Thursday, August 29, 2019

ADAPTATION REVIEW: The Shining (1980)


With two little words “Heeere’s Johnny!”, Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson brought Stephen King's 1977 novel, The Shining to life in 1980, instantly creating one of the most quotable and homaged films of all time. Despite the film's success and fame, King himself actually didn't like the film, and have even said it's the only adaptation that he could "remember hating". However, in 1981 non-fiction book Danse Macabre, he listed the film among those he considered to have "contributed something of value to the (horror) genre" and considers it as one of his "personal favourites". So I think it's fair to say that he enjoys the film as a horror movie, but not as an adaptation, which is probably why it was remade into a (pretty lacklustre) miniseries in 1997 with King as writer.

The film has been praised for Kubrick's stunning visuals and fantastically directed scenes along with phenomenal acting from Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance. Despite its success as a film, does it succeed as an adaptation? Before I begin to compare the two works, here is a (hopefully short) synopsis of the plot:

Plot Synopsis


Jack Torrance, a former teacher-turned-writer and a recovering alcoholic takes a job as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in the mountains of Colorado. While Jack and his wife Wendy are happy that Jack has found a job, their five year old son Danny is not happy about it, telling them that "Tony", his imaginary friend, has given him warnings about the hotel. On their first day there, Danny befriends the hotel's friendly chef Dick Hallorann, who tells him that the warnings Danny have been getting is due to "the shining", a psychic ability that allows the possessor to see premonitions about the future, and that the hotel is also able to "shine" and is dangerous.

Months goes by, and the Torrance family is shut in the hotel due to heavy snowfall, and strange things begin to happen; Jack starts acting more more strange and the entire family begin to see phantasms of the hotel's bloody past, except they seem to be gradually becoming more and more real. It's eventually revealed that the hotel is somehow sentient and evil and that it has been causing people to enact horrible acts of violence and its main goal now is to take Danny's "shine" to feed itself. Jack eventually gives into the madness caused by the hotel and sets his mind on killing Danny and Wendy in behalf of the hotel. Thankfully, Danny and Wendy outsmart and manage to escape, leaving Jack to die in the Overlook.

This synopsis is true for both novel and the film, so I'll now talk about the major and minor similarities between the film and the novel:

The Loyal Factors


All of the characterizations are more or less on point. Jack is a recovering alcoholic and a former teacher with anger issues who aspires to write a play during their peaceful time at the Overlook and slowly descends into madness (FUN FACT: King reflected a lot himself and his own alcoholism onto Jack when he was writing). Wendy is a loving and caring mother and wife who is desperately trying to keep together a failing marriage and trying to understand her unusual son. Danny is a young boy with above-average intelligence, supernatural powers, and is given  far too much responsibility and power for his young age, and "REDRUM" being "MURDER" spelt backwards is also accurate to the novel. Hallorann is still a kind-hearted and courageous man who becomes a mentor figure for Danny and is brave enough to fly across the country to save Danny, a boy who he's known for few hours at the most.

Jack's interactions with the hotel ghosts are fairly accurate. Lloyd the bartender who creates alcohol out of nowhere to serve to Jack is consistent and in both versions are crucial in the downfall of Jack. Grady, the hotel's former winter caretaker who murdered his wife and two daughters who has been reincarnated to be a butler, is also in the film and his actions of freeing Jack from the freezer and his speech about "punishing" Wendy and Danny is book-accurate. The short sight of a man dressed in a bear outfit performing oral sex on another man is (unsurprisingly) something from the novel, although their story is more expanded upon and it is a dog costume in there. Also accurate is the nude corpse of an old woman that Jack and Danny both encounter in room 237 (room 217 in the novel; this change is due to the actual hotel that they filmed in not wanting them to use 217 on the chance it might scare people so they invented 237), and Wendy's assumption that the bruise Danny received from her was actually caused by Jack.

So Stanley Kubrick did actually including the major parts from the book. But despite that, the film doesn't feel like Stephen King's The Shining, but more like Stanley Kubrick's original film, The Shining, with inspirations from Stephen King's The Shining. This is mainly due to some major changes in terms of plot, details, theme, and character development, which will be discussed in the next section:

The Disloyal Factors


The biggest change in the adaptation is most definitely Jack Torrance. While the basics of his character, i.e. a recovering alcoholic with anger issues who wants to write a play, is accurate to the novel, there was a whole another level to the character of Jack. The film's portrayal of Jack makes it clear that he would be the main antagonist of the film, because of how creepy Jack Nicholson was as the character right from the start. The novel, however, was the complete opposite. Jack's downfall into a villain is so much more upsetting because of how likeable Jack was. Jack in the novel was, while still an alcoholic with anger issues, also a very caring father and husband to Danny and Wendy. Yes, there were moments when his violent side slipped out, but throughout the majority of the novel, he had a surprisingly loving relationship with Danny especially, and was constantly trying to become a better father and husband and shake off his alcoholism. This is why in the novel, it's particularly distressing to the readers and the characters when Jack goes on his murderous rampage, while in the film, the rampage was something everyone sort of knew was going to happen.

This also marks a significant change from the film and the novel concerning Jack as the antagonist. In the film, Jack definitely seems to be aware that he's trying to kill his wife and son, and doesn't seem to have any qualms about doing so. The novel Jack definitely didn't want to harm his wife and son. You can clearly tell that he wasn't acting out of his own consciousness; it was the hotel controlling him, and he even throws off the control for a brief moment at the end to tell Danny he loves him. This is so frustrating because Jack was such a complex character who was fighting his inner demons, ultimately losing the battle because of the evil spirits in the hotel overtaking him. The film Jack isn't any of that. He isn't particularly loving to Jack or Wendy, he doesn't seem to be doing anything to try and make the situation better, and most importantly of all, I'm not even actually sure the hotel had anything to do with Jack going crazy; the film Jack felt like someone who was one bad day and a drink away from going on a full rampage. Because of this major character change, while Jack Nicholson did an amazing job playing the film's version of Jack, the character just seems to drag down the whole point of the adaptation because of the creepiness to his character.

The Overlook was always shown as an ancient, deadly evil in the novel that takes control of Jack against his will and forces him to try and kill his family. The film's Overlook is shown as nothing much more then a supernatural place that is a bad influence to Jack, goading him on just enough so that they could tip him over to the darkness, and it just doesn't make the Overlook that important since Jack feels like he was always going to go crazy, whether the Overlook was there or not, unlike the novel where Jack has to be forced to go on the murderous rampage. You can really see how Kubrick changing Jack, while giving us a more creepy central character, makes the complex plot of the novel so much more shallow.

Jack also uses a roque mallet in the novel, which is apparently a small version of a croquet mallet, which is a bit confusing since there was a fire axe at the hotel, so I'm not sure why Jack didn't use that instead. In the novel, Jack never actually sees the old woman's nude corpse, so he definitely doesn't kiss the corpse (who previously looked young and beautiful). The old woman's backstory isn't explained in the film, her being a rich old woman whose young lover had left her, and she committed suicide in the bathtub; in the novel Jack runs away before he even sees the corpse. In the novel, Jack also begins to do his own research into the hotel's history, and discovers that the hotel had a very blood one, being the location for mob shootouts, suicides, and murders. The hotel also had a boiler that had to be relieved of its pressure regularly or it would blow up, which becomes quite crucial in the novel's plot.

Another big change was Dick Hallorann's fate and Tony. In the film, Hallorann is killed by Jack the moment he enters the hotel, but in the novel, he takes a beating from Jack, survives, and actually helps Danny and Wendy escape the Overlook and becomes a surrogate father of sorts to Danny. Tony, Danny's imaginary friend is also changed. In the film, he's the croaky-voiced persona in Danny's finger. In the novel, however, Tony actually is a separate figure, always appearing a distance away from Danny so Danny can't see him properly. In the end, Tony is actually revealed to be an older version of Danny. Why he takes that form is never explained.

Jack's abusive, alcoholic father is also mentioned throughout the story. Jack is most likely an alcoholic because of his father (and Danny is an alcoholic as well in the sequel Doctor Sleep) and he is constantly haunted by his father's ghost and hears his father's voice everywhere, and the Overlook uses this to their advantage to make Jack's mind vulnerable enough for them to be able to control him.

Interestingly enough, the things you would associate with The Shining: the Grady twins, the blood elevator, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." and "Here's Johnny!" are all Kubrick additions. The novel had other creepy elements, such as a room in the Overlook becoming stained with blood for Danny as it flashes back to a massacre that had taken place there, or an empty wasps nest that Jack gives to Danny that becomes filled with wasps again at night (which represents the hive mind of the hotel), along with hedge animals coming to life; these hedge animals would move when you weren't looking like the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who, but later came to life and chased people around, trying to kill them. Another change is the bear-man. If you're confused as to what I'm talking about, it's this scene:
In the novel, these two were revealed to be homosexual lovers; the older man being the hotel's manager Horace M. Derwent in the late 1940s and the man in the "bear suit" (a dog suit in the novel) was Roger, a young man who was infatuated with Derwent, although Derwent is very verbally and emotionally abusive towards Roger. Derwent essentially tells Roger that he would consider being his lover again if Roger dresses up like a dog and humiliates himself. Roger does so, and his ghost appears throughout the novel to terrorize Danny.
Interesting Note: Delbert Grady, the Overlook's former winter caretaker and now waiter, is first named as Charles Grady in the film, but then is named Delbert Grady again as a ghost. (Perhaps this means that Jack and Grady are both reincarnations of former Overlook managers from different years who are drawn back to the hotel to be "reclaimed", and Charles Grady is the reincarnation of Delbert Grady. This could explain why the Overlook seems to be able to take control of Jack so easily.)

One of the most major changes however, is the ending. In the film, Jack chases Danny out into the hedge maze (a film creation), but Danny manages to outsmart him and Jack gets lost in the maze and freezes to death. The film then goes back into the Overlook Hotel and focuses onto a picture from 1921 where Jack is standing in the midst of a party, suggesting that Jack really has always been there, just like Grady (i.e. Jack is a reincarnation of one of hotel's former managers). In the novel, however, Jack has a more heroic and tragic ending. Like mentioned earlier, Jack throws off the control of the Overlook briefly to tell Danny he loves him. The spirits then force Jack to bash his own head in with the roque mallet and possesses Jack's dead corpse. Danny then reminds the possessed corpse of Jack about the boiler, which they had completely neglected to tend to. Overlook Jack tries to get to the boiler on time to relieve the pressure, but he doesn't make it in time, and the hotel blows up, killing Jack and (presumably) destroying the evil entity inside the hotel.

It's clear just from my three paragraphs on Jack Torrance that Kubrick's film did a great disservice to the novel. But does being a bad adaptation make it a bad film? As we've seen from Jurassic Park, that's definitely not the case. So now I'll be discussing how the novel and the film did by themselves, and then assess The Shining as an adaptation.

Personal Opinions


The Novel:

This was one of the first Stephen King novels I've read, and I really loved it. King has a way of writing all of his characters in such a way that not only do you believe they're real, but also get attached to them very quickly. This was the case with Jack Torrance for me. He was such a likeable character, and you get sympathize with and understand this character so well that when he actually falls into the control of the Overlook, you do get a real shock as he goes from being the most likeable character to basically the main antagonist of the novel. King also did an amazing job of chronicling the bloodied history of the Overlook without making it boring and genuinely kept me in suspense all the time because I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn't know what, so the twist worked really well (especially since I hadn't watched the movie yet). It's also only 450 pages, so it's a pretty quick read as well. The novel by Stephen King gets a 5/5.

The Film: 
I didn't dislike the film. It does work really well as a horror film. There's no doubt that Stanley Kubrick is a master filmmaker. Some of the visuals in the film are stunning and some of the most iconic moments are all Kubrick additions, which really shows that Kubrick is an amazing director. Jack Nicholson is AMAZING in the film and the man is genuinely terrifying when he's got an axe. I also did like the ambiguous ending of the film with the photo, which kept me thinking about it for a while, trying to understand why Jack was in that picture, something that the novel didn't necessarily go into as much, leaving the ending very clear-cut. Despite all that, there are some issues with the film. The acting wasn't great; Scatman Crothers was a great Hallorann, but the little kid playing Danny was pretty bad and Shelly Duval (Wendy) was flat most of the time, but she was really good at being terrified (although apparently that was because Kubrick was so demanding on set that Duval was apparently quite badly traumatized). Jack I definitely felt could have had more to his character; even putting the novel aside, film Jack was very flat and there was definitely a lot of character backstory that could have been provided for Jack, and the lack of the backstory didn't really make Jack as interesting as he could have been, and I think ultimately, that was the biggest flaw of the film. But overall, it's a solid, well-made film. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining gets a 4/5.

