Archive for the ‘ Read the Movie Challenge ’ Category

REVIEW: “A Home at the End of the World” by Michael Cunningham

A Home at the End of the World

Michael Cunningham
Farrar Straus Giroux, NY, 1990

CHALLENGE(S): GLBT Challenge, Read the Movie Challenge.

Finished 15 Aug 2010

At last! The drought is over. I have finally finished another novel! Now I have to work hard and see how much I can catch up over the rest of the month. Oh yes, and post this review.

I picked up A Home at the End of the World because, as you will no doubt know, I recently watched the movie adaptation and completely fell in love. From the synopsis:

A Home at the End of the World is the story of two boyhood friends: Jonathan, lonely, introspective, and unsure of himself; and Bobby, hip, dark, and inarticulate. In New York after college, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his roommate, Clare, a veteran of the city’s erotic wars. Bobby and Clare fall in love, scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to father Clare’s child. Then, when Clare and Bobby have a baby, the three move to a small house upstate to raise “their” child together and create a new kind of family.

The story is told in four different voices, alternating between Jonathan, Bobby, Clare and Jonathan’s mother, Alice. Perhaps having seen the movie added to the text for me, because before I even opened the book the characters were already real: they had faces, habits, particular ways of moving and thinking which were already understood. The movie did half the book’s work for it. Still, I agree with those who have said that there was too little character definition in between parts: I couldn’t really get a sense of each character’s voice from their internal perspective, mostly because Cunningham’s style simply overrode any attempt at individuality between sections. Too, I found the sustained bleakness of the narratives depressing and quite stressful to read, to the point where I could only read it in fragments towards the end. It was as if there was no hope or love left in the world: the sheer loneliness of each of the characters was devastating.

However. These things aside, it is worth reading for the majestic prose and insightful observation it provides on the human condition. While it may have set out to be a story of three adults and their attempt to negotiate their own complicated love triangle, to me Home is really about the end of an era, the collision between the ‘free love’ attitude of the sixties and seventies with the hard realities of the 1980s and the start of the AIDs epidemic: “They looked like a pair of beatniks, sloppily dressed in a remote, unimportant place. In their sunglasses and T-shirts and unruly hair they looked like they were standing at the brink of the old cycle: the 1960s about to explode around them, a long storm of love and rage and thwarted expectations. Bobby put his arm over Jonathan’s shoulder. They both waved.” (p.327) It’s about being lost; it’s about growing up; it’s about never quite getting your heart’s desire. It is not a happy book, but it is a powerful one, because it tackles head-on those fears shared by the majority of the human race: of illness, death, loss and failure.

It is also well written enough that I would recommend it to anyone brave enough. Some of my favourite quotes, other than those I’ve featured in previous Teaser Tuesdays:

“How are you feeling, man?” he asks me.

“Great,” I tell him, and it is purely the truth. Doves clatter up out of a bare tree and turn at the same instant, transforming themselves from steel to silver in the snow-blown light. I know at that moment that the drug is working. Everything before me has become suddenly, radiantly itself. How could Carlton have known this was about to happen? “Oh,” I whisper. His hand settles on my shoulder.

“Stay loose, Frisco,” he says. “There’s not a thing in this pretty world to be afraid of. I’m here.”

I am not afraid. I am astonished. I had not realized until this moment how real everything is. A twig lies on the marble at my feet, bearing a cluster of hard brown berries. The broken-off end is raw, white, fleshly. Trees are alive.

“I’m here,” Carlton says again, and he is.

— pp.22-23

“I’m talking about a little truth-in-packaging here. To be perfectly frank, you don’t quite look like yourself. And if you walk around looking like someone other than who you are, you could end up getting the wrong job, the wrong friends, who knows what-all. You could end up with somebody else’s life.”

I shrugged again, and smiled. “This is my life,” I said. “It doesn’t seem like the wrong one.”

— p.148

Overall, a compelling novel but a bit too much on the bleak side to be comfortable. I feel a definite need to read something light and fluffy now, just to cheer myself up! The film is much better; I think if you combined the two of them – the movie’s rich depiction of love and hope in the face of adversity, the book’s sad but still beautiful ending – you’d have the perfect story.

