We Can Remake You

Tweet

I'm not exactly famous for any ability at seeing the future, but I had an awful premonition the other day that Tim Burton would remake Mary Poppins. Unsurprisingly, my ghastly vision showed Helena Bonham Carter as the eponymous nanny, silly voice and mad hair included, and Johnny Depp (who else?) as lovable chimneysweep Bert. The only thing missing was Dick Van Dyke's comedy Cockney accent.

I'm not sure what prompted such a premonition, although it's entirely possible that my brain was simply reacting badly to Burton's recent trend for rehashing the material of other artists, only to have the resultant tired mess hailed as being "visionary" or worse, "dark". (Face it, he's about as dark as Minnie Mouse). I don't know, maybe I'm just sick of the fact that the whole world appears to be engaged in imitation, as opposed to origination.

Don't get me wrong, I know why it's done. If you have a successful original, then this becomes 'pre-sold product' by the time a sequel, adaptation or remake rolls around. You can target the in-built audience, and due to humanity's love of familiarity, it's easier to appeal to their awareness of an existing text than it is to flog them something new and unknown. Less money needs to be invested in creating, developing, and promoting the product. Look at Andrew Motion - he's trying to kid himself that a sequel to Treasure Island, written by himself some 127 years after the publication of the original, will become an instant classic. He, and his publishers, no doubt hope that the fans of the original will flock to the sequel, and all will be well. Writing an original novel is far more risky, and might, you know, not make much money. After all, ladies and gentlemen, let's not kid ourselves. The creative industries are exactly that. Industries.

It's easier to sell a book or a film by saying it's "like" something else. One creative product does well, so we become inundated with a flood of similar products, all cashing in on the success of the first. Gradually the quality becomes diluted and we're left with nothing but crap. However, the key point is that somewhere along the line, something new started the trend. To say it is original is not necessarily to say it is wildly innovative, rather that it is a new idea, or an existing idea told in a new way.

My point is this. These 'wildcards' are successful, which is what prompts the trend, yet their very success implies that there is a market, and an appetite, for the new and untested. So why do filmmakers and publishers instead choose to exploit existing texts?

Dorian Gray

Tweet I went to see the turgid, unmitigated disaster of a movie that was Dorian Gray on Sunday, and it's taken until now for me to feel sufficiently in possession of my credulity to compose an entry about it. I know, you may be (logically) wondering why I keep discussing films in a blog supposedly devoted to my writing career. Firstly, I have two degrees in film and it's a great passion of mine, and secondly, I believe that film faces the same technical problems as writing, in terms of pacing, structure, dialogue etc.

Now, Dorian Gray is somewhat unsurprisingly based on the genius work by Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The original novel is an absolute delight, whereas the movie is a lacklustre blight on the face of the film industry. I'm often somewhat skeptical of adaptations, as few of them manage to retain the subtle subtexts and wide-reaching nuances of the original source, and I should have guessed by the trailer that the makers of this limp movie would have managed to strip everything out bar the basic plot, and refuse to replace it with anything that might go over the heads of the target teenage audience.

The novel is a meditation on the nature of immortality, of truth versus beauty, of the strength of morality and conscience when faced with the temptations of debauchery, but the film chooses to dispense with these to promote the message, "Wouldn't it be fun if you could do what you want?" Responsibility and principles are jettisoned for a selfish gratification of the ego. It's hardly unsurprising in our youth-obsessed times, when people inject botulism into themselves in an attempt to stave off the ageing process, that the film places heavy emphasis on the value and virtue of youth. It ties in nicely with that other cinematic debacle, Twilight, in which vampires stay forever young and beautiful.

It's simply a bad, bad film. The costumes seem somewhat wrong, and I cannot quite understand why the stylist decided to give Sibyl long red hair, when such an appearance in Victorian art would denote the woman as a prostitute, or 'fallen woman'. Victorian art was extremely preoccupied with the idea of the 'angel of the hearth', of the quiet, obedient wife who would run the household for her husband without complaint. Naturally this image appealed to the highly repressed Victorian consciousness, yet man was still drawn to her sinful sister, the harlot. This scarlet-haired temptress allowed men to be experienced before marriage, and represented those who had fallen from grace and would usually end up falling off a bridge into the murky waters of the Thames. Indeed, this is the same fate that befalls Sibyl, despite the fact that she is intended to be a shining beacon of virtue and innocence in Dorian's increasingly dark world.

Part of me wonders that Sibyl's hair is inspired by the fact that when Dorian first sees her, she is playing Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet, although her appearance owes more to Ophelia in John Everett Millais' painting of the same name. Ophelia drowns herself, and Shakespeare hints that she does so as she is pregnant, and it's an eerie echo of the situation in which young Sibyl finds herself. I can understand the inclusion on the part of Mr Wilde, as he was clearly a genius, but I can't help feeling that any similarities featured by the filmmakers are completely accidental.

It is almost upsetting how easily the filmmakers tore the witty heart out of the novel, to replace it with a glossy absence of substance. Dorian's supposed debauchery seems tame compared to the goings on of most soap characters, and when we finally see the painting of Dorian in the final act, it looks more like Vigo from Ghostbusters II than a damning indictment of the havoc wrought upon a misguided man's soul. Where the book revealed the price to be paid for man's folly, the movie turns Dorian into a reckless pretty boy seemingly devoid of personality or charisma. Maybe if the filmmakers had taken a leaf from the diabolically bad League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and cast Stuart Townsend as Dorian (the only good thing about LOEG), then the film might have been saved. Otherwise, it's just a poor adaptation of an amazing book.

Buy the novel; ignore the movie.