For Stam Criticism is Inherent—Beyond Fidelity

Robert Stam’s article, which deals with the question regarding whether or not a film should have complete fidelity to its source material, questions why such a need is there in the first place. Stam argues that because film is a different medium from novels, inherently the adaptation will be different. He feels that readers become disappointed for the wrong reasons. Any kind of description of anything in particular in a novel is always generalized because the novel is not a visual medium. Stam argues that film is inherently specific. (Stam, pg. 55). In that sense, the way someone looks or the way the locale looks will always appear different from how it did in the novel, and the reader’s interpretation of events will have been breached; it’s inevitable.
Therefore, Stam argues than rather try to be as close to interpretation to the source material as possible, a filmmaker should tell the primary tale (the important feeling of the work and a retaining of its ideology) rather than try to stay as close as possible to the version told by the teller. Stam’s argument is that since one is working within two mediums, this need to have absolute fidelity toward a given text is a losing battle. (Stam, pg. 58).
Stam feels that the reason for why there are so many weak adaptations of books doesn’t have to do with the fact that the movie wasn’t being faithful to the book, but rather that the movie was trying too hard to be the book; to be literary. Stam’s feeling is that successful adaptations, for instance Tom Jones, stays true to the source material by using filmic conventions instead of literary ones to retain the feeling of the work. The novel Tom Jones references past literary conventions; the film references past filmic conventions. There was no other way the adaptors could have told their story, Stam argues, because a film is not inherently literary. (Stam, pg. 68). Rather, films are polyrhythmic—i.e. they contain elements from all of the arts—and fragmentary. (Stam, pg. 60). Stam argues that film, rather than being an inherently limited art form, is so rich and has so many elements running throughout it that filmmakers are scared to contradict the novel that they are adapting’s intentions. They are scared to admit to themselves that film may be a better medium to tell the story in than the novel. (Casting can tell a film audience a lot about a text that the text itself could not tell because the text never dealt with performance and interpretation. The casting and performance in a film can make a comment on the text itself, which the text could never do. In fact, because one medium is dealing specifically with another, making a comment in the form of criticism of that medium is inevitable.) (Stam, pg.60). Stam is completely against the bias of fidelity mainly because this notion censors the film medium to try to be a literary medium only. How could one do that to a medium that also contains elements of painting, dance, ect.?
Stam’s ultimate argument is that filmmakers are afraid to alter or even criticize a given text that they are adapting because filmmakers and filmgoers have a bias that literature is the greater medium; therefore films highest aspiration is to be literary and have complete and total fidelity to the text being adapted. (Stam, pg. 59). Ultimately, Stam feels that the primary function of films, when they are adaptations, is to, “…explore the notion of adaptation as demystifcatory critique” (Stam, pg. 63). His argument is that if a filmmaker is required to adapt a book that they disagree with ideologically or even stylistically, do they then have to have complete fidelity to the work and censor their own impressions or beliefs; thereby censoring the art form of movies altogether? Stam feels that this bias known as fidelity is a belief that needs to be done away with for fear that it will make all filmmakers timid towards expressing their own artistic temperament toward a given text that they are adapting. He argues that adaptation gives duration toward the work being adapted (even if it’s criticizing it) because it’s updating (by making a comment on) the initial work, for future generations. (Stam, pgs. 62-63). For him, adaptation is criticism.

Works Cited

Naremore, James, ed. Film Adaptation. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Subtle Bleakness

Ghost World, both the book and film, are works that deal with a girl by the name of Enid’s constantly reaching an impasse in her life. In both works Enid is the instigator of those moments of impasse that happen to her; of the moments when she’s not connecting with anyone. However, the difference between both the graphic novel and the film is that Daniel Clowes’ graphic novel never gets inside Enid’s thought processes, while Thora Birch’s Enid in Terry Zwigoff’s film is a much richer characterization. Birch’s performance gives credence to Enid’s view of the world. (An audience can tell that Zwigoff and company truly respect Enid’s individuality.) In the film, it’s not so much that Enid is an isolationist because she’s an unconscionable jerk, but that she’s an isolationist because she’s so unlike everyone else. There’s an opposing dialectic between graphic novel and film: in the graphic novel, Enid is too immature to connect with other people, while in the film Enid’s estrangement from others is her way of becoming an adult.
One of the key differences between both film and graphic novel is both works sense of spirit. In my opinion, the graphic novel is more malicious than the film; not only characterizing both Enid and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson in the film) as stereotypically hipster criticizers who reject everything in their path, but characters they make fun of are also stereotypically caricatures or composites of “weirdoes” . (It doesn’t help that the work is a graphic novel.) No one gets off easy in Clowes’ universe.
One gets the impression when they read Ghost World that no one can connect in the graphic novel because everyone holds derision towards everyone else in Enid’s town. (I for one would not want to take up residence there.) A scene like the one where the Seymour (Steve Buscemi in the movie) like character goes into the Diner looking for the woman who answered his personal ad, only to find that he’s had a prank pulled on him (Enid was the one who called Seymour) stays a malicious prank in the graphic novel because Enid never gets to apologize to Seymour, like she does in the film. In fact, in the film, Enid goes out of her way to personally know Seymour. She’s fascinated by the man in a way that’s completely a new experience for her, considering that’s she’s not fascinated by anyone else. In the graphic novel, the Seymour type character remains a composite-an image out of a comic book that lacks any dimensionality because the reader doesn’t see any more of him. Actually, the character traits of the Seymour in the film are regulated throughout many different characters in the graphic novel, diminishing the aspect of the man as individual. I think the casting of Steve Buscemi in the film helps the audience gain empathy with a man like Seymour, to the effect that he becomes rather endearing. The audience, like Enid, begins to view this man as a cool unique individual. More than that, he’s a man that shares a common sensibility (and sensibility is the key word here, opposed to the graphic novel) with the protagonist of the film. They both find ideas like the whitewashing of hatred in modern society interesting, while others simply dismiss the idea because it’s so taboo. These criticizers have a one dimensional viewpoint of Enid’s and Seymour’s ideas. (It’s the reverse in the graphic novel. In the graphic novel, a person like Enid sees everyone as one dimensional.) Throughout the movie, both figures occupy the same frame opposed to the comic book where the Seymour type character is relegated to his own comic book frame by Enid’s pov; in a sense being mocked in his own cage like an animal. (In the movie, others mock Enid’s artwork; hence why she maturely becomes an isolationist opposed to the inverse mocking in the graphic novel.)
The color scheme of the graphic novel makes Ghost World a one dimensional work of art-makes it a frigid aqua blue type of graphic novel. The graphic novel is a black and white one dimensional view of the world, whereas the film is in bold primary color denoting the enjoyment and thrill of being an individual. All one has to do to compare both works is to compare the two scenes in the Diner to see that Zwigoff sees individuals like Weird Al the waiter, Seymour, and even Enid as enjoyably eccentric; he imparts the space they inhabit, like the Diner, colorfully with primary reds. Clowes doesn’t.
Yet, there’s a downside to this exuberance of sensibility in the film and that is that it’s ephemeral. After awhile, one cannot share this point of view with others. This is a much more logical viewpoint than the graphic novel’s; the graphic novel’s snide viewpoint that snide people remain forever alone, because they’ve alienated everyone around them, can begin to be rather repetitive by book’s end. Zwigoff subtly imparts this knowledge throughout the movie; in effect taking away the snide tone of the book. In the key scene where Enid is listening to the Blues music that Seymour has lent her, even though this is in a sense Seymour and Enid’s way of connecting, Enid is sharing the moment by herself. Throughout the film, there are other subtle indications of Enid’s isolationist temperament, like when she starts relegating Seymour to her answering machine-a much more subtle form of relegating someone than found in the graphic novel. Is it ironic that the moment when Enid is at her most desperately alone, the color scheme of the bed that she’s lying on while crying is at its most flamboyantly colorful? There is a subtle bleakness to Ghost World and that is that the film shows how true individuality can lead to loneliness.