RATING:

2010
08/15
CATEGORY
4 Star Reviews
GLBT Challenge
GLBTQ Interest
Literary
Read the Movie Challenge
Romance
1 comment

REVIEW: “A Home at the End of the World” (film)

A Home at the End of the World

Directed by Michael Mayer
2004

CHALLENGE(S): GLBT Challenge, Read the Movie Challenge

I’m going to be honest here and say that I really don’t care what anyone else thinks of this movie: I loved it. I’ve read some fairly critical responses to it which more or less take it apart from a cinematic point of view, and for all I know they’re right, it’s a terrible movie. As I said: it really doesn’t matter to me. Something about the story and characters touched me personally, to the point where more objective/technical concerns ceased to be relevant.

From the blurb on the back cover, the film purports to be a story about three people – Bobby, Jonathan and Clare – and their attempt to form a highly unconventional family unit together. What I saw was more of a commentary on the end of an era; the children of the sixties and seventies growing into adults in a world that is much harsher and more dangerous than they were lead to expect – the loneliness that comes from growing up and realising the inherent bleakness of the human condition – the bonds that unite and sustain us, however unconventional they may be. The characters were beautiful, interesting, complicated people, their relationships believable and tender. All of them were lost in different ways, struggling to determine who they were and who they wanted to be. In this sense, they were perfect for each other, but inevitably doomed to disappointment as well.

I found myself extremely attached to all of them and very involved in their story. The parts were very well played by the actors, and although they did falter once or twice, I was never jolted out of the story by poor delivery or unbelievable reactions. Because of this, I was devastated by the ending of the movie: it was not only kind of predictable and vague but also utterly heart-wrenching. A film to open the soul, I think, even if it isn’t perfect – one of my favourites to date.

RATING:

2010
08/13
CATEGORY
4 Star Reviews
GLBT Challenge
GLBTQ Interest
Literary
Movie Reviews
Read the Movie Challenge
Romance
Leave a comment

REVIEW: “Maurice” (film)

Maurice

Directed by James Ivory
1987

CHALLENGE(S): Read the Movie Challenge

Let me begin this review with a frank and potentially hypocritical remark that summarises my initial reaction to certain parts of the film: HOLY GRATUITOUS NEKKID MEN, BATMAN. No, really. If you thought Brokeback Mountain was pushing boundaries, you have obviously not seen this movie.

This is not, I hasten to add, a prurient response (or at least, not merely), so much as one of complete surprise. It was not something I was expecting, in spite of the M rating (you know they’d have put that there just because the main character was gay, even if there had been no naked men involved whatsoever). To be honest, one tends to forget that men exist below the waist in movies generally, and after I got over my initial double-take I immediately found myself faced with the question of why it should be so surprising. I was under the impression that I had outgrown the prudish part of my nature some time ago, yet here I was, recoiling as if it were so completely shocking that oh my god, men were actually showing their naughty bits on-screen. Had either, or even both of them been a woman I probably wouldn’t even have thought twice about it. But in this case, it was like some kind of invisible line had been crossed and suddenly I was sitting back going, what am I watching?!

Talk about walking smack into your own subliminated prejudices. If there ever was a clearer demonstration of how the gendered gaze in cinema can structure your expectations…

In point of fact, though, I wouldn’t have brought it up except that it struck me as closely related to the main theme of the story itself. As I mentioned in my review of the novel on which it is based, Maurice is very much about the conflict between conventionality and personal liberation, and (perhaps because this is inextricably intertwined) about the gulf between words and actions, both of which I think played a significant part in the director’s choices when it came to creating the film. Most specifically, the story deals implicitly with ideas of masculinity and gender conformity as the titular Maurice grapples with society’s (and his own) disgust at his sexuality and the love that ultimately defines him, until he is forced to embrace exile and transcend that disgust to find happiness. Somewhat similarly, the director seems to have necessarily taken a step outside of the traditional, (heterosexual, white, middle-class, privileged, masculine…?) viewpoint in so much of mainstream cinema in order to shake up the viewer’s expectations and underscore this point.

