This land has got some shallow graves with deep divides and subtle shades

[sovay]

I really want to live in the kind of economy where I could afford vacations.

I would also like to live in the kind of economy where Diane Duane doesn't need to crowdfund in order not to be evicted and homeless, but here we are, so follow the link. [edit] She has now successfully done so, and along with her husband sends profound thanks to everyone who purchased or donated, but I still do not find it reasonable that she had to.

Last night I watched Winter's Bone (2010), directed by Debra Granik. It looked essential to women in noir, its cast included John Hawkes, I had been meaning to see it for years. It is the kind of film I will have trouble talking about even when I get the time for it, because of how much I loved it: a spare murder ballad of a movie, neither condescending nor romantic, and further proof that neo-noir doesn't need to be defined by a retro style in order to qualify for the genre; it cracks its protagonist's world open, sets her hunting for truth like the title, the cold, intimate, irreducible common denominator beneath debatable flesh and blood. It's about what can and can't be said, by individuals, by families, what can and can't be known. It's not sociological, but it is political in the way that being alive in a society is political. It's beautifully shot. I'd much rather have seen it win Best Picture than The King's Speech, a film I liked very much. The fact that Granik was nominated for co-adapting the screenplay but not for directing the picture demonstrates the depth to which the Academy must have had its head up its ass that year. Looking at Jennifer Lawrence's filmography, I'm not sure anyone has ever again asked her to play as tough and ordinary and original a part as the protagonist of this film; I understand how The Hunger Games happened, but she could have gone from Ree Dolly to Antigone. You can think of Winter's Bone as Sophokles for twenty-first-century America, honestly, and not pretentiously at all. What can you know and live with? What's forgivable and how far should a family carry the weight of what's not? What will you risk your life to see done for the ones you love? The film suggests answers, but it's noir: asking the questions is more important. They change the shape of the world, even when holding it together is all you have ever set out to do.

Comments

[kore]

I was surprised at how short it is! Bastard out of Carolina is pretty short too, IIRC. Maybe short books make for better adaptations? IDK.

[sovay]

Maybe short books make for better adaptations? IDK.

I think this is actually true. Movies are a lot more like plays than they are like novels, and the plot density of your average play (I'm not counting something like Angels in America) is generally less than that of your average novel. Hence your only options with Dickens adaptations are essentially miniseries or totally streamlined David Lean.

I was editing my comment to add that Winter's Bone actually reminded me a lot of The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973): the same kind of regional realism, the same worldbuilding through dialogue and an effortless inhabitation of place within which familiar crime tropes look quite different, not like tropes at all but just like ways the world is; the cast has the same kind of ensemble authority. Winter's Bone has much better music, though.

[kore]

Yeah, the rule of thumb I've always heard is that in a screenplay you get one page to a MINUTE of screentime, which seems nuts. And I say that as someone who loves the Lean Great Expectations.

Adaptations are weird. Every Austen adaptation, no matter how warm or gorgeous, falls a little flat for me without that ironic narration through which we see everything -- there's a glaze of sentimentality. But how would you get it in a film? It can't all be voiceovers. If it were a play, the narrator could maybe be an onstage character commenting. The Great Gatsby doesn't work for a similar reason -- without that narrator, the events just fall flat. (Every adaptation I've seen has voiceovers, and oh, they don't work.) (Altho apparently there is a production where a guy in an office just reads Gatsby aloud to the audience, and slowly his coworkers begin enacting the events until it's like the book is drawing all of them in, and I am REALLY FUCKING SAD I will never see that live.) The voiceovers do work in, say, old PI movies, but that's because we see everything from the PI's viewpoint -- the cliched wry narration is part of the landscape.

OTOH, they made To Kill a Mockingbird into a stunning film, and that is certainly a first-person child's-eye view. ....stupid migraine, I'm just dully rambling at this point.

[sovay]

Every Austen adaptation, no matter how warm or gorgeous, falls a little flat for me without that ironic narration through which we see everything -- there's a glaze of sentimentality. But how would you get it in a film?

I thought the 1995 Persuasion did, partly because—while emotionally acute and acted everywhere from very well to very entertainingly—it was neither warm nor gorgeous in the sense I think you mean; the fashions are period-accurate, which means sometimes they look terrible, and the weather is equally un-made-over, which means that sometimes everyone looks rather cold and pinched. It keeps a sharp eye on class as well as gender and it knows how money and professions work. It says more out loud than the book does, but not in ways that I thought turned any of it to mush. I should rewatch this movie; I remember it very fondly and I recognize much more of the cast now.

(I love the 1995 Sense and Sensibility, but it's almost a 180° approach. That's what happens when you cast Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon.)

