1408

The book: Stephen King's 1408 first appeared in his non-fiction book On Writing as an example of how a book develops from first to second draft. King decided to expand it into a short story, which was then published in the collection Everything's Eventual (2003) along with 13 other stories. Before that, it appeared in an audio book called Blood and Smoke (1999).

The movie: 1408 came out in 2007. The screenplay was written by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. The movie was directed by Mikael Håfström and starred John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson.

Plot/character differences: The basic idea of "horror writer who believes in nothing enters haunted hotel room" is the same in both, but the details are very different. The story in the book is pretty short and relies mainly on atmosphere; there isn't a lot of plot there, and the part where Mike stays in the room is quite short. We don't find out much about his life either before or after entering the room. In the movie, Mike's life story is explored in more detail, and it also affects his hallucinations in the room. The plot about the dead daughter and estranged wife only exists in the movie, just like the father in an institution and the first "serious" book he wrote. There are two alternate endings, neither of which is exactly the same as in the book. In the short story, Mike escapes the room but is left with burns, traumas and health problems, including a complete inability to write. In the movie, however, Mike either dies in the room (director's cut) or escapes to write a book about his experiences (theatrical version).

Besides adding the ex-wife, daughter and father, there aren't too many character differences. The agent is expanded into a much more interesting character, and the timid but earnest hotel manager is changed into a very confident and pretty ominous one. The main focus, however, remains on the character of Mike Enslin who stays pretty true to the book's description.

Author opinion: The script was sent to Stephen King for approval before making the movie, and he okayed it. That's all I know about it. Apparently the filmmakers are King fans, and John Cusack praised him as a genius at writing characters.

My opinion:
This may not be the most faithful King adaptation in terms of plot and characters, but it is one of the most faithful adaptations of the mood of a story. The film 1408 left me with the same dreary feeling as the short story; both stayed in my mind for a while, and both are somehow fundamentally depressing, yet also fascinating.

I saw the movie first, and my initial reaction to the short story was amazement at how different the stories were. The original is quite short and concise, and doesn't give a very long account of Mike's stay in the room. The movie focuses almost exclusively on his time in the room and only gives a short, not-in-the-book interlude where Mike visits another "haunted" hotel and talks about his lack of faith in a book signing.

What bugs me is that the movie doesn't share the book's subtlety. The vaguely menacing air of the room is almost ruined with full-on scares and special effects. There are lots of things that never took place in the book: "No one's lasted more than an hour." The clock radio. The woman with the hammer. Mike seeing himself on the other side of the street (which I liked, actually). The rest of the building disappearing completely. And on and on. Yet some of the most efficient scares in the book - for example, Mike's cut-off head appearing in one of the paintings or the menu with changing courses - are not used. The paintings do turn scary, but somehow it's not executed as well as I'd like; I would have preferred to see the haunting painting with yellowy fruit that was so important in the book. The paintings in the book weren't intrinsically scary, but they had a haunting air about them, something that didn't really come across in the movie, as the paintings were mundane and something you'd normally see in a hotel room. Some great visual opportunities have been lost. Some of the book elements are oddly placed, like the phrase about wolves eating Mike's brother. The effect is not half as strong as it is in the short story, because there's no context to support it.

The acting is superb, not always a given in a Stephen King movie. Mike Enslin is rendered well by John Cusack, and I actually found myself liking him. I rarely like horror movie characters, because they tend to be idiots who go into dangerous places after many warnings and get themselves killed. In this case, however, it seemed to make sense. Mike Enslin has been to too many scary places. He doesn't believe in ghosts. He has no reason to fear room 1408 any more than any other room he's been to. This was well argumented in the book, and it's well argumented in the movie.

1408 the movie isn't a masterpiece, but it's a decent adaptation of a good story. I hope we'll also get to see an adaptation of my favorite story in the same book, Everything's Eventual.

The Shining, Part 2: King's Version

The book: see previous post.

The movie: Stephen King wanted to make a more faithful adaptation of her own novel, and ended up writing this three-part miniseries. Directed by Mick Garris, Stephen King's The Shining came out in 1997. The leading roles were taken over by Steven Weber, Rebecca DeMornay and Courtland Meade. It's an adaptation and not a remake of Kubrick's version, but the comparisons are inevitable, so I'm going to keep making them.

