Movie Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society when it first came out ten years ago, and it quickly became one of my favorite comfort reads. It's a story about survival and recovery, and above all about the power of reading to bring people together. The film version, produced by Netflix, only got about half of that.
The story starts in 1946 London, as the city and the world recover from WW2. Our main character is Juliet, a newspaper columnist whose collection of articles has just been released in book form; it is a popular book that is doing much, much better than her study of Anne Bronte did years before. Casting about for what to do next, she gets a letter from Dawsey Adams in Guernsey, who has purchased a book that once belonged to her and is writing (her address is in the book, and she has only very recently moved) to ask for help in finding a bookshop so he can buy a copy of Charles & Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.
This is where I sat up and grumped, "It wasn't Tales from Shakespeare, it was More Essays of Elia and a biography!" But this is why I don't have many friends and live on the internet. ANYWAY.
Charmed, Juliet sends him a copy of the book and the two strike up a correspondence. Letters with Dawsey make up for the middling romance with a wealthy American. (One thing I do appreciate is that in the film version Dawsey is hella hot.) Juliet decides to go to Guernsey and meet everyone she's been reading about in Dawsey's letters and write an article on the power of reading!!!!!!!!!
And then she gets to Guernsey and everyone is hella secretive and kinda weird and wary of her.
In the book, she has corresponded with everyone for months and they are all delighted to have her, and it's all about these kindred spirits coming together.
I feel the difference has something to do with shifting perceptions of journalists in 20fucking18 but what do I know.
Anyway Juliet wants to Solve the Mystery of What Happened to Elizabeth McKenna. As a reader of the book, you're like "Well someone got sent to a concentration camp during WW2, I'm pretty sure I know how this ends." As a viewer, it's not that different, even though all the characters are like "WE'RE JUST WAITING FOR HER TO COME HOME."
(FWIW in the book there is a gay Jewish character sent to the camps as well who survives and is already back home. He is totally deleted from the film which puzzles me a little and pisses me off a lot.)
Dawsey is the primary caretaker of Elizabeth's adorable kid, who Juliet also finds adorable, but she's all "WHO IS THE FATHER?????" Which we know early on in the book. There's no mystery. Why the screenplay writer decided they needed so many ~~mysteries~~ instead of just getting on with the story bewilders me, unless/probably they decided that people just talking about BOOKS would be too dull....in which case, why adapt THIS BOOK?
I digress. Middling American is charged with finding the missing Elizabeth because Americans have Google, or something. So Juliet gets to tell everyone that Elizabeth was executed and it goes exactly as well as you'd expect.
In the book, one of Elizabeth's fellow prisoners wrote to them, and there's a whole subplot about another survivor named Remy coming to Guernsey and trying to build a new life for herself, and everyone trying to help but good intentions not being enough, so she goes back to France to a program that will help her and other survivors. It was a good subplot about the difficulties of trauma, and it's a bummer the whole thing was cut.
(Also cut was a whole subplot about Oscar Wilde letters, which was adorable but kind of an odd thing to introduce in the final act.)
The rest of the film is about Juliet finally deciding to dump Middling American. In fairness, his offences in the book are altogether missing; it's clear he's a controlling, arrogant ass, and by the time he tells Juliet she shouldn't be taking care of Adorable Kid she's over with him and you're cheering her on as she tells him off. Why they cut THAT scene is beyond me. In the movie she .... just isn't into him. She IS into hella hot Dawsey, and since he IS hella hot you're like, what are you even waiting for? In the book Dawsey isn't hella hot, but he is a quiet, thoughtful and charming person, and Juliet is taken with him immediately but is convinced he has a thing for Remy. Both end with Juliet going to propose to Dawsey, who says "Oh God, yes!" and its adorbs. The movie does end with a lovely denoument of a picnic where Dawsey reads them Lamb aloud to Adorable Child and to Juliet.
So basically what we have is a movie where people who have a love of reading are suspicious of a writer, the books that are central to so much are largely eliminated, the worst parts of WW2 are likewise eliminated, and the Asshole American is toned way the fuck down.
I am left irked. Irked, I say!
The story starts in 1946 London, as the city and the world recover from WW2. Our main character is Juliet, a newspaper columnist whose collection of articles has just been released in book form; it is a popular book that is doing much, much better than her study of Anne Bronte did years before. Casting about for what to do next, she gets a letter from Dawsey Adams in Guernsey, who has purchased a book that once belonged to her and is writing (her address is in the book, and she has only very recently moved) to ask for help in finding a bookshop so he can buy a copy of Charles & Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.
This is where I sat up and grumped, "It wasn't Tales from Shakespeare, it was More Essays of Elia and a biography!" But this is why I don't have many friends and live on the internet. ANYWAY.
Charmed, Juliet sends him a copy of the book and the two strike up a correspondence. Letters with Dawsey make up for the middling romance with a wealthy American. (One thing I do appreciate is that in the film version Dawsey is hella hot.) Juliet decides to go to Guernsey and meet everyone she's been reading about in Dawsey's letters and write an article on the power of reading!!!!!!!!!
And then she gets to Guernsey and everyone is hella secretive and kinda weird and wary of her.
In the book, she has corresponded with everyone for months and they are all delighted to have her, and it's all about these kindred spirits coming together.
I feel the difference has something to do with shifting perceptions of journalists in 20fucking18 but what do I know.
Anyway Juliet wants to Solve the Mystery of What Happened to Elizabeth McKenna. As a reader of the book, you're like "Well someone got sent to a concentration camp during WW2, I'm pretty sure I know how this ends." As a viewer, it's not that different, even though all the characters are like "WE'RE JUST WAITING FOR HER TO COME HOME."
(FWIW in the book there is a gay Jewish character sent to the camps as well who survives and is already back home. He is totally deleted from the film which puzzles me a little and pisses me off a lot.)
Dawsey is the primary caretaker of Elizabeth's adorable kid, who Juliet also finds adorable, but she's all "WHO IS THE FATHER?????" Which we know early on in the book. There's no mystery. Why the screenplay writer decided they needed so many ~~mysteries~~ instead of just getting on with the story bewilders me, unless/probably they decided that people just talking about BOOKS would be too dull....in which case, why adapt THIS BOOK?
I digress. Middling American is charged with finding the missing Elizabeth because Americans have Google, or something. So Juliet gets to tell everyone that Elizabeth was executed and it goes exactly as well as you'd expect.
In the book, one of Elizabeth's fellow prisoners wrote to them, and there's a whole subplot about another survivor named Remy coming to Guernsey and trying to build a new life for herself, and everyone trying to help but good intentions not being enough, so she goes back to France to a program that will help her and other survivors. It was a good subplot about the difficulties of trauma, and it's a bummer the whole thing was cut.
(Also cut was a whole subplot about Oscar Wilde letters, which was adorable but kind of an odd thing to introduce in the final act.)
The rest of the film is about Juliet finally deciding to dump Middling American. In fairness, his offences in the book are altogether missing; it's clear he's a controlling, arrogant ass, and by the time he tells Juliet she shouldn't be taking care of Adorable Kid she's over with him and you're cheering her on as she tells him off. Why they cut THAT scene is beyond me. In the movie she .... just isn't into him. She IS into hella hot Dawsey, and since he IS hella hot you're like, what are you even waiting for? In the book Dawsey isn't hella hot, but he is a quiet, thoughtful and charming person, and Juliet is taken with him immediately but is convinced he has a thing for Remy. Both end with Juliet going to propose to Dawsey, who says "Oh God, yes!" and its adorbs. The movie does end with a lovely denoument of a picnic where Dawsey reads them Lamb aloud to Adorable Child and to Juliet.
So basically what we have is a movie where people who have a love of reading are suspicious of a writer, the books that are central to so much are largely eliminated, the worst parts of WW2 are likewise eliminated, and the Asshole American is toned way the fuck down.
I am left irked. Irked, I say!