One of the clever ways that the film has added to the conception of the graphic novel is by a)altering Rebecca’s character in an interesting fashion and b)adding a new love interest for Seymour. In the film, Rebecca’s the one that is basically the influence for Enid to enter the conventional corporate working world, opposed to the instigator of her critical nature, in the graphic novel. In the film, Rebecca tries to convince Enid to get a job so that they can get an apartment together. For Seymour’s character, the person that is pulling him towards normalcy is his new girlfriend. (Both women share similar corporate working places, as well as dull bland apartments lacking the originality of Enid’s and Seymour’s place.) Interestingly enough, both break it off with the two characters and yet still Seymour and Enid don’t get in a relationship with each other. Much of this has to do with the mere idea that the two have some kind of connection to conventionality that they both don’t want to face, as evidenced in the scene where Enid notices that Seymour’s girlfriend bought him conventional jeans; this is the moment when both characters start to share their own frames much like in the graphic novel, i.e. they both become critical of one another. I prefer this form of estrangement opposed to the graphic novel’s. There’s no malicious arguments in the film. Instead, simply other people indicate the flaws in both Enid and Seymour’s relationship. Even though the square world doesn’t understand individuals like Enid and Seymour at all, at the same time individualistic people know each other all too well, and know when they are showing hints at being square. (In the graphic novel these complexities are missing in the Seymour Enid argument scene at the Diner. It’s not even so much of an argument, as a scene where Seymour tells Enid off.) So instead, they simply separate themselves from everyone else (including the audience, i.e. the film ends.)
Yet, Enid is not as callow as she was in the graphic novel, even when being separated from everyone else because of her point of view. Even when Seymour gets incredibly upset at Enid once he finds the first sketch she ever made of him, what he doesn’t see, until Enid shows him, is the other sketches she has made of him once she got to know him better. The surprise of the film is that Enid, like Seymour, is a truly mature person, as indicated visually when she goes home, washes the dye out of her hair and listen’s to Skip James’s Devil Got My Woman. The hipster image was merely a façade, while in the graphic novel it’s only when Enid is tragically alone, because of her own doing, that Clowes gives her an isolated moment away from Rebecca; the one who promulgates her hatred of everyone. (The one non-superficial similarity between graphic novel and film is that Enid’s isolated moments serve as a relief away from Rebecca.) One gets a sense of this if you compare both isolation scenes from the graphic novel and film. An image like the one where Enid has an empowering close up in the film, while listening to Skip James, is in direct contrast to the image on the second panel of page 62 in the graphic novel where Enid in long shot is holding her head down low in tears, basically (and arguably) being criticized by Clowes for her actions.
Yet in the film, no matter all the good intentions from both parties, Seymour and Enid still drift apart. This is an indication of the complexity (and maturity) of Zwigoff’s Ghost World; in the film once one is imparted with the knowledge that they should be themselves, they begin to become isolated. Even though no one gets off easy in Zwigoff’s universe, the filmmaker doesn’t condemn those people either.

Internal Dignity

It appears that both the film and novel versions of The Sweet Hereafter deal with the mutability of perspective. In both the film and the novel, everyone has their own interpretation on not only the events concerning the bus accident, but also their own actions and morality. Even though little “action” happens in both book and film, Atom Egoyan and Russell Banks want to show the complexity and importance of people being involved in a major accident either wanting or not wanting to investigate what happened to them; this is something that is not presented in a great deal of fiction. Someone like Nicole has a right not to want to seek the “truth”; however, Mitchell Stephens also has a right to seek the “truth”. The problem in this situation is that since nothing can be factually proven in regards to the circumstances of the accident, the “truth” is the different character’s interpretation of events which are always clouded by their moral perspective. I think it’s this complexity that leads to the complex structural choices of both novel and film.
One of the themes that intrigues me about the book of The Sweet Hereafter is the idea of how truly hard it is to interpret whether someone is lying or not, or whether they are guilty or not. The questions that Banks subtly hints at to the audience reading his novel is that we do not live in a black and white world were certain people are designated as good and certain people as evil. Many characters in the novel lie for good reasons, regarding the bus accident that killed many students. A clear example is Nicole Burnell’s account of what happened. In the novel, Nicole realizes that she’s being used as a linchpin in a case that she doesn’t necessarily agree with. (She’s being used this way because she’s the only surviving student on the bus that day.) Also, she feels powerless because she is being used both by the lawyer Mitchell Stevens and her own family, who want to simply win a case where they can obtain money to buy a new computer. She’s trying to win back her individuality from her father who molested her. Nicole feels that the students on that bus never would want to have their case investigated, just like many of their parents don’t want to tread down that road; for a parent like Billy, dragging the whole situation in a courtroom is not the proper private way of mourning his child’s death. The private nobility of characters like Nicole and Billy is in contrast to someone like Mitchell Stevens. Banks is a writer who never wants to have a predisposition towards any one characters viewpoint in his novel. Rather, he’s a writer whom believes in questioning character motivation before coming to a conclusion; even a character he may empathize with. Mitchell Stevens doesn’t do this.
By the end, it’s the reader that has to decide on their own who is right or who is wrong in a situation like this. Is there such an easy answer? Yes, Stevens may be right about making someone pay for the accident. However, Does Stevens have a right to investigate in this matter, considering that those were not his kids who died in the accident? Also, does Stevens have a hidden rationale for doing what he’s doing? The problem with idealists, especially ones without the proper facts who are simply following their gut intuition, is that no one examines why they are so passionate about the cases that they are involved in; no one examines their intentions because they feel that if someone is selflessly trying to find justice that there can’t be any hidden rationale behind such an act. In fiction, the selfless lawyer is always morally right in doing what he/she is doing. Banks shows the reader that Stevens took this particular case so personally because he felt guilty for the fact that he could never save his own daughters life. He’s attributing his victimhood onto the other parents involved in the accident. This is wrong because some parents are not feeling those particular emotions that he’s feeling, and it’s also wrong because once a lawyer is personally involved in a case, they begin to be blinded into believing whatever they want to believe. What makes the book such a complicated one is that Stevens is not necessarily a villain. This quote is an indication of how hard it is to judge someone as selfless as Mitchell Stevens: “But it wasn’t greed that put me there; it’s never been greed that sends me whirling out of orbit like that. It’s anger. What the Hell, I’m not ashamed of it. It’s who I am. I’m not proud of it, either, but it makes me useful, at least. Which is more than I can say for greed” (Banks, pg. 89.) He is someone who also may not necessarily be wrong in doing what he’s doing. No one, including the author, really has any answers in this regard.
What is satisfying about the film is how, in some strange way, all the feelings mentioned above are enhanced to greater effect. Even though the film stays closely attuned to the book, both in terms of tone and plot, there are differences that merely enhance what Russell Banks was getting at in his novel. Banks has admitted this, in relation to the Pied Piper aspect of the story. When one reads the novel, there is a very subtle feeling that Nicole (Sarah Polley) is trying to honor the children of the accident in her own way by not trying to cheapen their names in a legal action. The film literalizes this feeling for the audience by adding the Pied Piper story to the concept. In the Pied Piper metaphor, the piper’s forever wishing that he could have gone with the children who have left the town, crystallizes the idea that Nicole feels that she should separate herself from the people who are inadvertently using her for their own gain. This is her form of closure (Landwehr, pg. 217.); if she doesn’t do so she will forever feel like a walking ghost much like how Billy Ansel (Bruce Greenwood) feels. She has the power that Billy never had. This is in the novel, but it’s not as emotionally powerful or explicit. One does not get a sense that there’s that strong of a connection between Nicole and Billy Ansel, except if they were to consider that their two perspectives are some of the only ones that the reader reads. In the film this connection is more apparent because of Atom Agoyan’s highly ingenious structure, which is not in the novel. When Billy and Nicole have a similar sentiment, Agoyan can cut back and forth between the two of them and create a parallel between the two characters that would be hard to find if the film where told in chronological order, or in the deposition type format found in the novel. Agoyan makes one feel that they are actually watching a town and how citizens of that town connect with one another in times of tragedy, even if they are not in the same scene with one another. The grieving townspeople are emotionally stranded, and at the same time emotionally united. They have an internal form of dignity, and they feel no need to make that public. This enhances the feeling of the book; that feeling is there it’s just not as public about the sentiment.
Both film and novel share a similar purpose in showing the audience/viewer that the world is not as simple as a lawyer’s deposition presents it to a judge. There are many different elements that go into a person’s motivation to do anything. Both Banks and Atom Agoyan don’t believe in showing one character’s viewpoint on a given situation, but instead believe in showing several interpretations of events. A film like A Civil Action or a John Grisham book’s response to anything is to go to court. Once something enters that particular domain, the lawyer becomes the dominating viewpoint for everyone to pay attention to. He’s the writer, and Banks can obviously empathize with this viewpoint. Stevens (Ian Holm), like Russell Banks, phrases his words in a certain way to convince anyone listening to them (Banks a Agoyan section of the DVD); hence the deposition type structure in the novel. What Banks is trying to do in his novel is separate his particular moral standing on his subject matter. He’s trying his best not to be Stevens while at the same time not condemning his actions in anyway. Agoyan concentrates on this complexity in his film and adds another layer; Stevens becomes the film director. (This makes sense considering that film is a visual medium, and that Agoyan is himself a film director.) There’s a love hate aspect to this character that Agoyan has talked about in countless interviews. Stevens in the film is almost manipulating a family to respond a certain way, in much the same way that a director manipulates his actors; it’s all to create a great performance. Yet, he may be doing this for just intentions, just as Nicole is whenever she lies. They are coming at different angles, and yet their actions all amount to the same thing which is simply trying to keep one’s integrity in times of grief; how to empower oneself to get out of grief (Charlie Rose interview with Atom Egoyan.)
What’s wonderful about both the book and film is the fact that the case never reaches the courtroom; the situation never gets a chance to become that fictional. Both the book and film are about being emotionally rooted. The difference between both book and film is that the deposition format is much like a courtroom, in that each party is trying to make their case. Therefore, emotional honesty leaves the picture. In the book, the reader can tell in the case of someone like Dolores Driscoll that she’s trying to make herself look as innocent as possible in the eyes of the lawyer. When she states that:
“No, I am almost sure now that it was an optical illusion or a mirage, a sort of afterimage, maybe, of the dog that I had seen on the Flats and that had frightened and moved me so. But at the time I could not tell the difference. And as I have always done when I’ve had two bad choices and nothing else available to me, I arranged it so that if I erred I’d come out on the side of the angels. Which is to say, I acted as though it was a real dog I saw or a small deer or possibly even a lost child from the Flats, barely a half mile away,” (Banks, pg. 34.) clearly she’s trying to sell an image of herself being responsible that is somewhat farfetched. This doesn’t happen in the film (Dillon, pg. 228.) One is not choosing sides here; it’s more like an emotional tapestry where past, present, and future all commingle to create a character as they actually are; not as what they want to be viewed as.
In the novel, Stevens can create a persona for his reader that paints a false picture of the man. In the film he’s not in charge of how he’s presented. Therefore, the past can interweave in certain points contradicting a given impression that the audience has of him, and that he has of himself. This occurs in the film when Stevens runs into an old friend of his daughter’s. His past that he’s been blocking out of his mind for so long inevitably catches up with him here, and he begins to recount a horrible moment where his daughter almost died from an insect infection. Stephens talking to his daughter’s friend is narrating the shot where Stevens is a young man, holding a knife to his daughter’s throat. He had to do so because if his daughter’s swelling continued, he’d have to perform an emergency tracheotomy on her. This is an indication of how the past present and future are really synonymous moments in this film. Stevens is haunted by this image, because it’s indicative of how he feels a tremendous amount of guilt over being the man who cares so much for his daughter’s life that he will irrevocably damage her in the process. It’s a metaphor for what he’s doing to the dead school children; basically going against their wishes. Before this moment was a scene showing the bus accident; it’s the intercutting that occurs throughout the film, without the adherence to chronological order, that basically blows Mitchell Stevens’ cover in the audience’s eyes. Stevens is trying to create a civil case out of the bus accident out of guilt for the fact that he could never save his daughter.
Another indicative moment is the high overhead shots of a young Stevens in bed with his family which is interspersed throughout the film. It’s a moment of happiness lost, much like what happened in the bus accident. It’s not a coincidence that the one moment occurs after the other; the editing is drawing connections that are not in Banks book. These are moments that show that even though these characters are separated emotionally from one another, they are still connected through their all dealing with grief; this is something the lawyer doesn’t want to remind himself of but is haunted by constantly-hence the constant going back to that particular moment throughout the film. The title shot, which moves horizontally showing Stevens family in bed, is a metaphor for the structure of the film-it’s like a timeline and yet what’s missing on that empty floor that they are laying on is the other grief stricken moments that happen to the others in the film. Hence, the emotional isolation that all these characters are feeling, even if they are experiencing the same emotions. Linear time separates all of them, just as the deposition format separated the characters from the novel.
An interesting dialogue between film and novel occur in the moments when the film differs from the book: examples include the changing of the setting from upstate New York to Canada, and Nicole’s reading of the pied piper of Hamelin story to some of the children who eventually die in the bus accident. For the change of setting, I almost feel that it changes the tone of the story to one of even more mysteriousness than the novel. In my opinion, Canada is a beautifully mysterious place, where the people there are content in the mystery. This would help the feeling of the victims wanting to be left alone with their grief, and not wanting to necessarily know the “truth”. As Agoyan has said, Canada is not as much of a litigious society as the United States is (Charlie Rose Atom Egoyan interview.) They are content in their emotionally frozen states. What’s interesting about this is that Banks writes about this, and its simply more subtly stated and harder to interpret because the reader is so focused in one character’s viewpoint on the situation; unlike the film the reader can’t clearly see a connection between one character’s state and another’s because the viewpoints are not joined together by editing. In the novel, when Billy states that, “The snow continued to fall, and from the perspective of Risa and the others back at the accident site, I must have disappeared into it, just walked straight out of their reality into my own. In a few moments I was utterly alone in the cold snowy world, walking steadily away from everyone else, moving as fast as I could, toward my children and my wife” (Banks, 72.) What he doesn’t realize is that he’s much closer to the townspeople than he thinks; they all share in the same ideal that the lawyer is ostracized from, and the film makes this connection explicit.
No matter the differences between both book and film, the basic emotional core of the story is there and this is what makes The Sweet Hereafter such an interesting case of adaptation. It’s almost as if Atom Egoyan and Russell Banks are looking at the story from different perspectives, and yet both reach the same conclusion. It’s this type of emotional maturity that I think both hope for in a better world; I think this is the message that both are trying to get across to people. It’s also what the story is all about. One doesn’t necessarily have to be on the same page to understand where someone else is coming from. In this instance, The Sweet Hereafter is the perfect book to be adapted into film because it’s all about adapting to someone else’s viewpoint. This is something that the filmmaker and writer and audience go through when encountering this story; moral prejudice about a given character is gone. This is not something that the different characters go through, and that’s because the structure of both book and film have allowed that to be that way. The characters are stranded from each other.
