You would think, reading Time’s review of this film, that the person who wrote it had never read a book by Joan Didion. There was also negative press in Spanish. From what I can gather, this type of review – almost aggressively negative, expressing a level of perplexity that reveals frustration at having been given a difficult product when a simple one was expected – is typical for this Netflix original film.
I’m not going to unquestioningly go down the same road as such reviewers. Though I have read a good number of Didion’s books, including both some of her journalism and some of her prose fiction, and two of her memoirs, I have not read the 1996 novel this film is based on. Having said that, I want to point out that going by what I have been able to gather from online sources the film diverges from the novel in significant ways.
The filmmakers had a difficult task: to translate the allusive, complex prose of a great 20th century prose stylist into another medium: film. And they deserve at least some recognition for what they have attempted. God knows we get enough straight-down-the-line, unambiguous, goodie-versus-baddie, white-bread and boiled-egg movies every year from Hollywood studios. Can’t we tolerate a bit of ambiguity? A touch of improvisation?
Anne Hathaway does a good job playing Didion’s heroine, Elena McMahon, but there is a little too much ambiguity in the Ben Affleck role. He plays Treat Morrison, in the novel a politician, but in the movie a CIA operative. In the novel he might, of course, be both; I can’t tell without reading the book. This role might have been better clarified since McMahon and Morrison become romantically involved. The scenes of McMahon in bed with Morrison – his hand playing over the scar left by her mastectomy as they lie together on the sheets – or the one where she is reciting poetry as they sit by the sea watching the waves come in from the vast expanse of water beyond – are full of a kind of secondary sense-making that good writing and good cinematography are meant to deliver.
The character of Jones (Ed Gathegi) is, like Morrison, shadowy and elusive. He turns out to have an important role to play in the story, but this won’t be revealed until the film’s final moments. In the novel there is a planned assassination that, in the movie, does not emerge in the writing and this, it seems to me, is a major flaw. But Willem Dafoe as Elena’s father, a man living with dementia, adds lustre to what should have been greeted with applause instead of catcalls.
The history of US involvement in South American politics is too rich with stories to need another plain vanilla thriller. It is precisely the blurring of appearances and facts – qualities that Rees’ and Didion’s storytelling throws into relief – that characterises the CIA’s meddling in the politics of other countries. In any case Reagan’s selling arms to right-wing rebels in Nicaragua is, also, too well-known to need a voiceover or some form of plodding, predictable method that would provide a fair recount.
What? Have we failed as viewers? Though I can understand a consumer feeling a tad frustrated at the methods used to make this film, I would have expected critics to be more forgiving.
I’m not going to unquestioningly go down the same road as such reviewers. Though I have read a good number of Didion’s books, including both some of her journalism and some of her prose fiction, and two of her memoirs, I have not read the 1996 novel this film is based on. Having said that, I want to point out that going by what I have been able to gather from online sources the film diverges from the novel in significant ways.
The filmmakers had a difficult task: to translate the allusive, complex prose of a great 20th century prose stylist into another medium: film. And they deserve at least some recognition for what they have attempted. God knows we get enough straight-down-the-line, unambiguous, goodie-versus-baddie, white-bread and boiled-egg movies every year from Hollywood studios. Can’t we tolerate a bit of ambiguity? A touch of improvisation?
Anne Hathaway does a good job playing Didion’s heroine, Elena McMahon, but there is a little too much ambiguity in the Ben Affleck role. He plays Treat Morrison, in the novel a politician, but in the movie a CIA operative. In the novel he might, of course, be both; I can’t tell without reading the book. This role might have been better clarified since McMahon and Morrison become romantically involved. The scenes of McMahon in bed with Morrison – his hand playing over the scar left by her mastectomy as they lie together on the sheets – or the one where she is reciting poetry as they sit by the sea watching the waves come in from the vast expanse of water beyond – are full of a kind of secondary sense-making that good writing and good cinematography are meant to deliver.
The character of Jones (Ed Gathegi) is, like Morrison, shadowy and elusive. He turns out to have an important role to play in the story, but this won’t be revealed until the film’s final moments. In the novel there is a planned assassination that, in the movie, does not emerge in the writing and this, it seems to me, is a major flaw. But Willem Dafoe as Elena’s father, a man living with dementia, adds lustre to what should have been greeted with applause instead of catcalls.
The history of US involvement in South American politics is too rich with stories to need another plain vanilla thriller. It is precisely the blurring of appearances and facts – qualities that Rees’ and Didion’s storytelling throws into relief – that characterises the CIA’s meddling in the politics of other countries. In any case Reagan’s selling arms to right-wing rebels in Nicaragua is, also, too well-known to need a voiceover or some form of plodding, predictable method that would provide a fair recount.
What? Have we failed as viewers? Though I can understand a consumer feeling a tad frustrated at the methods used to make this film, I would have expected critics to be more forgiving.
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