Of course, James Ivory also directed A Room With a View which, if I recall correctly, had a brief scene in it which also shocked me at the time, so perhaps this is just his particular style of unvarnished, unalloyed filmmaking: in which case, more power to him. On the other hand, there were instances in the first half (during Maurice’s relationship with Clive) that there were opportunities to do this if that was his sole intention, and he chose to refrain. It was because most of the nekkid men scenes came in in the second half (after the split with Clive, and particularly during his relationship with Alec) that I made the connection between the two aspects in the first place.

However. Setting my personal reactions and speculations aside for the moment, I will say that it wasn’t exactly what I’d call a good film. I blame Hugh Grant, although not so much because of his acting (or lack thereof) as by virtue of the fact that he was Hugh Grant, causing me to realise holy crap that’s what Hugh Grant looked like the year I was born, which was followed by the charmingly self-centered holy crap people really did exist before I was born, that is so weird and thus so distracted me to the point where I completely failed to be able to see him as anyone else, let alone the intellectual and weak-natured Clive Durham. His “romance” with Maurice (played by James Wilby) was wooden at best, and downright embarrassing at worst, which made it quite difficult for me to sit through the first half of the story. This unsatisfactory beginning was made up for, however, by the fact that viewing the movie helped me to fully process my thoughts about the novel and come to a place where I felt I actually understood it for the first time. Connections were made. Relationships dawned. I began to realise just how deviously, deliciously subtle good old straight-forward Forster could be.

And that, I think, was the chief delight of this film. It brought the novel to life for me, not least because it quoted virtually every other page. Wilby was perfectly cast, even if Grant was not, and a great deal of the symbolism was included or embellished upon, giving a person who has read the book a number of those in-jokes and moments of “Oh, I know what he’s doing there…” which so greatly flatter the intellect. The direction is perhaps a little too self-conscious and heavy-handed in parts – one might even call it overwrought: it is obvious when he wishes to make a point, for instance, or to impress upon the audience that this particular moment is poignant, and emotional, but the highlights of the novel were handled adequately (and the ending, where Maurice rubs Clive’s nose in the fact that he is over him now, thanks, is perfectly done) and as an adaptation it was not too shoddy – though I would love to see it remade and shiny for a new and perhaps more appreciative audience.

Definitely recommended. But read the book first, and, ahem, beware unexpected!naked!men…

RATING:

2010
06/30
CATEGORY
3 Star Reviews
Classics
GLBT Challenge
Movie Reviews
Read the Movie Challenge
Romance
3 comments

REVIEW: “Maurice” by E. M. Forster

Maurice

E. M. Forster
Penguin Books, UK, 1995

CHALLENGE(S): GLBT Challenge, Read the Movie Challenge

Finished 27 Jun 2010

I only really picked this book up because I got the movie out and thought it would make a good addition to the “Read the Movie” Challenge. The premise sounded interesting, but so much like Brideshead Revisited that I was sure it would suffer by comparison, and in some respects it did. However, as I should probably have expected by now, Maurice proved to be utterly different than I anticipated, and ultimately the better for it.

Set in Edwardian England, the novel follows the life of Maurice Hall, every inch an “average” English gentleman, who is being relentlessly groomed to take the place of his dead father as an average stockbroker with an average and thoroughly respectable life. Were it not for a chance meeting with Clive Durham at Cambridge, he would likely have taken his place in society without a qualm. But his love affair with Clive begins to break through the stultifying normality of his everyday life, introducing Maurice to feelings of joy he had never imagined, and spurring him to dream that two men together might just be able to defy the world.

I have conflicting feelings about this novel. E. M. Forster is an old favourite of mine; A Room With a View blew me away when I first read it several years ago, so I’ve had a soft spot for him ever since. I love the way he approaches things. His prose is direct, objective, and the detached detail with which he analyses his characters, their actions and interactions, the decisions they make and the way their lives plan out makes for curiously compelling reading. He is also extremely empathetic and skilled at dissembling psychological impulses and complexities.

At the same time, I felt somewhat distanced from the characters – at times I even actively disliked them. There were passages of prose which were fantastic (in particular, the brief scene in which Clive admits he loves Maurice was extremely moving) but others which were so obfuscating as to bewilder me completely. It is definitely a book which will require re-reading several times before it sinks in, and fortunately it is of a type which I would not mind picking up and perusing for new meaning from time to time.

There were some things I did pick up on, however, which enhanced the reading experience considerably. When I first closed the covers, the ending bewildered me: I had been lead to expect a (spoiler!) happy reunion between Maurice and Clive, and had no idea why Alec was even involved. Clive’s attitude confused me, too, since he was the first to be so open about his homosexuality. It wasn’t until I referred back to an earlier passage in the book that some comprehension dawned:

“Everything I say is serious.” And somehow Maurice knew this to be true. It had struck him at once that Risley was serious. “And are you serious?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Then talk until you become so.”
“Rubbish,” growled the Dean.
Chapman laughed tempestuously.
“Rubbish?” He questioned Maurice, who, when he grasped the point, was understood to reply that deeds are more important than words.
“What’s the difference? Words are deeds. Do you mean to say that these five minutes in Cornwallis’s rooms have done nothing for you? Will you ever forget you have met me, for instance?”
Chapman grunted.
“But he will not, nor will you. And then I am told we ought to be doing something.”
The Dean came to the rescue of the two Sunningtonians. He said to his young cousin, “You’re unsound about memory. You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive. No doubt Chapman and Hall always will remember they’ve met you – ”
“And forget this is a cutlet. Quite so.”
“But the cutlet does some good them, and you none.”
“Obscurantist!”
“This is just like a book,” said Chapman. “Eh, Hall?”
“I mean,” said Risley, “oh how clearly I mean that the cutlet influences your subconscious lives, and I your conscious, and so I am not only more impressive than the cutlet but more important.”

— pp. 32-33

The way I see it, Clive is all about words: he insists that their relationship may only be “excused” if it remains platonic – that is, unconsummated, in the realm of words and emotions only. Maurice accepts this because not only does Clive seem to know far more about it than he does but he is, as Forster puts it, “at this stage…humble and inexperienced and adoring, he is the soul released from prison, and if asked by his deliverer to remain chaste he obeys” (p.314). But the major difference between them, and that which ultimately destroys their relationship, is that Maurice is as much about deeds as he is about words, as evidenced by the excerpt above. He is not content to remain as a “friend” in name but not in action. As he repeatedly complains after their separation, Clive is willing to do anything for him except be with him, and he is incapable of reconciling the inherent contradictions this entails. He breaks away; acts, in this case by sleeping with Alec, and in doing so finally comes to accept himself and his true position in society, rather than that which he has been pretending to for so long.

As you can probably see, Maurice is a complicated novel that makes you work for comprehension, and is not what I would call a comfortable read. However, it is definitely worth it and ultimately I think one which should be recommended, if only for its unusual insight into a world seldom expressed in the prose of this era.

RATING:

CymLowell

2010
06/27
CATEGORY
3 Star Reviews
Classics
GLBT Challenge
GLBTQ Interest
Read the Movie Challenge
Romance
3 comments

REVIEW: “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker

The Color Purple

[WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD (among others), 1983]

Alice Walker
Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2007

CHALLENGE(S): Banned Books Challenge, Book Awards Challenge, GLBT Challenge (mini), Read the Movie Challenge, Social Justice Challenge, Women Unbound Challenge, Year of the Historical Challenge

Finished 16 April 2010

I got an amazing amount of mileage out of this book. It won an Award (Book Awards Challenge), it is frequently banned (Banned Books Challenge), it features a lesbian relationship (GLBT Challenge) and domestic violence (Social Justice Challenge), was made into a movie (Books and Movies Challenge), it is deeply feminist (Women Unbound Challenge) and it’s set in the early 20th century (Year of the Historical Challenge). Whew!

On top of that, it is also a wonderful book that I highly recommend.

