Possession (Paltrom, Eckhart) should be busted for it

Cafe Society
1

Having both read A. S. Byatt’s Possession, the girlfriend & I were looking forward to watching the DVD.

Unfortunately, someone (presumably director Neil LaBute) decided that it would make a better movie if Roland were recast as (this is how he put it in the fragment of “director’s comments” that I glanced at) “a brash American…to give the movie more ‘spark’”.

That’s like casting Pee Wee Herman in the lead role of Conan the Barbarian (“we thought his manic antics would lend new energy to the role”).

Aaron Eckhart mugs and smirks his way through the whole movie, apparently under the impression that he’s Harrison Ford in a remake of Star Wars and Professor Maud Baily is spoiled Princess Leia. Or perhaps Humphrey Bogart to her Hepburn in an English-lit African Queen.

What a pathetic waste of an opportunity. The book was, if not unreservedly great, entirely fresh and entertaining. There was plenty of “spark” between Roland Michell, – the research assistant so immersed in Randolph Ash, and subsequently in the romance between Ash and Cristabel LaMotte, and so tentative about asserting his own self – and Bailey, the established professor ensconced in a literary and gender studies post and formidably arrayed in poststructuralist feminist semiotics. First Roland and then Maud are swept up in the romance of Ash and LaMotte’s liaisons, and it brings the former out of the shadows of his studies and the latter out from behind the protections of her analyses. Roland does not crack the shell of an ivory-tower Maud with a stiff back and a crisp demeanor with his raunchy worldliness --that’s somebody else’s story. Maud comes out, lured into a less safe and more vulnerable position, by the intoxication of passion and possibility, and precisely because Roland is not abrasive and full of himself and inclined to be a threat in her space, as his colleage and her former lover, Fergus Wolff, had been. And Roland comes out, himself, daring to express, to reach out, lured by the fascinating combination of Maud’s carefully maintained self-sufficiency and the possibility of touching her nevertheless.

The movie, on the other hand… well, it’s not entirely a bad story, I suppose, it’s just so totally not the same story. Nor is it anywhere near as interesting, as stories of its ilk (brash male whatever gets to and loosens up crisp and somewhat uptight female whatever) have been done so many times before, and better.

2

Agree, LaBute casts Ekhardt in everything. And Roland was NOT an American. An American named Roland? A Victorian Poetry scholar with that much “spark?” (or those pecs…Ekhardt isn’t bad to look at…although terribly miscast).

The movie wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t the book. The book is one of my favorites. The film, a trite, entertaining, been done before romance. But there wasn’t any way to make a great movie from this book. This is one of those books that is LITERARY, it really couldn’t have been translated successfully and intact. Since I knew that going in, my expectations weren’t too high and I enjoyed the movie.

3

Well, I liked the movie well enough. But I saw it before I read the book. Having read the book since then, I agree that (as is almost always the case), the movie changed the story for the worse. But because I didn’t read and love the book first, I don’t have the emotional attachment to the story that is causing your irritation with the movie. I’m sympathetic, though. I felt exactly the same way about Fried Green Tomatoes. I loved the book so much – and the movie changed the story. People who read the book after the movie (which was the case with most of the people I know), would say, “Sure the book was better, but it’s still a good movie,” and I would snap, “No it’s not. It sucks! The movie sucks!”

But Aaron Eckhart is pretty, as is Jeremy Northam. And, for what it’s worth, my father-in-law (from Wisconsin) is named Roland.

4

Well, yeah, there are probably hundreds of American’s named Roland. And probably a few Victorian poetry scholars with spark and great pecs. Still, somehow I expected…someone more British and Booky.

5

But Eckhart strips to his undershorts. That’s worth 2 stars all by itself.

6

So why can’t they do a shy bookish immersed-in-his-studies kind of guy with great pecs who somewhat non-arrogantly strips to his undershorts?

7

I loved the book and have refused to see the movie for precisely this reason. Does anyone know what A S Byatt has to say about it?

8

Because LeBute and Eckhart are buddies from college. LeBute makes a film, has to cast Eckhart. Eckhart can’t pull off non-arrogant and bookish, so they decide Roland needs “spark.”

(I think Paltrow did a good Maude for not being British herself…at least she fakes British pretty well. And they did loose a lot of the plot and most of the charm, but that was understandable - Victorian poetry isn’t translating to screen well. The plot they kept was ok. My main gripe was Roland).

9

Priorities.