What? I don't know whose bright idea it was to try to turn a Garcia Marquez novel into a movie but it wasn't a good idea and it didn't work. I mean it is a movie but it's not a good one. And, Netflix totally lied to me and said it was about an hour shorter than it is.
It's actually not as bad as it could have been (of course, the watching of this coincided with the reading of Windows on the World and I assume I only have so much vitriol to throw at "art"). The problem is that Garcia Marquez's work is so rich and layered and complicated that it will never translate to film. It has to be watered down and then it's not so great. Clearly the director was a little confused about what he wanted because the "cut scenes" portion of the dvd has the longest list of scenes I've ever seen on a dvd, by about twice.
This film, however, had more problems than the watering down of the script. Characters just disappear from the film, others simply appear with no introductions (here I'm thinking Liev Schrieber, John Leguizamo, and a character named "Ricardo"). The whole "cholera" thing is only at the beginning and the very end of the film. And most of the emotion is drained from the film. It's like the took Garcia Marquez's novel, put it in a sieve, let it sit there until it was absolutely anemic, beat it up a little, and then put it on the screen.
AND, the greatest offense in my mind is the scene in which the two main characters, Javier Bardem and and Italian actress I don't know, have a naked love scene in aged makeup!!!!! I don't need to see that.
No comments:
Post a Comment