytherin was her Achilles heel.

Or maybe she was also capable of realism as well as fantasy. Maybe she meant that some people are always more likely to turn out “bad”. But that makes the achievement of those who come good in the end all the more admirable. Slytherin’s ultimate legacy doesn’t matter. It will be dwarfed by the ongoing impact of the whole world of Hogwarts, Hagrid and Harry. I’m just reluctant, like everyone else, to stop talking about it.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - In Praise of Rupert Grint

Liam Trim with the latest edition of 'Page and Screen'...

With the all conquering Harry Potter franchise drawing to a close after a decade of record breaking box office figures and immeasurable sales of merchandise and DVDs, reams are being written attempting to sum up the reasons for the worldwide phenomenon. Recipes for success are being compiled and suggested as Warner Brothers and other studios look for the “next Potter” to lure audiences consistently to cinemas on a huge scale. Children’s authors are being assessed and targeted as execs wonder where to find the next J.K. Rowling. Meanwhile the super rich writer has launched a new website to continue the Potter brand, “Pottermore”, and has revealed that she has waited, perhaps wisely, until after the last film to publish several projects she’s been working on for some time since finishing The Deathly Hallows.

Some say that Rowling’s immense imagination and wonderful writing accounts for the success of the films. The sheer detail of the books helped create a wizarding universe that went beyond the plots. However up and down the country it’s easy to find English teachers, experts and ordinary readers that will think little of Rowling’s talent. Of course she clearly has an ability to create worlds and engaging plots but she is also reliant on influences and is far from a genius writer. Whilst I was sucked in by the books after reading them, unlike my school friends I only embraced The Philosopher’s Stone after seeing the film version, which convinced me Harry Potter wasn’t as childish as it sounded.

Perhaps the fact that Warner Brothers conceded artistic control to British based Heyman Productions ensured the appealing flavour of the series? There are no doubt many different reasons for the spellbinding effect Hogwarts has had on box offices internationally, but as someone who has grown up in the eye of a decade long magical storm, the Harry Potter films transcend the usual critical criteria. As rankings of the films appear all over the web, I have found myself reflecting on the franchise as a whole.

If I had to pick out one key reason for its success it would be the way the films have matured with their audience. Those behind the films deserve some credit for this but if anything they haven’t lived up to the darker depths of the books, until the final film if you believe the early reports from critics. It was Rowling’s masterstroke to pen seven stories that evolved in tone as well as plot. However watching the films has delivered the genuinely unique experience of seeing three child actors grow into young and talented adults, which mirrors the maturing mood of the stories.

Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson tend to hog the headlines. He has become a leading man and she has gone from prissy bookworm to stunning, sexy and intelligent model, capable of juggling a demanding degree from a top university with filming and an increasingly diverse career. Recently though, as Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 premiered in Trafalgar Square, the newspapers reserved special mention for the huge cheer that greeted Rupert Grint.

Grint has always been more than the long suffering ginger one. In the early films, when Radcliffe was excruciatingly awful at times in the lead role, Grint provided much needed comic relief and more, with a skill beyond his years. Respected film veteran John Hurt dubbed him a “born actor” and allegedly directors beyond Potter, such as Martin Scorsese, have predicted a bright future for him. In this early screen test, Grint is the clearly the most expressive of the famous trio, inhabiting his role even when he doesn’t have lines to read, unlike the blank faced Radcliffe and two dimensional Watson:


But then a combination of the stresses of the lifestyle change and scripts that let his character down reduced Grint to a predictable and subdued comic presence during the films in the middle of the series. Radcliffe and Watson both grew in confidence to take on more integral and convincing roles in the drama. The final film ought to have plenty of opportunities for Grint to go out with a bang big enough to showcase his true talent though, with the will-they-won’t-they romantic chemistry between Ron and Hermione finally coming to a head and several dramatic moments to sink his acting chops into. Grint has certainly demonstrated his promise elsewhere with performances in Driving Lessons alongside Julie Walters and wild teen drama Cherrybomb.

We’ve been through a lot with Harry, Hermione and Ron and got to know not only them, but a little of the actors that portray them, on the way to their final showdown with Lord Voldemort. Harry Potter will always be a great deal more than just a shadow hanging over the careers of Radcliffe, Watson and Grint. They will all try to shake it off and it will be remarkable if any of them completely succeed. I for one though have a feeling that out of all of them it is Rupert Grint we are still yet to see the best of. He was a lovable Ron but as someone else we haven’t heard of yet he is going to blow us away.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - Libraries vs. Cinemas in Fahrenheit 451

Liam Trim with the latest edition of 'Page and Screen'...

