Movie Maven

In this day and age, one becomes a connoisseur of adapted screenplays. The good. The bad. The updated Shakespeare teen comedy. The Harry Potters. They are money in the bank for the production companies, and delicious fodder for book lovers, who wail against the cheapening of great literature, rending their clothes and gnashing their teeth.

Out of this distracted melee comes "Atonement", the adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel of the same name. It would be criminal to discuss the plot in any detail in you haven't read the book. Set in the mid-1930s, the first half of the film takes place during one fateful day, when fanciful young writer Briony (Saorise Ronan) witnesses an altercation between her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and their gardener Robbie (James McAvoy). She terribly mistakes the situation, and her mistake becomes an event that shapes all their lives. The second half of the film finds them all in very different circumstances, during the British retreat from France. It's a truly brilliant book, and director Joe Wright, who helmed the recent adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice", shows again his agility for capturing not just the plot and characters of a novel, but also it's essence.

Wright does magical things with natural light, turning a precocious 12-year-old into something out of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and generally transforming the English countryside into something simultaneously idyllic and unsettling. As the ethereal Briony skips through the sparkling woods around her house, and her sister basks in a bathing suit in the dappled sunlight, you know it won't be long before something truly awful happens. The music is nothing less than perfect; the pounding keys of a typewriter mingle with the conventional violins and piano, and the beat that results is steady and maddening in a way. It's the audio embodiment of these characters marching blindly into disaster.

Parts of the second half of the film are problematic. The depiction of the hellish conditions at the Bray Dunes in Dunkirk is spectacular in the conventional way, but one does feel a strange sense of disappointment looking back on it. It misses the slightly otherworldly quality of the first half of the film, though this can still be observed in other scenes, particularly in the hospital where the older Briony works. In many ways it looks like every other mass scene of carnage, with digitized soldiers and little actual substance. Some of the most harrowing pieces of McEwan's novel are his descriptions of the Bray Dunes, and though Wright has the noise and chaos of the physical place, it lacks McEwan's subtle examinations of the soldiers' inner chaos.

Where Wright and his performers succeed most is in the restraint of the performances. Knightley is exceptional, playing a wealthy young woman with all the education in the world, but, as her social status dictates, with absolutely nothing to do. McAvoy, while not as mature an actor, is still able to command the screen (and he doesn't look so bad either). But perhaps most risky of all, Wright doesn't make you look at them all the time. Briony, both as a child and in her older manifestation, is what you look at. Her character is the most provocative; she can lead your sympathies one minute, and draw ire the next. Ronan has been nominated for an Oscar for her performance as 12-year-old Briony, and indeed she seems to exude an intensity and depth far beyond her years.

The film is not as "good" as the novel, perhaps. But this of course makes the assumption that a story can work the same way, effectively, in every medium available. It is appropriate that an adaptation is sometimes referred to as a "translation." There are always things that are lost in translation. Wright, I think, understands this concept. It is the mood, the tone, and the heart of a story that is important. Bring these things to the film, and the plot will follow.

(File Photo Courtesy of the New York Post)

Well, unfortunately, my dears, the work that I have left to do has surpassed me by a considerable amount, so I've not a lot of time this week for brilliant strokes of criticism genius. Later on in the week, I'll be expertly reporting on Atonement, which I finally got to see last weekend, but for now, I'll leave you with just a few tidbits:

1. Check out the Oscar Noms

Oh, yes, they're out, and the nominees look as boring as ever. Pretty much everything that's to be expected- though Ratatouille up for best original screenplay is an interesting little diamond of originality.

2. Heath Ledger

I've gotten three text messages, two phone calls, and several emails about the untimely and unbelievable death of one of the most promising actors of my generation. No doubt E! will be spewing all the awful unnecessary details: the autopsy reports, the tearful interviews with people who barely knew him, the "what went wrong" scenarios. I will simply say that he was a beautiful and talented man. He was a wonderful artist who had a great career ahead of him. My thoughts and sympathies go out to his family and friends.

Jane Austen.

Sigh.

I love Jane Austen. I loved her before she was cool, too. I loved her best when I was a bookish teenager, whose heart fluttered at the notes of passionate longing and stolen glances scattered in Austen's novels. I loved her characters- those magnificent women, clever and witty and sometimes plain, who peopled the upper-middle class lodgings of her genteel English settings. And the men. Gentlemen, cads, fiends, scholars, attractive but conniving cousins- these were my kind of heartthrobs. Forget J.T.T and Brad Pitt. I was a Darcy kind of chick.

The recent rash of Austen adaptations, pseudo-adaptations and references have had me simultaneously enthralled and a little perturbed. Though I will always be a Colin Firth woman, the Keira Knightly adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was a gorgeous revelation of a movie. It was lavish and brilliantly cast, and had a cinematic color palette like a nineteenth century oil painting. And I'm sorry, but I stand by Clueless, a vague interpretation of Emma. I thought it was funny when I was eleven, and I think it's funny now. I was, unfortunately, vastly disappointed with Becoming Jane last year, which seemed to have the notion that only way Austen could have written about love was to have experienced it herself. There is absolutely no factual evidence of any love of Austen's life, save for a few mentions in her diary of a flirtation or two. But since then everyone and their mother has been leaping on the Austen bandwagon- buying their I Heart Mr. Darcy t-shirts and their "An Elizabeth in a Darcy-less world" book bags.