The story is told in epistolary style, as a series of letters from the main character – Celie – to God. When the book begins, Celie is being abused by her father, by whom she eventually has two children. Her mother is dead and the only person she can really rely on is her younger sister, Nettie, who is cleverer and prettier and her best friend in the world. When a man she refers to only as Mister ——- proposes to Nettie, however, Celie’s life takes a turn for the worse. Her father refuses to allow Nettie to leave, and offers Celie in her place; to their horror, Mister ——- agrees. Separated from her sister, Celie’s only consolation is her developing relationship with Shug Avery, a beautiful singer who is the mother of Mister’s children.

The storyline gets more complicated as the novel goes on, but I don’t want to spoil it for you so I’ll leave the synopsis there. I will say, however, that there is a lot of musing about God and the nature of love throughout the novel, which I very much enjoyed. It did tend to get a little philosophical towards the end of the book, which kind of jolted you out of the story a bit, and I agree with many other reviewers that the ending was just a little too neat for me to believe completely. However, these flaws aside, some of my favourite parts of the novel were when the characters started discussing the nature of God. For example:

God love all them feelings. That’s some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves ’em you enjoys ’em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that’s going, and praise God by liking what you like.

God don’t think it dirty? I ast.

Naw, she say. God made it. Listen, God love everything you love – and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.

Oh, make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

Yeah? I say.

Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect.

— pp.176-177.

I really enjoyed the way the characters’ shifting affections and developing natures were used as a sounding board to illustrate the fluidity of love and its connection to God. I may not believe in God, but I did appreciate the warmth and strength with which Walker imbued the narrative, and her fantastic ability to give her characters a unique voice. Celie came across strongly throughout, as did her sister Nettie when we read some of her letters to her sister later in the novel. Even the secondary characters, from whom we do not hear directly, have a vibrant inner life that makes them leap off the page and into your imagination.

The book is also profoundly feminist. Its main theme is essentially humanity, both human beings and the quality of benevolence they show so infrequently towards one another, but it focuses particularly on the strength and resilience of the female characters, how they face the obstacles life places before them and deal with abuse from the men around them. That is not to say it is intrinsically “anti-male”, however; one of the most moving parts of the book, for me, is how Mister ——- and his son change and are changed by the strong women in their lives, eventually coming to see their true worth and nature beyond sex and domestic slavery. It is an optimistic book, at heart: it postulates that both sexes can, given time, come to a place of equality and respect, and love each other for who they are rather than who the world would have them be.

A deserving classic, and nowhere near as intimidating as I had originally imagined. If you haven’t read it yet, then I highly recommend that you do!

RATING:

2010
04/17
CATEGORY
4 Star Reviews
Banned Books Challenge
Book Awards Challenge
Classics
Domestic Violence & Child Abuse
Feminism
GLBT Challenge
GLBTQ Interest
Historical
Literary
Read the Movie Challenge
Romance
Social Justice Challenge
Women Unbound
Year of the Historical Challenge
3 comments

REVIEW: “The Vintner’s Luck” (film) by Niki Caro

The Vintner’s Luck

Directed by Niki Caro
2009

CHALLENGE(S): GLBT Challenge, Read the Movie Challenge, Year of the Historical Challenge

In case it isn’t obvious by now, I should probably mention that The Vintner’s Luck is officially my favourite book ever. As such, I was extremely excited when the movie came out on DVD (having missed it in theatres) and hastened to pick up a copy to watch. I knew beforehand that the author had been disappointed by the adaptation and therefore had very low expectations in spite of my excitement; sadly, they were quite justified.

I will say that the cinematography was beautiful, and the musical score was lovely. Caro really gave you the sense of being in the vineyard, and the story was well grounded in the earthiness of peasant life. Even the acting was well done. For the first, say, third of the film it followed the storyline close enough that I was quite satisfied, but once it started veering off, the movie lost its magic.

What most disappointed me was that Xas was pretty much incidental to the movie storyline, which was all about wine, and women. His relationship with Sobran was relegated to a weird kind of side story, whereas it was supposed to drive the whole plot. Because I adore Xas and found his connection with Sobran to be the most moving part of the book, once I realized that Caro did not intend to address it except obliquely the movie lost a great deal of its charm for me. As for how she handled the ending? Sobran’s death scene was very well done – it was literally like seeing the book come to life – but Xas was totally shortchanged, and that frustrated me.