In 1966 England won the World Cup. And firemen stopped putting out flames with water, to start them with kerosene to burn books.

Francois Truffaut’s film version of Ray Bradbury’s classic 20th century novel Fahrenheit 451 was released in 1966. It starred Julie Christie in a dual role and Oskar Werner as main character Montag. According to IMDb, Truffaut wanted Terence Stamp for the lead role but the British screen legend was uneasy about being overshadowed by his former lover Christie. Truffaut and Werner, with his thick Austrian accent on an English production, had fiery differences about the film’s interpretation of Montag’s character. It’s not surprising that there was passion on set because there was a great deal within the pages of the book.

Bradbury’s book is the tale of Montag, a fireman whose job it is to burn books. In the world of Fahrenheit 451 (the temperature at which book paper catches fire) the state has banned the owning and reading of books. Indeed in the film Werner is shown “reading” a newspaper or story consisting entirely of images, without even speech bubbles. Why the ban? Books are “the source of all discord and unhappiness”. Materialism, based on equality, is encouraged, as opposed to the competing lies and raised expectations sold by authors. Montag’s wife is reliant on state sponsored drugs and spends her days in front of state television. She barely speaks to him and all are ignorant of impending war.

Bradbury was a master of science fiction and he churned out volumes of beautiful and imaginative short stories, as part of collections like The Martian Chronicles. But Fahrenheit 451 merely has elements of sci-fi. For the most part its world is uncomfortably close to our own.

Truffaut’s adaptation has a fairy tale quality, and indeed the novel is somehow magical. It is an incredibly intelligent book, packed with literary references and joining the likes of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, as one of the great prophetic dystopias with powerful warnings about society. But it is not at all patronising and far more uplifting than both of these books. It lays out its moral arguments more passionately and poetically and tells a breathtakingly absorbing and thrilling tale, laced with beautiful metaphors. Orwell and Huxley’s books were urgent and thought provoking but lack the vibrant colour given by Bradbury’s imagery of flames. Bradbury could also be funny rather than drab and his ideas were grounded in the realities of modern culture.

In short then, Truffaut had an enormous task to match a book which simultaneously had pace, power, poetry and passion. I was therefore surprised by how much I enjoyed his adaptation. It lacks the book’s excitement and indeed many of its qualities but its opening scene, six minutes uninterrupted by dialogue, is suitably atmospheric. The film as a whole evokes the experience of reading and the worth of literature through the relatively new medium of cinema: not an easy achievement. By quoting from great works as Bradbury often does the film benefits from some of the novel’s rhythm and can show the mesmerising effects of fire, leaving pages “blackened and changed”, shrivelling up like dying flowers.

All in all it was an entertaining watch, faithful to the book’s message, even if it was not “the most skilfully drawn of all science fiction’s conformist hells”, as Kingsley Amis described the novel. It was inventively shot and hauntingly scored. And its wonderful final scene got me thinking.

In it the “book people” are wandering in the woods by a lake. They are all reciting or learning a book. The book people commit a book to memory and become that book. So when Montag meets a pair of brothers, one is introduced as Pride and Prejudice Part 1 and the other as Part 2, a woman is Plato’s Republic and a shabbily dressed man Machiavelli’s Prince and so on. In effect the community of peaceful outsiders are a human library.

But aren’t we all libraries really? We may not have devoted our lives to the word for word memorisation of our favourite books but our opinions and outlook on the world are shaped by them. The impressions and traces of good and great books we read can truly change us, inform us and enlighten us, as well as entertain us.

Equally us film lovers are archives of all the movies we’ve ever seen. Some of them will be forgettable but should we get a jolt to remind us memories of even the poorest film will come flooding back. Others made us stretch new emotional muscles or were so terrifically dramatic we had never felt so alive and full of possibility.

The copy of Fahrenheit 451 that I own contains an introduction written by Ray Bradbury for the 50th anniversary edition in 2003. He describes how he wrote the novel on a typewriter in the basement of a library, darting up the stairs now and then to do rapid research and pick randomly inspirational quotes to sprinkle into the narrative. His love of libraries is evident and he calls himself a lifelong “library person”. I couldn’t help but think that a cinema or movie theatre could never give birth to a work of art or vital piece of culture in quite the same diverse and autonomous way.

