Miscellaneous greetings, and vampires.

[dolorosa_12]

Before I get started on my promised (threatened?) rantpost about the film adaptation of Interview With the Vampire, I'd like to wish Kathy N. and __heatheradair happy birthdays. I'd also like to say 'welcome back' to catpuccino and angel_cc. It's good to have flatmates again. Also congratulations to Mimi for her grades, and to Raphael for graduating. Now, on with the nitpicking.

For those of you who've been living under a rock, my second favourite series of books is Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series. For a long time I've been interested in seeing Neil Jordan's film adaptation of the first book in the series, Interview With the Vampire. I'd been told it was a reasonably good adaptation, and certainly as far as the look, mood and general themes I'd agree. However, being one of those people who loves to pull apart movies, I have a few gripes.

(A warning: this rant will include spoilers)

The first problem is the cause of the central character Louis' depression and longing for death when he was a human. In the book, he's feeling self-destructive because his brother died. In the film, it's because his wife and daughter (which he doesn't have in the book) died. This irks me for two reasons. The first is that it implies only romantic love, and the loss of the object of such love, is enough to push people beyond reason into self-destruction. Why couldn't the loss of a beloved family member do the same thing? Is love for a family member less strong? Different, maybe, but not weaker, I'd hope. But the main problem is that this changes the character of Louis. In the book, much is made of the fact that he was a real innocent: unmarried, probably a virgin, young, with his whole life ahead of him. When he's turned into a vampire, all that innocent potential is cut off instantly, and the reader recognises the destructive injustice of this. (Indeed, as the series goes on, it becomes apparent that Rice feels only people who have lived their full, long lives are really emotionally and intellectually prepare to deal with immortality, and it is the characters who become immortal at young ages: Claudia (5), Armand (about 14 or 15), Louis (24, I think) and Lestat (21 if I remember correctly) who struggle most with it). To turn Louis from a naïve young man to one who has already gained a bit of maturity limits the impact of his transformation into one of the undead.

Secondly, Tom Cruise as Lestat? No, it's just painful. Then again, I don't know who would really work in that role. Lestat in Interview is Lestat as seen through Louis' eyes (as opposed to being the protagonist, as he is in most of the other books). He's meant to seem a glamorous, utterly amoral, terrifying yet seductive monster. He's also meant to be French. Sorry, but that's just not Tom Cruise.

Another dreadful miscasting (although it did provide for a hilarious exchange between Spike and Harmony in Buffy) is Antonio Banderas as Armand. Armand is meant to be from the steppes, and he is meant to have the appearance of an angelic, 14-year-old boy. He is not a 30-year-old Spanish actor with a black wig.

I was determined to hate Kirsten Dunst as Claudia, because it irked me that an 11-year-old was playing a character meant to have the appearance of a five-year-old. But she actually did a very good job. It would be a very hard role for a child, because Claudia's tragic story is that she lives forever in the body of a five-year-old. She has the intelligence and experience of a grown woman, because she lives so long, and yet she can never be anything other than a child. A child actor playing this role would struggle to convey such adult emotions, but I think Kirsten Dunst did a pretty good job.

My final gripe is that the film switched the focus from a broad philosophical exploration of the ethics of immortality, and the 'fall from grace' of people in the 18th and 19th centuries as they replaced religion with rationality to LouisLouisLouis and his struggle to accept the price of his immortality. This was certainly a strong theme of the book (it *is* an interview with Louis, after all) but it was a personal story set against the broader story of the spirit of the age. The era, in a sense, was a parallel character, a nuance which is lost in the film. However, I will love Neil Jordan forever for keeping one of my favourite quotes in the film:

Armand: The world changes. We do not. Therein lies the irony that finally kills us. I need you to make contact with this age.

Louis: Me? Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything. I always have been.

Armand: But, Louis, that is the very spirit of your age--the heart of it. Your fall from grace has been the fall of a century.

The main problems with the film were the problems that beset every film adaptation. All those clamoring characters, all that intricate plot, all that breadth and depth of vision has to be compressed into 100 minutes or so of film. It's hard, and what tends to happen is a loss of depth. The film of Interview With the Vampire gets some of the surface aspects of the book right, it captures the gothic tragedy of a society dancing oblivious into decline, but it fails to get to the heart of Rice's monstrous vision. I enjoyed it, it didn't cause me pain to watch, and I don't really see how it could've been any better (apart from different actors playing Lestat and Armand!). I think that's all we can really expect from film adaptations of books.

Comments

[dandysora.livejournal.com]

Evidently I know nothing about you if I've known you for so many years and didn't realise you enjoyed vampires so much -- this saga in particular. I haven't read it, mind you, but I've seen the two film adaptations made from the books.

On the note of Claudia, I was really interested to hear the director's rationale for picking an older actress for such a young character. He said that he was concerned about the mental wellbeing of a child being placed in that role with such a complicated situation and emotions. He wanted a child actor who would be experienced in the industry and be able to make the mental distinction between the role and the real.

And the rest of the eye characters, well... ignorance is bliss? (Eye candy, eye candy, eye candy....)

For your own mental wellbeing, never ever watch Queen of the Damned. It will kill your soul.

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

I was never intending to watch Queen of the Damned. I'd heard it was painfully dreadful.