Philistines.

There is a lot of speculation as to why Austen has been graced with so many adaptations of her novels and her life (the only one who appears to have had more is good old Bill Shakespeare.) But PBS, doesn't seem to mind, as long as it rakes in the donation dollars from Viewers Like You. Last Sunday, PBS will air six adaptations of Austen's novels, as well as a biopic Jane Austen Regrets about all these proposals she was supposed to have turned down.

Yesterday was the airing of a 90-minute adaptation of Persuasion.

It wasn't that great.

There's only so many scenes we can have with Sally Hawkins as Anne Elliott, writing in her diary and then looking up at the camera pensively. How much pining can one audience endure? The film unfortunately falls into the genre of the interminable Masterpiece Theater drawing-room drama, with little substance (or provocative dialogue) to back up the gorgeous shots of the English countryside.

I have greater hopes for some of the other films, many of which have been written and/or directed by British adaptation guru Andrew Davies, who directed both the quintessential Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth, as well as a version of Charles Dickens' Bleak House that haunts me to this very day. They'll be airing every Sunday from January 20 to April 6, with a two-week break for the beloved PBS telethon.

Yes, the search for Thenextlittlemisssunshine is officially over, and the winner is Juno.

It would have been really cool if I could have played the caustic film critic, and denounced Juno in all of its mousy brown glory, said it's trite, it's too precious for its own good, it's annoying, etc.

But, dammit all, I can't. It's adorable. And not in an annoying way, either. It's genuinely sweet, and funny, and well-executed and honest. It has a marvelous cast, and a bittersweet ending and a fragility that makes you think if you blow on it too hard it will burst into little dandelion spores and float away on the breeze.

But again, NOT in an annoying way.

How Jason Reitman managed to achieve this, I'll never know. At the beginning I fretted, for it seemed like Reitman was going to make it the Quippy Show with Ellen Page. "I'm going to be so quippy and wise-cracking it's going to BLOW YOUR MIND!" But it seemed like about a quarter of the way through, Reitman and his cast loosened up, stretched their legs, and created something genuine. Something that sounded like how real people talk and associate with each other.

You all know the plot: after a halting, awkward bout of lovemaking, precocious 16-year-old Juno (Page) becomes pregnant by her best friend Paulie (Michael Cera, every nerdy girl's crush.) She decides to give up the child for adoption to cool Mark and frigid Vanessa (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), a wealthy couple who might not be what they first appeared to be.

It's hard to get around the fact that the film does romanticize teen pregnancy in a few ways. As a girl who saw more than one round belly waddle down the aisle at her high school graduation, the choices that people make in these situations are far more fraught, and far more emotional than the movie would have you believe. What it does do a good job on is the stigma attached to teen-aged girls who get pregnant, the looks and sense of shame hailed down on girls who made a bad decision. There is a sort of devastation in the way the school receptionist witheringly eyes Juno's swollen belly as she signs off on a doctor's slip. But in the end, Juno triumphs. The divine forces of retribution (also know as the Lifetime channel) do not wreck their havoc upon her life. Juno is no "fallen woman."

The ending is a bit problematic from the audience's standpoint, at least in my personal experience. Without giving too much away, I thought it ended quite happily, or as happily as the circumstances would have allowed. A few of the friends I saw it with, however, said that it depressed them, though they weren't too sure why. It may have to do with the views each of us takes regarding teenage pregnancy and adoption, as well as child-rearing in general. But rest assured that this film is, as a whole, a comedy, and a lighter approach to a very serious matter. The philosophy of the film may be summed up with Juno's comment to Vanessa upon meeting her at the mall:

"The kids at school are constantly grabbing my stomach- they call me the cautionary whale."

Over the last few years, in the course of many parent conferences and

elementary-school curriculum nights, I’ve become familiar with the concept of the “just-right book.” This, my children’s teachers patiently explain, is a book that is perfectly suited to a child’s reading ability: neither too easy, in which case he or she will grow bored, nor too difficult, which risks frustration and confusion.

I defer to the pedagogical expertise of the professionals, but something in me nonetheless rebels against the idea that the books children choose should always be safely within their developmental comfort zone. There is pleasure to be found in bewilderment, in the struggle to make sense of what is just above your head, and there is wisdom as well.

Scott then goes on to point out the value in finding the unusual film for your children. Not just basing what your kids can see on the rating a film receives (which anyone with any kind of film industry knowledge knows is inherently biased) but rather based on the child's maturity level and engagement. This unbelievable few paragraphs of unrestrained sense and rationality most likely got its own special kind of hate mail, but I for one applaud Scott for getting up and saying that film is not an enemy, nor a bastion of demonic threat. It is a medium, some of which is appropriate for children, some of which is not.