Review: The Scarlet Letter (1995)

               

Shamefully misunderstood and underrated

           
This movie has been harshly criticized by shallow book lovers who just can't stand the fact that, save the names of the main characters and the basic elements of the plot, it has nothing to do with the novel. True. So what? A movie, too, is supposed to be a work of art, and art must have nothing to do with copying. If you want a movie that follows the book closely, then just read the book* and make the movie inside your head. Every great book can stand such treatment pretty well, and every true book lover – not mindless bookworm who reads for reading's sake – has quite enough imagination for that.

The same inane criticism of the “nothing to do with the book” type has been levelled against Troy (2004), The Count of Monte Cristo (2002) and many other movies “based on”, “adapted from” or simply “inspired by” famous literature. Nobody seems to ask one very sensible question. Why should the movie have anything to do with the book? The mediums are completely different; they may be expected to produce different results. Indeed, they should. Besides, just as prose quality itself is no guarantee of literary greatness, so the fact that a movie is “freely adapted” from a book is no license to pour invective on it. Like any other such movie, The Scarlet Letter must stand or fall as an independent work of art. For my part, it stands magnificently, for it is the best type of “adaptation”: one that uses the original only as an inspiration.

(A fascinating parallel with the worlds of theatre and opera can be drawn here. Most opera libretti are derived from plays which are ruthlessly cut and reshaped to suit an entirely different medium. Have you ever heard anybody degrading Le Nozze di Figaro simply because its libretto is a greatly simplified and weakened version of Beaumarchais’ original? Of course not. What about Rigoletto and Le roi s’amuse? The same deal. Why? Because whatever literary value has been lost in the art of adaptation, for it is an art, an ample compensation has been gained thanks to great music. It’s exactly the same with the visual side, and not only, of movie adaptations.)

I am here to tell you that The Scarlet Letter is a wonderful movie, and that this “5,3” on IMDB is tosh. If you expect, nay if you insist on, literal adaptation of the book, you needn’t waste your time with this movie. If you are just a little more open-minded, it’s a must-see. I am the walking and the writing proof that one can appreciate both works. The movie was my whole stimulus to read the book, and that has been a remarkably and unexpectedly powerful experience. But the film remains none the less great for that.

Demi Moore as Hester Prynn

Both the story and the characters are changed more or less beyond recognition in the screenplay, but none of these changes, so far as I can see, has any detrimental effect. Rather to the contrary! The screenplay is actually more dramatic, with several tremendously effective scenes and hauntingly powerful lines which are entirely new. Observe Hester’s receiving the scarlet letter in front of the multitude with the words “Put it on, for it is not a badge of my sin but your own”, or Reverend Dimmesdale’s stirring speech when he, again in front of the crowd, confesses that he loves that woman, that he is the father of her child, that in God’s eyes he is her husband, and that “If you must hang somebody, to appease your anger, and your fear, then hang me!” – to name but two examples. And who can forget the last words of Pearl, whose voice kind of tells the story: “Who is to say what is a sin in God’s eyes?” Who indeed?

Even more fascinating is the change in the characters. Here again, if anything, the screenplay has improved upon Hawthorne’s original. Hester in the book remains convinced that she has committed a dreadful sin, that God will punish her, that her Pearl, perhaps, is something of a witch. But Hester in the movie is to my mind a more inspiring, affecting and likable personality. She defies her elders with a vengeance: “I believe I have sinned in your eyes. But who is to say if God shares your views?” She loves and honours the father of her “sinful” child and she completely refuses to believe that what happened between her and Dimmesdale has anything to do with sin. The conflict in the movie, as should be expected, is more explicit, unlike the largely psychological struggle in the novel, but if not an improvement, this is certainly not a defect either.

Gary Oldman as Arthur Dimmesdale.

Ditto Dimmesdale. The passionate and intense creature in the movie is a vastly different character than the rather weak and pathetic creature in the book who excites that singular mixture of affection and exasperation. Now, Arthur on the screen is a man torn asunder by doubt, too. Did he sin? Did he become “a pollution” and “a lie” in God’s eyes? Or in his own? But finally, after a most dramatic fight between different aspects of his personality, the man wins over the pastor completely. If anything, again, the struggle and the victory are more realistic and more compelling in the movie than in the novel.

Hester’s lawful – and awful – husband is the only one whose incarnations on the page and the screen share some similarity: he is equally detestable in both places. That said, his portrayal in the movie is, of course, less subtle than the one in the novel, but this is compensated with additional brutality.

All in all, all three of the main characters, in addition to being vastly different, are by necessity simplified for the screen. Yet none of them, with the possible exception of the chilling Roger Chillingworth (aka Roger Prynne), is one-dimensional or dull.

Robert Duvall as Roger Chillingworth.

The script is greatly helped by the superb cast. The alluring and passionate Demi Moore as Hester, the long-haired and handsome Gary Oldman as Dimmesdale, and the sinister and scary Robert Duvall as Roger all give splendidly intense and vivid performances. The supporting cast is excellent and so are the director’s work and the sets. On the whole, the movie is much more of a love story than the novel, but it never degenerates into mere melodrama. If anything, the puritanical forefathers are rather more harshly condemned, their moral weakness and their odious duplicity are mercilessly exposed, something Hawthorne’s rather feeble satire fails to do. Also, of course, the sensual elements are far more explicit on the screen, but they always remain in perfect taste. The conclusion is rather happier than the one in the novel, but I see no reason to hold this against the value of the movie, either.

The soundtrack by John Barry.

One last point. The music is superb, too. Composed and conducted by John Barry, the soundtrack is available on CD and cannot be recommended highly enough to all lovers of gorgeous orchestral sound. Note particularly the music for the love scene, which in itself must be one of the most stunningly beautiful ever shot. It has a truly puritanical restraint, yet it manages to be really steamy. In combination with strings as intense as anything Sibelius ever composed, and as sensual as anything Wagner created in Tristan, this love scene is a truly wonderful and unforgettable experience.

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*I have borrowed this remark from an interview with the slightly crazy Jay Wolpert, the man who wrote the equally notorious in the category “nothing-to-do-with-the-book” screenplay of The Count of Monte Cristo (2002), the one with the outstanding Jim Caviezel in the title role. Mr Wolpert’s answer to those who criticized him for not keeping close to Dumas’ original cannot be bettered: “Thank you. My job was not to stay close to the book”. Dead right! Mr Wolpert is also amusing on his introduction of Albert as a son of Monte Cristo: “I have never understood why Dumas didn’t use that.” In other words, if you can improve the original, don’t hesitate to do so. There is no such thing as a perfect classic, no matter how ancient and revered.

Review: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1991)

A Gigantic Pile of Pseudo-Intellectual but Genuinely Tedious Junk

Not since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 have I been so disappointed with a movie. But there is an important difference. Arthur Clarke’s book being one of my greatest favourites, I expected a lot from Kubrick’s movie version. Not so with Tom Stoppard. Thrice have I tried to read his eponymous play, thrice have I failed to complete even half of it. Nevertheless, I had hopes that the screen could rescue what on paper – and most probably on the stage – is painfully dull. In vain.

In case you care, be aware that the following paragraphs contain spoilers.

It is sad to see fine actors like Gary Oldman and Tim Roth wasting their considerable talents with something so inane. The idea to retell Hamlet through the eyes of two of its minor characters is ingenious. But it does require genius to make interesting characters out of nitwits like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Tom Stoppard doesn’t have it. Gary and Tim are not to blame. Nobody could pull off decently an opening scene that violates the law of probability itself. Things improve but slightly further on.

It is difficult to find any redeeming qualities in this movie. It is visually very well-done, but nowadays this means no more than the crystal clear sound on a CD; it’s there by default. The plot of Shakespeare’s original is cleverly and rather amusingly interwoven with the adventures of the two schmucks, especially the players foreshadowing the “real” end of the play, but that’s nothing to write home, either. If I understand properly the ending of the movie, there is a charming twist in it.

Richard Dreyfuss as The Player

The only thing that redeems – partly – this mess of a movie is The Player, brilliantly played by Richard Dreyfuss, and his colleagues from the theatre company. Their scenes are the only genuinely funny ones, a godsend amidst the desert of dullness. The words of The Player are virtually the only ones that do make some sense and thus stimulate reflection or a smile:

There's a design at work in all art... events must play themselves out to an aesthetic, moral and logical conclusion. We aim at the point where everyone who is marked for death... dies. Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they can reasonably get.

We're actors! We're the opposite of people!

