After 10 years since my first reading, I finished Lord Jim for the second time under the avocado tree at my mom's house on my summer vacation today. I couldn't believe how brilliant the book was, and when I got to the last ten pages, I wanted more and more. My jaw dropped at the brilliance. The ending is phenomenal, and the book is overall a masterpiece and perfect in so many ways. I was amazed to learn that Conrad learned English in his 20's as a third language, after Polish (his native language) and French. He writes with a command of the language better than most professional authors and surely way better than I could ever dream of, despite being a native speaker and passionate English student.
With a huge amount of passion for the book, I excitedly rented the film from Amazon and set aside 2.5 hours to watch it tonight! I am a huge fan of Peter O'Toole, Eli Wallach, and had a great interest in James Mason and the rest of the cast, like the gorgeous Daliah Lavi. The acting is not at all my point of contention with this film, because I think they did great.
What happened with the directing and the script? Robert Brooks, did you read the same book I read? This became a bang-fest of guns and fighting where the book had maybe two pistol shots and one rifle snipe in the entire novel, with oblique reference to some other possible squabbles. The novel was primarily an existential struggle of a man trying to get back his lost honor, with complex narrative and immersive naturalism. The movie version had weak cinematography and horribly simplified and confusing writing where the emphasis hit hard on stuff that the book didn't ever mention, and totally ignored some of the most important and poignant points of the novel.
If you want a good Lord Jim, please read the book. If you want to be left confused and disappointed, frustrated and bored, watch this film. The last scene is atrocious. It is technically the same as the novel, but oh so different in every way. What happens with Jewel, or "the girl" in the film (because they somehow decided it was better not to give her a name) is totally unacceptable if you are going do call this film "Lord Jim".
Yes, this is a piece of trash, and I will never watch it again. I can't say that I regret my time watching it, because I had to as homework for my love of the novel, but it is so terribly adapted, and so insulting to the original author who toiled with a very challenging life to hew the story like a sculptor in another language, that please, what the heck happened with the Brooks script? Did he read the same novel? Could he or Hollywood just not help the distortion? He had a goldmine of base content but completely blew it! Doramin is nothing like the tragic, titanic, elephant leader of the book, and we terribly miss his amazing motherly witch wife, Jewel doesn't even merit her name in the movie and is a hollow shell of the strong feminine counterpart to Jim's groping leadership that she is in the novel, Jim is trapped in a confusing, castrated version of himself that doesn't make any sense, Brown is not Brown, Marlow who is the most important character is deleted from the script, Tamb 'Itam as well is deleted to terrible effect because his presence is critical to establish the believable bridge between the white leader and the native society that is immediately "taken over" by Jim (Tamb 'Itam is also an outsider in Patusan, but fiercely loyal to Jim), Cornelius is a far cry from the abject beetle that he is in the book (and Conrad didn't even think to make him alcoholic because his abjectness was already so absolute), the Rajah Allah was for some reason reinvented as "the general" which is totally opposite of his bedraggled fawning terrible scared leader character, Dain Warris loses his soul brother connection with Jim, Stein is a shadow of his powerful presence that he has in the book, and on, and on. Seriously I am scratching the surface with how much Brooks robbed the essence of the novel when making this film that cannot even stand on its own as a film. I would be willing to pardon his.pilferage if he had just made a good film with the source material, but he lost his way.
Film and novels often have a hard time in adaptions of one to the other, because they are such different mediums. You might conclude that it is never possible - and that is not a bad conclusion. But, there are some amazing attempts, like John Houston's adaptation of "Under the Volcano" (1984) or "Willy Wonka" (1971) or "The Excorcist" (1973), and so many other great adaptations to cinema that amplify the experience of the book. But dang, it is simultaneously sad and it makes sense that one of the treasures of literature, "Lord Jim", continues without a good adaptation, because it is allusive and built on paradoxes and complexity of narrative and appeals the the most profound extremes of the imagination.
With a huge amount of passion for the book, I excitedly rented the film from Amazon and set aside 2.5 hours to watch it tonight! I am a huge fan of Peter O'Toole, Eli Wallach, and had a great interest in James Mason and the rest of the cast, like the gorgeous Daliah Lavi. The acting is not at all my point of contention with this film, because I think they did great.
What happened with the directing and the script? Robert Brooks, did you read the same book I read? This became a bang-fest of guns and fighting where the book had maybe two pistol shots and one rifle snipe in the entire novel, with oblique reference to some other possible squabbles. The novel was primarily an existential struggle of a man trying to get back his lost honor, with complex narrative and immersive naturalism. The movie version had weak cinematography and horribly simplified and confusing writing where the emphasis hit hard on stuff that the book didn't ever mention, and totally ignored some of the most important and poignant points of the novel.
If you want a good Lord Jim, please read the book. If you want to be left confused and disappointed, frustrated and bored, watch this film. The last scene is atrocious. It is technically the same as the novel, but oh so different in every way. What happens with Jewel, or "the girl" in the film (because they somehow decided it was better not to give her a name) is totally unacceptable if you are going do call this film "Lord Jim".
Yes, this is a piece of trash, and I will never watch it again. I can't say that I regret my time watching it, because I had to as homework for my love of the novel, but it is so terribly adapted, and so insulting to the original author who toiled with a very challenging life to hew the story like a sculptor in another language, that please, what the heck happened with the Brooks script? Did he read the same novel? Could he or Hollywood just not help the distortion? He had a goldmine of base content but completely blew it! Doramin is nothing like the tragic, titanic, elephant leader of the book, and we terribly miss his amazing motherly witch wife, Jewel doesn't even merit her name in the movie and is a hollow shell of the strong feminine counterpart to Jim's groping leadership that she is in the novel, Jim is trapped in a confusing, castrated version of himself that doesn't make any sense, Brown is not Brown, Marlow who is the most important character is deleted from the script, Tamb 'Itam as well is deleted to terrible effect because his presence is critical to establish the believable bridge between the white leader and the native society that is immediately "taken over" by Jim (Tamb 'Itam is also an outsider in Patusan, but fiercely loyal to Jim), Cornelius is a far cry from the abject beetle that he is in the book (and Conrad didn't even think to make him alcoholic because his abjectness was already so absolute), the Rajah Allah was for some reason reinvented as "the general" which is totally opposite of his bedraggled fawning terrible scared leader character, Dain Warris loses his soul brother connection with Jim, Stein is a shadow of his powerful presence that he has in the book, and on, and on. Seriously I am scratching the surface with how much Brooks robbed the essence of the novel when making this film that cannot even stand on its own as a film. I would be willing to pardon his.pilferage if he had just made a good film with the source material, but he lost his way.
Film and novels often have a hard time in adaptions of one to the other, because they are such different mediums. You might conclude that it is never possible - and that is not a bad conclusion. But, there are some amazing attempts, like John Houston's adaptation of "Under the Volcano" (1984) or "Willy Wonka" (1971) or "The Excorcist" (1973), and so many other great adaptations to cinema that amplify the experience of the book. But dang, it is simultaneously sad and it makes sense that one of the treasures of literature, "Lord Jim", continues without a good adaptation, because it is allusive and built on paradoxes and complexity of narrative and appeals the the most profound extremes of the imagination.