(no subject)
I haven't seen The Lovely Bones yet, but I absolutely love the book, and from what I learned in I am absolutely not going to see it.
In Alice Sebold's 2002 novel, narrator Susie Salmon says that until her rape and murder, her family never understood what the word horror meant. But astonishingly, any true sense of horror is notably absent from the film adaptation of 'The Lovely Bones,' written and directed by 'Lord of the Rings'' Peter Jackson, with screenwriting help from frequent collaborators Philippa Boyens and Jackson's wife Fran Walsh.
As fans of the bestselling novel will immediately recognize, the film omits the fact that 14 year-old Susie (Saoirse Ronan) is brutally raped by her neighbor Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci) before being killed. While the book describes the scene in startling, almost poetic detail, the scene is totally left out of the movie, as is any depiction of Susie's murder, which both take place in the first chapter of the book.
Instead, Jackson takes us to the underground cave creepy Harvey has built, lets us get sufficiently uncomfortable and then allows Susie to escape out into the night (by this point she's a ghost).
Sebold, the book's author, knows firsthand what it means to be raped -- she told the story of her own horrific experience in her memoir, 'Lucky.' To her readers, it's obvious that her personal experience has informed 'The Lovely Bones.' By choosing to make the film more palatable to a PG-13 audience, Jackson takes the sting off of Sebold's story and ultimately does a dishonor to her brave, no b.s. writing.
Jackson was quoted as saying that he and his wife wanted to make the movie "so that it would be watchable by their 13 year-old daughter." It's here that Jackson lets his fatherhood become a conflict of interest when it comes to directing. 'The Lovely Bones' the movie is a white-washed tale. It's upsetting, but not horrific. Jackson, thinking of his own Susie Salmon-aged daughter, can't bear to depict the truth of the situation, so he resorts to toying around with CGI (giving us a vision of Susie's heaven that looks a whole lot like a computer screen-saver). In Jackson's version, Susie's dad Jack (Mark Wahlberg) is the main character -- a good man bent on never giving up the quest to find his daughter.
But this has nothing to do with the book Sebold wrote, which is more about the observation of life from a distance and the inherent sophistication of a teenager who is cut off just as she is on the brink of "crossing over" in a different way -- from childhood to adulthood. By making a movie his daughter could watch (and perhaps underestimating her maturity), Jackson does a disservice to his adult audience.
It's surprising -- not only because the 'Rings' director is one of the most respected filmmakers in Hollywood -- but also because his 'Heavenly Creatures,' the 1994 movie based on the true story of two teenage girls (one of them played by Kate Winslet, in her breakout role) who conspired to murder one of their mothers, was so unflinching. But then again, that was before he and Walsh became parents.
original article here
the removed scene:
"Mr. Harvey, I really have to get home."
"Take off your clothes."
"What?"
"Take your clothes off," Mr. Harvey said. "I want to check that you're still a virgin."
"I am, Mr. Harvey," I said.
"I want to make sure. Your parents will thank me."
"My parents?"
"They only want good girls," he said.
"Mr. Harvey," I said, "please let me leave."
"You aren't leaving, Susie. You're mine now."
Fitness was not a big thing back then; aerobics was barely a word. Girls were supposed to be soft, and only the girls we suspected were butch could climb the ropes at school.
I fought hard. I fought as hard as I could not to let Mr. Harvey hurt me, but my hard-as-I-could was not hard enough, not even close, and I was soon lying down on the ground, in the ground, with him on top of me panting and sweating, having lost his glasses in the struggle.
I was so alive then. I thought it was the worst thing in the world to be lying flat on my back with a sweating man on top of me. To be trapped inside the earth and have no one know where I was.
I thought of my mother.
My mother would be checking the dial of the clock on her oven. It was a new oven and she loved that it had a clock on it. "I can time things to the minute," she told her own mother, a mother who couldn't care less about ovens.
She would be worried, but more angry than worried, at my lateness. As my father pulled into the garage, she would rush about, fixing him a cocktail, a dry sherry, and put on an exasperated face: "You know junior high," she would say. "Maybe it's Spring Fling." "Abigail," my father would say, "how can it be Spring Fling when it's snowing?" Having failed with this, my mother might rush Buckley into the room and say, "Play with your father," while she ducked into the kitchen and took a nip of sherry for herself.
Mr. Harvey started to press his lips against mine. They were blubbery and wet and I wanted to scream but I was too afraid and too exhausted from the fight. I had been kissed once by someone I liked. His name was Ray and he was Indian. He had an accent and was dark. I wasn't supposed to like him. Clarissa called his large eyes, with their half-closed lids, "freak-a-delic," but he was nice and smart and helped me cheat on my algebra exam while pretending he hadn't. He kissed me by my locker the day before we turned in our photos for the yearbook. When the yearbook came out at the end of the summer, I saw that under his picture he had answered the standard "My heart belongs to" with "Susie Salmon." I guess he had had plans. I remember that his lips were chapped.