We are tragedians, you see? We follow directions. There is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good, unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

But The Player is a supporting character, and so are all of his colleagues. If only Tom Stoppard had made Rosencrantz and Guildenstern smart men of the world like The Player, this would have been a great movie! But he either wouldn’t or couldn’t. Instead, he turned them into infantile creatures as intelligent as your cat, quite incapable of bringing some depth to his concept.

Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Virtually all scenes with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are duds. The funny ones are tedious to the extreme, with rapid and clumsy conversation that tells a great deal less than its vivacity may suggest. Indeed, it tells next to nothing. The few poignant moments towards the end fare better but are not enough to justify nearly two hours of acute boredom. Still, occasionally – very occasionally indeed – there is a couple of lines worth noting:

Rosencrantz: Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering. Stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. It never occured to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squawking, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there’s only one direction. And time is its only measure.

Guildenstern: All your life you live so close to truth it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it's like being ambushed by a grotesque.

These are fine, stirring, brilliant lines. But they are virtually lost in what, for want of a better word, can only be described as trash. Examples are countless and not really worth quoting. But here are some anyway:

Guildenstern: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.

Rosencrantz: Or just as mad.

Guildenstern: Or just as mad.

Rosencrantz: And he does both.

Guildenstern: So there you are.

Rosencrantz: Stark raving sane.

Rosencrantz: Shouldn't we be doing something... constructive?

Guildenstern: What did you have in mind? A short, blunt human pyramid?

Rosencrantz: Oh! You mean - you pretend to be him, and I ask you questions!

Guildenstern: Very good.

Rosencrantz: You had me confused.

Guildenstern: I could see I had.

Rosencrantz: How should I begin?

Guildenstern: Address me.

Rosencrantz: My honoured Lord!

Guildenstern: My dear Rosencrantz!

Rosencrantz: ...Am I pretending to be you, then?

Guildenstern: Certainly not. Well, if you like. Shall we continue?

Rosencrantz: My honoured Lord!

Guildenstern: My - dear fellow!

Rosencrantz: How are you?

Guildenstern: Afflicted.

Rosencrantz: Really? In what way?

Guildenstern: Transformed.

Rosencrantz: Inside or out?

Guildenstern: Both.

Rosencrantz: I see. Not much new there!

Guildenstern: [shouting] Well, go into detail! Delve!

Are these supposed to be funny? Hilarious? Perceptive? Profound? You may rest assured that Gary and Tim do their best with every line. But what’s the use when the screenplay is gibberish?

But the worst thing in this movie are the author’s pseudo-intellectual and pretentious aspirations. Stoppard’s blatant attempts to infuse his creation with a serious message under the “comic” surface are simply pathetic. What does it tell us that Rosencrantz rediscovers the steam power or that an apple falling from a tree hits him on the head? Only that not everybody can become James Watt or Isaac Newton. Isn’t that a trifle too obvious? Likewise with his uncomprehending toddling in the footsteps of Galileo or Archimedes. We all know that discovery is a very different thing than description, explanation and invention. The great scientists from the past weren’t just curious and observant fellows; they were a great deal more. They had the right minds to describe certain natural laws, to explain certain hitherto mysterious phenomena, and to put both of them to practical use.

The attempts for discussion of even weightier issues like chance and probability, appearance and reality, life and death, fare even worse. These things have been done so much better before, not least by Shakespeare himself. The numerous discourses on death, such as the one that Rosencrantz delivers while lying on a sarcophagus, are nothing but a vastly inferior and intolerably verbose version of Hamlet’s justly famous “To be or not to be”. The several drawn-out and repetitive conversations between the two morons, or the constant confusion who’s who, that address the elusive relationship between mere labels like names and the essence of personality are something very much like nonsense. Juliet’s “What’s in a name?” is a much more succinct and greatly superior expression of the same conundrum.

To say that I am baffled by the huge amount of praise lavished on this movie would be an understatement. It may be, of course, that I have misunderstood it. Beneath all the verbiage there may be a core of profoundness that I am just too dumb to grasp. I do not think this is the case, but if you wish to adopt the snobbish attitude to the opposite, you have my blessing. The saddest thing is that the idea does have potential, and issues like the ones timidly raised here comedy is generally well-equipped to deal with. In some other hands, it might have spawned a masterpiece. Not in Stoppard’s hands, not as far as I am concerned.