Plot differences: The miniseries goes over pretty much all events in the book, with some minor scene omissions. The biggest omission, in my opinion, is the flashback to the night when Jack and his friend Al drove over someone - whose body they never found - and this made them seek help for their alcoholism. I thought this was an important event in the book, but for some reason, King has chosen to leave out most of the flashbacks. A more detailed account of why Jack beat up his student is also left out.

A scene is added to the end where we see Danny graduate, and it is revealed that "Tony" is in fact an older version of Danny (even if it's never explained how he went into the past to warn Danny). Danny also sees a vision of his dead father looking at him with pride. It's a bit after-the-fact, considering the book came out 20 years earlier, but since it's written by the original author, I'll give it a pass. It does give the movie a bit of closure and an uplifting ending - perhaps more so than the original ending of the book.

Character differences: Wendy's mother and Jack's student are mentioned, but not fleshed out much, in the miniseries. Again, this isn't much of a loss. I don't recall any other real omissions.

Author opinion: Written by the original author, who also provided a commentary track on the DVD. I haven't listened to it yet, but I might edit this part after I do, if he mentions any disappointments or particular delights in the miniseries.

My opinion:
Like I said in the previous post, I really like the book, and was sad to see how much Kubrick had omitted. But but. Making a literal translation isn't always the best way to make a movie, and I stand by what I said in the Pet Sematary post: King can write books but not movie scripts. This isn't his worst, by any means, and compared to Pet Sematary, it's actually pretty good. But there are certain major flaws. The biggest one is that some things needed to be omitted to make the story fit into a miniseries arc, and I think King made the wrong choices there.

We didn't really need to know so much about the hotel or Denver croquet, or see the janitor blow his nose that many times. The first episode, in particular, suffers from too much focus on the hotel and too little on the family. Things start picking up in episode two, but the pacing is still a bit off. For a series airing once a week, it must have lost a lot of viewers after the first episode, because basically nothing was happening.

Pretty much everything I said about Kubrick's version applies here, only in reverse. We get to know the characters and empathize with them, and that makes the story more relatable. It was nice to see them go to the nearby city before the snow came, shopping and seeing a doctor and stuff, things a normal person would have done in that situation. The Kubrick movie made it seem like they spent the entire time at the hotel, even when it wasn't snowing yet. The family members' reactions to the events seem more realistic here, and the domestic violence and alcoholism are given much more focus. The characters become more alive, more real, than they were in the Kubrick version.

The horror part doesn't work equally well. The realistic, calm family scenes take away from the tension and fear, even after scary stuff starts happening. The visuals are poor and the CGI effects do nothing to scare me. I realize they worked with a much smaller budget, but they could have gone for a classier "less is more" approach and made the low budget look good, and they didn't. The attacking topiary, in particular, looks pathetically unreal - come on, the topiary in the book wasn't that scary anyway. They're made of twigs and leaves! How can they bite you? The depiction of Tony is pretty faithful to the book, but his hovering in the air is a lame visual gimmick. Even the hotel they used as the setting is far from impressive-looking. The camera keeps panning onto the furniture that moves ever-so-slightly by itself, but you can only do that so many times without annoying the viewer, if the furniture never does anything eevil. There's a lack of real scares.

There is one scene I want to praise, however, and that is the lady in the bath tub. Now this was scary with a capital S, much scarier than in Kubrick's film. The teaser scenes with Danny standing at the door, his irresistable urge to go in, and finally meeting the woman in the bath tub, all worked very well to create suspense and horror. The look of madness on the woman's face is so horrifying that I hardly slept at all the night I saw the miniseries. It really got under my skin. The scene where Jack goes back to check if there's something in that room is very scary too. Great work from King and Garris.