Don’t get me wrong – Caro did kind of flirt with the idea that he and Sobran had a more intimate relationship. But it was just that; a (somewhat confusing) flirtation, rather than the epic love story that featured in the book. More disturbingly – to me, at any rate – Caro repeatedly has Xas as the aggressor and Sobran rejecting him. Not only was it not the case in the novel, but in emphasizing Sobran’s resistance to Xas Caro ruins the theological point Knox was trying to make, and she also features a scene which is unsettlingly close to rape, albeit of the entirely non-graphic kind. While I loved seeing Xas fly in that scene, it kind of creeped me out a bit, and I can definitely see why Knox was so upset with Caro’s particular interpretation.

I appreciate that Vintner’s Luck really isn’t the sort of book that would translate easily to another medium. A lot of its power is in the language, which is obviously up for interpretation, and it doesn’t have what you’d call an action-oriented plotline. Still, my strongest feeling throughout the movie was “You didn’t get it at all!”. At times it left me questioning whether the reason she changed the storyline as she did was to avoid the flak that would come from showing an angel in a homosexual relationship, and I found the plot she did choose to include rather confusing because the original motivations were missing. I also felt a strong sense that it was not a female-friendly film, odd as that sounds. The women in it were either crazy jealous (Celeste – although she was crazy in the book as well) or cold and hard (the Baroness, who was completely kick ass in the novel). There were also a great many  shots of naked women and sex scenes that, while they weren’t crude exactly, made me feel rather as if I was perhaps not in the film’s target audience, if you know what I mean. It was very much as if she were doing her best to make it into a heteronormative romance, when the entire point of the novel was the fluidity of love.

Overall, I’d say it is a film that can best be understood and enjoyed by those who have not read the book. For me, the plot made a certain kind of linear sense but the driving force behind it was different, and thus it seemed to strike all the wrong notes, like music played on a faulty instrument. Taken as a film rather than an adaptation, it was quite good, though that angelic storyline should have been dropped altogether as I don’t think it added much (anything?) to the plot. As an adaptation, it was not what I had hoped. I am not the nit-picky sort who requires all details to be identical to the book, but I felt Caro robbed the story of its main backbone when she decided to reduce Xas to a peripheral role. I did enjoy it for the lush sensuality of the setting and the music, and the cast was well chosen. There were a number of scenes I felt particularly well done, but aside from that I have to say I was not impressed. She has captured the lyrical beauty of the text, perhaps, but not its essence. A real shame.

RATING:

2010
04/11
CATEGORY
2 Star Reviews
GLBT Challenge
Movie Reviews
Read the Movie Challenge
Year of the Historical Challenge
4 comments

REVIEW: “The Painted Veil” by W. Somerset Maugham

The Painted Veil

W. Somerset Maugham
Heron Books, London 1967

CHALLENGE(S): To Be Read Challenge, Read the Movie Challenge

Finished 31 Jan 2010

This one has been on my “To Be Read” list for quite a while, hence its inclusion in the TBR Challenge. I also happen to own a copy of the recent movie adaptation, which I watched directly afterwards (although, of course, I’d already seen it twice). Actually, the movie came out around the time of my birthday, and I wanted to see it but was eventually coerced into seeing something else instead. I knew from the moment that I saw the movie poster (the same as the book cover shown on the left) that this was going to be a story I’d enjoy, and I was right.

Essentially, Painted Veil is the story of Kitty and Walter Fane. Having married the besotted Walter in an attempt to escape her overbearing mother, Kitty feels trapped and unhappy with her lot in life. It seems inevitable, then, that when handsome and charming (and married!) Charles Townsend comes into the picture, Kitty is easily swept off her feet into a scandalous extra-marital affair. As the book begins, Walter has just discovered her infidelity. To get revenge, he volunteers to go and act as a physician in a cholera-stricken village and insists that Kitty either secure Townsend’s promise to marry her or accompany him into the heart of the epidemic. Kitty is horrified to find that Charles has no intention of divorcing his wife for her, and is forced to travel with her estranged husband into a foreign and terrifying world.