Overall Assessment

Would Stanley Kubrick's The Shining have benefited from being a more loyal adaptation of the book? Definitely. I think that if Kubrick had made Jack a much more sympathetic character and allowed him more backstory, the audiences would have been genuinely shocked at Jack's fall to evil. Without that, Jack was just an extremely creepy character, and everybody was just waiting for Jack Nicholson to go insane and run around trying to kill people. And while this works for a slasher film, The Shining was never a slasher novel to begin with. It's a complex story about the strengths and weaknesses of the human mind, and I really don't think the film captured that very well. It is rather demanding to ask a film to keep everything from the novel, but the film was already almost an hour and a half. I really think they could have taken out the maze chase, maybe add ten more minutes and have a much more accurate adaptation while still making it a good horror movie.

As an adaptation, The Shining gets a 2/5. It just changed too much from the source material to make it an accurate adaptation of any sort, and its score was lowered even more because of them changing Jack's character so much, changing what was originally a very complex character trying to fight his inner demons and losing that fight because of the evil nature of the hotel to an already crazy person just going more crazy, not even necessarily because of the hotel, and that just degrades the Overlook's danger and Jack as the character too much to keep any complexity from the novel. The film was still good, but it felt so lacking in character development for Jack, and I really think the film would have benefited from a better story for Jack. I really don't think there was any excuse for them to leave out so many plot points from the book, especially when I think they could have fit most of them in with a long running time. But I don't really think it was because of incompetency, but rather Kubrick was inaccurate on purpose, putting his own creative spin on the touch. While I understand why he made those changes, I still think the movie was lacking a bit. I admit though that I loved Jack Nicholson and Jack Torrance and all of the iconic imageries, so while it's a bad adaptation, I can't really help myself but love the film just a little bit. So just like Jurassic Park, here's the lesson: If you're going to be unfaithful to the source work, the film better me AMAZING. Spielberg did it perfectly, Kubrick did it pretty well.

I'm going to be doing another Stephen King work for my next review. It's neither a novel or a film per say but rather a short story collection. You'll see how the review goes. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!


Your Most Faithful Blogger, 


The Connoisseur

Sunday, August 18, 2019

FILM REVIEW: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)

Zac Efron (Left) as Ted Bundy (Right)
Theodore Robert (Ted) Bundy is one of the most infamous serial killers in American history. Although he has confessed to some thirty different crimes committed in the span of four years from 1974 to 1978, it is popularly believed that his real number of victims is much higher and his time-span dating further back. Ted Bundy is also well known as a criminal who had an extraordinary amount of female supporters, who all supposedly claimed to be "in love" with him due to his good looks and charming personality, which is how he gained the trust of all of his victims (all female); he would typically approach them in a public place feigning injury, lead them to a secluded place, then rape and kill them. Due to the popularity surrounding him, there have been multiple documentaries made about Ted Bundy in an attempt to understand the man, and in May of this year, Netflix released a biographical film on Ted Bundy's life titled Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, with Zac Efron as Bundy. The majority of the film was based on Bundy's former girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer's (written under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kendall) memoir, The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy, along with direct recreations (and usages) of multiple video clips of interviews and trials.

The first thing I will be addressing in this review is Zac Efron's performance as Ted Bundy. Having only seen Efron previous in High School Musical and The Greatest Showman, and knowing him mostly as a comedic actor, I honestly wasn't excited to see him take on the role of Ted Bundy, as I didn't think he would be able to capture the psychopathic side of Bundy, and I just didn't really see him in such a serious role. When I did watch the film, however, I did come to thoroughly enjoy Efron's performance as Bundy, seemingly capturing the charismatic side of the man perfectly, and having a striking resemblance to the man (see photo above). The film actually just focuses on the charismatic side of Ted Bundy and doesn't actually show Bundy committing any of his crimes, apart from a short flashback of him luring a girl with an injured arm and knocking her out and this allowed Ted Bundy to become more likable somehow in the eyes of the viewer. Even though you do know that Bundy is actually guilty of all of these crimes, the movie paints him in an oddly sympathetic light, making him seem like a horrible victim of bad timing more then anything. Efron's Bundy is nothing but charismatic and likable from the start and continues to keep that persona throughout the film, and it can even make the viewer question if Bundy actually is guilty, constantly doubting the facts, and that's exactly what the directors were going for.