The casting, then. Jack Nicholson was too creepy and crazy-seeming; Steven Weber is too non-creepy in the beginning. He gives a surprisingly good madman performance, but his "nice Daddy" scenes are ruined with bad humor. I'm not sure if the one-liners and Elvis impersonations are ad-libbed or in the script, but they bug and serve to drag down the mood of the film. In addition, he acts like he's acting, which probably comes from his sitcom background. He's not awful, though; he's much better than Dale Midkiff in the lead of Pet Sematary. Maybe with different direction, he would have done a really good job. Rebecca DeMornay does a credible Wendy - and leaves a stronger impression than Shelly DuVall's version -, but she, too, is given annoying one-liners.

The biggest problem is Danny. Courtland Meade's performance leaves a lot to be desired. He overacts in almost every scene; I realize he's a child and it's a very difficult role to get right, but surely they could have found a better child actor for the role. Danny's central role in the story is somewhat ruined by Meade's acting, which is a shame. This is one clear shortcoming compared to the Kubrick version, where Danny Lloyd does a surprisingly good job in the role.

Also: "Kissing, kissing" - "That's what I've been missing". What the hell was that? It's not in the book, it makes no sense, it's a very lame way to show closeness between father and son. One of King's weaknesses as a script writer is adding corny little things like that. Those scenes take away from the credibility of the characters.

The miniseries has its moments, but as usual, the original book is the best way to get to the characters and the story.

The Shining, Part 1: Kubrick's Version

Book: The Shining (1977) is Stephen King's third novel, and according to Wikipedia, the one that established him as a popular author.

Movie: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining came out in 1980. The screenplay was written by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson. Starring Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall and Danny Lloyd, the movie became an instant classic and is still hailed as one of the best horror movies of all time. #57 on imdb's top 250.

Plot differences: The end credits hail King's The Shining as a "masterpiece of modern horror", which is slightly strange, considering how little of it was used in the screenplay. The movie skips quickly through the beginning, leaving out the entire backstory about Jack beating up a student, losing his job, running someone over with his car and denouncing alcohol. The story becomes sort of "normal man becomes haunted by evil hotel", while in the book, it seems to go deeper than that, into Jack's own demons that he hasn't dealt with. Jack's fascination with the hotel is there to some extent, but the "I'll write a book about the Overlook Hotel" plot is left out. The history of the hotel is not discussed in detail in the movie, which makes the terror of the evil room seem kind of random.

The ending is also changed, albeit not as much. In the end of the movie, Wendy and Danny escape through the mace, which doesn't exist in the book. Jack, after chasing them, freezes to death with a mad grin on his face. In the book, the hotel blows up, and while Wendy and Danny escape, Jack is left inside and dies with the hotel. In the movie, Jack kills Dick Hallorann rather abruptly, but in the book he lives and saves Wendy and Danny.

Character differences: Jack's friend Al, who got him the job, is not in the movie. Their past as drinking buddies turned AA buddies has been left out, which takes away some of the nuance in Jack's character too. A much stranger difference is that the hotel's general manager, Mr Ullman, is a very unlikeable character in the book. He's pompous and petty, rude to his staff and only seems to care about the hotel. He doesn't want to give Jack the job and almost fires him mid-way through the book. In the movie, he's a likeable, polite man who's only happy to give Jack this job. His warnings about the previous caretaker's death seem to be made with concern for Jack, not just the reputation of his hotel. I'm not sure why Kubrick chose to do it this way, and it takes away some of the tension Jack feels in the book. Wendy's nagging, superior mother and Jack's student who cost him his job are also left out of the movie, but this feels like a far less meaningful omission, as they only appeared in flashbacks in the book.

Author opinion: King was disappointed in Kubrick's take, because so few of the events and elements in the book were in the movie. He went on to make his own miniseries of the book, which I will discuss in the next post.

My opinion:
This is one case where I have a lot of respect for the book and the movie, even if they're good for very different reasons. The Shining is probably one of King's best novels. It's what he does best: describing a male author who struggles with his own demons while fighting a supernatural evil. Of course, the setting is pretty silly - who would take their child in the middle of nowhere when the father is an alcoholic and has rage issues? Pet Sematary had the "build a fence" issue, and this book has a similar glaring problem: don't go there and you'll be spared. But the characters are strong, and the story works on many levels. One of King's strong suits is inner dialogue, and in this book, the inner dialogue of the characters meshes constantly with the dark powers in the hotel trying to overtake their minds.