However, even though Nicole and Stevens are contrasting parties in terms of moral beliefs, they are not enemies. Both Banks and Egoyan care more about the integrity of their characters and the sustaining of their integrity, than whether or not they solve their emotional problems in a legalistic manner, because once something enters the courtroom the situation does turn black and white in an instant. Roles have been cast; there’s always a villain and a hero. One shudders to think what this film would be like if it was made in a non-independent vain, with the studio system involved.
This passage by Russell Banks: “They wanted her to stash her pain and guilt where they didn’t have to look at it. But she wasn’t having any of that. Silently, with her head bowed, Dolores was plunking herself down in the exact center of the town’s grief and rage, compelling them by her presence at these funerals to define her. Was she a victim of this tragedy, or was she the cause of it? She had placed herself on the scales of their judgement, but they did not want to judge her. To them, she was both, of course, victim and cause; just as to herself she was both. Like every parent when something terrible happens to his child, Dolores was innocent, and she was guilty” (Banks, 144.) makes me immediately think of the actors in the film. It’s almost as if Sarah Polley and Ian Holm’s faces are synonymous with that novel, and I don’t think this deters from the novels intentions in anyway (usually it’s a bad thing when you read a novel and can’t help but think of the actors in the adaptation because this does take away from the novelist’s intentions.) However, here it’s almost as if these actors were born to play these parts; they basically enhance the book’s intentions. I can’t think of any other actors who could play multilayered characters such as these; they make one aware of how Egoyan and Banks intentions are to not show a black and white world on the screen. Everyone involved in this enterprise has just as much quiet dignity as the roles that they are inhabiting. All one has to do is study the independent nature of Sarah Polley’s career to see that she very much is like the character that she plays in this film. She had a chance to become a big Hollywood actress in Hollywood, and decided to continue making independent films in Canada instead; consequently making much less money than she could have made had she went to Hollywood. The whole idea of this enterprise is independence away from people who think they have your better interests at heart, even if this is the “wrong” thing to do.
Works Cited:
1. Landwehr, Margarete Johanna. Egoyan’s Film Adaptation of Bank’s “the Sweet Hereafter”: “The Pied Piper” as Trauma Narrative and Mise-en-abyme.” Literature Film Quartely, 2008, Vol. 36 Issue 3, pg. 215-222.
2. Dillon, Steven. Lyricism and Accident in the Sweet Hereafter. Literature Film Quarterly, 2003, Vol. 31 Issue 3, pgs. 227-230.
3. Charlie Rose segment on the Sweet Hereafter: Interview with Atom Egoyan.
4. “Before and After The Sweet Hereafter” produced and directed by William M. Patterson and David L. Miller at Roaring Mouse Entertainment Inc.
5. Banks, Russell. The Sweet Hereafter. Harper Perennial, New York, 1991.

Similarity and Disparity Never Being Obvious in American Film

One of the qualities of American film that obsesses me is finding out something on one’s own that has never been mentioned in film scholarship or the history books; in finding connections that no one ever thought of on their own or never wanted to find on their own. It’s much easier to let history do all the talking, but I find that hard to do considering that the film medium is still a very new art form. Therefore, in my opinion, similarities and disparities can never easily be found in American film.
Two conspiracy suspense thrillers that deal with all the ambivalences of paranoia are The Conversation and Blow Out. Even though both films deal with men ensnared in a conspiracy who entangle themselves more and more in danger because of their obsession with that conspiracy, there is a major difference between both films and that is that The Conversation represents the beginning period of paranoia mounting in America during the 70’s, while Blow Out represents the end of that period. That doesn’t mean that Blow Out is a less complex or less disturbing film than The Conversation; I’d actually argue that Brian DePalma’s film is more disturbing than Coppola’s film because Blow Out represents the end of a period that Coppola obviously felt disdain towards and that De Palma revered.
For De Palma, the 70’s was a period where it was right and just for people to feel paranoid; for him this was a form of inquisitiveness on the part of the American people, in terms of distrusting their government, and who could blame them after Watergate? It’s because of the paranoia felt by reporters like Woodward and Bernstein that crooks like Nixon were held accountable for their actions. (Actually, the paranoia felt by the American people was justified considering that Nixon was pardoned by Ford.) For Coppola, the paranoia felt in the 70’s creates creeps like Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) who is obsessed with paranoia only for his own personal satisfaction; he gets off of surveilling others, and the feeling that he himself is being surveilled; he could care less about the victims of his obsessions. For Jack Terry (John Travolta), he becomes obsessed with the conspiracy that he’s entrenched in for the simple reason that he feels that what has been done (a governor running for president was murdered, and the murder was made to look like an accident) is morally repulsive. Therefore, something needs to be done to rectify the situation. Fortunately, Jack recorded the “accident”, so therefore he can hold those responsible accountable. However, Jack didn’t realize that the era where citizens were willing to stick their necks out on the line for the sake of liberty has passed. No one believes his theory and by the time the film ends Jack goes powerlessly mad; reduced to forever being the sound man on schlocky Horror films. (Caul works in a line of work where everyone’s a paranoid bugman-in Blow Out Jack is the lone wolf. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if movie technicians started turning on the government?)
This is a brilliant metaphor on De Palma’s part considering that he has often been accused of making schlocky Horror films, but more to the point De Palma’s belief in this film is that empty headed films serve as a distraction away from the grave reality of what’s going on in the real world-which is that everyone is apathetic towards real causes that matter and that society post the 70’s simply loves window dressing. By the end of Blow Out Jack has gone back to the role that society has relegated for him-it’s De Palma’s stating that audiences in the future will keep him away from making another Blow Out, and he was right. Even though by the end of both films both characters end up totally disgruntled and destroyed, in The Conversation Harry brought this onto himself, while in Blow Out society has created another Harry Caul in Jack.
What I find interesting about both films is the casting of the leading men. In The Conversation, Harry is cast indelibly; Gene Hackman is the perfect person to play an obsessive considering that he himself is such a method acting leading man type. What’s odd is the casting of fun lovin’ Vincent "Vinnie" Barbarino/Tony Manero in the part of an obsessive paranoid. However, I think there is a point to this casting choice (not to mention that Travolta is brilliant in the part) and that is that initially Jack shouldn’t be off putting like Harry. It’s only as the film goes on that Jack becomes more and more the stereotypical paranoid, which is just another way for society to castigate him. (In some ways, Blow Out is a subtle critique of The Conversation, which is odd, considering the fact that De Palma was probably highly influenced and enamored by the film.) It’s this sense of being enamored that makes Blow Out a more romantic version of The Conversation; it’s also why a romantic leading man type was cast as Jack. (The Conversation is an all out renunciation of everything in its sight-perfectly fitting for a 1970’s downer of a film, and perfectly fitting for Gene Hackman to play the part.) Jack is in love with the victim of this conspiracy Sally (Nancy Allen) because she represents his love with liberty against tyranny; he wants to keep that ideal/her alive. Harry has no attachment with his victims, other than being obsessed with them-as if they were tabloid figures. However, I find the style of Blow Out to be more disturbing than The Conversation, because of the fall from grace aspect of Jack’s character. It’s reminiscent of the shower scene in Psycho; the audience tragically knows ahead of time what is going to transpire for Jack, while in The Conversation, Harry is lost in his own obsessivness, so that by the time the ending happens it’s a complete shock. I think the reason for this is that Blow Out is the more plangent film; it’s 1980’s statement is one of lament in the form of a question directed toward The Conversation and Coppola-What’s the point of even fighting the system, when you know that it and everyone else is crooked?
