Book to Screen – Mansfield Park (1999)

Recently, I read Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. In my review, I mentioned the movie from 1999 that I’d seen and liked. But I haven’t seen it in quite a long time so I thought it was time for another viewing since the book was fresh in my mind. I got quite a surprise. There will be spoilers below for both book and movie.

The movie is very different from the book. Character personalities are changed. The plot is manipulated and changed somewhat and there’s even a brief sub plot injected for no other apparent reason than to make a politically correct comment that slavery is a Very Bad Thing. Unless I missed it, that’s not in the book at all and it felt very out of place here.

Fanny Price, our heroine, as written by Jane Austen, is meek, mild, proper, respectful, intelligent, shy and tends to blend in to the background, the objective observer. She has her own opinions but doesn’t usually express them. She loves Edmund Bertram from afar most of her life but never breathes a word about her feelings to him or anyone else. She doesn’t trust Henry Crawford and will never love him.

The movie starts with Fanny moving to Mansfield Park from her home in Portsmouth. You get a few brief scenes where you understand that she is the poor relative and will always be treated as such and there’s a scene where Edmund introduces himself to her. You kind of see that they become good friends in a brother/sister way but it’s not really emphasized and the next thing you know, the plot leaps to somewhere near the last third of the book. We’ve barely met the Crawford siblings and they’ve hardly made an impression on us and yet Fanny already has them pegged and figured out as not to be trusted.

When Henry Crawford decides he will woo Fanny, it’s nearly instant and after he asks her uncle for her hand, he accepts and she refuses, it all goes to hell. In the book, her relatives are far more gentle in their attempts at persuading her to accept Henry. In the movie, she is immediately banished back home where, after some time, Henry Crawford appears with sparkly fireworks and doves. Huh? Henry confronts her with his knowledge that she loves Edmund which she admits and is told Edmund is going to marry Mary, Henry’s sister. We really haven’t seen much of Edmund and Mary together to fully accept that he’s besotted with her and she’s undecided because he’s only a second son and is going to be a minister.There’s really not much build up to that on screen at all aside from a couple of speeches and no chemistry.

Henry nearly convinces her to accept his proposal, at least I think that was what her dream of doing exactly that was about, but the health crisis of her cousin Tom calls her back to the Park, which also didn’t happen in the book.  And also, never part of the book, Tom’s extended illness seems to be implied caused as a result of his reaction to seeing slavery at his father’s estate in Antigua. His father has a book with drawings of slaves and says his son is mad. I believe the implication is that his son saw the mistreatment of the slaves in Antigua, drew the pictures himself and what he saw is now haunting him. What? In the book Fanny remained in Portsmouth and was continually updated by letter as to Tom’s  recovery. She didn’t return until the scandal about Henry Crawford and her cousin Maria hit the fan.

Ah yes, the scandal. In the book this was totally off “screen” as it were. Fanny receives news that her newly married cousin Maria has run off with Henry Crawford after Fanny firmly rejects his proposal yet again and Edmund arrives to take her back to Mansfield Park.  In the movie, Fanny walks in on Henry and Maria in bed after she has returned to Mansfield and while Tom is still ill. I can understand why they’d change this for the movie since it would have more impact for a viewing audience but by this time as you’re watching the film, having read the book, you’ll just be shaking your head.

Then there’s Fanny herself. Her personality is very different. She’s bright and cheerful, ready, willing and able to stand up for herself if need be. She’s also a budding writer, having loved to write her stories since she was a child. This is encouraged as she gets older, by Edmund, and at the end, a possible publisher is found for her. Not even close to the Fanny of the page.

The bare bones of the story is the same and there are the same characters but they really aren’t developed well. The story, such as it is, resembles that of the book, or a small part of it. So much of the detail has been left out. Most of the characters have a tenuous relationship to the personalities that Jane wrote for them. I do get that you need to see a lot of the action that, in the book, was only conveyed by letter or conversation. A movie would be very boring otherwise. I know that a lot of detail has to be left out of a book because there’s only a limited length for a film. I tried to think of how the movie might be viewed for someone that has never read the book, and I think that was me when I first saw it. I’m pretty sure now that was one of the books I hadn’t read.

I did like it when I saw it but it’s been quite a number of years since I have seen it, likely rented on DVD at the time. Fans of Jane Austen’s books will not like this filmed version very much. I would be curious to find other versions to compare but I’d not be optimistic that I’d actually think any of them are a worth adaptation.

To use a phrase from the end of the movie, it could have been different. But it wasn’t.

Review: Mansfield Park – Jane Austen

2017:81
4 of 5 stars
Published in 1814

The next in my effort to read all of Jane Austen is Mansfield Park. This is the story of Fanny Price, one of the many children of a younger of three sisters, the one that married for love and now struggles to feed the children and pay the bills. Because she married against her family’s better judgment, she has had no contact with her sisters for many years but reaches out to ask for help in desperation. The other two sisters decide they should take on one of the older children, a daughter, and so they do. This is Fanny, of course, who is moved away from her home and beloved brother William to Mansfield Park where her aunt and uncle, the Baronet and Lady Bertram reside.