This is also one of Kubrick's best movies. He's in his own element, offering us horror through skillful visuals. The hotel set is magnificent: large, oppressive and with long hallways. Kubrick's use of colors, especially red, is an effective way of creating suspense in a horror film. I liked the subtle visual ideas: the disappearing/reappearing twins, the tricycle Danny rides through the long hallways, and particularly the mace, which I thought to be much more imposing than the attacking topiary in the book. Less is more, and this movie has achieved many scary scenes with relatively little special effects. The one thing I found a little lame is the blood gushing into the hotel hallway. It sort of loses meaning because it comes up three or so times throughout the movie; fake blood is the oldest trick in the book and not all that scary to a modern viewer. But it still manages to be somehow stylish. The "Red rum" scene where Danny goes into a trance is very effective and particularyl well acted by Danny Lloyd.

The big problem with the movie, however, is that Kubrick has basically thrown away most of the story. The setting and some of the key scenes are there, but that's about it. It doesn't ruin the movie - a part of making a good adaptation is having your own voice about it - but I do think some of the story would have deserved to be there. I'm talking particularly about the alcoholism, violence issues and marital problems. It's a long movie, but it feels a bit hurried due to the lack of character development and dialogue; they go into the hotel, it shows its scary side, the end. In a horror movie, there will be a lot of gasping and screaming. To make it seem real, you need to know the characters and relate to them. In this respect, Kubrick's movie falls slightly flat.

Another misgiving is the casting of the main character. Jack Nicholson is a good actor, but as Jack Torrance, he's pretty creepy from the start. His smile doesn't seem genuine, and he doesn't seem like a nice Dad. I think Jack Torrance needs to be a kind, likeable character whose darker side is only slowly revelead to the audience. I also agree with King that Nicholson's role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest might serve as a hint that the character will go crazy. In the book, I liked Jack Torrance. In the movie, I dislike him and have no sympathy for him.

I'm still not sure about the way they did Tony. In the book, Danny has visions of a young man named Tony who shows him scary things. In the movie, Tony speaks through Danny's mouth and pinky finger. It's a way of making Tony seem like a child's imaginary friend - until he starts showing Danny scary stuff. As such, this is effective - supernatural encounters explained away with a child's imagination are one of the constant themes in horror films, and usually it works well. However, the stuff Tony showed in the book was much more varied than just the frights of the hotel; Danny could read his parents' and others' thoughts and communicate telepathically. Some of that is in the movie: Dick Hallorann and Danny communicate telepathically, and Danny can also hear his parents arguing sometimes. But there don't seem to be any instances where he directly hears his parents' thoughts, and I thought this was a loss. One of the most touching things in the book for me was when Danny could hear scary words in his parents' heads - DIVORCE and SUICIDE - without really understanding what they entail. His confusion over the parents' marriage is pretty much left out of the movie altogether.

The movie is more visual than verbal, and the omission of much of the dialogue and backstory makes it Kubrick's story rather than King's. However, it amplifies the horror in some scenes; while the book is story-scare-story-scare, the movie is at times scare-scare-scare, which is probably what made it popular in the first place. Both the book and movie work well on their own levels, but because of all the omissions mentioned above, I much prefer the book.

Interlude

I just realized I got a few comments in January, so hi to readers and sorry for not noticing you there! I'm gonna post more shortly but here's a few thoughts...

I actually got several Stephen King movies for Christmas, and I have been planning entries, so you can look forward to seeing those soon. I'll start with The Shining, both Kubrick's and King's versions. I must say that I don't like a lot of the film versions though, so don't expect super-favorable posts. Actually, I saw 1408 just this week, and I haven't read the story, which bugs. I loved the movie, and it was very scary for me. I think I will try and find that short story and blog about that too.

