Maugham’s original book "The Veil" and the movie "The Veil" can be described as different in emphasis, each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and its nature is different, so it is different. Write about her alone, write about her vanity, selfishness, and pampering, write about other people's self-views from her one-sided view, write about her confusion about herself, love, marriage, soul, religious belief, spirituality, etc., later It is more focused on her search for "Tao"; while the film is just a typical love story of "love and forgiveness" during the cholera period. Seekers in the orphanage who helped and even started to think. However, because the film is not limited to Katie’s vision, it expands to the rich depiction of different characters and the true reproduction of some contradictions between China and foreign countries in 1926, making its structure more rigorous and reasonable, and the heroes and heroines in the film never love it. To make a solid foundation for the plot of love.
Although the movie actually uses the plot and background of the novel to tell a love story in another direction, I like the sourness of the original and the romance of the movie, so I still want to write about the difference between the two.
[1. The difference between structure and plot]
{novel}: It starts when Katie and Charlie cheat in the room, while Walter stays outside the door to write. The story is simple: Katie, a woman who lingers in the upper class of the British society, hurriedly married Walter, a bacteriologist she doesn’t love, to avoid her mother’s urge to marry. She followed him to Hong Kong, China, and met Charlie, the Chief Secretary of Hong Kong. The two quickly fought. It was so hot that Walt knew about the affair, and Walt asked Katie to go with him to Meitan Mansion, which was causing cholera. Katie appealed to Charlie for help, but was refused. Katie, who saw through his hypocrisy, went to Meitan Mansion with Walter disheartenedly.
Different from the movie, even though Katie discovered Water's noble character in her days in Meitan Mansion, she never fell in love with him. The two who learned about the pregnancy were even more indifferent and embarrassed. In the book, Katie always hoped that Walter would forgive her, but Walter did not forgive her until he died. Before he died, he only said one sentence: "It's a dog who died." This sentence comes from the last line of Goldsmith's poem "Elegy". The general idea of the poem is: a good-hearted man adopts a dog in the city. At first, the dog and the man live in harmony, but one day the two forge a grudge and the dog goes crazy. The disease bites a person, and people expect that the bitten person will die, but if the person survives, the dog will eventually die.
Walter's dying last words indicate that he did take Katie to Meitan Mansion to retaliate against her, and he deliberately let her die from cholera here, and he also deliberately sought death. The movie is about him contracting cholera and dying, but the novel says that he may have been infected during an experiment, and he has been experimenting with his body. His heart is broken.
After Watt's death, Katie returned to Hong Kong and received sympathy and warm reception from the British living in Hong Kong's upper class in the name of a well-respected doctor's widow, including the wife of her old lover Charlie. Katie, who was staying at Charlie's house, had already seen what a hypocritical Charlie was, but Katie did not resist the temptation and went to bed with him again. Afterwards, the ashamed Katie hurried back to England by boat. At this time, her mother was dead and she decided to live with her father...
So the novel is very real, and the bitterness of Maugham's writing is also evident.
{Movie}: Since Katie and Walter are already on their way to Meitan Mansion, they begin to narrate, and then slowly use memories to flashback her affair with Charlie. The location was changed from Hong Kong to Shanghai. The plot has been drastically changed and replaced with a romantic love story from unknown to falling in love. The emotional road between Katie and Walter is spread bit by bit, but when the news of the pregnancy is learned, it is impossible to confirm who the father of the child is. The two even embraced each other tenderly, and finally succeeded in portraying Katie into an affectionate woman who is more passionate than Jinjian and is willing to raise her youngest son by herself. The ending of the film is that Katie met Charlie on the road when she returned to England. Charlie showed her favor, and she loyally rejected the suggestion that his old relationship was rekindled, and said to her son "He is no one" with disdain.
Although the film changed the origin of the story from Hong Kong to Shanghai (weakened the colonial background), it added a lot of the anti-imperialist situation in China in 1926 in the plot processing. The British shot and killed the Chinese who were on strike. This incident led to the work difficulties and life dangers encountered by both British Walter and Katie in the Meitan Mansion in cholera. It is this conflict intensified that makes the characters fuller (in Meitan Mansion) Solving the drinking water problem of cholera under the distrust of the people showed Walter's ingenuity), and also made the emotional integration and deepening of the two more reasonable (Katie was invaded by anti-imperialists, and Walter saved her in a crisis. ).