Seeking justice in the American landscape is a difficult endeavor; especially in American film. That’s because it’s so difficult to apprehend the motives and rationale behind seeking justice; analysts constantly get it wrong. Even though it’s popular to state that Unforgiven is an example of how Clint Eastwood’s politics have changed as a filmmaker compared to his earlier work, I feel that Eastwood’s ideology is more complicated than that; let’s say for the purposes of argument that his politics have changed and they haven’t changed. If one were to compare Unforgiven to Dirty Harry, one could clearly see that even though both films hold different stances toward violence, both films also hold the law that’s protecting a given area (in Dirty Harry that area is San Francisco, while in Unforgiven that area is Big Whiskey, Wyoming) in contempt. The way both films are different is that both have different takes on why those particular forces should be in contempt, in relation to that particular law system’s views on violence.
If one were to compare both films they could clearly see that both Dirty Harry’s structure and Unforgiven’s structure are similar. In both films the characters that Clint Eastwood plays (Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry and William Munny in Unforgiven) both have to fight the law of the land to seek justice. In Dirty Harry, the police force that Harry Callahan works for won’t charge the mass murder in the film because of lack of evidence and Harry’s unethical behavior in going after him. Therefore, Harry has to go after the killer illegally, in order to stop him. Clearly, the film has an ideological hatred of the ethics of the police force and judicial system in San Francisco circa the 1970’s. Unforgiven has a similar contempt for how the sheriff Little Bill Daggett runs his town. In the film, William Munny (an ex-killer for hire) comes out of his retirement for one last job, which he takes ironically enough because of his ethics. The job concerns killing the man who disfigured a prostitute and was not reprimanded in anyway by Bill Dagget. In Munny’s efforts to seek out this man, he seeks out help from his old partner in crime, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman); these two are a similar partner team to both Harry and his partner Chico Gonzalez (Reni Santoni) in Dirty Harry. They are lone wolves seeking out justice without the help of the law. Both films share the similar trope of having their middle and end scenes be reversals of each other. In Dirty Harry, when Harry tracks down the killer, the killer one ups Harry by beating him up, and by the end of the film there’s a reversal of roles where Harry beats and kills the killer; the same occurs in Unforgiven.
Yet, there’s a subtle difference between both films and that is that the villain in Unforgiven, the character who resembles Andy Robinson’s Scorpio killer in Dirty Harry, is Gene Hackman’s character. This is clearly Eastwood’s way of stating that even though he still does not trust the Law of the land, at the same time he does not advocate violence like he did in the past. (In Dirty Harry, the police force were keeping Harry from administering violence on the Scorpio killer, while in Unforgiven it’s ironically enough the sheriff who believes in administering violence on people who don’t deserve to be treated in such a harsh way.) There are other indications of Eastwood’s stand against violence (albeit not against vigilantism.) It’s in the characterization of William Munny and how he doesn’t have it in him to kill anymore, even if it’s for justice. It’s interesting that both Eastwood’s character and Hackman’s character used to be murderous gunslingers. Hackman’s character hasn’t changed at all, even though it appears that he’s become a law-abiding citizen; he loves the prestige that he now receives as a psychopathic sherrif while Munny doesn’t want anything to do with the biographer who tries to glorify him by film’s end for killing so many people.
It’s almost as if Eastwood is criticizing the character he played in Dirty Harry for not being a vigilante in the right way; it’s almost as if he’s equating him with the initially psychopathic William Munny who hasn’t reformed. There’s an indicative scene in Unforgiven when Eastwood says to the Schofielfd Kid (who in Dirty Harry would have been the Scorpio killer or another victim of Harry’s like the bank robber at the beginning of the film because he views himself as a pro in unlawful acts) that, “We all have it coming kid,” meaning that everyone will get what’s coming to him in Heaven or Hell. (This Eastwood character is different from Harry Callahan in that he’s religious opposed to viewing himself as the enactor of justice in the world-in Dirty Harry it’s almost as if Callahan’s Magnum gun was a holy religious object-in Unforgiven guns are abhorred by the filmmakers.) If one were to compare this scene to the one at the beginning of Dirty Harry where Eastwood threatens a bank robber by saying, “I know what you’re thinking—“Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But, being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya punk?” clearly Eastwood is trying to subvert the Eastwood mythos of being pro-violence and pro-guns.
The scene where in Unforgiven where Morgan Freeman’s character can’t shoot one of the men who disfigured the girl, and Eastwood reluctantly (which is the key style in Unforgiven-everything including the look of the film is reluctant and not quite sure of itself-including the film’s politics) kills the man is perhaps the best part of the film; the scene ends when Eastwood demands that the other men give the person he just shot some water. If one were to compare this scene with the one in Dirty Harry when Eastwood and his partner come down on the Scorpio killer in the middle of the film in the football field, it’s an indication of Eastwood’s distaste in his past films for vigilante justice.
However, there still is that caveat that the law doesn’t help matters in anyway-both films deal with a figure like Hackman’s stripping citizens of his town of their guns so that they can basically be unsafe from him. It’s this version of Eastwood’s politics (perhaps his view on gun control and distrusting of the government) that hasn’t changed. Even though one form of the government in Dirty Harry are pacifists, and one form of the government in Unforgiven are for appearance’s sake pacifists, Eastwood equates both factions as the same reprehensible force; they both don’t believe in protecting citizens from harm’s way but instead mean to merely hide their reprehensibleness behind a set of regulations; it’s always the Eastwood character who is looked down upon by everyone else as being a vigilante. In some ways, Unforgiven isn’t that different from Dirty Harry at all.
Films that do share similar qualities, albeit not obviously, are both Citizen Kane and The Usual Suspects. Both films deal with men who are complete legends because they are so mysterious (Charles Foster Kane (Orson Wells) in Citizen Kane and Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects.) Both films utilize a highly complex structure of someone else’s perspective on the individual in question. What’s brilliant about The Usual Suspects is that it’s a modernist subversive take on the Citizen Kane idea in that the person being interrogated—Verbal (Kevin Spacey)—is Keyser Soze. Imagine if in Citizen Kane the person being asked on what Rosebud was was actually Kane in disguise! Well, that’s not a bad way to create an alibi for yourself and get away with a crime in the process.
Perhaps the ingeniousness of The Usual Suspects occurs because, unlike Citizen Kane, it was a film made in the 90’s opposed to the Forties; the one good thing you can say about films made in a recent decade is that so many narrative devices have been used throughout the years that films have to become more ingeniousness in their storytelling techniques. For the 40’s Citizen Kane’s use of telling a story (in this case Kane’s life story is the plot) through different interpretations, or viewpoints, of events was a highly ingenious way in which to tell a story, because the audience would be basically receiving information from unreliable narrators, much like in a novel. The audience had to choose which perspective was the correct one for themselves; they never got a hold of the “true” Charles Foster Kane, and that’s because the movie wasn’t told from an omniscient narrator’s perspective. If a person hated Kane, they obviously would make him out to be a jerk; if they loved him he would be viewed as a saint. What makes the ending of The Usual Suspects so shocking is that the whole movie is a lie and the audience isn’t aware of this until the very end of the movie; at least in Citizen Kane the audience was aware that no viewpoint on Kane was the “correct” viewpoint. They weren’t lulled into believing that what they were seeing was actual fact. In The Usual Suspects, the audience is tricked into believing that out of everyone in the movie, what Verbal is saying in comparison to everyone else’s interpretation of events is gospel; by the end of the film it turns out the audience has been duped by the Devil.
Both films not only were influential in terms of their structures, but also were influential stylistically as well. I think in terms of style this is where both movies differ. For Citizen Kane, the film’s use of deep focus shot composition made it so that the audience could see both the figure in the foreground and the background as well. I think this, coupled with the highly flamboyant aesthetics of the film (the camera is constantly making an interesting movement or is constantly showing an event from an interesting perspective) allows the audience to feel that what they are seeing is highly dubious at best in terms of being factually accurate. The Usual Suspects use of slow zooms and non-flashy aesthetics creates an impression, in terms of the audience’s interpretation, that Verbal’s story is factually accurate.
What’s similar about both film’s is Orson Wells and Bryan Singer’s use of the maguffin. In Citizen Kane, the maguffin is Rosebud, while in The Usual Suspects it’s Keyser Söze. Both things are not as important as the journey that the audience goes through to find them; they are just a pretext for a film to exist. Both films deal with trying to extract information on what exactly those things are, yet by film’s end both the reporter from Citizen Kane (William Alland) and the police investigator from The Usual Suspects (Chazz Palminteri) (who are basically surrogates of the audience) don’t satisfactorily receive what they want. (The reporter never finds out what Rosebud is and the police investigator figures out, only too late, that Verbal duped him, and that he really was Keyser Soze. Verbal flees by the end of the film; Rosebud goes up in flames.)
It’s fascinating that both films have very satisfying powerful cathartic endings, and yet at the same time there’s something off about them. I think this has to do with the fact that even when the maguffin is solved by film’s end, the mystery remains the mystery. In Citizen Kane, even though the audience figures out what Rosebud is the audience still doesn’t know why Rosebud was so important to Kane’s life; here’s a man who owned everything and yet the thing he most cared about was this paltry sled? In The Usual Suspects, even though the audience figures out who Keyser Soze is, the question audiences have been asking for years afterwards is, what was fabricated in the film and what wasn’t? Audiences for both films have obsessed over both maguffin’s for years afterwards because both mysteries haven’t quite been completely solved. For years afterwards, audiences have resembled the look on Chazz Palminteri’s face upon recounting The Usual Suspects and Citizen Kane; they are stupefied by both film’s inconclusiveness.
Both The Hangover and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie share similarities in that they are entirely made up of segments. They are interesting films in that they are both linear and non-linear at the same time. It’s very difficult to follow character progression when trying to study a series of Youtube clips, and the same applies for both films. You might say that they were made for the Youtube generation. If one sketch doesn’t pan out, there’s always another to relieve the disappointment. This isn’t situational comedy so much as it is almost a surreal form of comedy. In Bunel’s film, each segment turns out to be someone’s dream, while in The Hangover moments don’t connect in terms of thematic development and that’s what makes the movie funnier. (I’m thinking of the song number that comes out in the middle of nowhere at one point in the film.) What this type of structure allows the filmmakers to do is to basically please themselves and the audience without worrying about whether or not they are breaking convention; the movie can all of a sudden turn into a musical or a slapstick farce and the filmmakers would be applauded rather than derided for their efforts. I think it’s rather endearing that the young director of The Hangover, Todd Phillips, was inspired by an older directors efforts; I think it’s what makes The Hangover rather touching and surprising.
I feel that what makes The Hangover so fresh is the fact that it appears from the outset to be like another stupid bromance fraternity house type of comedy, and yet it unfolds in such a beautiful manner that it becomes a rather graceful comedy by its conclusion; just like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. I think this has to do with the fact that the audience has missed the stupid escapades of the three main protagonists; there’s subtlety in the fact that the movie that the audience was expecting is bypassed by the filmmakers. These guys have to retrace their steps in order to figure out what they did the night before. It’s a sobering experience. I feel this is also greatly inspired by Bunel’s film. In The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, the Bourgeoisie characters that Bunel has aped and made fun of so much in his past films keep trying to attend a dinner but somehow never get to because of one thing or another. The audience in that film is also constantly getting hints of what they are missing and nothing more. I feel this device is supposed to show, in a subtle comical way-and therefore the right way in which to do so, the maturing developmental nature of these characters. Their point of view on matters has to naturally shift because they can’t reach their original traditional (it’s tradition for them to do these kinds of things) goal; in a sense they have to grow up. Stu (Ed Helmes) has to finally realize that his wife is horribly controlling and that he shouldn’t be bossed around by her anymore, just as Rafael Acosta (Fernando Ray) has to realize what a pretentious man he is, and that he shouldn’t put down the poor because he’s just as much, if not more so, of a buffoon than they are. Stu is constantly trying to show how much more mature he is from his friends, only to realize by film’s conclusion that his state of mind is basically a macho fantasy; should one constantly suffer for the sake of being mature? As The Hangover consistently shows, it just a’int worth it because eventually one can’t keep hiding the mess that they have created for themselves-one should rather embrace it.
What makes both films subtle and graceful (almost like a Chaplin comedy) is the fact that both Bunel and Todd Phillips do not condemn or put down their main characters, even though they very easily could have. This must have been hard for Bunel, considering that he always held the bourgeoisie in such contempt in his past films; age cooled him out. He sees their actions as comic and rather endearing in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, just as Phillips is enamored with his characters, because they begin to embrace their faults. It’s interesting that both films mark drastic departures for both filmmakers. Bunel’s previous films, especially The Exterminating Angel, hold characters like the ones featured in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie in great contempt. The Exterminating Angel shows the dinner party that the audience misses in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; there the audience and the main characters can never leave the dinner that they attend. Bunel hated the bourgeoisie because he was a deeply political man. I don’t know if I would call Todd Phillips a deeply political filmmaker, but there is a similarity to him and Bunel in that his past films like Road Trip and Old School have a contemptible streak in them when it comes to depicting the main characters in the films. Maybe it’s because of the lack of depth in those films and those characters that Phillips had a stupid snide feeling creep into those films; well, Bunel may have been going through a similar process albeit in a more rich manner.
It’s amazing to me that supposed “disparate” films like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Hangover, and The Usual Suspects and Citizen Kane, have more in common with one another than supposed “similar” films like Blow Out and The Conversation, and Unforgiven and Dirty Harry. I particularly find this shocking, considering that the films that share similarities with one another don’t have the same subject matter at all, while the films that are dissimilar from one another share basically the same exact subject matter and milieu. I think these oddities are a testament to the richness and complexity in American filmmaking, as well as to their deceptiveness. It’s almost as if Blow Out and Unforgiven are subtle critiques, made to look like homage’s, of The Conversation and Dirty Harry. Whereas The Usual Suspects and The Hangover are subtle enhances of the methods, both in terms of style and content, utilized in Citizen Kane and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The irony in the appreciation of American film is that we are comparing the wrong films to one another.

Differing Perspectives on Humbert Humbert

One of the ostensible differences between the Lolita film version and Nabokov’s novel is that Humbert’s predilection for nymphs is not present in the film; in Kubrick’s version Humbert loves Lolita and Lolita only. One would think that if Kubrick removed this key aspect of the story for his adaptation, the whole structure of the work would collapse. However, Kubrick’s Lolita is a very interesting case of censorship, because rather than wallowing away in conventionality, Kubrick used the constraints of the production code to make a comment on censorship; ironically enough this actually relates to Nabokov’s themes in his novel. What makes the film interesting is that one can’t catch the inherent link between both book and film unless they pay close attention to the offhand moments and comments—the moments of double entendre.
Obviously, the book doesn’t need to use the device of double entendre in order to hint at moments of unconventional sexual promiscuity; the sexuality is right out in the open. Yet, the book still deals with the oppression of sexual freedom. (Ch. 5.) The movie doesn’t; Humbert can’t be shown as a pedophile because of the limitations of the production code. Therefore, the movie deals with something completely different and that is oppression of artistic expression. As time would tell in the case of A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick was certainly a director who believed in the director having complete artistic control of their film, no matter how reprehensible the subject matter may be. Kubrick’s Lolita deals with the horrible pat quality of 60’s culture, particularly in relation to art. It’s almost as if Kubrick felt so dissatisfied with film censorship and the general state of the culture at the time, that he felt that he should make a satire out of the whole situation; the statement that I got upon viewing the film is that, “Look how ludicrous it is to make a Lolita in the era of the 60’s. How can one make a tame version of one of the most risqué books ever written?” Unconventional sexual promiscuity was becoming quite prevalent at that time, in the culture opposed to the counterculture no less, and yet here’s a censored Lolita of all stories. I think Kubrick wouldn’t have it any other way—the difference between Kubrick and Nabokov is that Kubrick sees the hilarity in censorship, while Nobakov sees the torment and longing and frustration that eventually lead to Humbert’s madness because of sexual taboos. Kubrick is in some ways a satirist (especially considering that this film was made in his Dr. Strangelove Peter Sellers period.) He wants to make a Lolita in the most difficult period possible in which to tell that story, (the early Sixities being a time of copious amounts of film censorship being performed,) in order to make a comment on that period-why else does the story take place in the period that its set in, if only to show that the 60’s is in some ways a more conservative time period than the 20’s, in terms of the whitewashing of the sexual truth. It’s this form of frustration that leads to Humbert’s madness in the film.
In the hotel scene, there’s so much double entendre. For example, when Quilty is talking to George swine (an ironic name if ever there was one) the way they talk to each other is highly flirtatious. At one point Swine asks Quilty what he does with his excess energy. Quilty describes what his wife does to him in vague terms when they practice martial arts; he says that, “I sort of lay there in pain, but I love it.” When Humbert asks about the bed situation, Swine says that the double bed is very accommodating; “One night we had three ladies resting in one.” What everyone in that hotel alludes to is so obvious that this makes using double entendre rather ridiculous. However, Kubrick had no choice in the matter because of the censorship edicts of the time. Therefore, Kubrick is making a comment of how ridiculous it is to whitewash the sexual truth, especially in the counterculture era of the 60’s.
Actually, Quilty’s weapon of choice against Humbert is the whitewashing of the sexual truth. When Quilty speaks to Humbert in the guise of the police man, Kubrick has arranged the actors so that Humbert can’t see who’s talking to him. In this scene, as in all the scenes with both Sellers and Mason, Humbert is in such contrast to Quilty; Humbert is stiff while Quilty is very relaxed. In this scene Quilty represents the “official” world that constricts Humbert sexually. Yet, Quilty is the most reprehensible figure imaginable. This is Kubrick’s metaphor for how the whitewashing of the sexual truth and censorship is a joke because the people who do such a thing are far worse than the people being censored or restricted; censorship probably exists in order to make people who do not subscribe to the censorship code (which is a joke as this film clearly shows) look morally reprehensible Metaphorically, Kubrick composes a composition that represents this idea; it’s the close up over the shoulder shot of Quilty and his wife as they are hiding behind the newspaper from Humbert, who is in the background. They and their treacherous ways hide while Humbert is clearly visible. It’s ironic that James Mason is so courtly a gentleman and speaks with great enunciation, and yet he’s the one that’s ostracized from society; whereas Quilty is known by everyone to be a “genius.”
It’s the authoritative figure that Quilty is playing that makes Humbert paranoid; surely Humbert knows in the back of his mind that this man is more reprehensible than he is. It’s this nagging truth that results in his paranoia that his Lolita will be taken from him; in the book the reverse occurs—in the book Humbert is paranoid about what he will do on his own volition to the woman. In fact, the Humbert of the film played by James Mason, is very sympathetic not just because of the performer, but the fact that in the film Humbert loves Lolita and Lolita only. There is no mention of Humbert’s plan to one day have little nymphets with his Lolita for his sexual predilection, as there is in the book. Humbert’s being more sympathetic in the film actually enhances the idea that he’s very much unaware of how dangerous and perverse the real world is. This is felt in the shot where Quilty’s poster is hanging behind Humbert while he’s crying his eyes out in lolita’s room; he’s unawares at the fact that Quilty is Lolita’s true love. In the film, Quilty represents that subterranean reality that is going to take Humbert’s Lolita unawares away from him. Quilty gets away with this because he has been disguised to appear like a normal upstanding citizen. It’s the contrived play that basically kills two birds with one stone by taking Lolita away from Humbert while making him mad in the process-in effect making him look like the social undesirable pervert that Quilty really is. A person like Dolores never will realize this sad fact because she believes in whitewashing the sexual truth as well; this is what makes her death a truly tragic one. You don’t have any of this criticism of society in the book because Humbert truly is that social undesirable pervert.
Quilty is simply not as prominent a character in the book, and when he is the reader may not even be aware of his presence (it seems that the reverse occurs in the film with Peter Sellers great performance. In the film, his wild improvisatory scenes are not censored, while the sexuality in the film is.) The Quilty in the film is so despicable that he actually makes Humbert come off rather well in the film. What ends up happening in Kubrick’s version is that Humbert ends up becoming a tragic character who has been ostracized by society, opposed to snide and repulsive as he is in the book. The Humbert characteristics in the book are actually attributed more towards Quilty in the film. Kubrick’s vision of Lolita is that society allows it for a man like Quilty to get away scot free. (I don’t think the Quilty of the novel really has that much power.) I think it’s this sad fact that gives the film a real emotional substance that bypasses the hip satire elements, as in the scene when Humbert tries to take Lolita out of the hospital but is disallowed by the “official” security officers. Kubrick continually tries to criticize society opposed to criticizing Humbert, and he does this through clever means. In the scene, Humbert is the one who is given close ups that can’t help but build empathy for him, while the security guards are shot in long shot. They are not individualized in anyway. They are the faceless censoring threat of Humbert’s passion. In the book, it’s Humbert Humbert who is the hip satirist with no emotion in him. In the novel, Humbert is the one who condescends towards Lolita’s intelligence (pg. 117), opposed to James Mason’s Humbert who is interested in educating Lolita of the ways of the world, like in the scene where he reads her poetry. It helps that Humbert rarely is the narrator of the film, because we don’t see his view of how everyone is not as perceptive about the ways of the world as he is.
One of the main differences between the two versions is that they are created by artists in two different mediums. In the novel, the reader can’t help but feel a cold antipathy towards Humbert when he makes a comment like, “there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her unkempt armpits, there she was (my Lolita!), hopelessly worn at seventeen, with the baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A.D…” (pg. 277.) In the last scene in the film, the audience feels sympathy for Humbert because they are not hearing his narration. Without the distraction of the narration, the audience pays more attention to what Humbert is saying in this scene; when he says to Lolita that, “I’m not making fun of you,” it appears as if he means it because he does not make a witty retort in his mind to undercut the sentiment, like in the novel. For what is the primary basis of the narration, but an undercutting of sentiment for defense mechanism purposes? Humbert refuses to show his emotions like someone like Dolores in that last scene in the novel; whereas in the film I for one was not thinking about Dolores in that last scene. I was thinking about how sad and depressing it is that of all people, Humbert is the one that gets short changed by society. Without the narration and the idea of Humbert being a nymphomaniac, Lolita appears very crass when she says, “stop crying,” to Humbert in the last scene; that stop crying is basically society’s reprimand of Humbert showing any uncensored emotion. One begins to lose sympathy for Lolita in the film because she begins to resemble everyone else; she’s simply part of the censoring body known as society.
What’s interesting about the film is that the untrustworthy narrator aspect of the story is not present (Robert Stam article); how could it be considering that Kubrick was not writing a novel? However, this does not necessarily mean that Kubrick’s film is a weak adaptation. Because of the constraits put upon him, Kubrick had an intriguing idea in regards to censorship and stylistic constraint and what it does to an audience’s perception of a person like Humbert. Consequently, the film is completely different from Nobakov’s book, because Nobakov didn’t have to face such considerations.

Garbage Dreams-blurb published in Cineaste magazine

Mai Iskander’s documentary Garbage Dreams shows how the Zaballeen, a lower class peasant group in the outskirts of Cairo, struggle to survive amid the globalization of their one form of income, garbage disposal. Unfortunately, Iskander’s focus on depicting the Zaballeen’s inability to do anything about their situation and his obsession with making the audience feel his subjects’ sense of exhaustion have the opposite effect: the film feels dull and disassociated. However, one can glimpse certain potentials. There is a moment when one of the teenagers featured in the film, Osama, who has had enough of living in such poor conditions and of being invisible in the eyes of other Egyptians, decides to go to work for the foreign, hi-tech garbage company brought in by Cairo’s city council. When his friends learn that he is holding this job, they “innocently” rough house with him. The audience can see the tension between ambition and loyalty, which is here recast as one between globalization and traditionalism. The film’s point suddenly becomes clear, only to be lost once again when the scene abruptly ends. The experience is akin to skimming a newspaper article on a tragic situation in a foreign land and failing to become incensed enough to do anything about that situation. The main problem with Garbage Dreams is that Iskander fails to make the audience truly indignant at the Zaballeen’s plight. One sees, but doesn’t feel, what is at stake. This is ironic, considering that the filmmaker is so intent on showing the audience the lower classes’ predicament in Cairo.

Censorship as a Dangerous Form of Constriction

One of the most dangerous aspects of the 20th century was how the National Board of Censorship and the Catholic Legion of Decency got away with heavily censoring films. Both bodies appeared to be trying to help filmgoers in terms of not being corrupted by what they watched. However, it’s this form of “moralism” that allows organizations to have more power than should be allotted them. The real question that has to be asked is what was the real rationale for why these organizations did what they did? What effect did their actions have of the filmmaking industry? What effect their restraint had on the artists in that industry?
One of my main problems with self censorship is the arbitrary decision of who are the “up-standing citizens” who should be censoring films. The leading member of the National Board of Censorship (a body run by film distributors in order to not have the government dictate what state their films should appear in), Dr. Oberholtzer, felt that the people who comprise the Board that had complete control over whether or not a film could be censored, was any person who was not a criminal or illicit person and not a politician (Saylor, 146). That’s a very generalized group of people. Therefore, say someone feels the need to censor a given movie, that arbitrary person gets power over someone who may actually know what they are doing. That person on the board may simply not like a given scene because they don’t politically agree with it, ect. Therefore, they’ll censor that given movie. The fact that the artist who actually created the product had no say in the matter during the National Board of Censorship’s reign, over an arbitrary person who is dictating the outcome of what happens to the film, is completely anti-Democratic and illogical. Self-censorship was a fake form of Democracy, that was simply window dressing over the fact that censorship itself is an anti-Democratic principle that takes all the power away from the artist. For what is an artist but a symbol of freedom of speech?
The criteria that the Board used during its reign made no sense either. Even though the first two edicts were typical censorship ideology, (films should be censored for their, “obscenity, indecency and inhumanity” and for their “sacrilegious character”) the criteria also included, “Their tendency to present crime in an informatory way” and “Their incitement to riot and attacks upon public order” (Saylor, pg. 146.) Now, these last two edicts are silly, and also indicative of how condescending the censorship board was towards the public populace that went to the movies. The censorship board’s main aim, in my opinion, was to simply dumb down the movies. The third criteria basically shows that the censorship board wanted to take out any form of reality out of a given movie because of fear that the young would be highly influenced by viewing illicitness in movies. The censorship board is basically stating here that movies are entertainment and entertainment only; they should never have the power to show the workings of the real world, because audiences wouldn’t be able to handle this. This doesn’t make any sense, considering that the news certainly shows readers and viewers what the real world is really like. As if simply showing crime in a movie would create an illicit reaction out of someone. Modern audiences see crime all the time in a given movie, and they haven’t rioted the streets. The censorship board during their reign basically stated that audiences couldn’t handle the documentary field in anyway. This censored view of life is a fake blasé view, and many older films during the censorship board’s reign can attest to this. What were the censorship board trying to do? Were they trying to police a world’s populace by trying to show them a fake view of the world, in film? What does this say about the censorship board’s view of the intelligence of the standard film audience; that they were dumb and simply deserved sub-standard entertainment that didn’t make them think a little? The ramifications of the censorship board’s actions were extreme because they limited artistic freedom, thus limiting the potentialities of the film medium.
The shocking edict of that time was that movies were simply entertainment and were sub-standard in importance towards theater, painting, novels, music, ect. Really, what the censorship board’s prime aim was to make cinema the sub-standard art form that they initially felt it always was. Mature themes like violence are an important part of an artist’s vision. If Dostoyevsky were censored there would never be masterpieces of literature like Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground. They would be highly botched works, and more importantly they wouldn’t make any sense, had they been censored. They might even have been withdrawn had they existed under conditions like the censorship board. Dostoyevsky’s never got to exist during the early half of the 20th century in film because of self censorship. Yes, there are filmmakers out there who use violence tastelessly and ill morally in their films. However, should their bad judgment be used against filmmakers of exquisite taste? Well, that’s what happened under the censorship board’s reign. They basically used film as instructive moral doctrine for audiences, which is in itself a form of usury. Is it any wonder that the Catholic Church had leeway over filmmaker’s rights?
When the pact between both the National Board of Censorship and the Catholic Legion of Decency occurred, ironies ensued because of the vast differences between both organizations. When Elia Kazan reached a disagreement with the the National Board of Censorship on the rape scene at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire, his reasoning was that, “The rape of Blanche is a pivotal, integral truth in the play, without which the play loses its meaning, which is the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate, by the savage and brutal forces of modern society. It is a poetic plea for comprehension” (Brook, 348.) By this time, in my opinion the times were changing and the Board realized that they had to move with the mandate of the times. It’s with A Streetcar Named Desire that the Board finally realized the transgression of their ways, and permitted the rape to be subtly hinted at, for the sake of the initial message that the filmmakers were trying to come through with. They finally realized that moments such as the one with Blanche shouldn’t be censored or else the meaning of the film would be lost; the filmmakers were not trying to sneak pornographic material in the film just for the thrill of it; the illicit material had meaning behind it. Unfortunately, almost as a haunting reminder of the stupid decisions that the Board had pulled in the past for the sake of “morality”, the Catholic Legion of Decency, with the clout that the Board gave them in the past, had final cut over A Streetcar Named Desire. (Brook, 349.)
Naturally, Kazan was outraged. The fact that a filmmaker even has to deal with a Religious body is ludicrous; Tennessee Williams and Catholicism should not be uttered in the same sentence (Brook, 349.) Just as there should be a separation of church and state, there should be a separation of church and art. As mentioned before, what appears illicit may not be merely illicit, if handled by an artist. Well, a body primarily concentrating on simply what is or appears moral doesn’t care about those considerations. If anything, it’s more political than that. The person being affected by this the most, of course, speaks the most eloquently about the situation, because they are experiencing the situation firsthand. Here’s Elia Kazan: “They didn’t give a damn about the beauty or artistic value of the picture. To them it was just a piece of entertainment. It was business, not art. They wanted to get the entire family to see the picture. They didn’t want anything that might keep anyone away. At the same time they wanted it to be dirty enough to pull people in. The whole business was rather an outrage” (Brook, 349). If one didn’t know better they may think that Kazan was describing the National Board of Censorship.
Even though the National Board of Censorship’s intentions were sound, the idea being that self-censorship is the best alternative opposed to government censorship for the sake of the integrity of the artist, they missed the fact the censorship simply shouldn’t exist. The idea that they or the Catholic Legion of Decency had the right to take over an artist’s vision by censoring it is far more immoral than any illicit behavior depicted in the films being censored, as the National Board of Censorship found out, only to late. They were being made irrelevant by an organization that they themselves gave power to. This is the inherent problem when organizations go mad with the idea that they and they alone can enforce morality; they begin to dupe themselves.