I saw The Golden Compass, but the books are predictably checked out at the local library. I will say that I became very interested in reading them. The movie was interesting and presented a lot of what I thought were fairly new ideas - a girl in the lead; the daemons; the barely touched upon topic of the parallel universes, and so forth. I was disappointed in the length of the movie, though, 90 minutes is way too hurried for a movie like this. I mean, Lord of the Rings took three hours per movie, and still wasn't as detailed as the books. While it had a hurried and cut-off feel, it wasn't a bad movie by any means and I loved the performance of Dakota Blue Richards in the lead. I feel like the story was merely scraped on the surface, and yet I got a very positive idea of the books based on the movie. Good fantasy movies serve to illustrate the book and give way to new interpretations, but less successful ones can still serve as teasers for the book. Which is a value in itself, I think.

Pet Sematary

Book: One of Stephen King's most popular novels, Pet Sematary came out in 1983. It relates the story of doctor Louis Creed and his family that faces a young son's death - a son Louis later revives at an ancient Indian burial ground.

Movie: Also titled Pet Sematary, and came out in 1989. Stephen King wrote the screenplay himself; the director of the movie was Mary Lambert. Starring Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby.

Plot differences: The basic plot is the exact same as in the book. However, minor differences include the omission of Norma Crandall and her death, which is replaced with the suicide of babysitter Missy Dandrige, and more appearances by the ghost of Victor Pascow.

Character differences: Norma Crandall, Jud's wife, is completely omitted from the movie. Steve Masterton, a friend of Louis', has a reduced role. Missy Dandrige, who is only mentioned in passing in the novel, has a wider role and a completely different, hypochondriac personality.

Author opinion: Stephen King was probably happy with this, since he wrote it himself. He was tired of seeing his films adapted by others, and wanted to have a say in the matter.

My opinion:
Stephen King cannot write movie scripts, end of story. I haven't seen one TV movie, miniseries or feature film written by King that was any good. He's good at writing horror novels; Pet Sematary is one of his best books, and the concept of an unnatural child coming back from the dead is carried out well in the novel. However, he completely butchers his own concept in the movie.

Firstly, the dead speak in the novel. They say horrifying things about living people, telling them their sins and the bad things others think of them. Gage, the dead little boy, tells Jud Crandall that his wife cheated on him and laughed at him with all of his friends. This is unnatural and disgusting coming from a child, and it makes Gage scary. But what does he do in the movie? He talks in a childish voice, asks people to come play with him, grimaces with a knife in his hand. Zelda and Victor Pascow are at least scary in the movie, but Gage is just childish.

From the Wikipedia entry:

In addition, the movie glosses over the concept of the Wendigo in the forest, and completely skips over the implication that there is a singular, specific intelligence which guides the resurrected creatures and speaks through them.

Now, the idea of a specific intelligence behind the evil is much scarier than what happens in the movie. Jud Crandall relates the story of young Billy, who was resurrected by his father, but like Gage, he is much scarier in the book than in the movie. In the book, he speaks terrible things to people and knows all about them. In the movie, he shouts, "Love death! Hate living!" Ehh?

Secondly, the omission of Norma Crandall is very weird. Her death in the book gives a feel of natural death, dying from old age, as opposed to Gage's unexpected and terrifying death. King doesn't seem to realize that this is necessary to ground the story somewhat in the reality of death.

Thirdly, the dialogue is so cheesy. It's very difficult to buy a horror movie where the dialogue constantly takes your focus away from "oo, creepy" and back to "hee, kitschy". The scenes in the book have been transformed into unbelievably corny movie moments. The beginning is a good example. I'm going to quote my own recap of the movie:

Ellie runs off somewhere, and Rachel and Louis walk up to the house. "So...?" says Louis cornily, expecting a positive response, even if Louis in the book felt nervous and anxious about Rachel's response. I think Dale Midkiff is trying to portray "nervous and anxious", but comes up with "hey, look what I got you, don't you just love it?" Ridiculous soap opera music swells up as Rachel declares, "It's gorgeous!!" with the overdramatic tone usually reserved for messages like "I'm pregnant!" They hug and Louis laughs.

I assure you I'm not exaggerating here. It really is that bad. In the book, Louis is so tired of his family that he's contemplating just taking off without them and driving into the sunset all by himself. But in the movie, it's all "Look what I got you honey". I don't know why King chose to write the movie like this, but it's very difficult to buy.

The fourth glaring problem has nothing to do with King or his script. The acting is just really bad. Dale Midkiff is horrible as Louis Creed, a role that would demand some depth from an actor. You need to embrace not only joy and "family man" qualities, but also grief, fear, and being more or less possessed by an evil force that wants you to revive your loved ones. Dale Midkiff gives us *blank stare* through most of it. That doesn't cut it. Fred Gwynne is good as Jud Crandall, but everyone else pretty much hams their way through it. There's the scene of Gage's death, which should be tragic - but what does Dale Midkiff do? He shouts "NNOOOOOOOOO!!!" in the corniest, longest possible way. And they show still pictures during it. Of Gage as a baby. What the fuck was that? Was it Stephen King or Mary Lambert that decided this was a good idea? It totally ruins the tragedy of the moment. The subsequent grief is fast-forwarded over, it seems, and we jump straight to the horror part. That also takes away some of the power of the story.

I did find the film scary at times. The horror scenes mostly still work, and Zelda is really terrifying, as she should be. However, with some of the deeper levels of the book taken away, some of the horror is also lost. The film is helplessly 80's, helplessly time-stamped and kitschy, and very difficult to take seriously. Which is a shame, because I do think it's a good book. Sadly, there was also a low-quality sequel with different characters, directed by Mary Lambert, but this time written by Richard Outten. I haven't seen the sequel, but it has a 3.9 rating on imdb.com (the first movie has 6.1), which says a lot.

I'm intrigued about the new version someone's making for next year. The details are in imdb pro, which I'm not willing to pay for, but it's there for those of you with a membership. Let's hope they got it right this time!

The Sound of Music

Book: The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, an autobiography written by Maria von Trapp, came out in 1949 in the US. It was a best-seller, translated into several languages. The book relates the story of the family, from the time Maria was called into the von Trapp family to the time after Georg von Trapp died. The Nazi invasion of Austria and the difficult adjustment to the American culture are depicted in detail. The book is very religious and reflects Maria's Catholic faith.

Movie: The Sound of Music (1965) is one of the most successful musicals of all time. It is actually based on Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse's musical, and Maria von Trapp's book was uncredited. Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay for the movie, and it was directed by Robert Wise. It starred Julie Andrews as Maria and Christopher Plummer as Georg von Trapp. The book also spawned two successful German/Austrian films, Die Trapp-Familie (1956) and Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika (1958). However, I'm not going to discuss those, as I haven't seen them.

Plot differences: The beginning is the same. That's about it. The plot of the book, based on the true story, is really too long to outline briefly, but here are the key differences:
* In the book, Maria comes to the house to teach a sick child called Maria. The other children don't need a governess because they go to school outside the house. In the movie, she's the governess of all of the children.
* In the book, the Nazis take over Austria eleven years after Maria and Georg are married. In the film, the Nazi rule has come while they were on their honeymoon.
* Their singing career began some years before the Nazis came; in the movie, their first performance is connected to their escape from the Nazis.
* There was no "Liesl falls in love with the postman" story in the book.
* In the book, they escape to the US on a singing tour, and stay there. In the movie, they escape in a car and then walk over the Alps to safety.

Character differences: Captain's friend, the freeloader, was not in the book. He never existed, and it seems like he's there to bring comic relief to the movie. The role of the Baroness was expanded and changed to some extent. The Captain's fiancee never visited the house, and their breakup wasn't as obvious as it is in the movie.

The children's real names were Rupert, Agathe, Maria, Werner, Hedwig, Johanna, and Martina.
The children's names in the movie were Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta, and Gretl. I don't get it. Not one name was the same. Are consonant+ L names supposedly more Austrian than their original names? Why was Rupert changed into Liesl? Why would someone give their children names as similar as Liesl and Louisa? Arrghh. Also, not to nitpick but their mother had died seven years earlier - and Gretl was five. Maria and Georg's children Rosmarie, Eleonor and Johannes are not in the movie.

Author opinion: Maria von Trapp was happy with the movie, saying the most important difference was that they changed the children's names. Eldest son Rupert von Trapp, however, was bitter about the fact that they replaced him with a girl. Later on, Maria complained about her meager royalties from the movie.

