Exploring recent film adaptations of popular novels, Ketaki compares faithfulness to source material in works like It Ends with Us and All the Light We Cannot See, exclusively for Different Truths.
My brother, Tapa, once explained the difference between pulp fiction and classic fiction to me, “In case of pulp fiction, every emotion is exaggerated, over-hyped, so on. Even the characters are too romantic, rather unnecessarily. And in case of a classic fiction, the characters act according to the situations as in real life we do, the hyperbolic expressions, the excessive display of every emotion is a no-no, all emotions are justifiably presented,” so forth. I nodded in a sombre face, as if this was the first time, I was learning the difference. He was happy too to educate me in an area which was not his at all, rather he intruded upon mine and tried to prove his erudition.
These days, whenever I am getting a little free time, I am opening the Netflix and segueing on to a film, based on a novel read by me. Lately, I got glued to a popular fiction, It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, a young American author, of recent times. According to Tapa, this is pulp fiction. But as I had gone through the bestseller popular fiction, I found it engaging and very much relatable from any nook of the earth. In fact, I finished this grabbing tale in a day or just nine or ten hours.
A Woman’s Emotions Manipulated
I had read similar fiction before. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a woman’s emotions manipulated. I wasn’t simply impressed by her choice to have the child. Her relationships with multiple men didn’t shock me as a middle-aged, Indian woman. What kept me reading was the ending. She chose to support herself and her baby with her flower shop. She rejected the man who had abused her. She did this even though their relationship had once seemed promising. I admired her. She had hoped for a lasting, loving relationship that would eternise.
But she accepts the fate, she chooses to face with equal temerity. May be, her mother, ill-treated and oppressed all her life, was the reason for steering clear of such a mate who might have shoved her to be a victim of domestic violence like her mother throughout her life. This is how the story opens up.
And I was a bit amazed to see this film among the ‘Recently added’ ones. I was wondering whether this film was based on the novel, I lately read. Ah yes, it was. Even Colleen Hoover, the author happened to be the producer of the film! Justin Baldoni played the double role as a successful director as well as the male protagonist. Hats off to Baldoni for this commendable balance maintained between the roles.
Just after this one, I was allured by the mini-series, “All the Light We Cannot See,” again on Netflix, based on a recent widely acclaimed novel with the same name by an American author, Anthony Doerr. And believe it or not, I forgot my dinner and hours of sleep and kept watching all the episodes, back to back, with an unflagging ardour. As I have just finished reading the popular fiction, I found the film-version, quite interesting. Might be, it was because of its being faithful to the original fiction. Directors often take liberty while bringing the author’s creation on the celluloid, but in this case, the screen-version did not seem to deviate much, or at all, for that matter, from the fiction.
True to the Novel
The episodes which seemed complete in just four limited episodes remain true to the novel, save the concluding part which deal with the ageing characters, who had been adult youngsters when the action in the novel mattered. Maybe because of the extraneous nature of the concluding part, the director of this series, Shawn Levy, chose to do away with it. And the omission hardly affects the storyline or the characters to bring the main incidents to life. Thus, the primary appeal is neither lost nor calls for any remiss owing to such attenuation.
The story is a blend of fact and the power of imagination and love. This is an amazing tale of struggle and confidence, trust and love, set in the backdrop of World War II. Marie Laure LeBlanc, a blind girl, is supported by her father, who is the master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. His daughter, Marie, had gone blind at the age of six, in 1934.
Her father helps her to know the city of Paris like the back of her palm by making a model of the city and getting her acquainted with it. She also learns from her father that the museum contains a precious diamond among other stones, known as the Sea of Flames, which causes immortality to the owner at the cost of misfortunes to all close to him. The only way to end the curse is to return it to the ocean which is its rightful owner.
Topsy-Turvy Life
We find the life of Marie topsy-turvy, when Nazi Germany invades France in 1940, and she has to take refuge with her father at her great uncle, Etienne, at the coastal town of Saint Malo. Her uncle used to broadcast educational audio-clips, in fact, to the children like Marie and Werner Pfennig, who knew him as Professor who used to speak about light and life on Broadband No. 13.
Werner was reared in an orphanage in a coal-mining town of Zollverein, however his skill for making and mending radios was known far and wide. In 1940, he was forcibly taken into National Political Institute of Education at Schulpforta, a state boarding-school imparting strict Nazi values, which Werner’s sister Jutta hates, though while leaving for the school her brother promises to be back in a couple of years to take her away on an airplane.
The rest is a gruesome picture of World War II, ravishing public properties, driving men and women along with children and new-borns on the streets. However, a Nazi gem-expert, Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel, caught hold of Marie’s father, demanded the Sea of Flames from him and as he pretended ignorance, Rumpel shot him dead. In the meanwhile, Marie kept broadcasting on a Radio channel, which Werner heard regularly. Marie thought that her father was listening to her regularly.
French Resistance
However, Madam Manec, who looked after Uncle Etienne, was affectionate to Marie and she was a part of French Resistance along with local women. Von Rumpel came to Saint Malo to track Marie and snatch the gem from her. But in a clash, he had to die.
Ultimately, by turn of fate, Werner, Uncle Etienne and Marie meet each other and though Etienne had to leave Marie in the custody of Werner, who would protect blind Marie. But the Miniseries abruptly ends with Werner bidding adieux to Marie, so that he could keep his promise to his sister, Jutta, still waiting for his return. Here, the series end.
But the story says that Werner died in a fit of delirium, stepping on a German landmine which killed him in an instant. Etienne was freed from Fort National and came back to Marie. Jutta came to Paris with her son Max to meet Marie and all of them were past their prime by then. These were not shown, may be considered as extraneous to the viewers.
Anyway, many films are true to the original story like Doctor Zhivago, Gone With the Wind of yesteryears, and Shawshank Redemption, Little Women [1994] and quite a few of these times. I am yet to watch One Hundred Years of Solitude, a series on Netflix, based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s piece-de-resistance. Being faithful, the director sometimes loses nothing, rather gains a lot. But it all depends on how the audience would respond to the film. Kudos to all our present-day film-directors!
Picture design by Anumita Roy
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