Ted Bundy was a very public figure, and had many female supporters who claimed to be in love with him, and he was generally well-liked by many due to his good looks and extremely charming personality, and this film really delves into that part of him. After a crime is committed in which the victim was lured by the perpetrator into a false sense of security, there are people who always say "Why couldn't the victim figure out that the other person was dangerous?"or "I would have known they were a psychopath." While there absolutely were signs that Bundy was dangerous in real life (he was known to be abusive to his girlfriend and had even threatened her at one point), when making first impressions, Bundy never showed any hints to his true nature. You can genuinely watch any scene in the film where Bundy interacts with someone and it would be impossible to find any signs of malevolent intentions simply because there aren't any. Ted Bundy created a completely different persona for himself in public, and the directors conveyed that amazingly onto the screen, creating a sympathetic Bundy with the overall message that "Real psychopaths blend in perfectly with society" instead of the overly repeated message of "These are the subtle signs of a psychopath, recognize them", and I really liked this idea because it did humanize Bundy to a point where you do begin to understand why people did end up trusting him and why he had such a large female following. Ted Bundy has even said “We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.” and “Society wants to believe it can identify evil people, or bad or harmful people, but it’s not practical. There are no stereotypes.”, which I feel really fits in with the overall message of the film.

As the movie is based on The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy by former girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer, portrayed by Lily Collins (and referred to as Elizabeth Kendall in the film), and so follows Bundy's relationship with her and so is told heavily from her perspective rather then Bundy's. And through that relationship Bundy becomes more sympathetic and likable in the eyes of the viewer. In the first ten minutes of the film, Bundy becomes a surrogate father to Elizabeth's daughter Molly, and he is established as this loving and caring person through his interactions with them. This is why even as Bundy becomes accused of and charged with more and more crimes throughout the course of this film, the viewers continue to doubt his guilt, something that is historical fact, because of his continued devotion to Elizabeth and Molly. This is further enhanced by a recurring object in the book, a French novel by the name of Papillon, which is about a man who is incarcerated wrongfully as he has been framed, plans an escape, and eventually lives a free and happy life. When Bundy gives Elizabeth the novel in the movie, he had already been incarcerated (wrongfully as Elizabeth still seems to believe) and has already escaped custody (only to be captured again). This leads Elizabeth (and the viewers as well) to believe that the film just may end in the same fashion where Bundy is exonerated and lives a happy life, and I think this was another brilliant way by the filmmakers to show off a sympathetic side of Bundy to the audience, fitting the overall concept of humanizing Bundy.

Bundy's relationship with Kendall also relates to the final scene of the film. While this scene is most definitely created solely for the film and has no basis in real life, it does nicely conclude the movie and also finally shows more of the "hidden psychopath" side of Ted Bundy that the film had been missing. In the scene, Elizabeth visits Bundy after he has been sentenced to death and asks him about what happened to the head in one of the cases. After continuously denying that he committed the crime, Bundy finally writes HACKSAW, after Elizabeth tells him "You need to release me, Ted". After this followed a series of montages compiled from clips throughout the film where Elizabeth begins to realize that the signs actually were all there throughout their relationship that Bundy was a violent psychopath and that she didn't notice any of them, which is the opposite of the concept that the film was trying to show, i.e. "Real psychopaths blend in perfectly with society", and instead showing the signs always being there, just obscured by Kendall's love for Bundy (which is much more closer to real life where Kendall did notice signs of Bundy's violent behaviour). 

The revelation also removes any sense of guilt and doubt she had about this case. She says "I could have helped save some of these girls if only I hadn’t trusted you" and "It’s not my guilt. It’s yours". But despite the guilt she carries about not realizing Bundy was a killer sooner, she also carried just a little bit of doubt that Bundy was guilty and had some hope inside her that the man she allowed to be close to her and her daughter was innocent. However, after she gets that confession from Bundy (his first ever confession of his crimes going by the film's continuity), she gets closure for her years of torment and suffering and tells her loved ones that she's finally fine. The film also uses Bundy's love for Elizabeth as motivation for Bundy's eventual confession to over thirty different crimes, as while they do not outright state this, they do say that Bundy confessed after their meeting (which never happened in real life), implying that Bundy's confessions in the film continuity was due to Elizabeth's visit. And this makes perfect sense as the film is very much about Bundy's continued relationship with Elizabeth Kendall, so I personally thought this was a great way for the filmmakers to use this ongoing plot to not only conclude the movie but also the personal stories of of Ted Bundy and Elizabeth Kendall respectively, using the end of their relationships as sort of a conclusion to their respective character arcs in the story.

The film also had an impressive supporting cast with the two strongest performances coming from Kaya Scodelario (The Maze Runner) as Carole Ann Boone, Bundy's lover and later wife and John Malkovich (Johnny English) as Judge Edward Cowart, the presiding judge at Bundy's final tria.
Carole Ann Boone was Ted Bundy's close acquaintance and eventual lover. She defended him fervently, believing until the end that Bundy was truly innocent. She also eventually became his lover and wife, being legally married in the middle of trial. She also became pregnant with Bundy's daughter during a conjugal visit and has since then gone off radar. The film cut out a large portion of their story, moving their relationship to just encompass his Florida trial and nothing about their prior (then-platonic) relationship, which began in 1974. She also helped Bundy escape in 1977 by smuggling money to him, and visited him every day in Colorado. The film portrays Boone as a stalker-like person who becomes public in her support and love for Bundy during his Florida trials in the 80's. This is most likely to further amplify Bundy's charisma and women's attractions towards him during his trials and portray him again as a likable and attractive figure.
Judge Edward Cowart was the presiding judge at Bundy's last case, and from viewings of the actual trial, John Malkovich portrayal of the judge as a somewhat eccentric man is accurate, as most of his lines a lifted straight out of the actual trial and even lines that were added in by Malkovich himself is quite in-keeping with the judge's actual personality. The title of the film "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" is a quote from Cowart describing Bundy's crimes, and yet he also says: "Take care of yourself, young man. I say that to you sincerely; take care of yourself, please. It's a tragedy for this court to see such a total waste, I think, of humanity that I have experienced in this court. You’re a bright young man. You would have made a good lawyer and I would have loved to have you practice in front of me, but you went another way, partner. Take care of yourself. I don’t feel any animosity toward you. I want you to know that. Once again, take care of yourself." This quote once again emphasizes Bundy's extreme charisma and likability as a person as even the judge who sentenced him to DEATH actually likes him, which is a strong indication of the kind of man Ted Bundy was; a manipulative, charismatic psychopath who can win you over without the slightest betrayal of his real self.

Theodore Bundy is one of the most infamous figures in 20th Century American history and a very complex person who created a cult of personality around him with a massive fanbase of adoring teenage girls. The film did an amazing job replicating that cult of personality and Zac Efron did a fantastic job of bringing life to the side of Ted Bundy that made him a sympathetic and liked figured in the public's eyes during his trials. I also really liked that they used this very concept to create a clear character arc for both Bundy and Elizabeth, and how both eventually came to terms with what Bundy did, with Bundy no longer lying about his innocence and Elizabeth realizing that Bundy was never innocent and that she had to forget about him. Efron and Collins both brought their best to the film and had great chemistry on screen, and the rest of the supporting cast did a good job to, with only one miscast that I could think of. My one major complaint with the film is that they didn't make Ted Bundy creepy enough. While I understand this film is more about the cult of personality around him, he still was a dangerous mass-murderer, and Zac Efron's portrayal, while good at capturing the charismatic side, isn't exactly menacing or unsettling. While I liked that they humanized Bundy, they humanized him too much to the point that the film's version of him becomes a little too likable, and you don't really get a sense that he is this dangerous criminal accurately enough, and I think that detracted from the portrayal quite a bit, marring what is otherwise a very good film. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile gets a rating of 4/5.

For my next review, I've decided to go back to Stephen King again, looking at one of his many adaptations. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!

