Rant & Rave: Was it a Disgrace

You know when you imagine what a character from a book looks like, when you see them, know how they smell, how they walk, their hand gestures, the way their eye lashes flap about when they blink, you know the sound of their voice and know all the intricacies of their persona. I feel I know a huge chunk of the characters in the books I have read, I even identify things I consider unique to them amongst real life human beings.
I remember once I saw a little girl with a messy blonde bob, lively and mischievous looking and I could not help but, think “oh my, she looks exactly like Scout from the book To Kill A Mockingbird.”

It is therefore always interesting to see movies based on those very familiar characters from one’s favourite books but, I imagine it must be the most daunting of tasks to attempt to make accurately visual all the detail contained within a book. You have to find the right setting, the right props, work with great precision on the dialogue and cast the right actors.
On countless occasions I have found that film buffs rely on their audiences to be stupid and inattentive, expecting to be spoon fed and do none of the thinking for themselves. I think sometimes they live in hope that we may not have read the book and that they can then make additions or subtractions or pointless modifications to a storyline that may have great as is.

I was excited to come across the movie adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, a book I have come to hold in very high regard. The book tells the story of a Middle-aged divorcee whose life takes a detour after he is found to have been sleeping with a student at the Collage where he works as a lecturer. He moves to his daughter’s farm and for a time he finds calm in being there, this till a brutal attack by three young men on him and Lucy (his daughter).
The narrative deals competently with issues of aging, sex and power shifts all the while being smart and real. The movie attempts this and although on some counts they manage to do a good job or replicating or rather adapting the book to the movie, there are things I think are vital to the story that the movie does not deliver on. They sourced the location beautifully but, this could not have been easier for them since the books author went into great detail describing the scene. The characters were a bit hit and miss for me, for one; I think the casting director did a great job of casting for the characters of Lucy, Soraya and Bev Shaw but, missed the mark with regards to the protagonist David Lurie (played by John Malkovich), playing the part of the tall, handsome man (as described in the book) is a shabby looking, scrawny and not at all handsome boy, Patrick who is described as having a weathered face and shrewd eyes is played by a man who looks timeworn as opposed to weathered and no wisdom can be found in his eyes in any form.

Some of the story’s peaks are lost in the movie, due to minute inconsistencies and a failure to mind the detail.

I understand that a movie is limited by time and sometimes even budget and that an author can afford to be as detailed as they wish without having to pay these two factors much consideration but, when taking an original work and replicating it, I think it is always best to either go big or not go at all. I think turning a book into a movie can sometimes be like putting a beautiful Amel Lerrieux or Adele song over some mundane and futile house beat all so someone else can reap the benefits of somebody else’s hard work.

Never the less, here are some movies that were adapted from books that I think were done pretty well: