Jenni uses her Film Degree to do a Review: The Rum Diary
I feel for any director or screenwriter that finds themselves dealing with an icon.
Hell, I feel for anybody that has to deal with an adaptation at all.
You see, the beauty of books is that half of the work is done by the reader's imagination. When you translate a book to the screen, you are using one person's imagination to communicate what has been experienced differently by many - which leaves you in iron boots standing on thin ice.
No one will ever be happy - whether it be casting or missing plot points - it is impossible for a film to be exactly like its source material since they are vastly individual storytelling mediums. Of course, people seem to not be willing to accept this fact and hold films accountable for changing aspects of their favourite novels. I, however, being obviously smarter and more cinematically informed than the average bear (EN: she's joking), have developed a theory that the best adaptations are the ones that capture the essence of a book and use that to make a brilliant movie - and not, and this is important, not worry about staying "true" to the book.
For example, and I love to whip this out, the film Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story was based on a supposedly unfilmable novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen. It is a comedic, way ahead of its 18th Century time book about a man telling the story of his life, that gets distracted with flowery language and the over-explanation of everything that led to the event, that he hardly gets past the story of his birth. The film, starring Steve Coogan and directed by Michael Winterbottom, chooses to shift the focus onto a semi-biographical story of Coogan's experiences while acting on the set of Tristram Shandy. It's all very meta and layered, but it beautifully captures the essence of the novel and uses it to make a film that stands on its own. The novel and the film complement each other - you don't need to have experienced one to enjoy the other.
On the other hand another example is some of the Harry Potter movies (I want to say the fourth or the fifth one in particular, but there's so many - who can keep track). They were faced with a mammoth task and chose to satisfy the massive readership by translating the important scenes and moments from the book instead of focusing on how movies are supposed to flow. Thus, ending up with a bad film and perpetuating all the trolls out there to continue hissing "The books were better"... when really the film was just poorly executed. Arguably, the best scene in the Harry Potter series is Harry and Hermione dancing to Nick Cave in The Deathly Hallows Part I - and there is not a breath of that visual moment in the books. So, do you know what happened? David Yates understood that cinema works differently and chose to demonstrate all those emotions that Hermione and Harry were going through by just showing us. This is honestly cinema at its finest.
Nothing will let me embed it... so you'll just have to watch it here -- it still gives me chills. Nick Cave probably helps.
Anyway, this wasn't meant to be an essay on Harry Potter... I think my point about adaptations has been well and truly made.
So, the trouble with The Rum Diary is that is deals with an icon: Hunter S. Thompson. It's based on his first novel which loosely draws on his young journalism days in Puerto Rico, where his Gonzo style started to take form. Secondly, it stars Johnny Depp in the Hunter S. role he so amazingly embodied in Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but it is now written and directed by Bruce Robinson, most well-known for Withnail & I.
Leagues of drug-addled drunks dabbling in anti-authoritarian writing are already holding their pre-bought cinema tickets in shaky anticipation.
I don't mean to diss any fans of Hunter - because I love him as well, his writing is visceral and frightening and wonderful - but I don't subscribe to the whole "You have to be on drugs to be a true artist" motto and I get a bit annoyed with it. I've got enough whimsy in my head already causing problems, why would I want to compound them with addiction? So, I get irritated when people hijack something I think lives and breathes on its own, and make enjoying it another excuse for getting high.
Ahem. Excuse me. Wow, this film is bringing out a lot of rants in me.
I think this audience is a curse and a blessing for The Rum Diary. A lot of people are going to see it expecting a prequel to the other Hunter S. Thompson-Johnny Depp opus, but Fear and Loathing it is not. Which, being the cranky and spiteful girl I apparently am, is something I liked about it. But many people will be angry at it; half of them will hate it for wasting their LSD while watching some sort of unFear and Loathing; and the other half, the true Hunter fans (i.e. the ones that have read the book), will detest it for changing elements of the novel.
If you haven't worked it out already, I fall into neither of these camps. I liked the movie.
The story is about Paul Kemp, a journalist that hasn't quite found his place, who takes a job at a flailing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Away from everything he knows, he gets in out of his depth with a villainous type man trying to sully Puerto Rico's untouched beauty and his beautiful fiancée, before taking on the "bastards" at the top. All this with a little added alcoholism.
Apart from a little somewhat clunky dialogue, it was well executed and clear. I think it captured a young Hunter-esque character finding his voice in a foreign land, before he became Hunter, the Gonzo journalist. It feels like jungle and squalor and Puerto Rico (as far as I know, since I've only been to the San Juan airport). And you can not fault any of the actors. Except maybe Giovanni Ribisi... his character of Moburg was perhaps a little to close to a homeless man caricature that belonged in Fear and Loathing.
I have not read the book, but I think that is an advantage - because this film stands alone. I did not find it disjointed or incoherent and it felt like the essence of early Hunter S. Thompson to me. It ticks the boxes in my adaptation criteria.
So, what I loved most about this film, and why I think I will hold it in high regard, was the desire it awakened in me. There is this beautiful theme of finding yourself by being away from yourself. By silencing all the things that you think make you who you are - your past, your connections, your baggage - you can find the voice that truly speaks as you. In a modern world where we are over-connected by technology, The Rum Diary made me yearn to run away to all the wild places of the Earth and just... live, I guess. I wanted to escape and find the purest form of myself. But can we ever be somewhere where we don't have to worry about a status update any more?
I'll be so bold as to say that the one thing that Hunter probably wanted us to take from his example was the commitment he had for life. He saw the humour and the tragedy in things, shot them with a rifle and downed a shot. He didn't care if you liked it or not - just as long as you were dedicated to the moment. And there's something beautiful in there that we all could learn from.
So, turn your technology off and share a rum with the person next to you. Just live, you bastards.
The Rum Diary was written and directed by Bruce Robinson and stars Johnny Depp, Richard Jenkins and Aaron Eckhart.
Hell, I feel for anybody that has to deal with an adaptation at all.
You see, the beauty of books is that half of the work is done by the reader's imagination. When you translate a book to the screen, you are using one person's imagination to communicate what has been experienced differently by many - which leaves you in iron boots standing on thin ice.
No one will ever be happy - whether it be casting or missing plot points - it is impossible for a film to be exactly like its source material since they are vastly individual storytelling mediums. Of course, people seem to not be willing to accept this fact and hold films accountable for changing aspects of their favourite novels. I, however, being obviously smarter and more cinematically informed than the average bear (EN: she's joking), have developed a theory that the best adaptations are the ones that capture the essence of a book and use that to make a brilliant movie - and not, and this is important, not worry about staying "true" to the book.
For example, and I love to whip this out, the film Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story was based on a supposedly unfilmable novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen. It is a comedic, way ahead of its 18th Century time book about a man telling the story of his life, that gets distracted with flowery language and the over-explanation of everything that led to the event, that he hardly gets past the story of his birth. The film, starring Steve Coogan and directed by Michael Winterbottom, chooses to shift the focus onto a semi-biographical story of Coogan's experiences while acting on the set of Tristram Shandy. It's all very meta and layered, but it beautifully captures the essence of the novel and uses it to make a film that stands on its own. The novel and the film complement each other - you don't need to have experienced one to enjoy the other.
On the other hand another example is some of the Harry Potter movies (I want to say the fourth or the fifth one in particular, but there's so many - who can keep track). They were faced with a mammoth task and chose to satisfy the massive readership by translating the important scenes and moments from the book instead of focusing on how movies are supposed to flow. Thus, ending up with a bad film and perpetuating all the trolls out there to continue hissing "The books were better"... when really the film was just poorly executed. Arguably, the best scene in the Harry Potter series is Harry and Hermione dancing to Nick Cave in The Deathly Hallows Part I - and there is not a breath of that visual moment in the books. So, do you know what happened? David Yates understood that cinema works differently and chose to demonstrate all those emotions that Hermione and Harry were going through by just showing us. This is honestly cinema at its finest.
