In my mind

For some months now, a DVD has been sitting next to our video screen.  The film is based on a John Fowles novel, The French Lieutenant’s Woman.  When it was published in 1969, his book was hailed as an extraordinary ‘post-modern’ work.  The setting is Dorset, England, in the middle of the 19th Century.  The story is about a love affair, but the book is distinguished by containing three alternative endings (or two, depending on how you want to look at it!).  I will return to Fowles’ work later:  for now, a spoiler alert.  I will be telling more of the story further on (and maybe reveal one or two other book or film endings, too).  You have been warned!  By the way, if you haven’t read The French Lieutenant’s Woman, give it a try.  Immensely popular in the 1960’s, Fowles novels caught the ethos of the time:  not just this one, his first novel, The Collector, was a fine, scary and yet poignant examination of a creepy obsessional man.

Fowles’ books and the DVD came to mind as I finishing re-reading Jane Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’: what a glorious book that is, so intimate and revealing.  At the same time, on this reading of an Austen novel I was struck by the absence of much by way of any physical descriptions of the key characters.  In fact, the main thing I could remember as I finished was that Colonel Brandon wore a flannel waistcoat!  I had to go back and check, and discovered there was a little more: “though his face was not handsome, his countenance was sensible, and his address was particularly gentlemanlike”[i]; but that seemed to be all.

Sense and Sensibility was made into a film in the 1990s, with Hugh Grant as Edward Ferrars, Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood, Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon and Emma Thomson as Elinor Dashwood.  I saw the film once, enjoyed it but I felt it was rather like watching a stage play:  each of the actors was playing a role, and when I went back to reading the book again, their images disappeared.  The novel’s strength is in the characterization, in the inner reflections of each person, especially Elinor, and it is that which remains memorable.  Jane Austen was hardly interested in physical appearance, and with good reason.  Her characters were real enough through their actions and their personalities.

Of course, some people get very exciting about who plays a particular part in the cinematic version of a book.  When Pride and Prejudice was made into a television mini-series in 1995, Colin Firth (wet shirt and all) was either the object of constant longing or profound distaste when he was cast into the role of the reserved and apparently haughty Mr. Darcy!  Ten years later, when Keira Knightley appeared in a film version as Elizabeth Bennett, it was hard for some of us to square her appearance against her stellar role as Jules (Juliette Paxton) in Bend it Like Beckham, and later as Cecilia Tallis in Atonement.  Actors playing parts, even very good actors, who were possibly too well known to let them easily disappear into the role they were playing.

When I read, I don’t see visual images of the protagonists, I see characters, passions, feelings, thoughts and uncertainties.  Sometimes this has no real consequence when the visual version of a story hits the screens.  The first of the Harry Potter films used ‘new actors’, and so Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were Harry, Hermione and Ron – and for me, they still are.  I know the films weren’t the same as the books, yet for some reason those three are my visual image of the key characters in the series, and I can’t imagine anyone else playing their parts.  If there was another film series, I think I would accuse the new cast of ‘merely acting’!

Like the Harry Potter series, many books are essentially stories, successful if the plot is engaging and absorbing, especially in the case of detective novels, which comprise one of my favourite genres.  When I read detective novels, I am usually immersed in the unfolding mystery – the ‘whodunnit’ side of the events.  In many cases the physical appearance of the key detective is often hard to envisage, but his or her nature is made very clear.  When they appear on television, the choice of actors can be stunningly accurate as embodiments of the book’s characters, or woefully misplaced.

Among my favourite detective novelists, two stand supreme:  Dorothy L Sayers, and P D James.  In the case of Lord Peter Wimsey, I think the casting of Ian Carmichael was perfect.  Edward Petherbridge might have been quite good for the role in the later series, but following Carmichael, he didn’t stand a chance.  It worked the other way around for Adam Dalgleish:  the first ten of P D James’ books saw Roy Marsden as Dalgleish, and he was sadly not quite right.  Everything was saved when Martin Shaw took over for the last two books, accompanied by Janie Dee as Emma Laverton.  If only they had filmed the two remaining books, but The Lighthouse and The Private Patient are still waiting for Martin Shaw, who has been wasting his energies on the George Gently television series (in my opinion, anyway!).