"Don't, Mr. Harvey," I managed, and I kept saying that one word a lot. Don't. And I said please a lot too. Franny told me that almost everyone begged "please" before dying.
"I want you, Susie," he said.
"Please," I said. "Don't," I said. Sometimes I combined them. "Please don't" or "Don't please." It was like insisting that a key works when it doesn't or yelling "I've got it, I've got it, I've got it" as a softball goes sailing over you into the stands.
"Please don't."
But he grew tired of hearing me plead. He reached into the pocket of my parka and balled up the hat my mother had made me, smashing it into my mouth. The only sound I made after that was the weak tinkling of bells.
As he kissed his wet lips down my face and neck and then began to shove his hands up under my shirt, I wept. I began to leave my body; I began to inhabit the air and the silence. I wept and struggled so I would not feel. He ripped open my pants, not having found the invisible zipper my mother had artfully sewn into their side.
"Big white panties," he said.
I felt huge and bloated. I felt like a sea in which he stood and pissed and shat. I felt the corners of my body were turning in on themselves and out, like in cat's cradle, which I played with Lindsey just to make her happy. He started working himself over me.
"Susie! Susie!" I heard my mother calling. "Dinner is ready."
He was inside me. He was grunting.
"We're having string beans and lamb."
I was the mortar, he was the pestle.
"Your brother has a new finger painting, and I made apple crumb cake."
Mr. Harvey made me lie still underneath him and listen to the beating of his heart and the beating of mine. How mine skipped like a rabbit, and how his thudded, a hammer against cloth. We lay there with our bodies touching, and, as I shook, a powerful knowledge took hold. He had done this thing to me and I had lived. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart. I smelled his breath. The dark earth surrounding us smelled like what it was, moist dirt where worms and animals lived their daily lives. I could have yelled for hours.
I knew he was going to kill me. I did not realize then that I was an animal already dying.
"Why don't you get up?" Mr. Harvey said as he rolled to the side and then crouched over me.
His voice was gentle, encouraging, a lover's voice on a late morning. A suggestion, not a command.
I could not move. I could not get up.
When I would not --was it only that, only that I would not follow his suggestion? --he leaned to the side and felt, over his head, across the ledge where his razor and shaving cream sat. He brought back a knife. Unsheathed, it smiled at me, curving up in a grin.
He took the hat from my mouth.
"Tell me you love me," he said.
Gently, I did.
The end came anyway.
Ranting to come later, I have to get off for now. But, honestly, I am very upset.
This comment was pretty accurate:
Tossing out such a critical part of the story Ms. Sebold so masterfully crafted not only weakens the plot and character development, but patronizes viewers.
In Alice Sebold's 2002 novel, narrator Susie Salmon says that until her rape and murder, her family never understood what the word horror meant. But astonishingly, any true sense of horror is notably absent from the film adaptation of 'The Lovely Bones,' written and directed by 'Lord of the Rings'' Peter Jackson, with screenwriting help from frequent collaborators Philippa Boyens and Jackson's wife Fran Walsh.
As fans of the bestselling novel will immediately recognize, the film omits the fact that 14 year-old Susie (Saoirse Ronan) is brutally raped by her neighbor Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci) before being killed. While the book describes the scene in startling, almost poetic detail, the scene is totally left out of the movie, as is any depiction of Susie's murder, which both take place in the first chapter of the book.
Instead, Jackson takes us to the underground cave creepy Harvey has built, lets us get sufficiently uncomfortable and then allows Susie to escape out into the night (by this point she's a ghost).
Sebold, the book's author, knows firsthand what it means to be raped -- she told the story of her own horrific experience in her memoir, 'Lucky.' To her readers, it's obvious that her personal experience has informed 'The Lovely Bones.' By choosing to make the film more palatable to a PG-13 audience, Jackson takes the sting off of Sebold's story and ultimately does a dishonor to her brave, no b.s. writing.
Jackson was quoted as saying that he and his wife wanted to make the movie "so that it would be watchable by their 13 year-old daughter." It's here that Jackson lets his fatherhood become a conflict of interest when it comes to directing. 'The Lovely Bones' the movie is a white-washed tale. It's upsetting, but not horrific. Jackson, thinking of his own Susie Salmon-aged daughter, can't bear to depict the truth of the situation, so he resorts to toying around with CGI (giving us a vision of Susie's heaven that looks a whole lot like a computer screen-saver). In Jackson's version, Susie's dad Jack (Mark Wahlberg) is the main character -- a good man bent on never giving up the quest to find his daughter.
But this has nothing to do with the book Sebold wrote, which is more about the observation of life from a distance and the inherent sophistication of a teenager who is cut off just as she is on the brink of "crossing over" in a different way -- from childhood to adulthood. By making a movie his daughter could watch (and perhaps underestimating her maturity), Jackson does a disservice to his adult audience.
It's surprising -- not only because the 'Rings' director is one of the most respected filmmakers in Hollywood -- but also because his 'Heavenly Creatures,' the 1994 movie based on the true story of two teenage girls (one of them played by Kate Winslet, in her breakout role) who conspired to murder one of their mothers, was so unflinching. But then again, that was before he and Walsh became parents.
original article here
the removed scene:
"Mr. Harvey, I really have to get home."
"Take off your clothes."
"What?"
"Take your clothes off," Mr. Harvey said. "I want to check that you're still a virgin."
"I am, Mr. Harvey," I said.
"I want to make sure. Your parents will thank me."
"My parents?"
"They only want good girls," he said.
"Mr. Harvey," I said, "please let me leave."
"You aren't leaving, Susie. You're mine now."
Fitness was not a big thing back then; aerobics was barely a word. Girls were supposed to be soft, and only the girls we suspected were butch could climb the ropes at school.
I fought hard. I fought as hard as I could not to let Mr. Harvey hurt me, but my hard-as-I-could was not hard enough, not even close, and I was soon lying down on the ground, in the ground, with him on top of me panting and sweating, having lost his glasses in the struggle.
I was so alive then. I thought it was the worst thing in the world to be lying flat on my back with a sweating man on top of me. To be trapped inside the earth and have no one know where I was.
I thought of my mother.
My mother would be checking the dial of the clock on her oven. It was a new oven and she loved that it had a clock on it. "I can time things to the minute," she told her own mother, a mother who couldn't care less about ovens.
She would be worried, but more angry than worried, at my lateness. As my father pulled into the garage, she would rush about, fixing him a cocktail, a dry sherry, and put on an exasperated face: "You know junior high," she would say. "Maybe it's Spring Fling." "Abigail," my father would say, "how can it be Spring Fling when it's snowing?" Having failed with this, my mother might rush Buckley into the room and say, "Play with your father," while she ducked into the kitchen and took a nip of sherry for herself.
Mr. Harvey started to press his lips against mine. They were blubbery and wet and I wanted to scream but I was too afraid and too exhausted from the fight. I had been kissed once by someone I liked. His name was Ray and he was Indian. He had an accent and was dark. I wasn't supposed to like him. Clarissa called his large eyes, with their half-closed lids, "freak-a-delic," but he was nice and smart and helped me cheat on my algebra exam while pretending he hadn't. He kissed me by my locker the day before we turned in our photos for the yearbook. When the yearbook came out at the end of the summer, I saw that under his picture he had answered the standard "My heart belongs to" with "Susie Salmon." I guess he had had plans. I remember that his lips were chapped.
"Don't, Mr. Harvey," I managed, and I kept saying that one word a lot. Don't. And I said please a lot too. Franny told me that almost everyone begged "please" before dying.
"I want you, Susie," he said.
"Please," I said. "Don't," I said. Sometimes I combined them. "Please don't" or "Don't please." It was like insisting that a key works when it doesn't or yelling "I've got it, I've got it, I've got it" as a softball goes sailing over you into the stands.
"Please don't."
But he grew tired of hearing me plead. He reached into the pocket of my parka and balled up the hat my mother had made me, smashing it into my mouth. The only sound I made after that was the weak tinkling of bells.
As he kissed his wet lips down my face and neck and then began to shove his hands up under my shirt, I wept. I began to leave my body; I began to inhabit the air and the silence. I wept and struggled so I would not feel. He ripped open my pants, not having found the invisible zipper my mother had artfully sewn into their side.
"Big white panties," he said.
I felt huge and bloated. I felt like a sea in which he stood and pissed and shat. I felt the corners of my body were turning in on themselves and out, like in cat's cradle, which I played with Lindsey just to make her happy. He started working himself over me.
"Susie! Susie!" I heard my mother calling. "Dinner is ready."
He was inside me. He was grunting.
"We're having string beans and lamb."
I was the mortar, he was the pestle.
"Your brother has a new finger painting, and I made apple crumb cake."
Mr. Harvey made me lie still underneath him and listen to the beating of his heart and the beating of mine. How mine skipped like a rabbit, and how his thudded, a hammer against cloth. We lay there with our bodies touching, and, as I shook, a powerful knowledge took hold. He had done this thing to me and I had lived. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart. I smelled his breath. The dark earth surrounding us smelled like what it was, moist dirt where worms and animals lived their daily lives. I could have yelled for hours.
I knew he was going to kill me. I did not realize then that I was an animal already dying.
"Why don't you get up?" Mr. Harvey said as he rolled to the side and then crouched over me.
His voice was gentle, encouraging, a lover's voice on a late morning. A suggestion, not a command.
I could not move. I could not get up.
When I would not --was it only that, only that I would not follow his suggestion? --he leaned to the side and felt, over his head, across the ledge where his razor and shaving cream sat. He brought back a knife. Unsheathed, it smiled at me, curving up in a grin.
He took the hat from my mouth.
"Tell me you love me," he said.
Gently, I did.
The end came anyway.
Ranting to come later, I have to get off for now. But, honestly, I am very upset.
This comment was pretty accurate:
Tossing out such a critical part of the story Ms. Sebold so masterfully crafted not only weakens the plot and character development, but patronizes viewers.