Your Most Faithful Blogger, The Connoisseur

Wednesday, August 07, 2019

NOVEL REVIEW: The Giver by Lois Lowry


For some time in my younger years, one of my favourite genre of novels were dystopian novels. I was constantly fascinated by the portrayals of some unknown possible future. Some of my favourites being The City of Ember, The Hunger Games, and The Maze Runner. One of the earliest (if not the first) dystopian novels I read was The Giver by Lois Lowry, which is actually the first in a series of four interconnecting novels (all of which I have read) called The Giver Quartet. Not only was this novel already available at home, but it was also required reading for school. Nevertheless, I really loved it. The world-building was superbly done and each character was unique and interesting in their own way. I really liked the concept of the novel: in a seemingly Utopian society where all pain, along with emotional depth have been removed to "Sameness", there is only one person who is chosen to hold on to the memories of the past, and how that one person, known as the Receiver, has to deal with the emotionless, almost brainwashed society that they live in.

The book really builds up to the reveal that the community Jonas (the protagonist) lives in is completely different from the world that we know. When you first begin reading the book, you don't actually get a sense that there's anything particularly wrong with Jonas' world. There are some obvious differences like the existence of a speaker system to deliver messages through the community, jobs are assigned based on aptitude, and there is something called being "Released". During its first mention, the novel doesn't make any of it clear apart from the fact that it's a horrible punishment of some sort and it being a taboo topic for the most part. But apart from all of the different aspects of society, you don't get a full understanding of how strange everything is until it is mentioned that no one knows what an animal is, apart from it being a descriptive word for an unruly person.

The novel then mentions Release a second time, this time the Release of a baby, along with releasing of the elderly. While the releasing of babies is seen as a somber occasion, releasing the elderly is joyous occasion and a celebration of life. These different aspects of the concept of Release creates much confusion not only in the mind of the reader, but to the characters in the novel as neither can accurately pinpoint what Release actually is, because the government obscures the real truth to the point where all the citizens are told is: "Release is sometimes good, and sometimes bad, but you should never joke about it". The concept of obscuring the truth is a constant theme throughout this novel as the citizens of the Community are indeed kept from the truth, as their perception of reality and emotions have been completely warped, an example of this is the pills to counteract the "Stirrings", feelings of sexual desire, which apparently they haven't managed to suppress fully.

Truth and reality is warped to such a point that the Community becomes essentially an authoritarian society where regard for human life is completely cast aside, as their lack of emotions are unable to comprehend love, remorse, or sadness, and those words have become meaningless, stripping down society to nothing. Family is no longer a concept as children are assigned to parents who are also assigned spouses. Children are brought to life by the Birthmothers, who are impregnated in a lab. Due to this, there is no sentimentality or love between any members of the Community, and due to that, death isn't really a concept in the Community. While they do feel sadness at the Release of a newborn and at the loss of a child due to an accident, it isn't sorrow, and they seem to recover from it dangerously fast and move on with their lives if nothing had happened.

Release, like I've previously stated, is eventually revealed to be murder, and due to the indoctrination of the Community, the people who Release others do not feel any sense of remorse or shame for what they do, and feel that what they do is the right thing as they send the Released to "Elsewhere", making the process seem like a farewell ceremony to a haven of some sort rather then the brutal act it really is. The readers feel the full shock of this reality by showing Jonas' own father, always portrayed as a kind, light-hearted man, releasing the slightly "weaker" of a twin baby.

The book does make it clear however, that although the lack of love, remorse, regard for human life, etc... is indeed a negative thing, it also briefly discusses the disastrous consequences of those emotions, colour, climate, and most importantly, personal autonomy. In the novel, this is all part of a large concept of achieving "Sameness". With Sameness, where there are no colours or emotions, there can never be conflict as everyone will essentially be the same, including individual personalities. They also took away climate as cold or hot weather can cause crop failures, tornadoes destroy, etc. Although the book never actually delves into detail on how they managed to achieve Sameness, they do actually provide reasons for why Sameness is a better alternative, and even Jonas and the Giver do agree that it wouldn't exactly be safe to allow people to choose some aspects of life for themselves.

While it seems ridiculous to the reader, the points do have some validity, and the novel does make you wonder if Sameness isn't as horrible as it seems. While freedom of choice is definitely and integral component of life and it is obviously wrong for that to have been taken away from the people, their point about having no colour, emotions, and climate creating a peaceful and conflict-less world is not completely incorrect. So many of the world's problems in the last 1000 years can be traced back to racism, and one can wonder if removing skin colour and race altogether could actually be beneficial for society. Same goes for climate; natural disasters destroy environments and kill people, and maybe we could be better without it. Again with emotions; violence comes through negative emotions and maybe without any emotions we can live conflict-free.

It is obvious that these ideas are very much flawed upon closer observation, but through the casual way they approach it in the novel, along with the negative memories of pains and sufferings, it really does prompt the reader to think that maybe the people who decided to engineer Sameness was onto something, just a little bit, and if you didn't know what you were missing, would it be so bad? Would blissful ignorance be so horrible? And in fact, this is what some dystopian novels are centered around. A major example I can think of is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In Brave New World, most of its citizens live in blissful ignorance through the use of the drug Soma, which they use whenever feel negative emotions, and therefore always live in some sort of hallucinatory trance, allowing for easier control of them by the government. But this once again brings up the question whether or not living in constant physical pleasure would be so bad, as long as you didn't know what you were missing. So while we do know that that kind of control using ignorance is indeed bad, but it could be debated that it may not be as horrible as we'd initially believe if the people didn't know what they were missing.

While I personally don't have a clear stance on the topic of "Is the idea of a society filled with blissfully ignorant people so bad as long as they're content with it?", as both sides could be argued, it is something to think about for the readers. It would be great to hear all of your thoughts in the comment section below!

I was planning to delve into the characters and how effectively they enhanced the story, but I feel that doing that now after I've gone into the society of the novel would detract from the review a bit, but I will say that all of characters were great, and the most interesting one personally was Jonas' father, who is the only person in the Community apart from Jonas and the Giver who seems to be more 'human' then the others, as he is able to portray feelings that seem very much like love to his family and newchildren, but in the end is still the product of his society, and therefore lacks the emotional depth to fully understand love and performs the Releases with nothing but a little regret and sadness, making him one of the most compelling characters in the story.

The Giver is a great example of a dystopian novel done well, in my opinion. While I am not extremely familiar with dystopian novels, Lowry is outstanding in her ability to create and build a society that is, on surface quite similar (and perhaps even an improvement) to our own in terms of structure and everyone having some sort of job and the elderly seemingly very well cared for, but yet fundamentally so different from our society. While the differences at the beginning are very minor things, like the strict organizational structure, as the story goes on, the differences becoming more and more obvious, like animals being fictional and colour being nonexistent, the final truth of Release being murder shown in a very shocking revelation, with the person showing the truth being Jonas' own father, one of the most likable and human characters in the novel.

An issue with the novel I did have was the nature of the memories. Jonas' ultimate plan is to leave the community and therefore returning the memories to the Community. This leaves the question: What is the nature of the memories? I can accept the explanation that as Rosemary dies, the memories left her body and returned to the members of the Community. But the novel fails to explain why the memories would leave Jonas as he leaves the Community. The film adaptation (which was not the greatest, but a decent adaptation of the novel) actually gives a little more explanation to this by creating a border that seems to be the cause of the Sameness, and by crossing that border with all of his memories, Jonas would be releasing them back into the community. While it isn't a great explanation, it is an explanation, something that does lack in the novel.

While I really loved the book for its world building and its characters, the whole unexplained or elaborated concept of the "memories returning to people if Jonas left the Community" feels contrived and engineered specifically to be able to move the plot along and give the novel a satisfying conclusion. Unfortunately, that concept is a major part of the novel, and therefore does affect what is otherwise a very good plot quite a bit, as it becomes nonsensical, but since the novel is really about the world building and Jonas' discovery of these memories, I don't believe that part should be too relevant in the overall quality of the book. I still do strongly recommend readers of all ages to read the novel, as while it is intended for teenagers, it still has themes mature enough to fascinate adult readers. The Giver by Lois Lowry gets a final rating of 4.5/5

My apologies for taking so long to do another review, but I've been slacking off slightly due to it being summer vacation. I will attempt again to resume my weekly posting schedule, and I will try to upload another post by the end of this week, this time a movie review that I've been looking forward to for a while. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!


Your Most Faithful Blogger, 


The Connoisseur

FILM REVIEW: Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)

  " We all go a little mad sometimes. " There are very few directors who are considered a genius in the art of filmmaking. Some ex...