Of course some fantastic films have their beginnings in great directors being inspired by other great directors in a darkened cinema. Last year Christopher Nolan’s Inception was seen and adored by millions, with the director freely admitting influences as varied as James Bond, Stanley Kubrick and the Matrix trilogy. There’s no doubt that I would prefer to spend an afternoon in my local cinema than my local library. Both are arenas of escapism but both are changing.

At the cinema 3D may or may not breakthrough as the next big wow factor for audiences. Box office figures continue to remain high and records were broken throughout the global recession. People will always flock to the multiplex to give themselves up to the immediacy of film. They want to be transported to another world in moments.

Libraries are undoubtedly in decline. In the UK local libraries are understaffed, underfunded and short on stock. The coalition government is happy to snatch away even more support for them for tiny savings, despite promises about getting more children to read from Education Secretary Michael Gove. Children’s author Patrick Ness used his Carnegie medal acceptance speech to launch a stinging attack on the policy.

As a child I got into reading because of the ease and assistance of a library. Its poor range of choice wasn’t good enough as I got older but I might still use it now if it were better equipped. In any case libraries are a vital stepping stone into independent reading and education for youngsters. The grander buildings full of history and knowledge have the potential to be truly magical gateways to new novels, screenplays, election campaigns or God knows what. Libraries empower the imagination and the intellect. But so do cinemas, just in a different way. Both can keep us entertained and thinking, as Fahrenheit 451 proves. Both deserve to thrive.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - Are our favourite characters more alive in books or movies?

Liam Trim with the latest edition of 'Page and Screen'...

The idea of character is more complicated than we allow ourselves to realise. Of course put simply they are made up, fictional people in stories. But there are those who wish to challenge such a casual assumption. Some say they are merely bundles of words. Others question their independence, as we can never really know anything certainly about anyone besides ourselves. Therefore are characters simply versions of their creators? Are authors, screenwriters and actors getting it completely wrong when they try to imagine what it’s like to be someone who isn’t them? Should all characters be developed to a certain point? Some crop up as mere extras in a scene of a movie or a chapter of a novel but nevertheless leave an impression on us. Do they count as true characters even when we know next to nothing about them? Do we need to know anything about a character? Can we know a character at all?

Of course it’s sensible not to get bogged down in such questions. It’s pedantic, futile and stupid to waste energy debating whether any character can have true meaning beyond an author’s words. Often characters are simply a fact to be accepted, a vital part of the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy any genre of fiction. But it can also be healthy to think about the limitations of characterisation as well its possibilities. Characters are vehicles that carry us through any story, doors onto worlds of escapism. Writing believable and engaging characters is the most difficult part of creating novels or films. Anyone can have a half decent plot idea or conjure adequate passages of dialogue but very few can mould the perfect characters with which to tell their story.

On the page the biggest challenge is getting a character moving because, as I said, characters are vehicles. Uninteresting, average or amateur writing can start by telling us about motionless characters. Great writers can establish iconic figures with very little information, which is seamlessly part of the narrative. On the screen it can sometimes be easier to get a character “in”, as the motion comes from the medium itself and the viewer can be convinced by things like setting, costume or the glance of a talented actor.

Having said this it is often difficult to transform the subtleties of the written word when it comes to character depth. For example, fictional figures like Jay Gatsby and Jean Brodie make very brief appearances in novels named after them. However the books can still be predominantly about their distant personalities. The Great Gatsby is about the potential rather than the actual, with the central message that “a dream realised is a dream destroyed” according to Sarah Churchwell in The Guardian. She argues that Baz Luhrmann’s forthcoming adaptation, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, is doomed to failure because by its nature the film will try to visually realise the dream of Gatsby and his grand home. DiCaprio will inevitably be more prominent than Gatsby was in the book.

Jean Brodie too is a similarly enigmatic character, observed only from the viewpoint of others. She has her image like Gatsby and she is only ever seen putting on her front. She is remembered for a bunch of catchphrases, such as “you are the crème de la crème” and “I am in my prime”. In Muriel Spark’s novel (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) the perspective jumps around between Brodie’s pupils but we never get to know her, just her influence on the lives of her protégés.

This doesn’t make her flat or two dimensional but it probably means she is not rounded either. This does not make her a bad example of characterisation. We are made to think about the people we know; do we really only know their public performances? And we imagine more than we are told or shown about Jean Brodie. Spark throws in glimpses of her pupils in the future, of their deaths and careers, prompting further questions about the novelist’s power and Brodie’s desire to manipulate. So we know aspects of her behaviour.

The narrative blends of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Great Gatsby are difficult to imagine on screen in quite the same way. Their stories would undoubtedly lose something or become narrowed on a particular aspect. There are narrative techniques that have no cinematic equivalent.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker Prize winning The Remains of the Day was adapted for the screen by Merchant Ivory in 1993. It centres on one of the most fascinating characters of modern fiction, Stevens the butler, played by Anthony Hopkins in the film. It might be that the role of a butler is the perfect lens for a multi layered story about class, identity, personality, culture and repressed emotion. Or it might be the talents of Ishiguro and Hopkins. But on the page and the screen Stevens is incredibly lifelike.

Subtleties and methods employed in the novel cannot be replicated on screen. For example the parallel narratives are largely lost and most of all Stevens’ unreliable narration. He is looking back on his career with nostalgia and it doesn’t take long for you to realise in the book that Stevens is deceiving himself about the past, holding back things and regularly revising his retelling. But Ishiguro pulls of the style masterfully. The half truths Stevens tells and the things he claims to forget or confuse reveal greater truths about him to the reader.

On screen Hopkins has none of these advantages to introduce Stevens to us as something more than a servant. But he does have the benefit of the visual. He can communicate with an expression or look in his eye the sort of doubt, regret and reserve it took Ishiguro dozens of pages to build. And whilst Ishiguro’s execution was pitch perfect in The Remains of the Day his preference for the unreliable narrator took some considerable practice to get right. In a previous of novel of his, An Artist of the Floating World, passages like this appear so often at times, almost on every page, that they become extremely cumbersome and annoying:

“These, of course, may not have been the precise words I used that afternoon at the Tamagawa temple; for I have had cause to recount this particular scene many times before, and it is inevitable that with repeated retelling, such accounts begin to take on a life of their own.”

Here Ishiguro is trying so hard to create a complex character that he is constantly alerting us to his efforts, shattering the reader’s immersion in the story. He is basically overwriting. So screen adaptations can often ditch bad writing to bring out the best elements of a believable character for a good story. But then there are also bad actors.

Anthony Hopkins is undoubtedly a fine actor. With roles like Stevens and Hannibal Lecter, he has established himself as a respected and acclaimed “character actor”. This term usually refers only to eccentric or developed individuals in a story. Our favourite characters can be just as alive on the page or the screen; they are simply represented in different ways. But they also need not be eccentric, developed or rounded to be alive and touching. They can come in all shapes and sizes.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen – A Dangerous Method trailer shows the pitfalls and pluses of adapting non-fiction

Liam Trim discusses David Cronenberg's upcoming non-fiction adaptation, A Dangerous Method...

As cinemagoers and telly watchers we are used to accomplished adaptations of fictions born on the page. Whether it’s the BBC’s latest Jane Austen costume drama or blockbusters like the Harry Potter series, we consume creations transformed from the page to the screen all the time. We are also accustomed to the fictionalisation and cinematic imaginings of happenings from history, with one of film’s latest trends being the increasing use of exciting events from the recent past. The likes of The Social Network and 127 Hours brought books about modern, real lives to the big screen.

But we are less used to films based on academic and extensively researched works of non-fiction. There is of course the occasional box office hit based on a lucky scholar’s lengthy biography or surprisingly successful history. However it’s rare for such books to be huge hits in print via Amazon, Waterstones or WH Smith, let alone dominate in theatres. It normally takes a strong following of the book to persuade producers that the appetite is there for a lucrative movie. Or a particularly juicy subject matter, ripe for controversial or intriguing expansion and exploration.

In the case of A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr there is certainly the potential for controversy. His book, released in the early 1990s and based on new evidence, charts the relationship between commonly recognised pioneers of psychoanalysis, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, which is controversial enough in itself. But its way into the world of intellectual competition and mental instability is the papers of Sabina Spielrein. She was a Russian patient of Jung’s, taken to a clinic in Zurich in 1904 at the age of 18. Her habits included “ill concealed masturbation”. And she and Jung had an affair.

As if that were not a sufficiently saucy and shocking cocktail, the nature of the affair remains scandalous even now. Jung was trying to drive forward a new profession and ensure its respect as a science and as a medical treatment. And yet he had an affair with one of his patients. An affair directly linked to his treatment and his probing of her condition. She was beaten as a child by her father and this sexually excited her. It doesn’t take much to imagine what she and Jung got up to. Sadomasochism enters the mix.

An official trailer for A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s play, The Talking Cure (which was based on Kerr’s original book), is now online. You can watch it here:


It stars Cronenberg’s usual partner in crime Viggo Mortensen as Freud, Michael Fassbender as Jung and Keira Knightley as Spielrein. Disappointingly for fans of Cronenberg and Mortensen’s previous collaborations, the story appears to focus on Jung, with Freud relegated to a secondary figure. The weight of the narrative therefore falls on rising star Fassbender, who also stars in a new Jane Eyre adaptation out later this year, and his chemistry with Knightley. Disappointingly for fans of history and good storytelling, Knightley’s role, from the trailer at least, appears to be that of kinky sex slave.

Even the slightest research into Kerr’s original work uncovers just how fascinating a story, a true story, he set out to tell. Spielrein was treated by Jung and she had some kind of sexual affair with him, although it may never have been consummated. She went onto graduate as a doctor and pursued her own career in psychoanalysis, playing a key role in bringing its breakthroughs back to Russia. She was treated by Freud but always remained attached to Jung.

Not only did Kerr tell this remarkable story with “verve devices” of storytelling and “scholarly precisions”, according a 1994 review in The Independent, but his book had a serious point. Aside from being part of a tantalising love triangle complicated by genius and a battle for the soul of a groundbreaking science, Sabina Spielrein sheds light on who was the more influential man; Jung or Freud. Kerr argues that Freud’s thinking was of its time and not revolutionary. In any case many of Freud’s and Jung’s ideas are recognised as plain wrong and outdated today but if one was more important in laying the true foundations of psychoanalysis, Kerr argues it was Jung. He helped create Freud’s reputation and was the “engine” of the profession’s growth.

Of course this is just Kerr’s opinion but it is backed by thorough research and is genuinely interesting. The trailer for A Dangerous Method focused on psychoanalysis for its first 40 seconds, before throwing Knightley into the mix as over the top, loony eye candy for Fassbender to drool over. The dialogue, from Fassbender, Knightley and Vincent Cassel, becomes shamelessly erotic; “never repress anything”/”I want you to punish me”/” why should we put so much effort into suppressing our most basic natural instincts”. Surely Cronenberg hasn’t wasted his time on soft porn with period detail?

Probably not. It’s probably just the marketing approach of the trailer. And there are positives and great potential to be found within its brief runtime. The focus on Jung suggests that the general intellectual thrust of Kerr’s book, that Jung was more instrumental than Freud, will remain (although Mortensen does seem to be portrayed as an infrequent but superior wise figure). Cronenberg is hardly known for costumed drama and after the hard hitting A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, we can expect something knew from him in this genre. There is also little wrong with well acted desire and I’m sure the full performances won’t disappoint.

The fact remains though that those behind the trailer for A Dangerous Method are following that age old principle of advertising; sex sells. The prospect of charismatic and fit X-Men star Fassbender having forbidden romps with a kinky and crazy Keira Knightley will interest millions, whilst Jung’s professional friendship and battles with Freud will lure considerably less. There is nothing wrong with humanising great figures from the past; it’s what great stories do and it can bring fact to life. But there is something wrong with completely destroying the intentions of a source born of one writer’s hard work. Even if the final film tells Sabina Spielrein’s full story and is truer to Kerr’s revisionist study, it will have sold some sensational half truths to tempt people to see it.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

Page and Screen - The Big Sleep

Liam Trim on the transition from page to screen of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep...

Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel The Big Sleep, the first to star PI Philip Marlowe, was ready made for the big screen. It had a zippy, twisting and engrossing plot, propelled at pace by short, sharp chapters that feel like scenes from a movie. It is full of characters that are enigmatic, living in the shadowy underworld of Los Angeles, but they all jump out of the page at you because they are so flawed and real. Appropriately, the whole thing plays out in and around Hollywood. And perhaps best of all, Chandler’s dialogue is quick and witty, containing cool and sophisticated one liners that are easy to transplant straight from a book to a script.

The classic film version, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and directed by Howard Hawks, was released in 1946, just seven years after the original novel. Its place amongst other classics in a widely recognised Hollywood hall of fame is justified. It adds elements the novel was missing and brings screen legends like Bogart and Bacall together to successfully bring the charismatic Marlowe and feisty Vivian Rutledge to life. But it is also a largely faithful adaptation and owes its source material a huge debt.

What is the general story of The Big Sleep then? It is too complicated to properly explain briefly. Chandler’s original plot negotiated a weaving path between webs of blackmail, secrets and lies, fuelled by Hollywood excess. Essentially Marlowe is hired by General Sternwood who has two “wild” daughters, Carmen (Martha Vickers) and Vivien (Bacall), each with their own scandalous weaknesses. Carmen is being blackmailed by a dodgy bookseller doing something illegal on the side and Vivien’s estranged husband, who the General was fond of, has gone missing. Marlowe quickly unravels the blackmail but bigger problems continually turn up, leading him further and further into a tough investigation of gangsters, gambling and girls.

Elements of the original plot seem even more complicated on film because of the need to tone down Chandler’s frank portrayal of sex and drugs. For example Carmen is blackmailed because of naked pictures of herself but in the film she is wearing some kind of Oriental robe. Carmen’s attempts to seduce Marlowe, and therefore her dangerous nature, are also less overt in the film.

The best lines of dialogue are lifted completely unaltered from Chandler’s prose. There are far too many to quote. Almost all the dialogue in the book is slick and crucial to the irresistible noir style. The film’s script, by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, sticks as close as possible to the novel’s dialogue as well as its intricate plot and is consequently one of the best and most quotable in cinematic history, line for line.

The character of Marlowe comes to life because of his smooth talking street smarts. But this doesn’t mean that other characters are deprived of scene stealing lines. Even minor characters, such as a girl working in a fake bookshop called Agnes, get the odd gem. When Marlowe disarms her and asks “Did I hurt you much?” she shoots back “You and every other man in my life.”

Not all of the novel’s charisma could make it from the page to the screen. Despite an excellent performance from Bogart, accurately portraying Marlowe’s mannerisms and speech as the reader imagines them, it’s impossible to transfer the brilliance of his first person narration. Chandler gives Marlowe an incredibly strong voice and not all of the great lines in the book are spoken.

Marlowe’s nature as a detective means that he rapidly describes his surroundings vividly and unavoidably the film lacks the colour of these delicious chapter set ups, because it is in black and white. Marlowe also internally sums up other characters. We cannot see these first impressions on film. Despite the glamour of Bacall and the other actresses in the production, we’re denied such delicious and spot on imagery of the women as this; “she gave me one of those smiles the lips have forgotten before they reach the eyes”. No actress could express such subtlety. In the book we also learn a little more about Marlowe’s own state of mind and emotions, again through wonderful writing; “I was as empty of life as a scarecrow’s pockets”.

One of the changes the filmmakers did make was to intensify the relationship between Bogart’s Marlowe and Bacall’s Mrs Rutledge. The plot remains essentially the same, with some scenes tweaked and others, like a fairly pivotal one towards the end, omitted altogether and explained elsewhere. However Bacall’s character appears more often than she does in the book. The change in her character was probably for commercial as well as narrative reasons. Cinema audiences wanted to see a love story between their two big stars, not an unorthodox, cold and professional Detective teasing but ultimately knocking back a beautiful lady, as Marlowe does in the book.

Indeed the inclusion of the love story does fundamentally change Marlowe’s character in some ways. He is robbed of an ingredient of his allure as he is no longer a troubled but brilliant and determined loner when he admits that he loves Vivien. But it makes The Big Sleep work better as a standalone story and is considerably more satisfying than the end to the novel, which explains things but doesn’t exactly resolve them.

It is inevitable that the adaptation has its differences to the source material. And it is also essential that changes were made. I may miss Marlowe’s narration from the page and even the excitement of Chandler’s written action, compared to the film’s set pieces which are over in a flash. But the film gives me the unrivalled onscreen chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, which sheds light on and makes the most of the flirtatious relationship from the page. It might even reveal new truths in Chandler’s story, whilst lacking others. Overall though it’s clear that both the novel and the movie are sublime; clever and gripping, sophisticated and cool. Entertainment at its best.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)