Books – Page 10 – Ripple Effects

Old Tales, New Takes

From the comments in my post What Maisie Knew (2012): From Book to Film, I see literature lovers, especially those who have read Henry James’s novel, are curious to watch the movie, wondering what a modern day film version could offer. Here is a good example of an adaptation exerting artistic and creative freedom to transpose while bringing out the spirit of the source material, ideas transferred as types onto the screen.

I can imagine too for literature purists, this is horror story. To them, movie adaptations are by definition a lower form of creation. They may be more acceptable if they follow exactly the same story lines and characterization. Any diversion spells disloyalty. How faithful and literal they are in the transposition is the sacred measure of their quality.

Having seen some retelling of literature effectively turned into cinematic form, I had long discarded the ‘loyalty’ criterion in my personal viewing. A ‘faithful adaptation’ doesn’t guarantee success, an example is the newest Romeo and Juliet (2013) which, using a modern day term, is pretty ‘lame’.

On the other hand, you might have enjoyed some movies without being aware of the literary source on which they are based, however loosely:

Apocalypse Now – Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Bridget Jones’s Diary – Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

The Claim – Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge

Clueless – Jane Austen’s Emma

Cruel Intentions – Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Easy A – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

The Hours – Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

Jude – Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure

The Lion King – Shakespeare’s Hamlet

My Fair Lady – Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

From Prada to Nada – A Latina version of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

O Brother, Where Art Thou? – Homer’s Odyssey

Ran (Kurosawa’s, another evidence that literature is universal) – Shakespeare’s King Lear

West Side Story – Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Of course there are those that still use the same title without having to hide an alter ego, but have given the source material a contemporary spin. Because of their new angle to an old story, viewers can glean fresh insights and gain a deeper appreciation. Here are a few productions in recent years that are worth watching:

Coriolanus (2011)

Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is placed in present day, fictional Rome. Modern politics, urban warfare, but same old human hunger for power, the treachery of pride and the ever complex entanglements of family ties. Ralph Fiennes is superb as Coriolanus rivalling and later aligning with his archenemy Aufidius (Gerald Butler). Vanessa Redgrave and Jessica Chastain play the two significant others in the life of Coriolanus the vengeful career warrior, his mother and wife. Alas, what’s a woman to do?

Much Ado About Nothing (2012)

If a movie adaptation had already been made by Kenneth Branagh with Emma Thompson and all the Brits in full period costumes and a colourful set, what is one supposed to do for a remake? Joss Whedon was ingenious enough to shoot it in a couple of weeks, like on a whim, right in his own Santa Monica, California home, in black and white. Every room, furniture, wine glass, and the swimming pool is Whedon’s, but every line is Shakespeare’s. Old story, modern humour. A most creative take.

Trishna (2011)

This is British director Michael Winterbottom’s third adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel, after Jude (1996, Jude the Obscure) and The Claim (2000, The Mayor of Casterbridge set in 1860’s California). This time he transports us to India. From the mass of humanity, we zoom in to one innocent girl in a poor rural area, 19 year-old Trishna. The trajectory of her fate and encounters parallel Tess of the d’Urbervilles in Thomas Hardy’s novel, equally poignant and tragic. The transposition is convincing. Freida Pinto of Slumdog Millionaire fame is perfectly cast as Trishna. Winterbottom’s naturalistic style matches the mood of the novel. Not easy to watch at times as we follow a powerless female in a class-centred, male dominated world. A beautifully shot film.

Blue Jasmine (2013)

I’ve written a full post on this. I see Blue Jasmine as Woody Allen’s homage to Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. A different time and place, altered names and backstories, but same kind of struggles, parallel character types. Vivien Leigh won an Oscar for her role as Blanche in the 1951 movie version as a displaced, worldly older sister coming to take shelter with her younger, less well-to-do sister. Cate Blanchett won hers playing Jasmine who faces similar predicaments. In typical Woody Allen style, a pathos and humour mashup. Blue Jasmine is an excellent new take on a piece of classic literature. Of course, in this case, we only see the overarching parallels, but it does speak to the subliminal power of old tales.

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Tess of the d’Urbervilles (2008 TV): The Lite Version Part 1, Part 2

Blue Jasmine: Homage and Re-imagining

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

A Summer in Genoa (2008, Michael Winterbottom, Colin Firth)

Book Sale 2014: A Very Restrained Purchase

It’s that time of the year again… no, I don’t mean nesting habit of birds. I’m referring to The Crossroads Market Annual Book Sale. A diversion from my usual avian pics for Saturday Snapshot, here’s a photo of my very restrained purchase this year.

Readers familiar with my previous annual book loot will know how I’d hauled back home dozens of like-new or even unopened books at $2 each. All for the good cause of supporting Servants Anonymous Society.

Due to the boxes of still unread inventory from previous years, I’d decided to refrain from gratifying my hoarding instinct this time. The result is this minimal bagging of just four books, which I’d spent hours hand picking. Again, $2 each, all in mint condition:

The reasons for these selections? Three had sold film rights and two of them are already in development for a movie adaptation. The fourth one isn’t going to be a movie, but no less dramatic.

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Other than being known as the Father of the Bride, Steven Martin is also a talented banjo player. I’ve heard his banjo playing, but as for his books, quite a few of them actually, I still haven’t had the pleasure to enjoy. So here it is, a Steve Marin novel with 22 full-colour art reproductions inside. Story is set in the demanding art world of Manhattan, about Sotheby’s up-and-coming and very ambitious Lacey Yeager who has set her mind on climbing high on the career ladder. Amy Adams had bought the film rights, aiming at producing and starring in it. Who is writing the screenplay? Ned Benson, who wrote and directed The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby Him and Her, which had me mesmerized at TIFF last year.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

The novel won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the UK and the Costa Awards in 2008, Irish Book Awards’ Novel of the Year, and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Roseanne McNulty has lived in a mental asylum for fifty plus years. Now at the ripe old age of one hundred, she decides to write her life story. Fascinating. So the book chapters transport the character and her readers between the present and the past. I look forward to the movie adaptation, just take a look at this perfect casting: the legendary Vanessa Redgrave as the older Roseanne McNulty and the talented Jessica Chastain as the younger. Producer is Noel Pearson, the Irish theatre and film producer who brought us the Oscar winning My Left Foot (1989, Daniel Day-Lewis). The Secret Scripture film adaptation has great potentials. Shooting is reported to be starting in June this year.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

Here in Canada, this is a multiple award winner: 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award, 2011 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize Finalist, 2011 Man Booker Prize Finalist, and selected as Amazon #1 Best Book of 2011. Film rights have been purchased by John C. Reilly’s production company… yes, the actor John C. Reilly, to turn this Western, yes, cowboy novel in the style of Elmore Leonard and True Grit into film. Should be an interesting read and movie. I don’t know about John C. Reilly, but, would he be willing to collaborate with the Coen brothers for the project?