The most interesting aspect of this story for me was Kitty’s development as a character. To begin with, she’s spoiled, selfish and lacking in compassion. She doesn’t see why she shouldn’t get exactly what she wants, and doesn’t mind using other people to do it. By the end of the novel, she has grown a great deal as a person; she hasn’t exactly reformed, but she’s aware of what she’s doing and is making an active effort to be considerate and compassionate to others. This is more clearly emphasized in the movie ending, which differs from the book insofar as it has (spoilers!) Kitty and Walter actually falling in love and, when she returns to Hong Kong after Walter’s death of cholera, Kitty ignores Townsend completely when she meets him again. The novel is less clear cut about it – Walter still dies, but while Kitty comes to respect him and regard him as a worthy object of affection, she does not in fact love him, and she quickly falls back under Townsend’s spell when she returns (albeit to her own self-disgust). Her transition from shallow socialite to a more well-rounded, compassionate human being is shown in the way she reacts to her mother’s death and her plans to make a new life with her widowed father back in England.

I have to confess that I liked the movie ending better; so much more emotionally satisfying to see Kitty resist Charles at the last! However, the book has its merits as well, so I think that both can be appreciated on their own terms.

I was intrigued most especially by the discussion of religion that was intermingled with the narrative. Kitty’s lack of faith was explored without judgment, and I enjoyed some of Maugham’s pontifications on philosophy and life after death. I did find some of the author’s assumptions about women and the treatment of the Chinese a little bit offensive – acceptable as a representation of attitudes in their time, perhaps, but a trifle irritating nevertheless. “Wounded vanity can make a woman more vindictive than a lioness robbed of her cubs” indeed!

Nonetheless, these small faults aside The Painted Veil is a charming read and a book which I will undoubtedly return to several times with great enjoyment, and the movie is really quite beautiful; the cinematography alone makes it worth a watch. A true classic!

RATING:

2010
02/05
CATEGORY
4 Star Reviews
Classics
Movie Reviews
Read the Movie Challenge
TBR Challenge
1 comment

REVIEW: “The Vintner’s Luck” by Elizabeth Knox

The Vintner’s Luck

Elizabeth Knox
Victoria University Press, 1998

CHALLENGE(S): GLBT Challenge, Read the Movie Challenge, Year of the Historical Challenge

Finished 2 Feb 2010

Judging by the polarity of the reviews on this novel, either you love it or you hate it. Fortunately for me, I was in the “love” camp. More than love – I adore this book. I’ve never read another quite like it.

I want to start out by saying that it is possibly best to come to it with no expectations (so if you think the premise sounds interesting, I recommend you go and read it before reading any reviews). I got a copy from the library with no synopsis whatsoever, so I went into it almost completely blind: all I knew was that it was about this guy and an angel who fall in love.

But Luck is so, so much more than that. So much more.

Continue reading →

2010
02/04
CATEGORY
5 Star Reviews
Fantasy
GLBT Challenge
GLBTQ Interest
Historical
Literary
Magical Realism
New Zealand Fiction
Read the Movie Challenge
Romance
Supernatural
Year of the Historical Challenge
17 comments

Last-Minute Challenge Additions

This is the last post of these, I swear.

  1. Banned Books Challenge
    Read and review as many books on the list as possible by September.
  2. World Religion Challenge
    This is perfect for my research projects this year. I’m going to choose the Unshepherded Path, because it’s likely I’ll be focusing on two different aspects of either two different religions, or the same religion, rather than five or more.
  3. Award Challenge
    10 books from different award categories by November. I don’t have a list as yet – I think I’ll pick them as I go.
  4. Read the Book, See the Movie
    Festival Jury Member level. Read 10 books that have been turned into movies, then watch the movie, and review both. This is going to be fun!
  5. 2010 Challenge
    2 books from each category, 20 in total. For my open category I’m going to choose…hmm. I think Graphic Novels. I don’t read many of them as a rule, but I got into the genre a bit last year after reading Watchmen (I still haven’t seen the movie) and I’d like to explore a bit more.

I think that’s about 20 challenges in total. Wow. This is going to be one busy year!

2010
01/26
CATEGORY
2010 Challenge
Banned Books Challenge
Book Awards Challenge
Read the Movie Challenge
World Religions Challenge
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