My opinion:
The book and the movie are two completely different things. You can't really even compare them in this case. The movie is a classic; it's a completely made up story, and as such, it works rather well. It's a charming fairytale for children and adults alike, naïve and innocent compared to modern films, and it's difficult to judge by today's standards. Some things, like the children's names, grate. I'm not too happy with the whole "hiding in the abbey from the Nazis" plot either, as it's nowhere near the real events. I mean, Maria and Georg von Trapp were married in 1927, and the Nazis came in 1938. But then, how could they have made a movie with such a long timeline that would somehow incorporate the fact that the von Trapps had to learn to speak English when they moved to America, even if they spoke English throughout the film, and so forth?

The love story between "Liesl" and the postman was completely unnecessary and kind of suggests that it's "young love" the audience wants, not a love story between a middle-aged widower and a youngish nun. It's kind of odd that they added that. Also, during Sixteen Going on Seventeen, it's pretty obvious that the actress was 21. The other children get a very small role in the movie, particularly Marta and Gretl. They're not so much depicted as individuals as a group of generic children, happily singing and jumping behind Maria and doing whatever she wants. We're just supposed to buy that everyone liked Maria from the start and that there were no problems in adjusting to the new mother. I know that this is normal for a family musical of the era, but it still seems naïve for a modern viewer.

The book is way too religious for a Hollywood movie, of course. It's way too religious for a secular reader, even. Maria von Trapp had her own idea of religion, of how to raise children, and so forth. She had pretty strict values and the book is rather "educational" in a way that Hollywood couldn't possibly have incorporated. It might interest some readers to know that the children didn't really like her all that much (at least at first), that her own daughter ran away from home at age sixteen, and that she bugged the film studio with her wishes and commands. She doesn't sound like such a great person from that description. But the book is written from her own perspective, and she keeps stressing how close they were as a family and how all families should be just like them. It's difficult to know what the truth was. Julie Andrews is charming in the role, in any case.

Truth be told, both the movie and the book are so dated that I have difficulty criticizing them. I wasn't alive when either of them came out. The Sound of Music is actually the first movie my mother ever saw in the theatre, and she's 55 now. In fact, the book constantly refers to how things are in Europe as opposed to the US. Pretty much every single thing here has changed so that it's now the same in Europe, and it feels weird to think that there was such a huge difference between the cultures back then.

Of course, if you look at the movie, there was no difference - rich Austrians spoke English and drank pink lemonade, making small talk like in American movies.

Girl, Interrupted

Book: Girl, Interrupted was written by Susanna Kaysen. It's an autobiographical novel about Kaysen's year in a mental institution in the 1960's. Published in 1993.

Movie: The screenplay was written by James Mangold and Lisa Loomer, and the director was James Mangold. It was going to be Winona Ryder's comeback to stardom, but became Angelina Jolie's triumph instead, and Jolie ended up winning an Oscar for her supporting role as Lisa. The movie came out in 1999.

Plot Differences: The book has no linear plot; it's a collection of memories and musings about sanity, society and interesting personalities, a very modern and fragmentary novel. The movie pretty much changed it into a clear-cut linear narrative intersected with flashbacks of Susanna's life. Events that never really happened have been added to the movie; these include Susanna and Lisa running away and Lisa stealing Susanna's diary and threatening to kill her.

Character differences: The character of Lisa is expanded in the movie; she only appears in one or two chapters in the book. In the movie, Lisa pretty much steals the show from the protagonist Susanna, whose symptoms of insanity are played down and she seems like a downright dull character in a crazy setting. Susanna's roommate Georgina is made less central than in the book. The story of Daisy, who is abused by her father, is expanded considerably and tied to Susanna's story. The black nurse, portrayed by Whoopi Goldberg, does not appear in the novel in a similar form (there is a nurse named Valerie, but she is not at all like Goldberg's character).

Author opinion: Kaysen has said she hates the movie, calling it "melodramatic drivel". Full article here.

My opinion:
Girl, Interrupted is a movie I've seen many times and used to love - until I read the book. Which is brilliant. Kaysen really has an original voice as an author, and her insights were interesting to read. Unfortunately, almost none of them were used in the movie, and the writers decided to just change the entire story. It seems like the target audiences for the book and movie are completely different. This is a definite case of dumbing down a novel to please a wider, less educated audience, an audience more used to linear narratives and flashbacks and probably uninterested in the book.

The film flows fairly nicely. Winona Ryder is good, but the character of Susanna has been blanded down a bit too much and fails to make the impression she makes in the book. More VO's might have helped. Angelina Jolie as Lisa is really good, of course - and completely unrecognizable as a junkie with rings around her eyes and ruffled hair. The outfits, furniture and town landscape fit well to the 1960's, and the Vietnam war news run alongside the events in the institution. Some of the humor works and some of the dialogue is poignant enough to keep up my interest.

The movie is a bit different from the mainstream. It does portray people in a mental institution, which you don't see too often. However, their insanity has been sort of toned down to not offend people. One woman does shout out dirty words compulsively in one scene, but we don't see Alice Calais painting herself with her own feces like in the book, or something else that might upset more sensitive viewers. The problem with the movie is that it makes the institution seem like a nice little summer camp for pretty young girls whose appearance and behavior don't offend the viewer. Some characters don't really display their problems at all. For example, Georgina's "I'm a compulsive liar" is never backed up with anything. She doesn't tell one lie during the film.

The DVD has lots of deleted scenes. The fact that a lot of these scenes are Susanna seeing things or experiencing "insane" moments speaks about the weirdly political thread running through this film: that Susanna's hospitalization had a lot more to do with her society and its norms than with her being sick. Which in itself is fine and to some extent present in the book. The problem is that the film makers clearly didn't want to portray Susanna as insane or in need of help at all. The clearest sign of this is the scene where the head nurse, played by Whoopi Goldberg, tells Susanna that she's just a lazy, spoiled rich girl who doesn't know what real insanity even is. It's an abominable scene. Firstly, the book has no "lesson" Susanna must learn, and it's condescending to state the message of the film like this. Secondly, it would be horribly unprofessional of a nurse to tell a patient something like this - a judgement, really; something she can't possibly say with any authority, because she doesn't talk to the patients about their problems. She simply wouldn't know, and even if she made that judgement in her mind, it wouldn't be OK for her to say it out loud. And we're supposed to side with her?

The scenes added by the screenwriters can be clearly distinguished from the ones based on real events. Susanna and Lisa never ran away. Susanna wasn't there when Daisy committed suicide. The ward didn't go to an ice cream parlor where Susanna's ex-lover's wife was told off by Lisa. The patients didn't spend nights going down a secret pathway and bowling while 60's music played. In fact, very few of the scenes and dialogues that took place in the book actually made it to the movie.

Most notably of all, the scene where Lisa steals Susanna's diary seems unreal and strange. I thought at first it was a dream sequence, but no. Susanna finds the other patients reading her diary in the basement, and Lisa chases her and threatens to kill her. Susanna tells her she's already dead, and Lisa has a nervous breakdown. This kind of thing brings the movie down. People telling each other they're already dead, with dramatic music in the background, gives the feel that we're watching a performance, not an interaction between real people. Too much of the dialogue in the movie is clearly aimed directly at the viewer: "Dear viewer, please note that Daisy is abused by her father, and the only reason she was released was because her Daddy was rich and powerful." "Dear viewer, are you catching the irony we're playing on here: Lisa threatens to kill Susanna, while she herself is already dead inside?" Dear writers? We get it. Less would have been better.

The use of music is another thing that bugged. When they sing Downtown to Polly who's in seclusion, it just becomes another unbelievable cinema moment where they sing a famous song of the era. Again, less would have been more.

The movie isn't bad, exactly. It's just that it's too far removed from the book to really be an adaptation of it. It's more a movie loosely based on the characters in the book. As an adaptation of the book, it's a failure. As a movie, it's kept my interest on repeated viewings and is at times compelling. The movie clichés drag it down, but don't completely ruin it. If they had used the deleted scenes, which are mostly based on the book, it would have been much better.

You know who should have made this movie? Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry. Imagine how they could have done justice to the non-linear timeline and the visual imagery in the novel.