The Film Club by David Gilmour

This is not the David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame. Again, despite being an award-winning Canadian author, one time TV personality and CBC film critic, university lecturer, people outside of Canada upon hearing the name would likely think of someone more famous, at least Google does. Due to his recent incendiary remarks on his preferences re. writers and literature, this Canadian Gilmour just may have raised some awareness, adding notoriety to his name.

However, for me it’s not about him but about this audacious parenting experiment he conducted. At the time, his son was a 16 year-old who had an incurable avoidance of school. Watching him loiter at the edge of the cliff of boredom and aimlessness, what is a father to do? Well, Gilmour let his son drop out of school, but on two conditions: watch three movies with him every week, and, no drugs. Not a bad offer. A father and son film club instead of school… only in Canada, eh? Which titles were in his syllabus? As a film buff, I’m totally intrigued by his unorthodox parenting method, already half way through the book. Will definitely share with you eager parents when I’m done.

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You might want to see what others have posted for their Saturday Snapshot. CLICK HERE to Melinda of West Metro Mommy Reads.

What Maisie Knew (2012): From Book to Film

With all due respect to Henry James, I’d rather be watching this contemporary adaptation of his work than slashing through the thickets of his novel. A thicket of a book, the last time I used this description was with Proust. And, if I’m to decipher long and incomprehensible sentences I’d rather be reading Proust than James. Nevertheless, James’s novel is a dense and deep psychological analysis of a dysfunctional marriage and its fallout on the child, a relevant issue today. Nobody wins in cases like that.

When published in 1897, it was probably one of the earliest fictional depictions of divorce and child-custody. Precocious Maisie knows much more than her parents could ever imagine. Like a volleyball, she is being tossed back and forth between her Mama and Papa, whichever side she lands on loses, for they both want their life to be free from child-rearing, free from ties and obligations. The notion of being ‘free’ recurs in the last chapters of the book, a key to how Maisie ends up choosing who to follow — her governess Mrs. Wix, someone who is not obsessed with being ‘free’, but who is committed to Maisie’s welfare.

Again, may I reiterate here as in previous posts about books to movies, the two are totally different art forms. Here, one is a 300 page literary work, internal, dense and deep. The other is a 93-minute production of visual storytelling, enhanced by dialogues and musical score. To achieve this end, screenwriters Nancy Doyne and Carroll Cartwright have to pick and choose the most relevant storyline and characters, and opt out of lengthy, internal exploration of psychological entanglements, something the literary form can describe readily. The screenwriters have done a good job in their choices, keeping the story simple and relevant for viewers a hundred years after the book was published. Despite the subject matter, the movie is enjoyable and highly watchable.

Set in modern day NYC, it smoothly tells a poignant story from the child’s point of view. Six-year-old Maisie (Onata Aprile) is eyewitness and victim of her parents’ constant quarrels and later divorce, a young child caught in the thorns and thistles of adult relationships. It is unfortunate that the most sensitive and observant child is often the most vulnerable. The naturalistic capture by the camera of Maisie’s quiet observations is most heart-wrenching. Maisie learns that the adult world is a busy place, her presence, an inconvenience. Thanks to the screenwriters’ gentler treatment, the movie spares us from some cruel, hateful fights in the book. We see Maisie ultimately get a taste of what it’s like to be cared for and to have some simple, childhood joy. The ending shot is beautiful.

Unlike Maisie in the novel, there is no moral dilemma for her in the movie. No doubt, the moral element is crucial in James’s novel. Divorce and adultery must have poked deep into the heart of James’s readers in his days. But our contemporary society has, alas, evolved into a ‘morally neutral’ state of numb resistance. The screenwriters may well know too that entertainment value comes before the didactic. We see no moral choices here with Maisie in the movie. After all, a young child will readily cling to whoever that loves her in deeds rather than mere words. Kudos to the filmmakers, they know the heart of a child.

Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel capture the story from Maisie’s viewpoint, natural and realistic, camera lens often at a lower angle. Certain shots are particularly affective, from inside a taxi, the transport of choice in Manhattan, at different times the vehicle that takes away Mama, Papa, and caring Margo. We would see from inside the taxi out to Maisie standing on the roadside, abandoned and distraught.

The wonderful cast is what makes the movie so absorbing, and at times, even heartwarming, despite its subject matter. The then seven year-old Onata Aprile is a natural. Julian Moore’s solid performance as her mother Susanna is convincing. She is a touring rock-and-roll singer who has passed her prime. Jealous and temperamental, Susanna’s love for Maisie is possessive, and often displayed in empty words. British actor Steve Coogan, known to North American viewers by his recent starring role in Philomena, plays the career-minded art dealer father Beale. Like his ex-wife, he is too busy with his own life to care for a child. They both say they love Maisie, showering bursts of affection whenever they see their child.

What saves Maisie is the awkwardly positioned step-parents, her father’s new wife and Maisie’s former babysitter Margo (Joanna Vanderham, the parallel of Ms. Overmore in the book) and her mother’s new love interest, the tall and young bartender Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård, a Sir Claude parallel). As predicted, they soon are abandoned themselves and the two quickly form a tie that includes Maisie in their life. Diverging from James’s story, the two are genuinely loving and caring, a soothing balm to Maisie and the viewers.

Overall, a fine, contemporary adaptation of the novel. To James purists, a loose reinvention; for viewers seeking meaningful entertainment, this should be on the list of films to watch.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

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The Budapest Hotel: A Grand Escape

“But it doesn’t mean anything.”
“So we put in words. One word for every note, like this…”

— ‘Do-Re-Mi’ from The Sound of Music

Does music need words to make it meaningful? Do we have to find a message in a work of art before we can appreciate it?

Here we are with a cinematic piece that can’t be ‘explained’. What genre? What theme? What purpose? I’m not going to bother. As with my experience of watching previous Wes Anderson movies, somehow, I feel I need to let my rational side relax and just enjoy the ride. Rushmore probably has more of a traditional storytelling mode and thematic content. But with The Royal Tenenbaums, I have to adjust the quirky frequency to high, it’s a totally different kind of viewing experience. Fantastic Mr. Fox, I was mesmerized by the stop-motion animation and humour, great voices add to the lively adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story. Moonrise Kingdom, I wasn’t fully gratified but by then, I was used to the Wes Anderson style of ‘magical realism’.

That ‘magical realism’ strikes again in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Not my favourite colour palette, red and pink, by I was totally captivated as soon as the film began. I was being led into a fairytale world of real life people. From the cinematic framing, it aptly demonstrates the idea of symmetry. In many frames, the subject is right in the centre, almost perfect symmetry on both sides of the screen. But does it mean anything? One might ask. If we have to be rational about it, shall we just say, for the effects of a neat and tidy piece of the old world. Framing nostalgia before the world becomes too distorted, too inhumane. This is, after all, 1930’s Europe. And we can see the parallels in signs and symbols especially towards the end of the movie when uniformed men take over the Hotel.

Wes Anderson credits Stefan Zweig in creating The Grand Budapest Hotel. The Austrian writer’s name is shown at the very beginning of the end credits. In numerous interviews, Anderson pays tribute to Zweig’s whole collection of works, a writer who is noted as once ‘the world’s most translated author’. Zweig is a relatively new discovery for Anderson but so deeply has the writer inspired the filmmaker that ‘it’s basically plagiarism’, Anderson joked at the news conference when the film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.

As someone who is much intrigued by the creative process of adapting books into films, I did read some Zweig before watching Budapest. I must be reading the wrong works though, I’d thought. From the novella Chess Story, to a few of the stories I read in the new collection recently translated into English, all tell very gloomy tales. The writings almost exude a sense of despair, as the characters are mostly running away from persecutions and ethnic cleansing, or memories thereof, even driven to madness as the chess champion Czentovic in Chess Story, albeit some descriptions embed a subtle trace of humour.

Maybe along the notion of ‘Wabi-sabi“, beauty and sadness, what Zweig has done subtly and now Anderson explicitly is to extract and fuse “humor and sadness”. Here in Budapest, writer/director Anderson has freely utilized the element of fantasy and fun to paint the passing of an old world, a realism too sad for millions in 1930’s Europe, Zweig being one of the subsequent victims. To escape the incendiaries of Nazism, Zweig and his second wife moved to England, then to the U.S., and finally to Brazil in 1940 where he ultimately committed suicide together with his wife in 1942, leaving a note of utter despair as he saw Nazism dominating Europe and his former homeland Austria.

In this fictitious Republic of Zubrowka, where The Grand Budapest Hotel is situated, Anderson offers us a great escape despite setting his story within the brewing tension of 1930’s Europe. The story begins with a closer to present day author (Tom Wilkinson) reminiscing upon an extraordinary experience which has inspired his book The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Years ago when he was still a young writer (Jude Law), in finding cures for writer’s block, he had retreated to a mountain hotel The Grand Budapest and in there met its owner, Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham). Known as Zero when he himself was just a lobby boy in an age long passed, the owner told the writer his story of how he came to inherit this grand piece of property, albeit in a run-down shape now. Someone volunteering an extraordinary life story to an author in an exotic locale, the beginning of Budapest reminds me of Life of Pi, another great tale of magical realism.

But the movie belongs to Ralph Fiennes as the hotel Concierge and go-to person for all sorts of favours, M. Gustave. The death of long time patroness of the Hotel Madame D. (Tilda Swinton) has dragged M. Gustave and his protégé, the new lobby boy Zero, down a rabbit hole of misadventures and fortunes. Fiennes has proven that he is a versatile actor that can be as evil as Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List, or as madly romantic as Count Almasy in The English Patient, or as charming and fun here in Budapest. His comic timing is first-rate, his expressions, spot-on. My long-range forecast, an Oscar nom awaits him next year for his role in Budapest.

The line-up of talents is long, not just in acting, where we find the usuals of Wes Anderson movies like Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum. Saoirse Ronan (breakout role as young Briony in Atonement) as Agatha the pastry maker is adroit and whimsical. She’s well matched to the young lobby boy Zero, aptly played by Tony Revolori.

The movie is also marked by the delightful compositions of Alexandre Desplat, whose musical scores adorn many notable movies in recent years. A collaborator with Anderson since Rushmore but here, Desplat’s scores captivated me early on with the lively East European themes and in particular, the Russian folk melodies. Some instruments that we seldom hear in other films are distinctly alluring, such as balalaikas, zithers, dulcimers, and organ, with full orchestral rendering. Another long-range forecast, Oscar for original score.

And then there’s the make-up of Tilda Swinton, the art work and production design of the whole Budapest experience (even the parody painting “Boy with an Apple” is an original art work by English painter Michael Taylor from a real life model), the flowing editing, the original screenplay and directing, the cinematography, Budapest Hotel is going to be one grand entry in the next Academy Awards.

~ ~ ~ 1/2 Ripples

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Awards Update:

Feb. 22, 2015: Oscars for Best Costume Design, Make-up, Production Design, Original Score.

Feb. 14, 2015: Wins Best Original Screenplay from WGA.

Feb. 8, 2015: 5 BAFTA wins, Original Screenplay, Original Music, Production Design, Make-up and Hair, Costume Design.

Jan. 15, 2015: 9 Oscar noms, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Production Design, Make Up and Hair-Styling, Costume Design, Original Score.

Jan. 11, 2015: Golden Globe win for Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical

Dec. 11: 4 Golden Globe noms for Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical, Wes Anderson for Best Director and Best Screenplay, Ralph Fiennes for Best Actor – Comedy or Musical

Dec. 10: SAG nom for Best Cast in a Motion Picture

Dec. 7: The Grand Budapest Hotel wins Best Screenplay and Best Production Design at the L.A. Film Critics Awards

Dec. 1: The Grand Budapest Hotel just wins Best Screenplay from the New York Film Critics Circle

From NPR: The Rise and Fall of Stefan Zweig

The Music Behind the Screen

The Untold Story Behind ‘Boy With Apple’

The Railway Man by Eric Lomax: Book Review

This is an important book in that it chronicles the real-life experience of a prisoner of war in the hands of the Japanese army after the British surrendered in Singapore during WWII. The Pacific War is a part of WWII history that has often been ignored, other than the Pearl Harbour chapter. The British Empire in the Far East was dealt a deadly blow by Japanese invasions, and, British POW’s suffered not a bit less than those in Hitler’s death camps.

Japanese atrocities and war crimes have often been muffled in this our North American society. I don’t want to speculate why but yes, I do have an inkling which I will not discuss here. But as someone who had grown up in Hong Kong and came to Canada as a teenager, I can tell the difference in knowledge and perceptions when I compare the generally uninformed public of the West and those who themselves or their elders’ generation had lived through in Asia during the war.

Because of the general lack of knowledge on the Far East during WWII, Eric Lomax’s first person narrative as a POW in a Japanese labour camp and later military prison is all the more valuable. The memoir starts off with his love for the railways in childhood and how it turned into a youthful passion for engineering and radios that later led him to the Royal Signals Corp of the British army during the war in Singapore. As the colony fell to Japanese hands, Lomax’s life was torturously demented in subsequent decades until the very end.

Eric Lomax was a young 22 year-old when he was captured and moved with tens of thousands of POW’s to Kanchanaburi, Thailand, to build the notorious ‘Death Railway’ in 1943. It was a passage way for military transport from Thailand to Burma, and the route of a possible Japanese invasion of India. The conditions of forced labour were horrendous. Many POW’s died building the railway. This part of the world was the subject of the famous movie Bridge on the River Kwai, an unrealistic (even farcical now that I’ve read Lomax’s memoir) depiction of British POW’s inside Japanese military camps.

With his skills, Lomax and several others built a radio secretly to get news of the war. The radio was later discovered, together with a map Lomax had carefully drawn up of the railway line. Six of them were interrogated and savagely beaten by The Kempetai, or goon squad, as Lomax described them. Both his arms, wrist, several ribs, teeth, and his hip were broken. Two died from the beatings. While Lomax survived, more tortures and horrendous treatments followed in the days after. The experiences had left him permanently damaged psychologically for the rest of his life. Decades after the war, Lomax was still being tortured by terrifying flashbacks. The nightmares continued until he met his tormentor and forgiveness replaced hatred and vengeance.

So all in all, a significant story to tell. But while the book’s description is straight forward and clear, it leaves me ungratified as to its writing style and lack of deeper exploration, with all due respect to the author and his horrific, nightmares of ordeals. Yes, he had done a detailed job in reporting his personal journey from childhood to the war, the tortures and his suffering, other victims and their fate. As well, he recorded the aftermath of his horrific experiences as he re-entered ‘normal’ society, and sadly still, to a family that he no longer knew. His mother had died of a broken heart and his father had remarried. I was particularly engrossed with the after war effects in the last chapters.

However, the internal change of heart for the reconciliation with the Japanese interpreter had not been explored. After the bulk of the book describing his painful ordeals, the very last chapter of a happy ending looks off-balanced. It all started with the Japanese officer and interpreter, Takashi Nagase, who was present at Lomax’s torture, publishing his autobiography in his seventies. In there, he even mentioned the torture of Lomax, but due to his remorse, he felt he had been ‘forgiven’. Lomax’s second wife Patti, upon reading the English translation of the book, decided to write to Nagase regarding her husband. Patti’s letter opened up a chance for the later meeting between the tormentor and the victim.

Nagase had shown deep remorse, and dedicated his life after the war to help the Allies locate graves of POW’s, to ‘make-up’ for the wrongs the Japanese army had done. In his meeting with Lomax fifty years later, both in their seventies, near the bridge on the River Kwai, Nagase offered his visibly acute and sincere regrets for what the Japanese army had done to the British soldiers. A forgiving spirit suddenly took hold of Lomax and the two became friends. However, Lomax did not go deep into how his ingrained hatred and vengeance were alleviated, except noting that Nagase was a changed man now.

Further, the book had not answered a question I’ve always pondered. No, I understand it was never intended to delve into that issue as it is a personal memoir and not a political or philosophical treatise. But this question has been unsettling for me. What if the tormentor had no remorse, could reconciliation be possible? Other than Nagase, we know that many in Japan today still worship their dead WWII soldiers including war criminals as national heroes, unlike Germany’s denunciation of the Nazi regime. History textbooks had even been changed to tone down Japan’s aggression in the war. Even as recent as January 2014, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited and paid his pilgrimage at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. The controversial Shrine is a clear symbol of, in Lomax’s words, “an unashamed celebration of militarism”. In the book, we also read that Nagase had taken the unpopular and even dangerous stance of denouncing this war monument. To victims and their descendants of Japanese wartime atrocities, the chapter has not ended; in international politics, the issue remains.

It is always a triumph to see true remorse and subsequent reconciliation. Lomax’s personal story is extraordinary for both himself and Nagase. In that sense, readers are gratified with a light at the end of a long, dark chapter of one life, a bright stroke on the large canvas of WWII history.

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The Railway Man by Eric Lomax, first published in Great Britain, 1995 by Jonathan Cape. Movie tie-in edition by Vintage Books, London, 2014, 322 pages.

** Movie Adaptation: I saw The Railway Man the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. So far, there has not been a general, major release of the film here in North America. As much as I’d like to share my view on the film, with Colin Firth as Eric Lomax, Nicole Kidman as his wife Patti, and Jeremy Irvine as young Lomax, I intend to wait till there is a public release of the film before I post my review. Let’s hope I don’t have to wait much longer.

Related Links:

Pride and Pain of Patti Lomax

Railway Man’s Forgotten Family

What Japanese History Lessons leave out by Mariko Oi

Listening for Lent

In the old days, say, six years ago, reading for me was, simply, reading. Holding a book in my hands, read through the printed words, turned the pages manually, feeling the paper at my fingertips. But today, I have several ways to ‘experience’ a book. I can still read in the old traditional way, or download the eBook to my iPad using the app ‘OverDrive’, or, listen to an audiobook, on CD’s or MP3.

As a slow reader, I find listening to audiobooks a time-saving way, albeit I still prefer to hold a book in my hands and see prints on paper. But in this day of multi-tasking, I sometimes listen to audiobooks while driving as I can fit in my reading time. I confess, I could be distracted by the story, or the traffic. But overall, listening to audiobooks while driving is a perfect alternative for me, in lieu of time and space for ‘actual’ reading.

Recently I read an article by T. M. Luhrmann in the New York Times entitled Audiobooks and the Return of Storytelling. This insightful piece introduced me to a different reason for listening to audiobooks.

First off, Luhrmann takes down the generally accepted view that reading with our eyes as ‘more serious, more highbrow’ than listening to a story being told orally. She points to the early childhood experience when way before we could read, we were introduced to stories through listening to them. So maybe such a notion extends to our adult life making us feel that listening to stories is a childlike activity than reading the text on our own.

Many great books were actually oral legends, Luhrmann points out, “… for most of human history literature has been spoken out loud. The Iliad and the Odyssey were sung.” Noted. Can’t say listening to audiobooks is child’s play.

Luhrmann then comes to the crux of her idea. While we listen to an audiobook, we can do something else with our eyes and hands. That’s just obvious, isn’t it? Exactly what I said at the beginning of this post, the benefit of multitasking. But I was too rash to have thought I knew it so. What I read after this was nothing short of an epiphany for me.

No, not while driving, but when Luhrmann is gardening, she listens. Often, she would listen to the Bible. I love what she has to say next (emphasis mine):

Listening to a book is a different sensory experience than reading it. The inner imagining of the story becomes commingled with the outer senses — my hands on the trowel, the scent of tansy in the breeze. The creation of this sensory richness was in fact an explicit goal of the oral reading of the Bible in the medieval European cloister, so that daily tasks would be infused with Scripture, and Scripture would be remembered through ordinary tasks.

Whenever she looks at the “50 polypodium californicas and 50 festuca idahoensis in the dappled light beneath [her] oaks” she would think of “Gatsby’s extraordinary gift for hope.” Why, Luhrmann was listening to Fitzgerald’s novel while planting those the year before. Now looking at the plants would flash upon that inward eye what she had heard.

Of course, that sounds so simple and natural, a kind of classical conditioning, if you will. We fuse our senses and experience. All the more that we should listen to good books or we’ll have bad memories looking at the tasks we’d performed.

And what a wonderful idea Luhrmann had left me with: Scripture-infused daily tasks. That can’t be more apt for Lent.

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Tanya Marie Luhrmann teaches Anthropology at Stanford.

Related Posts on Ripple Effects:

No Texting for Lent and the End of Solitude

The Dinner by Herman Koch: A Timely Read, for Lent?

Dances With Words

What Makes a Good Audiobook Narrator?

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More Downton Ripples

Two years ago, some time after Downton Abbey Season 2 had finished airing on PBS, I wrote my first “Downton Ripples” post. I subtitled it “How I Overcome Downton Abbey Withdrawal Syndrome”. In that post, I’d listed some books and movies/TV productions that relate to the setting similar to Downton Abbey, for I was fascinated by the Great War period after watching Downton.

Some of the authors I read included Robert Graves, Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh, and watched Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust, Easy Virtue and discovered Lost Empires, the TV series with a young Colin Firth together with Laurence Olivier, amazing.

This time, after Season 4, the withdrawal syndrome seems to have numbed a bit, but the ripples continue to spread. Again, Downton has prodded me to seek out the literature around the time between WW1 and WW2 Europe. While there are many present day authors writing about that era, I’d like to hear more authentic voices. I went looking for writers actually living in that period of history to hear their stories.

The following is a list of titles I’ve gone through this time, some I have finished, some still on my ‘To be’ agenda:

Parade’s End (2012, BBC/HBO co-production)

This series complements Downton Abbey perfectly. While Downton is light and heart-warming, soapy in its feel, Parade’s End is cerebral and literary, its social commentary of the time harsher and more incisive. I think the difference is, Julian Fellowes creates as a contemporary screenwriter, and knowing what modern day viewers want, he caters to their desire. Yes, he has offered us charming entertainment, and for the stars and the show, opportunities for Emmy and Golden Globe noms and wins.

Parade’s End is another story. Playwright Tom Stoppard (Emmy and BAFTA nom for this) adapts from Ford Madox Ford, a writer during WWI period, contemporary of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the Lost Generation after The Great War, and witness to the destruction of the old world order and individual lives. Sure social barriers were dismantled, but together with such collapse came the shattering of long-held values and beliefs. Through the protagonist Christopher Tietjens, we can feel the intense struggles and poignancy of a man caught in such desolation.

I first saw Parade’s End on HBO when there was a window of free viewing. After watching one episode, I knew I must subscribe to continue with the rest of the series, and so I did. Effective advertising indeed. That was last year, and I recently just finished re-watching Parade’s End on Blu-Ray.

Parade’s End is the first time I watch Benedict Cumberbatch in a leading role (Emmy nom), an impressive performance as Christopher Tietjens, one of the last remaining honourable men struggling to stay afloat in the drowning waves of social change and ideals. Rebecca Hall (BAFTA nom) is effective as the scheming and seductive wife Sylvia. The young, almost ethereal Adelaide Clemens as suffragette Valentine Wannop is perfect. She makes me think of Carey Mulligan. And what a wonderful connection — Mulligan will be the star of the new film Suffragette, which I highly anticipate.

Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford

This will be my major challenge in TBR books this year. Image here is the BBC Book edition I bought in a book sale a few years back. It has 906 pages, and is made up of four novels — Some Do Not, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up, and The Last Post. A more recent edition is the reissue of Penguin Modern Classic, with a new introduction written by Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending). You can read the intro here.

Parade’s End by Tom Stoppard

I enjoy reading the scripts of productions I like. It’s a kind of deconstruction, if you will, demythisizing of sort. I’m fascinated by the skills of a screenwriter who uses words to elicit images for the director to execute, translating the literary into the visual using words. To write for the screen almost sounds like an oxymoron. I’ve read Julian Fellowe’s Downton Abbey scripts and found it most interesting. I’d like to explore Tom Stoppard’s journey of adaptation. But first, I need to tackle Ford Madox Ford’s original texts.

T. S. Eliot — After Downton and Parade’s End, I’m all geared up to explore deeper into the the psyche and spirituality of the time. Why, after all, what had lost in a generation was not just the physical bodies or social structures, but the internal, the destruction of a value and belief system. I’d like to read and reread Eliot’s works, delve into a time that prompted the poet to see hollow men, and women come and go, talking of Michelangelo. What’s underneath the façade of human progress?

The Europeans by Henry James — A voice from the dawn of the 20th Century. I have finished listening to the amusing auidiobook of The Europeans. Yes, unlike many readers’ impression of James’ works, The Europeans is a delightful read (listen). It is like a medley of E. M. Forster and Jane Austen. Humorous depiction of the different POV’s between a pair of European sister/brother coming to visit their American cousins residing in the outskirt of Boston. With some LOL moments. My next James read is The Ambassadors.

Stefan Zweig — While Lady Edith’s love Michael Gregson headed to Germany and mysteriously gone missing, the then famous (real life) writer Stefan Zweig in Austria was lamenting the spread of anti-semitism in the continent. It’s interesting that Downton has led me to connect, at least in historical timeline, with an author I’ve just recently discovered, thanks to Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, to which he has credited the works of Stefan Zweig. I’ve recently read Zweig’s Chess Story, and now delving into his short stories.

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The Dinner by Herman Koch: A Timely Read, for Lent?

Why is this book compared to Gone Girl? It’s nothing like it. The Dinner belongs to a totally different calibre. If I have to compare it to something, then I’d say, reading it conjures up Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Are there really some in our society who think themselves so superior that they ought to be above the law? The law, after all, is a human construct. Can we not bend it to serve our own interest, when the interest is out of love for our son, or wife, or husband?

The Dinner is Dutch writer Herman Koch’s sixth novel. It has sold over a million copies and translated into twenty-one languages. The book deals with subjects that are soul-searching: The dichotomy between nature and nurture; how much of our being and psyche is hereditary? What portions of our actions are a result of our own waywardness as lost souls? As I was reading, the movie “We Need to Talk About Kevin” (2011) came to mind. However, what is not present at least in the Kevin movie is the accessory after the fact component.

The Dinner starts off with quite an original concept. The author parallels the story development with a gourmet dinner two couples are having in an upscale restaurant. The Apéritif and the Appetizer are the foretaste of what we will get for the Main Course. What appears to be petty, disgruntled complaints and personal biases of the narrator’s in the early chapters turn out to be only a light appetizer, for the main course is when a horrific crime is revealed. The ‘horror’, though, isn’t limited to the crime per se, for it is chilling to read how everyone involved deals with the aftermath.

The main course is a gripping thriller based on a real-life crime. After reading the novel, I googled and did find the report on it. Koch tells the story effectively with his straight-forward descriptions written with journalistic detachment, and incisive observation as the notes of a perceptive psychoanalyst. Further, he informs us with the detailed thought process of his narrator. Here is a disturbing look at someone who is capable to love his wife and son deeply but hates everyone else that crosses his path. This is more than a thriller though, for the moral dilemma or rather, its characters’ lack of sensitivity to it, is what makes the book provocative.

I don’t think we are expected to ‘like’ or even ‘identify’ with any of the characters. The book is effective in that we are left as observers. And with that, hopefully, we just might think a little deeper into issues concerning our humanity, and in the next generation of humans we bring up. How much are our children a result of our parenting and examples, how much are they a result of their own choosing and decisions? Can nature or nurture excuse us from our errors? If Freud were around today, The Dinner just might be on his reading list. But, would he be able to offer a remedy to save us from ourselves?

The ending shares a similar thought with the Woody Allen movie Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989). Now, as soon as I said this, some of you familiar with the movie might think I’ve dropped a spoiler in here. So, that’s the farthest I’ll go in describing the plot and details of The Dinner. The aftertaste may be haunting, but it is something that we should face as a human society.

Today is the beginning of Lent. I always feel such is an opportune time not so much about refraining from pleasure like abstaining from going to fancy restaurants for gourmet dinners, but in dwelling on the meaning of Easter. The Dinner may just have, inadvertently, reinforced the notion that we as individuals in a human society do need some form of saving grace after all.

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The Dinner by Herman Koch, translated by Sam Garrett, published by Hogarth, 2012, 320 pages.

Books to Movie Adaptations Updates

Here are some updates that look promising, books that are in various stages of development into movies. For yourself or your book group, should make a good reading list:

East of Eden — This just came out two days ago, Hunger Games director Gary Ross will write the screenplay of this new adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic, with Jennifer Lawrence to star. For J. Law fans, this is good news. But for devotees of the original 1955 movie adaptation directed by the legendary Elia Kazan with the debut breakout role for James Dean, this modern version definitely is uncalled for, a rebel without a cause.

An Object of Beauty — The movie version of Steve Martin’s novel about the NYC art gallery scene is now a project of Amy Adams’, with Ned Benson writing the screenplay. I have high expectation of this one, having seen Benson’s wonderful works The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her last year at TIFF. The cast has not been announced but Amy Adams will be the producer and actor in her new project.

A Walk In The Woods — from the vast open sea in All Is Lost to the Appalachian Trail, Robert Redford will appear in this adaptation of the 1998 personal memoir by Bill Bryson, a walk on the Appalachian Trail to ‘rediscover America.’ Nick Nolte is also reported to be in the cast. Screenplay by Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3, The Hunger Games), directed by Ken Kwapis (The Office). The movie is scheduled to come out in 2015. Enough time to read or reread, or even walk the Trail yourself. Who knows, you might see the film crew while there.

Beautiful Ruins — Author Jess Walter of this popular novel will co-write the screenplay with writer/director Todd Field. I’ve seen Field’s Oscar nominated adaptation of Little Children (2006 with Kate Winslet nom. for Best Actress), a haunting film. I trust his talents with Beautiful Ruins. Considering the Italian coastal setting of the book, the movie would likely offer some beautiful cinematography. Imogen Poots is on board, so far.

The Dinner — Dutch author Herman Koch’s novel is like a dynamite. I’m half way through the lighted fuse as I type this post, so it’s not full-blown yet, but I’m totally engrossed in this book based on a real-life crime. The dinner menu in an elegant restaurant ingeniously parallels the plot development. I missed it at TIFF last year. And since, I’m not aware that it has made its presence on the big screens here in North America. But hopefully this year we will have the chance to see it. Even if it doesn’t show in your city, read the book still. (Update: to read my book review on Goodreads CLICK HERE.)

The Hundred-foot Journey — Another culinary movie. This one is much lighter than the above, based on Richard C. Morais’s novel. Story is about a family from India moves to France, opening an Indian restaurant across from a Michelin-starred fine French restaurant. Cultural clashes, the reverse of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The book is quite entertaining, the movie comes with some big names. Producers Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, Helen Mirren to star, and directed by the prolific Lasse Hallström (Chocolat, 2000; The Shipping News, 2001; Salmon Fishing In the Yemen, 2011)

The Giver – The highly popular young adult book by Lois Lowry finally gets a movie appearance, over twenty years after its publication in 1993. Utopia turned bad, ideals and reality. With so many movies on a dystopia, will this still look fresh? Cast include Jeff Bridges as The Giver, and look here, Meryle Streep, Taylor Swift, Alexander Skarsgard, Philip Noyce directs. One of Noyce’s previous works is the adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American (2002). Many may have read this title in school. Time to reread.

The Little Prince — Lots of talents are behind this newest animation based on the beloved story by French author and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Those lending a voice include: Rachel McAdams, James Franco, Marion Cotillard, Jeff Bridges, Paul Giamatti. While I love the earlier musical version (1974, with Gene Wilder as The Fox), I welcome a new adaptation, for I know this will bring the book to the limelight for a new generation. Making a movie nowadays looks to be the most effective way to introduce literature to a younger generation (or whatever generations).

The Secret Scripture — By the Booker Prize short-listed Irish author Sebastian Barry. The novel is an internal dialogue of a close to 100 years-old patient in a mental hospital, Roseanne McNulty, reminiscing her younger days. The older character will be played by the brilliant Vanessa Redgrave, her younger self by the talented Jessica Chastain. I last see them together in a film was in Ralph Fiennes’s directorial debut, the modern version of Shakespear’s Coriolanus. Don’t think these two ladies will appear in the same scene in The Secret Scripture since they are of different time periods, but good to know that the roles are being played by two wonderful actors.

