(Published in personal blog on 2015/12/24)
The Remains of the Day (1989/1993)
The masterpiece of the novel "The Long Day Will End" (1989) by the Japanese-born writer Kazuo Ishiguro was released in a new translation in Taiwan this year. When reading this book, in addition to appreciating the exquisite decoration and printing of the new edition, the content of the story also reminds me all the time. Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in the 1993 film adaptation of James Avery. From the novel to the movie, apart from the unfinished love between the male and female protagonists, the decline of the empire and historical changes written from the backside of the old British butler culture, and the pull of institutional culture and human morality are common themes. , After reading the novel, the most impressive thing for me is that the two different forms of works have completely different narrative methods and angles, and the changes in some plot details of the film even cause differences with the novel's point of view. Write down my personal thoughts here, as a little reflection from novels to movies.
narrative point of view
The original novel is written in the form of a diary. It is written in the Darlington mansion where the British housekeeper Stevens temporarily left his work for many years after the war. The journal below serves as a first-person point of view for the entire book. In addition to recording the experiences and experiences during the journey, it also recalls a lot of the time he and Miss Kenton worked together at the Darlington House before World War II. These two narrative lines at different times are somewhat justified by Stevens. The words that speak to themselves are mixed together, the observation, reflection and thinking of the modern narrative line, and the description of the past narrative line which is intentionally ambiguous but full of a lot of work and historical details, constitute a rich material for the film to play.
I won't go into detail about the content of the novel. I have seen the movie before I read it. I am surprised that Kazuo Ishiguro adopts such a first-person narrative point of view. Compared with movies, the first-person point of view is commonplace in literature. The inner muttering tells the imaginary reader everything he perceives. In this book, it is transformed into a diary style, allowing the character to make an unreal confession directly to the reader. Everything in the story has been reshaped and modified by the character. , transformed into paragraphs of self-justification and argumentation, but the author clearly inserted between the lines a critical hint that contradicts the character's point of view, so a strange tension is formed between the character's language and the reader's reading. For example, the "greatness" of the English countryside in the first article is linked to the protagonist's recollection of the "dignity" proposition pursued by the housekeeper, but readers can't help but smell a hint of self-hypnosis and boasting.
When talking about the involvement of Lord Darlington and Nazi Germany in the latter part, Stiles talked him around, but later defended and clarified his possible guilty conscience. Mr. Cardino Jr. questioned him about what to do with Lord Darlington. The dialogue of the position of the author is written in great detail, and it becomes the revelation of the author's point of view. The passage with Miss Kenton hardly mentions the affection that has developed between the two in the text, and even re-disassembles the timing of the key turning point and corrects itself on the grounds of poor memory, but between the flickering words, and On the fifth day, the diary of the day when the two met again after many years was completely blank, but it was added on the sixth day to see how Stevens was emotionally affected by Miss Kenton's decision, and finally he questioned him with Miss Kenton. The response of whether he was happy or not in these years directly stated the feelings that were previously concealed by words, and at the same time implied that what Stevens feared at this moment might be the blankness of his life.
It is of course difficult to reproduce the tension generated by such first-person perspectives in the film. Although it is not uncommon for Hollywood type films to play with the narrative point of view in recent years, what I can think of at the moment is that the astonishing ending of "Breaking Point" completely negates the narrative of the whole film. Authenticity is also to play with the audience's trust in the narrator through the perspective of character recollections. The movie "The Long Days Ending" did not play to such extremes in narrative, but took a more traditional routine. The character narration brought out by the correspondence between Stevens and Miss Kenton was placed in the beginning of the film. Echoing the form of the original work, as for the journey of the protagonist and the memories of the past, it is a general third-person point of view, and the space for narration to intervene is limited and lacks the possibility of meaning inversion. The movie also added a plot from the perspective of Miss Kenton at the right time, making up for the more ambiguous image of the heroine in the original book.
text and images
A large number of work details are described in the novel. The film naturally uses scene props and scene scheduling to solve the problem. It is inevitable to discard information. For example, the British housekeeper attaches great importance to the cleaning of silverware. In the film, only a compliment from the guests is used, and the picture almost invisible. Although the interior decoration of Darlington's house in the picture is exquisite, it is low-key compared to the gorgeousness of "The Age of Innocence", but the director still put a lot of key scenes, like the outdoor hunting team at the beginning of the movie and the garden of the mansion. The scenery evokes the book's image of the English countryside and the elegance of the old British Empire. The mid-climax dinner scene is also visually powerful. The gloomy tones are probably the theme that matches the British weather and the prosperity of the past. The visual language of the whole film is mostly flat and straightforward. Only in the opening scene, more effort is used, and the images inside and outside the manor are dubbed by the voice-over of letters. Fluency is naturally different from the complicated text narrative of the novel.
However, the large number of details and written arguments in the original book actually constituted a language and cultural confusion for me, which made Stevens fall into the daily confusion of himself and could not see his own and the surrounding situation, and the film was lacking. The self-reported language makes Stevens, who is nagging and even funny in the book, seem cold and quiet, like a different person (especially when he is played by Dr. Hannibal), and the blindness is also relegated to vision and space. It is difficult to identify. The key word "dignity" in the whole book can only be left as the only inconspicuous paragraph in the movie script, which is the protagonist's father at the dinner table talking about how his colleagues in India found out there was a tiger in the room but did not change his face; of course The protagonist and his father's insistence on work can also be used as a manifestation of the dignity of the housekeeper. The movie cleverly added that the old father held the hand of the cleaning car tightly when he fell, and Stevens had to poke his father's fingers one by one. It echoes the scene in which Miss Kenton brushed away Stevens's grip on the book afterward. However, although the image of "fighting a tiger" is mentioned only once in the novel, it becomes an important point to understand the motivation of Stevens' behavior throughout the book, which is not emphasized in the film.
