Eccentric Flower:200003/Low Fidelity

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From Susan of the Apocalypse:
Oh, see, now, you had no way of knowing that I'm a rabid High Fidelity fan, now did you? I haven't seen the movie yet, but from having read the book, I'd have to argue against the proposition that the main character is unlikeable. He's a right idiot at times, and he's definitely flawed, but he's generally well-meaning.

For all I know, you also read the book and just see it differently. But a lot of why I loved the book was that it made it so easy to understand how someone could fuck up pretty much everything in his life while still trying to be doing the right thing, or at least wanting to do the right thing and just getting in his own way. If that makes sense.

From Jette:
How do you know that John Cusack's character in High Fidelity will be so unsympathetic? I read the book and didn't find him so bad, if a bit childish and sexist in parts (but duh, he's a man).

First, note that while I know both Jette and Susan in person, I've known Jette for over ten years and known Susan for a few months. This probably explains why Jette is more willing to be blunt when telling me I'm being bitchy!

Second, note that I have neither seen the film (obviously) nor read the book. I have only read the reviews of the film (three so far). I suspect I would probably like the book a lot better than the film, and may even read it one day. But I also have strong reason to believe I'd find the film hard to sit through.

The thing is, in a book it's a lot easier to get inside a character's head and understand why that person is doing obnoxious or stupid things. What I liked about Grosse Pointe Blank is that it managed this difficult trick - it got me thinking in the same terms as the main character, just as bewildered by the world as he was, to the point where his response (to become a hired assassin) actually came to make sense in that context. That's a brilliant piece of writing, to make the audience sympathetic with a hitman.

I don't believe the film of High Fidelity will be able to make this character sympathetic to me. And one reason I believe it is because Frears - whom I love - traditionally makes films full of unsympathetic characters. I watch his films because he also throws in enough caustic bitchiness to make enduring them worthwhile. But there are few good guys in Frears films - and this doesn't seem like it's going to be mordant enough to be fun.

And a script that relocates from London to Chicago for no good reason (except to hire American actors) is not to be trusted.

Back to this book vs. movie business. Jette will recall that when I saw The World According to Garp, I didn't understand how anyone could possibly see anything sympathetic in Glenn Close's character - Garp's mother (I think of her as "Nurse Jenny" because I can't remember her character's surname). Jette (whom, let it be said, I was dating at the time), gently suggested that I read the book. I did, and I was surprised. The woman was less one-dimensional, less obviously evil - she had motivations, reasons for what she did. Even the person responsible for Garp's death (I don't want to give the whole thing away) has hidden depths. None of this was apparent in the movie, none whatsoever. And it made the story much better for me, especially since one of the things I disliked about the film was the arbitariness of the ending - suddenly Garp's dead for no apparent reason - why?

Admittedly the book, like all Irving, is dense and hard to adapt, but it would have been nice to see a trace of this in the film. Some of it was surely time constraints, some may have been poor scriptwriting ... but some of it was because, in film, this is just plain hard to do. Period.

Ah, well. Apologies to the various people who tell me they skip over my entries whenever I rant about film. The silver lining is, aside from the fact that I haven't gotten a lot of work done today, I really don't have anything more serious to rant about!

I wonder if the 7:30 showing of High Fidelity has sold out yet.