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Previous Books to Movies Lists:

2014 Book To Movie Adaptations

Upcoming Book to Movie Adaptations

Great Movies Expectations

Book Review of The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais

Do We Need Another Rebecca Remake? Another Grapes of Wrath?

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2014 Book to Movie Adaptations

I’m sure without any more suggestions, you have plenty to read already. But just in case you’re one of those who likes to read the book before watching its movie adaptation, here’s a list to add to your 2014 reading:

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carré

The most recent John Le Carré novel to be adapted into a movie. He has eight so far. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdam, Robin Wright, Daniel Brühl star. Directed by Anton Corbijn whose last film was the thoughtful The American (2010), a film adaptation I found to be much better than the book. A Most Wanted Man is to be premiered at Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 16-26, 2014, in Park City, Utah.

The Double by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A government clerk after seeing his own double–but a completely opposite personality from his introverted and unsure self–ultimately goes down a path of madness. Should be one captivating psychological thriller, but interestingly according to IMDb, it’s a comedy. Jesse Eisenberg stars (I can see the casting is spot on). At TIFF last year. To be screened at Sundance this January.

Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman

Acclaimed psychological thriller about missing children and their abductors now turned into suspense drama by director Amy Berg, known for her riveting documentary West of Memphis (2012) about the ‘West Memphis Three’. Adapted screenplay by Nicole Holofcener, who wrote and directed the recent, award winning indie film Enough Said (2013). Dakota Fanning, Diane Lane.

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Carey Mulligan stars as Bathsheba Everdene, screenplay adaptation by David Nicholls, who has written other classics adaptations such as Great Expectations (2012), Tess of the D’Urberville (2008). But my personal favourite of his works is the gem When Did You Last See Your Father? (2007) And if you’ve seen the intense Danish film The Hunt (just nom for an Oscar), you’d be curious to see its director Thomas Vinterberg at the helm of this latest Hardy adaptation.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

A woman mysteriously disappears on the day of her wedding anniversary. A NYT bestseller, the thriller will be directed by David Fincher, two-time Oscar nominee for The Social Network (2010) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Ben Affleck, Roasmund Pike, and Neil Patrick Harris star.

Hector and the Search For Happiness by François Lelord

Psychiatrist turned writer Lelord’s internationally popular book about a psychiatrist’s globe-trotting search for happiness. Sounds like a delightful read and an original movie idea. Intriguing cast includes Rosamund Pike, Toni Collette, Christopher Plummer, Simon Pegg, Stellan Skarsgård. If I’m attracted by the cover to read the book, it will be this one.

Labour Day by Joyce Maynard

From the POV of a 13 year-old boy, how his labour day weekend changes his life as an escaped convict (Josh Brolin) asks him and his mother (Kate Winslet) for a temporarily shelter. Mother and son soon find that he could well be the husband and father they respectively need. But of course, there are twists and turns. Jason Reitman (Up In The Air, 2009) writes the screenplay and directs. Winslet got a Golden Globe nom for Best Actress for her role.

Life Itself by Roger Ebert

Ebert’s memoir is adapted into a documentary by Steve James, whose film ‘Hoop Dreams’ was greatly supported by Ebert twenty years ago. Life Itself the book is an eyewitness history of film criticism in America, on top of a moving personal memoir. The doc will premiere in Sundance beginning today Jan. 16 – 26. Click here to read my personal encounter with the legend.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

A quick jump for Mia Wasikowska from Jane Eyre to Emma Bovary. Of course, she’s also Alice in Wonderland, and a sequel of that will be coming out in 2016. Paul Giamatti co-stars. I’m delighted to see all these classics being adapted into modern movies, raising awareness for a new generation of readers. Let’s just hope the film does justice to the literary source.

The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel

I’ve mentioned this before. The true but untold story of how a group of rescuers called ‘The Monuments Men’ in war-torn Europe saved art and artifacts from the Nazi’s. In the introduction of the book, the author writes: “Hitler and the Nazis pulled off the ‘greatest theft in history’, seizing and transporting more than five million cultural objects to the Third Reich.” Star George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin (The Artist), Hugh Bonneville (so Lord Grantham finally gets the chance to go into the battlefield).

Noah

Read the Bible. This epic adaptation is based on the Biblical account of Noah and the Great Flood. Helmed by Darren Aronofsky, Oscar nominee for Best Director for Black Swan (2010). Russell Crowe is Noah, and Anthony Hopkins is … uh… Methuselah. Others include Emma Watson, Logan Lerman (as Ham), Douglas Booth (Shem), Nick Nolte (?) Interesting postmodern interpretation I suspect.

Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin

All ye Downton Abbey and Lady Sybil fans, this is the first movie Jessica Brown Findlay made after Downton, with co-stars Colin Farrell, Jennifer Connelly, Will Smth. Directed by Akiva Goldsman, Oscar winner of Best Adapted Screenplay for A Beautiful Mind (2001). The setting is interesting as it depicts the story from both the beginning and the end of the 20th C. Another time warp fantasy. Click here to the book’s webpage.

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More titles mentioned by commenters (A sequel list will come at a later date):

Serena by Ron Rash (Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper)

Suite Français by Irène Némirovsky (Michelle Williams, Kristin Scott Thomas)

Son of God based on The Bible

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Top Ripples of 2013

It’s not easy to rate a whole year’s experience by Ripples, unlike a two-hour movie. However, here are some stats I’ve compiled for my own records.

Ripple Effects is all about books and movies. For me, watching a movie definitely is a much easier activity than finishing a book. So far this year, my movie number is around 100, almost three times as many as books I’ve read. They include movies I’ve watched on the big screen in theatres, at TIFF, and on DVD and Blu-ray formats at home. But I’m sure there are still a few I’d forgotten to jot down.

I’ve written 16 movie reviews on Ripple Effects this year, and they are not all 2013 releases. This number represents only a dearth of my film experience. From this small collection, there are two that I’ve given 4/4 Ripples (I’m sure I’ll add some more in this Award Season):

Nebraska
12 Years A Slave

These two came close, with 3½ Ripples:

Before Midnight
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her (TIFF 13)

And several more with 3 Ripples. Click here to my review list.

For my trip to Toronto to attend TIFF in September, definitely a 4-Ripple experience.

Many of the movies I watched this year are “catch-up’s”. They are cinema classics I’d missed over the past decades. These are films that I’d long wanted to see but had not the time or the chance to. Yes, this ‘catching-up’ activity is a most enjoyable time for me. They don’t make movies like these anymore. No CGI, no colours even, yet we can see a kaleidoscope of characters, fantastic scenes and poignant human conditions. So, Top Ripples go to:

Federico Fellini’s I Vitelloni (1953), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8½ (1963)
Victorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), Rashomon (1950)
Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957)

Some others are book-related. Before the newest remakes come into being, I’d like to experience the original version, like:

Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940)
Elia Kazan’s East of Eden (1955)
John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Still other films I watched and/or rewatched to prepare for or just to go together with what looks like is their latest version, or homage, if you will, like the following to coincide with Before Midnight (2013):

Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives (1992)

Or Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) to go with Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine (2013)

Along the way during this rewarding movie-watching year, I’ve discovered some foreign language films, two in particular stand out: Korean director Chang-dong Lee’s Poetry (2010) and Secret Sunshine (2007)

As a freelance reviewer, I continue to be a contributor to Asian American Press as their film and arts guest columnist. Further, and this I’m really excited about, my feature article on the Canadian-Korean playwright/actor Ins Choi was published on the December 4th issue of Curator Magazine.

Even though I’ve only read a small number of books compared to movies watched, I’m glad I’d completed a major challenge, and that’s reading Proust. It’s definitely a 4-Ripple experience for me, despite having had to slash my way through thickets and at times, find my way out of a literary labyrinth. My post on this first taste of Proust was featured on WordPress’s ‘Freshly Pressed’. Now that’s the bonus madeleines on top of an already savory meal.

Another book I hold high esteem is Eric Metaxas’s Bonhoeffer, a Read-Along I hosted earlier in 2013. I’d enjoyed the camaraderie of reading the same book with others, and the discussion of ideas. Finishing a book or not is not as important as taking part in the journey, even for a little while, as we share our thoughts. 4 Ripples.

For old acquaintances and new friends I’ve made in the blogging world this year, I must give another 4 Ripples. This is the major reward of blogging. To all the new blogs and sites I’ve discovered, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our mutual visits.

As for posts, looks like my “Quotable Quotes from Downton Abbey” has taken over “Memorable Movie Love Quotes” as the most popular these days. And I can understand why. Let’s get ready for Downton Season 4, coming up in just a few days.

And for my adventures as a nature paparazzo and bird-stalker, I give them nothing less than Top Ripples.

To 2014, I have a few ideas. This may involve a bit more individual studies, and researching into topics that have interested me for some time. Yes, films and their influence in our postmodern culture, into that topic I will continue to delve. So there you have it, more books and movies to share with you all. As always, I invite you to come by the pond and throw in your two pebbles. I cling on to my motto: “Serenity is golden, but sometimes a few ripples are needed as proof of life.”

To All, a Four-Ripple 2014!

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The Book Thief (2013): From Book to Film

It’s been a week since I watched The Book Thief, but the face of Geoffrey Rush still creeps into my mind every now and then. We were talking about famous faces on a previous post. A good actor draws you right into his character without distractions from his previous roles, and here’s a good example. Regardless of Rush’s successful roles in the past, here in The Book Thief, I only see Hans, the nondescript yet loving step-father to Liesel.

The movie is an adaptation of the popular 2005 YA novel of the same name by Markus Zusak. The book had appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list for 375 weeks. It had since been translated into more than forty languages. Congruent with the age target of the book, this is an appropriate adaptation. It is a PG movie, so we won’t see the violence and horror as intense and explicit as in Schindler’s List.

Before anyone jumps to shoot it down as a ‘sanitized’ version of the Holocaust, let me just say it pertains to the spirit of the novel in quietly depicting life in a small German town under the pressure of Nazi warmongering. It shows a side of the usual WWII movies we seldom see, the ordinary German folks. Zooming in on a street in a small town, it shows the effects of a fierce political regime have on its grass-root citizens: husbands and wives, children, friends, neighbors and acquaintances like the neighborhood tailor or accountant, some of whom suddenly taken away and labelled as the Enemy: Jews.

The focus of the story is on the humanity. No doubt, the majority of the town folks are swayed by and immersed in Nazi ideology, yet there are still a few who stand silently against the ferocious regime, but can do nothing. Even a feeble voice of dissent will send them to conscription regardless of age. That’s what happens to Hans.

As in the book, we have Death as the voice-over narrator, quietly looming over the fictional town Molching, busy at work. Liesel (Sophie Nélisse) arriving at her new home to her adopted parents on Heaven Street. Yes, ironic, since her little brother has died during the trip. The girl soon finds her new home a comfort, and makes a new friend with Rudy (Nico Liersch) next door. Her step-mother is Rosa, played by Emily Watson who reprises her role as in The War Horse as the seemingly tough and bossy wife and overseer of the home. Her husband is Hans, played by Geoffrey Rush with affective charisma, who shows himself from the beginning that he is the emotion powerhouse, the engine that runs the movie.

Directed by Brian Percival (who helms episodes of Downton Abbey), the movie is unabashedly explicit in its emotional channeling. By that, I don’t mean it’s overtly sentimental and melodramatic. The fine line that separates the two may be the word ‘restraint’. Rush and Watson have depicted this quality memorably. He may look oblivious in appearance, but is ever wise and compassionate in spirit; she conversely holds a feisty facade only to hide a tender and caring heart. It is a delight watching them relate to each other.

For a YA novel turned into film, the spotlight has to be on the young protagonist Liesel. Sophie Nélisse is a precocious rising star who has won a Genie in the acclaimed French Canadian film Monsieur Lazhar (2011). She has already won a Spotlight Award at the Hollywood Film Festival for The Book Thief. Nico Liersch playing Rudy looks to be a few years too young, but being a good actor, the two loyal friends ultimately shine through as the movie picks up its momentum.

The plot line of hiding the Jewish young man Max, son of Han’s wartime comrade to whom he owes his life, adds texture to the story. Max inspires Liesel to love words even more, igniting that spark in her later to write down her story. To Max, the hiding place is more than a shelter from the storm. It is his connection to the decency and dignity of being human. The snowball fight in his hideout in the basement is one of my favorite scenes.

As for books, reading, and words, looks like they just work as a cover, in both the book and the movie. That Liesel comes as an illiterate ten year-old in Germany may not be quite plausible. The few episodes where she steals a book are incidental, lacking potent effects. The movie nevertheless is persuasive in its subtle way by turning mere book characters into flesh and blood human beings. The Book Thief is about humans. It shows their ugly face that haunts even Death, and their triumphant side that makes Death envious, the power to love, to hope, and to live despite tragedy and loss.

This is not a great film, but one that quietly touches, and subversively moves one to tears. It will not make any major award list, and would likely be dismissed by some critics. But this is the kind of films that, years later, one would discover serendipitously and exclaim, “Why have I missed this little gem?”

~ ~ ~ Ripples