I consider another success came with the filming of several of the Elizabeth George books, and her two detectives, Inspector Lynley and Sergeant Havers.  Here, I know many disagree, but I found Nathaniel Parker an excellent Lynley, and Sharon Small was perfect as Barbara Havers.  Another example where I am probably at odds with many other people comes when we turn to DCI Banks, or Inspector Banks as he is usually called.  I can’t watch Stephen Tompkinson, who seems entirely wrong to me.  Perhaps my reaction is a response to the dreadful tinkering the television series does with the interpersonal relationships.  At a more trivial level, my grumbles are further aggravated by seeing the excellent Caroline Catz there, who should be back in Port Wenn doing battle with that monstrous Doc Martin (outstandingly portrayed by Martin Clunes).

Detectives on screen seem to do much better when they are seen before the books are read – at least for me.  John Thaw played Inspector Morse, distinguished by his signature ability with crosswords, his love of beer and his penchant for Wagner:  Morse is John Thaw, the person we see on screen (and I have never seen the need to read to read the books).  Author Colin Dexter went on to offer us a prequel, Endeavour, with Shaun Evans in the title role.  When Morse died he was followed by Kevin Whately as Inspector Lewis, his former deputy.  Lewis has his own deputy in DS Hathaway, Laurence Fox, and I can’t help but think that Lewis will retire one day soon, and then we will have a new series, Hathaway, to watch.  Morse both young and old, Hathaway and Lewis, as far as I am concerned they are who we see.

There is much more to this than my views about characters in books and their portrayal in films.  Not only am I fascinated by what I ‘see’ as I read, and who appears on the television or in the cinema; sometimes a film does something more.  I’m not a movie buff, but I do want to mention two examples that I have found very revealing.

The first is a movie that was a regular feature every Christmas in our home: Love Actually, an enjoyable, harmless entertainment, which I’ve written about before.  The pretext for the film is a series of events taking place before Christmas, comprising a series of interconnected stories about eight couples, accompanied by an underlying theme of arrivals and departures (using shots at the beginning and the end of the film in the arrivals hall of London airport).

Some of the stories are simply fun:  an ageing rockstar, trying to make one last hit record, and his relationship with his manager; a young man going to America to impress women with his English accent, and coming back with two sexy Americans; and Liam Neeson as a widower, dreaming about Claudia Schiffer after the death of his wife, and eventually meeting up with her (in a brief role as Carol), while his schoolboy son experiences his first crush.  Some are bittersweet, with a nice story about a conventional triangle, with one of the two men unable to tell the woman he loves her, only to be found out after she marries the other man, a discovery that leaves her rather flummoxed; another about a woman psychologically unable to escape from the demands of her mentally ill brother to create an independent life for herself.

Three stories are fascinating in relation to my concerns about people in films.  In the first, Hugh Grant plays the role of the British Prime Minister.  This works superbly, because we know he is Hugh Grant (floppy hair and all!!), and we know he is ‘playing’ at being a PM.  We don’t take him seriously, and we aren’t expected to: it works because we know he is pretending to be a Prime Minister, without any attempt to being convincing.

The second is Colin Firth, Jamie in the film, (by the time this film was made he had recovered from being Mr. Darcy), who discovers his girlfriend is unfaithful, and abandons the UK to go to Portugal to complete his next novel.  There he slowly realises he likes (falls in love with) his housekeeper, Aurelia, but they are separated by language (neither understands the other), and by caution.  Back in London,  Jamie starts to learn Portuguese, and just before Christmas, fed up with his family, goes back to find Aurelia.  She has been learning English, and that leads to a happy ending.  This part of the film works because Aurelia is played by a Portuguese actor and singer, Lúcia Moniz, largely unknown outside her country, and Colin Firth buries his usual character and becomes a convincingly grumpy, frustrated writer!