Novels rarely describe Walt’s work and difficulties, but only learn about his hardships through the nun’s respect for him; while the film uses him to persistently say to the masses in broken Chinese: "This water is not good, it’s not good," "Don’t drink, don’t drink" and the witty little windmill made from Katie’s boredom, to lead the waterwheel from the upstream to the village, etc., made the audience love and pity the man, and the audience even mumbled How come Katie, a guy who doesn’t recognize Meiyu, hasn’t seen this peerless good man Watt (of course, this is inseparable from the actor played by Edward Norton), and naturally Katie slowly fell in love with him later on, which the audience loves to see It's up.
[2. Differences in characterization]
{novel}: From beginning to end, Katie’s vision and viewpoints are displayed. Judging from Maugham’s brushstrokes, Walter is indeed not a character—serious and reticent, uncharming, more than boring, simply It's—"This man has nothing to say". But Katie is a woman who is active in dancing parties, golfing, flirting and laughing. She is vain and naive, naive and ridiculous. These two people are indeed a pair of seemingly disagreeable couples.
In the novel, there is a lovable character Weddington, who is Walt’s assistant and their neighbor. He is the key figure of Maugham. Weddington is frank, frank, smart, lively and even scheming. Everything was amused and pleasant. He keenly saw the uncomfortable relationship between Katie and Walt. It was also he who made Katie relieve her depression under Walter's cold violence; and he also set up Kai. The bridge between Tie and the monastery, she introduced Katie to visit the monastery and met the dean, so that Katie began to think about whether she should do something useful. Behind Weddington in the book is a mysterious Chinese lover, a Qing gege who will be saved by fate—and this also triggered Katie's exploration of the mystery of the East. Maugham mentioned the Chinese Zen-"Tao" through Weddington's mouth, saying: "Some people seek this way from opium, some from God, some turn to whiskey, some I want to find out in love. But with Tao, you still get nothing." In the movie, the plot of this person is all weakened and downplayed. It is the enlightening teacher who guides Katie to think about herself and soul.
{Movie}: In the film, Katie's vanity is replaced by her true pursuit of happiness, and Walter's boringness is replaced by his serious and respectful, making a story that should be cold and full of depression and entanglement become a story Slowly began to appear in warm-toned romantic films. However, characters not mentioned in the novel are added in the film (the leader of Yu is changed to the Kuomintang played by Huang Qiusheng), and the characters who do not appear (the guard Song Qing and the leader of the Qing Dynasty warlord). The role of Huang Qiusheng is really amazing, the biggest highlight of the film adaptation. Using Walter’s dialogue with Huang Qiusheng to reveal the true words of the Chinese people (no matter which party), “Chinese people should take care of the place of the Chinese people”; when talking with the leader of the Qing Dynasty about sending soldiers to remove the corpses of cholera victims, Huang Qiusheng was caught The Englishman Walter, who is sincere for the people, and the leader of the warlord, who is a corrupt and inaction, acted as an interpreter, calmly tampering with the dialogue between the two, and reached a consensus. This paragraph is simply wonderful. Of course, Huang Qiusheng's uniform temptation dress is not tolerated. Missed. And Weddington in the book is a little old man in the movie, clever and clever, his Qing dynasty has become an ordinary woman who smokes opium. I am a bit dissatisfied with this point, but the theme is not covered in the whole film. In the introduction of "Tao", it is estimated that the director is unintentional and powerless.
【In general】
Maugham's original work and the film are completely different in nature, but both have their own advantages. You will not be disappointed when you see a movie as a romance. It is also essential to comprehend Maugham’s acrimony and straightforwardness in the novel. After all, those classic lines in the movie, such as: "If a man cannot win the love of a woman, It's his fault, not hers.", "A woman will not fall in love with a man because he is noble", "Do you look down on me that way?" "No, I look down on myself." "Why?" Because I love you." Wait, these are all from Maugham.
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