(Altho apparently there is a production where a guy in an office just reads Gatsby aloud to the audience, and slowly his coworkers begin enacting the events until it's like the book is drawing all of them in, and I am REALLY FUCKING SAD I will never see that live.)

I don't see why, unless it's a production performed by only one company. That sounds like a really good way to do it.

The voiceovers do work in, say, old PI movies, but that's because we see everything from the PI's viewpoint -- the cliched wry narration is part of the landscape.

It works in some of them! I've seen at least two noirs—Force of Evil (1948) and Side Street (1949)—where I wanted to extract the voiceover with a grapefruit spoon.

OTOH, they made To Kill a Mockingbird into a stunning film, and that is certainly a first-person child's-eye view. ....stupid migraine, I'm just dully rambling at this point.

I don't think there's a hard and fast rule. It's the thing about art where you can do almost anything if you do it well. Only most people don't, and then we get bad voiceovers.

[thomasyan]

a guy in an office just reads Gatsby aloud to the audience, and slowly his coworkers begin enacting the events until it's like the book is drawing all of them in

Oh, have you seen Millennium Actress? I liked the drawing-in done in there.

[sovay]

Oh, have you seen Millennium Actress? I liked the drawing-in done in there.

I have not. What is it?

[kore]

I forgot, I wanted to add, the Handmaid's Tale miniseries did voiceovers very well (remarkably, the actress not only recorded the voiceovers, but MEMORIZED them and sat there running them in her head while they shot the footage -- the director was amazed at how well they matched up and asked her what she was doing). But as you say, that's a miniseries, with a lot more room to breathe.

(Another rule of thumb I heard was "LIMIT the voiceovers! As few as possible!" But....why? Just because I guess. Marguerite Duras wrote a play in which the actors silently interacted while voices from the back of the theatre narrated the play, and their own feelings, hopes, fears. I think it stayed that way in the film she wrote from it, too, I'm not sure. Some novels, a lot of the famous ones, are all voice. Or a lot of other famous ones, like Middlemarch, are all psychology and interconnections. How do you get that into two hours? Why does the limit have to be two hours anyway? Why not make connected movies like they used to do in Europe?)

Full-cast radio adaptations seem like a great solution to me, but we don't do those in America do we. sigh. //clutches at the BBC

[sovay]

(remarkably, the actress not only recorded the voiceovers, but MEMORIZED them and sat there running them in her head while they shot the footage -- the director was amazed at how well they matched up and asked her what she was doing)

I think of that as a very theatrical way to do it and I approve.

Marguerite Duras wrote a play in which the actors silently interacted while voices from the back of the theatre narrated the play, and their own feelings, hopes, fears.

That had to be more successful than O'Neill's Strange Interlude, which I am unable even to name without mentally quoting Groucho Marx. "Here I am talking of parties. I came down here for a party. What happens? Nothing. Not even ice cream. The gods look down and laugh. This would be a better world for children if the parents had to eat the spinach."

How do you get that into two hours? Why does the limit have to be two hours anyway? Why not make connected movies like they used to do in Europe?

Because I'm not sure Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (or The Hunger Games: Mockingjay) in two parts was a good idea? I know neither of them was exactly Sissi, but they are the only recent examples coming to mind right now; see also how Peter Jackson got three movies out of The Hobbit. Or whatever infinite installments the Marvel movies turned into.

Full-cast radio adaptations seem like a great solution to me, but we don't do those in America do we. sigh. //clutches at the BBC

I hope the BBC is good for a migraine.

[moon_custafer]

I think of that as a very theatrical way to do it and I approve.

I really wish I could recall the 19th-century play I read about years ago, which ends with an epilogue that consists of the Good Old Man character tidying up before heading to bed, and the stage directions include a monologue about the play’s events which the actor is to think, but not say out loud. I’m pretty sure it was aimed at a popular audience too, this wasn’t some avant-garde production.

(Justice includes a completely wordless scene of the protagonist in solitary confinement, but though the stage directions are extremely detailed, they only list actions.)

which I am unable even to name without mentally quoting Groucho Marx.

“And in those corridors I see strange figures, weird figures -- Steel 186, Anaconda 74…”

[sovay]

I really wish I could recall the 19th-century play I read about years ago, which ends with an epilogue that consists of the Good Old Man character tidying up before heading to bed, and the stage directions include a monologue about the play’s events which the actor is to think, but not say out loud.

I have no idea which play that would be, but that's cool.

“And in those corridors I see strange figures, weird figures -- Steel 186, Anaconda 74…”

I will almost certainly see the 1988 TV version of Strange Interlude someday because of Edward Petherbridge, but until then I am essentially all right with the fact that Animal Crackers destroyed my ability to take it seriously.

[asakiyume]

I had a Hollywood person tell me this for a fact (well, I mean, obviously different people in Hollywood could have different ideas, but yeah). That a short story was just right.