Ah, but it is the last couple where illusion really works. Alan Rickman plays the role of Harry, the unimaginative and unperceptive head of an agency, Emma Thompson his wife Karen: yes, it’s those two again!  Harry is tricked into becoming overly interested in his PA, buys her an expensive gift, and in doing so utterly devastates his wife.  These two are outstanding actors, and all the actions  and fun of other characters pale beside this compelling story of middle-aged foolishness and disillusionment.  Two great actors really becoming their characters, and, as you might expect, it works even better because there isn’t a book we have read before to have influenced our expectations.

And now we can return to The French Lieutenant’s Woman.  It is hard to imagine a more impressive team behind a movie.  While the book was written by John Fowles, the screenplay was by Harold Pinter (he of kitchen sink drams in the 1950s and 1960s, later writing the lines for such films as The Servant, Accident, and The Go-Between).  The director was Karel Reisz (who had achieved well-deserved fame with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, starring Albert Finney and Shirley Ann Field).   And the stars were the young team of Meryl Strep and Jeremy Irons, early in their careers, way back in 1981.

Why do I want to end my blog with this film?  It was a very clever adaptation of Fowles novel, which centres on the affair between Charles, a gentleman of means, and Sarah, an abandoned woman.  They meet and fall in love in Lyme Regis, but Sarah goes on to Exeter at Charles suggestion.  It is here that the story becomes more compelling:  using a device often favoured by writers, there is a narrator commenting on the action.  When the book appeared it was praised as post-modern and ‘clever’, partly because the narrator offers, at this point in the story, the suggestion that Charles abandons Sarah and does not go to see her in Exeter.  Reading on, we discover they do meet after all, and then finally we are left with two other alternative endings.  In one Charles proposes to Sarah, but his letter is not delivered, and he runs away to Europe, only later to find Sarah has his child, and we are left thinking they might get together; in the other, they meet, but do not get together, and Charles is left thinking he had been manipulated.

How to put all that on the screen?  Pinter had the clever idea to have two parallel stories. One is the Victorian period drama about Charles and Sarah, and the other is between the actors Mike and Anna, playing the lead roles in a modern filming of the story. Meryl Streep appears as Sarah and Anna, and Jeremy Irons as Charles and Mike.  Actors acting as actors, acting parts in a film!

Just as the novel had multiple endings, here the two parallel stories in the movie have different outcomes.  In the Victorian story, Charles enters into an intensely emotional relationship with Sarah, meeting secretly while breaking his engagement to another (rich) woman, but Sarah disappears.  Charles searches for Sarah, fearing she has become a prostitute in London. After three years, Sarah, who by that stage has a job as a governess, contacts Charles to explain that she needed time to ‘find herself’ and the two are reconciled.  In the modern story, Anna and Mike are both married, but are continuing an already established affair during the making of the Victorian film! As filming concludes, Mike wishes to continue their relationship, but Anna has lost interest  and leaves after the completion of filming without saying goodbye to Mike.

Clever, but what makes it more than clever for me was one scene, fairly early on, when Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, in their modern roles, are practicing a scene in the sun room of the house where they are staying.  This scene is where Sarah, out in the wild hills above Lyme Regis, will catch her dress in a bramble bush, look up, see Charles looking at her, walk towards him and stumble and fall.  They practice once, but Anna wants a second try.  This time, as she pretends to find her dress caught, she looks at Mike with an unsettling intensity, moves forward and falls, and as she is helped up, seamlessly and instantly the film takes us to the Victorian story, from modern to Victorian dress, from the sun room to the hillside, all in just one frame of film.  It sets the atmosphere of the film:  Jeremy Irons is both Charles and Mike, Meryl Streep is both Sarah and Anna; and Harold Pinter has transformed the story, and conjured another way to make us think about alternative endings.  The book was the source of ideas for the film, but, interestingly,  back reading it a second time, the images of Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep had disappeared.

If there is one way to get people riled, it is talking about actors playing roles in films based on much loved books.  Enough said?  It’s all in my mind, after all!

 

[i] Excerpt From: Jane Austen. “Sense and Sensibility.” iBooks. <https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/sense-and-sensibility/id481665171?mt=11/>

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