Fanny is homesick and miserable but makes friends with the younger of the two sons, Edmund, who treats her affectionately and looks out for her, at least some of the time. The two Bertram sisters more or less leave her to her own devices most of the time. Fanny is generally treated all right but is never allowed to forget she’s not their equal, a poor relation dependent on them, and is kept in the background, running errands and keeping her aunt company for her keep but Fanny is a quiet girl and seems happy enough. Things change when she’s about 17 and new neighbours, the Crawfords, Mary and her brother Henry, move to the area.

Talk about setting the cat among the pigeons! There are romantic entanglements, jealousy, scandal, and flirtatious games being played. Through it all, Fanny watches with an objective eye, the Crawfords are “society” and are shallow and insincere, they corrupt those around them but only Fanny seems to see it. She stays true to herself even when she is rejected and banished as ungrateful but never fear, Fanny gets her happy ending.

I like Mansfield Park a lot. Most of the characters are great fun, in that they’re not all upstanding, honest and stout hearted. Many are by and large devious, haughty, shallow, naive, self absorbed, shrewd and snobby. They aren’t horrible to Fanny mostly but they never let her forget that she should be grateful for the advantages they have provided for her and very surprised when she is shown to have integrity and a mind of her own, as most of Jane Austen’s heroines have, even if some of them are easily swayed from the straight and narrow path on occasion.

As with most of Austen’s books, it has been filmed. My favourite is the movie released in 1999 starring Frances O’Connor as Fanny and Jonny Lee Miller as Edmund.

Official trailer here.

Movie review: IT (and other Stephen King meanderings)

It might seem odd to post a movie review to a Reading themed blog but it’s a movie that was made from a book. “IT” is a 1986 novel by the horror writer Stephen King. It’s a big, chunky book that has two parts, one taking place in 1958 with a group of early-teens fighting an entity called Pennywise and then the second part some 25+ years later in the early 80s with the same group as adults returning to their home town of Derry to confront Pennywise again. Pennywise appears as a clown at first, to lure in children then it changes to represent the innermost fear on which it feeds. It may maim or kill and is terrifying. It lurks in the sewers, or in dark corners of old, abandoned houses, never out in the open sunlight. The kids are friends but are often bullied by the stronger and more popular children. They find strength in their bond as the Losers’ Club and that’s what gets them through this nightmare, both as children and as adults.

The book was made into a tv mini-series in the 80s starring British actor Tim Curry as Pennywise the clown and he was excellent, though for me, the best part of it. It was good, better because he was in it, but not great, as I recall.

The new remake of IT was quite good. I haven’t read the book since the 80s so I couldn’t say whether it followed it well or not but it only focussed on the part to do with the kids, not the adults years later like the original mini series did. It was set in 1988-89 which would bring the adult part forward to present day if there is a sequel planned, and it seems like there might be.

All of the child actors they cast were very good, which is unusual really (in my opinion). For me, there is always at least one or more that irritates me. Not all of the kids themselves are likeable but then that’s not down to the actors, just the character and I would think the actor must be doing a good job if he’s making the character annoying! The one playing the girl in the group was especially good. She’s Sophia Lillis and she’s got talent. She’s also really pretty now at the age of about 15. She’s going to be a stunner in 5 or 10 years. She kind of reminds me of Deborah Messing from Will and Grace. Talent and looks will take her far in Hollywood. Watch that space.

The man that played Pennywise the clown in this version is Bill Skarsgård from the Swedish family of actors. You’ve seen his father Stellan in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and his brother, Alexander, was in True Blood. We’ve only just seen Bill lately in a creepy series called Hemlock Grove. Excellent stuff with vampires, a werewolf and lots of other creatures. Tim Curry played the original Pennywise but Bill did just as good a job, I think.

Since this movie was all about the kids and their experience, it went into more detail about the lives of most of them and about their fears which is what the entity feeds on. Their parents are not major characters and only appear if it contributes to either the child’s state of mind or to their personal fears. If they do make a second movie about the adults, it should be interesting.

IT is on my list to re-read. Perhaps it would be a good October/Halloween book! I read a lot of Stephen King’s books back in the 80s with a few more in the past 10 years. I haven’t read the Dark Tower series so won’t be going to see the new movie out that’s based on them. Quite often, movies and mini-series based on King’s books have fallen flat which is a shame. Few seem to be able to really grasp the spirit of the book. Even The Shining with Jack Nicholson seemed to miss the mark a bit for em. Nicholson is great but his personality is so huge that it kind of takes over a bit. The Shining was one of the movies that was better received than most, however.