Nothing will let me embed it... so you'll just have to watch it here -- it still gives me chills. Nick Cave probably helps.
Anyway, this wasn't meant to be an essay on Harry Potter... I think my point about adaptations has been well and truly made.
So, the trouble with The Rum Diary is that is deals with an icon: Hunter S. Thompson. It's based on his first novel which loosely draws on his young journalism days in Puerto Rico, where his Gonzo style started to take form. Secondly, it stars Johnny Depp in the Hunter S. role he so amazingly embodied in Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but it is now written and directed by Bruce Robinson, most well-known for Withnail & I.
Leagues of drug-addled drunks dabbling in anti-authoritarian writing are already holding their pre-bought cinema tickets in shaky anticipation.
I don't mean to diss any fans of Hunter - because I love him as well, his writing is visceral and frightening and wonderful - but I don't subscribe to the whole "You have to be on drugs to be a true artist" motto and I get a bit annoyed with it. I've got enough whimsy in my head already causing problems, why would I want to compound them with addiction? So, I get irritated when people hijack something I think lives and breathes on its own, and make enjoying it another excuse for getting high.
Ahem. Excuse me. Wow, this film is bringing out a lot of rants in me.
I think this audience is a curse and a blessing for The Rum Diary. A lot of people are going to see it expecting a prequel to the other Hunter S. Thompson-Johnny Depp opus, but Fear and Loathing it is not. Which, being the cranky and spiteful girl I apparently am, is something I liked about it. But many people will be angry at it; half of them will hate it for wasting their LSD while watching some sort of unFear and Loathing; and the other half, the true Hunter fans (i.e. the ones that have read the book), will detest it for changing elements of the novel.
If you haven't worked it out already, I fall into neither of these camps. I liked the movie.
The story is about Paul Kemp, a journalist that hasn't quite found his place, who takes a job at a flailing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Away from everything he knows, he gets in out of his depth with a villainous type man trying to sully Puerto Rico's untouched beauty and his beautiful fiancée, before taking on the "bastards" at the top. All this with a little added alcoholism.
Apart from a little somewhat clunky dialogue, it was well executed and clear. I think it captured a young Hunter-esque character finding his voice in a foreign land, before he became Hunter, the Gonzo journalist. It feels like jungle and squalor and Puerto Rico (as far as I know, since I've only been to the San Juan airport). And you can not fault any of the actors. Except maybe Giovanni Ribisi... his character of Moburg was perhaps a little to close to a homeless man caricature that belonged in Fear and Loathing.
I have not read the book, but I think that is an advantage - because this film stands alone. I did not find it disjointed or incoherent and it felt like the essence of early Hunter S. Thompson to me. It ticks the boxes in my adaptation criteria.
So, what I loved most about this film, and why I think I will hold it in high regard, was the desire it awakened in me. There is this beautiful theme of finding yourself by being away from yourself. By silencing all the things that you think make you who you are - your past, your connections, your baggage - you can find the voice that truly speaks as you. In a modern world where we are over-connected by technology, The Rum Diary made me yearn to run away to all the wild places of the Earth and just... live, I guess. I wanted to escape and find the purest form of myself. But can we ever be somewhere where we don't have to worry about a status update any more?
I'll be so bold as to say that the one thing that Hunter probably wanted us to take from his example was the commitment he had for life. He saw the humour and the tragedy in things, shot them with a rifle and downed a shot. He didn't care if you liked it or not - just as long as you were dedicated to the moment. And there's something beautiful in there that we all could learn from.
So, turn your technology off and share a rum with the person next to you. Just live, you bastards.
The Rum Diary was written and directed by Bruce Robinson and stars Johnny Depp, Richard Jenkins and Aaron Eckhart.