The tiger does not change color in front
"The First Tiger" is the climax of the middle section. The protagonist chooses to complete the work he shoulders under the attack of the busy mansion meeting affairs and his father's critical illness. Here, the movie, like the novel, emphasizes the rush and pressure of this scene. Anthony Hope For the performance of Kings, the audience may see more of his stubborn insistence on work and psychological suffering. The camera gives the actors room to make expressions, and the shadowy silhouettes of the characters outside the conference room are compared to the meeting. The dignitaries who are busy with international affairs have all kinds of critical demands. The novel's textual description directly makes readers feel the chaotic rhythm of the scene more than the movie. In the same contrast, in the end, Stevens coldly dealt with his grief for his father's death in the text, but was proud that he was finally promoted. One of the "great" stewards.
The second "Tiger Fighting" sequence is also a meeting, a much smaller but crucial secret meeting, in which Sir Darlington mediates between the British Prime Minister and the German Nazis, and becomes the political and moral critique of the entire story. key point. The Lord's godson, Mr. Cardino Jr., took an opposing stand and pressed Stevens about his views on the conduct of his master as a housekeeper, while Miss Kenton also pressed him to respond by saying that she had agreed to someone else's proposal. At the moment when moral sense, values, and emotional crisis are attacked by many parties, the film uses Stevens to drop the wine bottle to the ground, implying the character's emotional uncertainty. Then he passed through Miss Kenton's door and entered the room to witness the The tearful Miss Kenton, the camera deliberately avoided Stevens's expression, only to hear him slowly tell Miss Kenton the unimportant work assignments, which became a "turning point" to force the other party away.
In the novel, Stevens did not actually enter the room. At this critical moment, he stopped outside the door and finally turned to leave. The crying expression of Miss Kenton was only his imagination for a moment, and the indifferent words when facing Miss Kenton were Schedule scenes at different times. These memories made Stevens wonder, consciously or not, the turning point of the separation between the two. The film's handling is obviously more emotional, but the novel's ruthlessness isn't all that far off, because after everything was over that day, Stevens wrote of his loss, "a deep feeling began to rise deep inside. The taste of victory", he lost everything but gained the "dignity" of the steward. These thought transitions are not seen in the movie. But maybe Stevens walking into the room in the film is another meaning of "fighting a tiger without changing his face"? The simpler explanation is that he originally wanted to comfort Miss Kenton, but he couldn't say it at the last moment. No matter which explanation, it was a bit too much compared to the moderation of the novel.
american master of darlington house
Another key difference in the film is the description of the new owner of the Darlington House in modern time and space. In the novel, only gentlemen from the United States are described. Of course, there is a metaphor of the transfer of power between Britain and the United States. The film changes the new owner to an American statesman named Louis. In the novel and the film, he has come to Darlington House before the war to participate in the first important meeting before. Louis tries to persuade the French representative to take strict measures against Germany. His position was criticized by everyone as being rude, presumptuous and suspicious. Actor Christopher Levy, who played Lewis in the movie, was famous for his Superman movies in the 1980s. His upright and strong image made the American character a pure voice of justice. It is a political layman who will bring Europe into crisis, and the same words are certainly more justified by Superman. The film also adds to the character's love for traditional British culture, making him the new owner of Stevens after saving the Darlington House from a possible auction many years later.
Regardless of the revision of the American political image, at least this Mr. Lewis provided the ending scene of the movie, which is different from the novel. After Stevens returned from his trip, the two of them were in the same room many years ago. He asked Stevens if he remembered what he said at the dinner party. Stevens paused and replied that he did not remember. This unintentional question implied that the protagonist closed his heart again. The bird that only got into the chimney by mistake, and after the two hurriedly released it out of the window, in the scene outside the window, Stevens closed the window and sank into the room, closing his life, and then the aerial shot gradually zoomed out. With birds flying into the sky, overlooking this piece of English manor that has disappeared into history.
separation and ending
Returning to the film's climax, an earlier meeting between Stevens and Miss Kenton after years of separation, he realizes on his journey the mistakes of his past (the film reworked the role of the country doctor to make He again questioned the protagonist's moral stance), whether it was his indifference to the Sir's political stance, or the refusal of Miss Kenton to be thousands of miles away, this meeting was like another chance in life. It's just that the movie arranges a shock to the audience. Miss Kenton originally planned to return to the Darlington House to continue the relationship, but just before the meeting, her estranged husband came to inform the two that their daughter was pregnant, which changed her. This is also the reason why the movie adds Miss Kenton's plot. Through her two conversations with her husband, we can see Stevens' mistakes and shocks. Compared with the novel, where Stevens is expected to come back after many years, it is just wishful thinking. The movie is even more reluctant, especially in the novel where the two separate in the rain. The sad expression of never seeing each other in the future.
The novel ends with a walk on the quayside, before Stevens returns to Darlington House, the same scene in which he walks with Miss Kenton in the movie, but alone in the book. In his conversation with strangers, he finally admitted the mistakes of the past, and reflected on the fact that the dignity he had always believed was just an illusion, but then he dismissed the idea of remorse, because life always had to go on, and it was time to return to daily life . At this time the night is rising, and people are cheering that the long day is coming to an end. This bland ending doesn't have the drama of the movie, but like the sun rising and setting, the past history of Britain and Stevens' life will come to the end of the day, and it is also a choice with a lot of aftertaste.
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