I wonder if part of the problem is that the King novels are usually so thick with lots of detail and that’s hard to translate into a film. By losing so much detail, you lose a lot of the plot and it doesn’t hang together as well. The movies then rely on effects and scare tactics rather than leading you into the situations more slowly where the creepy and scary bits then have more of an impact. At least, for me. In fact, it’s a general opinion that the best adaptations of King’s work have come from his short stories (Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption) with a few exceptions (Misery and the original version of Carrie were excellent adaptations from novels. You might think mini series would be better, giving more time to expand on the detail and the original IT wasn’t too bad at all but The Stand, one of my favourite books, really dragged. I loved the more recent novel 11/22/63 but I didn’t enjoy the series made from it, either. In my opinion, James Franco did not suit the lead part and they changed too much of it.

The new IT has managed to get past the details problem, probably by splitting the book into two movies, I guess. At the end, there’s a screen with “Chapter One” displayed, indicating there could be a second chapter. Hollywood loves sequels so it’s likely. If they do as good a job as they did with this one, it should be worth seeing and I would definitely recommend the movie we saw last night!

Another work in the making is a new limited 10 episode series that Hulu is producing called Castle Rock. King fans know Castle Rock is one of the towns that appear in a number of his books along with Derry, both towns in the easternmost U.S. state of Maine. Wikipedia describes the series as “The series is set to explore the themes and worlds uniting King’s entire canon, while brushing up against some of his most iconic and beloved stories. ” So far, Sissy Spacek and Bill Skarsgård are among two actors already cast, both of them being actors that have played in Steven King movies (Sissy was Carrie). It might be interesting, this “mash up” as it were.

Stephen King’s wife Tabitha is also a writer and I’ve read two of her books which were not horror based. His son Owen is now writing and collaborating with his father.

I do remember liking IT as a novel. My other favourite King books include 11/22/63, Christine, The Stand, The Shining, and The Dead Zone and Mr. Mercedes. Are you a fan? Which of King’s books or adaptations are your favourites?

Book to Screen – The Snowman

Jo Nesbo is the Norwegian author of a series of crime novels about detective Harry Hole (pronounced Hoo-leh). Harry is a deeply flawed man, an alcoholic and a brilliant detective, especially when it comes to catching serial killers. In an interview that you can find on his website, Nesbo describes Harry as “an innocent with problems, becoming more and more like the criminals he hunts, gone to a darker , he’s on his way to hell”

The interview was recorded about the time The Snowman (#7) was released, which was 4 novels ago and at that point, Nesbo says there will not be a film made but it seems that over the past few years, he’s changed his mind or he’s finished with Harry novels. That was his other point, no movie until he’s done with Harry.

I really enjoy the Harry Hole novels and I’m excited to see that there will be a movie made from one of them, The Snowman. They’ve picked Michael Fassbender to play Harry. Not a bad choice, he’s fairly tall at least and Harry, in the books, is about 6’4″. Fassbender doesn’t have a face like 40 miles of rough road like Harry does, though, which is from all that booze, cigs and stress but I’m sure they can manage to make him look rumpled and worn around the edges. The trailer (see below) seems to show him looking fairly rough but he’s still a handsome man, Michael Fassbender and I always picture Harry as a man that might have been good looking in his youth but whose years swimming in the bottle and tangling with serial killers all show on his face.

So. The Snowman. I’ll copy my review here:

This is the third Jo Nesbo book i’ve read and I’ve read them all out of order. This one falls in between the other two I read and even though the killer from this book is revealed in the first one I read, The Leopard, I couldn’t remember exactly who it was at first. Even when I did, and was looking for clues, the story was so well crafted that I second guessed myself once. Inspector Harry Hole is on the trail of a serial killer who ends up being called The Snowman. He kills women who have children mostly. The women go missing and most of them were never found both in the past and in the present until the Snowman leaves a head of one woman atop a snowman in the forest.

Harry’s ex-girlfriend Rakel and her son Oleg are still weaving in and out of his world. He manages to stay off the booze most of the time and goes off on his own to investigate things which frustrates his superiors to no end. His new partner, Katrine Bratt is sharp and may have an agenda of her own. The climax would be a visual thriller if they filmed it. I like the Harry Hole books and I like the way Nesbo constructs his stories.

As I wrote above, I read Harry #8, The Leopard, before The Snowman but with enough distance between them that I didn’t remember who the killer was. It’s been enough time again, five years, that I can’t think who it is off the top of my head now, either! I do think I’ll try to reread this before seeing the movie though I’m actually reading the latest Harry Hole book, The Thirst, now. I would recommend reading his books in order because on occasion, he’ll mention something in a subsequent book that might spoil one of the previous books if you haven’t read it yet.

The movie, which is released in October, was filmed in Oslo and Norway and the trailer looks fierce: