Novel and Film Adaptations
In the original book, Tallie's appearance is relatively bland. It is not known when she moved in, but her dog was first noticed by barking on a neighbouring road on January 8. On January 15, Tallie also inadvertently visited Abigail in order to avoid the atmosphere of Finney killing pigs. It seems that this incident happened gradually and unexpectedly.
The film delays Tallie's appearance until February 3, and she sits in the relocation carriage facing Abigail, suggesting that a mysterious connection already exists. In terms of seasons, Bitter January explained Abigail's and Dyer's lifestyle, the grief of the bereavement, the origin of her notes, and regret that there are no joys and sorrows to record. On February 10, Tallie walked out of the double-storey building and walked down the mountain road to Abigail's residence. At this time, the snow was half melted and the green grass intertwined, which also means that the mood began to change.
The viewing angle of this mountain road is very magical. It is rare in the movie that the protagonist can watch his beloved slowly walk and gradually move away from the open vista. This kind of hope is really worrying.
The two protagonists do not meet many times in the book, and Abigail's inexplicable heartfelt feelings for Tallie are all concentrated in the original record of the first visit on January 15.
The film scatters the entire book from the outside in to other meetings:
- For example, in the film's first encounter on February 10, Abigail mentioned that Tallie's face exuded roses and violets, which made her embarrassed to stare at it: In the winter sun though the window, her skin had an under flush of rose and violet that disconcerted me until I look away.
- In the film, we pluck chicken feathers together on February 17, and observe the way Tallie speaks. The other party wants to talk more deeply: Her manner is calm and mild and gracious, and yet her spirits seem to quicken at the prospect of further conversation with me. (Art Movies often use nudity to describe nothing to hide. This film is not suitable for taking off clothes at this moment. Maybe pulling out chicken feathers is a symbol of wanting to get the truth.)
- In the film, on February 25, Abigail milks a cow alone and realizes that the two have a special relationship: There seems to be something going on between us that I cannot unravel.
In the process of their relationship, Tallie is mostly the initiative, and the way of film performance highlights her actions. After pulling the feathers together on February 17 in the film, Tallie asks about how Abigail and Dyer met. Abigail confided that Dyer was not the ideal partner, but had to bite the bullet and keep getting along. After speaking, Tallie tapped Abigail's little finger, and the fireplace was blazing like the flames of love in the background.
But in the original book, this "inspiration" came from the book. On January 22, Tallie did not reappear a week after his first visit. It was like Abigail's inner monologue. At the end, he wrote And so our hands were joined if our hearts no yet knitted together. It seems to mean that she and Dyer are holding hands but not heart to heart. However, instead of talking about Dyer in the movie, Tallie tapped Abigail's finger, emphasizing that the two are heart-to-heart partners.
In the movie, Tallie snaps her little finger, and Abigail politely rejects Dyer's request for love.
Abigail's birthday present is a rivalry between Tallie and Dyer. What Abigail wanted in the original was a dictionary, and Dyer didn't have any criticism. Abigail points out the atlas at the beginning of the film and is entertained by Dyer. Tallie gave the atlas as a gift in both the book and the film. Who can win the hearts and minds, the superiors and the inferiors will see each other.
On Abigail's birthday, both the original book and the movie mentioned that Tallie's shoes were soaked in water. After taking off the shoes, Abigail warmed Tallie himself. The difference is that Tallie in the book actually accepts Abigail's service with a calm expression after a long conversation, and once closed his eyes to enjoy a massage. The screenplay understands the crush's nervousness better, and Tallie quickly pulls his feet back.
There is an ice storm after the birthday. In the original novel, the characters can only hide in the house, worrying about the weather forecast and worrying about saving food. Dyer recounts to Abigail that he experienced a big earthquake as a child, and the fear lingers for a long time. Abigail took pity on him, and the two shared the bed and regained their enthusiasm.
The director played a different role in this section, deeply sympathizing with the two couples. In the film, Dyer braved the wind and snow to drive the livestock to the barn and was prevented from returning home. Fortunately, Abigail tied a rope and followed the line to rescue Dyer, so a sense of shared destiny prompted them to regain their enthusiasm. Tallie, on the other hand, went to Abigail's house and turned back in a snowstorm. On the way, he escaped from the shelter where he might suffer from a sexual disturbance. He ventured home with severe frostbite. Even though Finney was a bad guy, he was eager to save his wife.
Three weeks into the ice storm, Abigail thought Tallie would never be seen again, but she didn't. The book describes Abigail's inner shock on March 4: When she arrived my heart was like a leaf borne over a rock by rapidly moving water. On the same day, it also wrote about her reluctance when Tallie left: as if she were in full sail on a flood tide while I bobbed along down backwaters.
The film uses 3 and a half minutes of video to describe the weight of the above two sentences stacked in two weeks. Tallie reappeared in the film on April 10. The camera has turned into a green hill, and Abigail watches Tallie slowly approach from the hillside.
Then the frequency of Tallie's visits is no longer week after week in the book, but every two or three days, the two of them make hair loops, milk cows, sit and watch the sunset, dry their clothes, and walk side by side... It shows that their feelings are heating up.
Finally, in the film on April 22, Abigail looked at Tallie's back and expressed her reluctance.
This three-and-a-half-minute video has a more important task to illustrate the confession that has reached a critical point three days later. The original was Tallie's confession a week after his appearance, and the film's brewing technique was relatively delicate.
The book's March 11 handling of the confession takes a bit of a twist. I wrote a lot of other things before, and finally I suddenly wrote that I recalled Tallie's visit in the tiny candlelight, and the momentum was weak. The script of this film was significantly rewritten, showing Tallie's power and allowing the two protagonists to show off their acting skills.
The film took place on April 25. On this day, the camera followed Tallie down the mountain and approached Abigail's house, followed the back into the kitchen, and then sat on the chair like the host. Tallie's chest rose and fell, as if she was short of breath. When Abigail came back to her senses, she went straight to the problem: Every morning I wake up and I think that I never want to be far from you.
Seeing that Abigail didn't have the same reaction, he joked that he wrote the poem "O Sick and Miserable Hearts, Be Still".
In fact, Tallie did not directly break the topic in the book, but mentioned this poem as a confession wedge for no reason.
Abigail turned the conversation to his never-fulfilling expectations of great things, growing up just mediocre. Tallie brings the topic back, questioning whether the desire to feel fulfillment, fulfillment, and joy can be practised in us right now? Pressed by Tallie, Abigail admitted that the two felt intimacy with nothing else to satisfy.
The next kiss scene is probably one of the top female and female movies. It's rare to see that the kiss scene is not just a simple angle and action, but a twist in the words. Vanessa Kirby's jaw-dropping effort steals the shot.
The effect of the film performance is better than the original, compare the original description:
She leaned forward and offered me her lips kiss and then turned her cheek, which I then kissed instead. I asked why she hadn't done as she was going to do, and she had no reply. So I took her hands and then er shoulders and, with our eyes fully open, brought my mouth to hers.
Both the original book and the movie use three consecutive Astonishment and joy to express Abigail's feelings, but it is only when Katherine Waterston has her hands open on the long table that she conveys the ultimate joy.
The general audience may not notice that the date in the film suddenly jumped from April 25 to May 30, and how to make up for this missing page is due to the director's creativity.
The scene suddenly changed to a beautiful sunny day. When only the two of them were left together, they immediately kissed fiercely. Tallie directly concludes that the close relationship between the two can benefit themselves and others and help the farm win three times: I believe that intimacy increases goodwill...Won't our farms benefit from that? Won't our husbands? Later, the picture cuts to Abigail naked in bed alone, suggesting that The two are already skin-to-skin.
In the book, the two sides will meet two weeks after the confession. When they met, there was no passion, but the first discussion was about each other's feelings, what kind of feeling this is, and how to deal with it... The two sides were in a state of groping. Later, Tallie proposed that self-serving fallacy to ease anxiety. They hadn't heard the criticism against lesbians at the time, they were not ashamed of homosexuality, and there was no moral burden. The scale of passion in the original book is limited to "slight pleasure" on this day: We spent the interval thereafter consoling each other and allowed ourselves some gentle excitement.
In the next meeting, the movie was significantly changed. There was no dialogue in the original book. The two even talked about "King Lear", which is probably a stroke of the Nordic director.
The scene is even more green. The two are lying under a big tree on a mat, Tallie is wearing a red dress, and the buttons of his shirt are completely open. Although there is no movement, the picture conveys a strong sense of spring, unlike the original book.
The topic of the day in the film is roughly derived from the content of the book on April 1, including Tallie's three-line poem, the feud with Finney, and the news of the killing of his wife.
The biggest point is that Tallie thinks that Abigail has kept her distance from her before and dared not approach her. The topic in the book ends with Abigail saying that Tallie is now warmly embraced. But in the film Tallie continues to ask why you didn't dare to accept me before? Abigail mentioned the revelation of "King Lear" and optimistically regarded the cage as a protection net, as if suggesting that Abigail used a secret love to continue to meet Tallie in the past, but now he can hide and secretly communicate with Tallie under the cover of marriage. But Tallie says she doesn't like cages. It is conceivable that Finney, as her jailer, is more dangerous than Dyer is to Abigail.
In this section of the film, the two people suddenly heard the sound of the branch being stepped on. They did not see the figure and turned back to continue the conversation. The next scene is Finney teasing Tallie in the afternoon at Shangri-La, implying that Finney has been informed and the crisis is gradually increasing.
A week later in the book, Tallie is still nowhere to be seen, a hawk has been using a single cloud above us as its own parasol. The eagle circling overhead symbolizes unease, and the film adds to Dyer's bloody hands to deal with the birds.
Abigail finally turned passive and didn't want to wait for Tallie in vain. He took advantage of the night to approach Finney Farm and checked Tallie's safety with a monocular. This is the most exciting passage in the book for me.
In this section of weather, the sequence of the movie and the original is not the same. In the book, Abigail sneaks to check on Tallie after the rain has stopped. In the film, after watching Tallie, the rain falls on the hillside road where Tallie passes, and the Abigail window drips with raindrops. Generally speaking, the rain scene usually represents the film language of the inner tears of the people in the play.
Tallie reappears, sitting in the carriage with Finney, inviting Dyer and Abigail over to dinner. Tallie couldn't speak, so Abigail had to record local news that day in the book. In the film, we see the carriage walking on the hillside where Tallie comes and goes. At this moment, the carriage is like a hearse with a coffin.
Before the banquet, the movie made a lot of changes, which made Abigail's anger reach its peak. Abigail is suddenly annoyed when she sees Dyer busy taking notes, she thinks of her mother saying that she does all the housework and only appears in her father's notes when she buys clothes as an expense. She lamented that the girl married before she was an adult, and faced the endless problems of life in advance. This passage in the book was originally a week after the dinner party, and I couldn't see Tallie's sigh, but in the film Abigail was no longer passive, and took action a week after the dinner party.
In the film, Abigail went to the town to buy clothes for a dinner party (just echoing the above-mentioned expenses that appeared in the notebook), when a fire broke out in Manning's building, everyone was unable to put out the fire, and could only watch the girl burn to death. Abigail gritted his teeth before the fire, foreshadowing that Abigail would also be powerless about the impending tragedy.
In fact, the fire appeared on the same day as Tallie's confession in the original novel. Ironically, the girl in the book was not burned to death immediately, but was splashed with water to catch a cold and died of pneumonia. In those difficult times, no matter how you treat it, you can't escape death.
In that four-person dinner, Finney fully demonstrated patriarchal thinking and cruel and violent character. He usually maintains a harmonious image of his neighbor for a long stay, so unabashed that he doesn't want to stay any longer. Dyer and Finney discussed the plow shovel at the table, which is only mentioned in the book. A large part of the film talks about the difference between the hinged and the disc, and finally Finney asks if your home is better to use? I shuddered that Finney saw the Tallie as a bad tool that could be replaced.
A week after the dinner party in the film, Abigail couldn't wait for Tallie to appear, so he decided to go find her on his own, and found out that the Finney farm was empty, instead of waiting for the neighbors to tell the news as in the book. In the film, Abigail himself reports to the sheriff that Finney's relocation is suspicious, unlike Dyer in the book.
Abigail was calmed down by Dyer's opium tincture because of his emotional agitation. He is a relatively gentle man, but modern people would find it unbelievable that a husband drugged his wife. Possibly because even Dyer uses drugs to control his wife, the movie continues it to Tallie's death, suggesting that Finney may have overdose on his wife.
The final twist in the original is Tallie's letter from her new home.
The director added another bonus to perform Dyer and wanted to read the letter together, but Abigail refused. In addition to describing Tallie's tragic new life, the letter is about providing the location. After Abigail replied to the letter, he then set off for a visit (actually a rescue), isn't this what the atlas is about empowering women! It's a pity that Abigail set off after Tallie's death, and the motivation has been weakened.
In the film, Tallie receives a reply from Abigail, and the film deliberately compares Finney to disregard Tallie's privacy and take the letter to read aloud. In the book, Abigail didn't have time to reply, that's just what she planned to write. Tallie was lonely and helpless until his death, without Abigail's comfort.
In fact, Abigail didn't leave immediately after receiving the news of Tallie's death in the book. She cried for two days and was given opium tincture. Four days later, she decided to ignore the objection to visit. Dyer failed to stop her before she followed.
The original book did not have much to say about the three-day journey, and the film image processing was very rich, turning Abigail from a soft woman into a warrior. Dyer reluctantly got up from the bed, and Abigail neatly packed his bags. The carriage enters the canyon, which is lined with towering green forests. Abigail has always been dressed in blue and white, but this time wearing red all over his body means his blood is boiling. Tallie's letter reverberated inside her like a powerful call to get her on the journey: do you know what memory it is that I most cherish? It's of you turning to me with that smile you gave me once you realized that you were loved.
The end of the trip is Finney, who is still not fake. The original Abigail has nothing to gain, not even the Tallie cemetery. In the film, Abigail can also see the last side of Tallie Xiangxiaoyu's death. When she was lying next to her, the director pulled out the time machine, a series of lingering montages. After the confession, the film disappeared for six weeks. From April 26 to June 5, the two sometimes saw each other every day, until the eagle began to circle...
I think this lingering montage of love and death juxtaposed is one of the best passion scenes in recent memory. The original is a record of a secret affair that no one knows about in the notebook, and the film further explores the passion hidden in the notebook.
When Abigail returns to her hometown, the first sentence in the book is that she cuts her hand, like a broken heart. In the film, Dyer also had a thumb injury, and that day was Tallie's birthday present to Abigail to defeat Dyer.
In the film, Abigail silently vows that if he ever gets a chance to approach Finney Farm again, he will be shot with a rifle. There is no such passage in the book, because her character tends to be weak in the original book.
The book ends with I imagine continuing to write in this ledger, as though this was my life. As though my life was not elsewhere. As if Abigail was just converging into the notes.
The movie chose another passage from the book as the ending, which was even more tear-jerking. The original book mentioned that Abigail and Dyer could only continue to live together. In the film, Dyer tries to win over Abigail, she answers I can't imagine what more we could do for one another... In fact, this sentence is told by Abigail to Tallie in the book.
In the film, Dyer and Tallie ask Abigail together, can't you help?
Abigail rejects Dyer.
Tallie comforted her: imaginations can always be cultivated.
In the end, Abigail and Tallie closed their eyes and imagined the sweethearts who never left.
give birth to movies
The author of The World To Come short story Jim Shepard is good at developing stories from historical research. The inspiration for this book came from the fact that he picked up an old farm notebook to record the daily weather and chores such as planting and harvesting crops, but there was a line on the edge of the page " my best friend has moved away, I don't think I will ever see her again."
I have read the original book, and I feel that the author has written this female-girl romance too mildly and implicitly. At the time, I wasn't quite used to this classical Chinese style, and the two met about seven times in the book, and three of them were actually quite restrained. Although the tragedy at the end ended in disappointment, it didn't seem reasonable enough. I don't know what was special about the film company?
The first promoter of the movie was Ron Hansen. He specializes in the history of the American frontier era. He is the original author and screenwriter of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Assassination of Jesse), which made Casey Affleck's acting skills begin to be valued and widely acclaimed. , that year won the National Society of Film Critics (National Society of Film Critics Award) best supporting actor.
Hansen met Shepard and wanted to team up for another frontier movie, reaching out to Kathy Affleck for support. The timing was right, as he landed a contract with Amazon Studios after winning the Oscar for leading actor, and in 2017 he formed his own production company, Sea Change Media.
In hindsight, Hansen's greatest contribution was to visualize the details of food, clothing, housing and transportation in the film, especially the quaint apple peeler used by Casey Affleck. In the film, the protagonist is always busy with all kinds of rough work. The traditional husband and wife relationship suffers from each other in a difficult environment, and there is no space to pursue their dreams.
However, the development of this feminist script by heterosexual men may be criticized for the lack of female perspectives in this day and age. Affleck seriously considered Hansen's proposal, and hired a second film promoter, Whitaker Lader, the producer of his own company, who came forward to integrate the two writers. The team strives to make the story more focused on the two heroines, increase the number of times they get along with each other, and restore dialogue and interaction. The text of the script is very beautiful. I found that almost all of them were moved from the novel as they were. At first, I didn’t feel any special feeling when I read the original book, but through the poetic narration of the script by Katherine Waterston (played by Abigail), the joys, sorrows and sorrows were brought to life on the screen, and it also helped me to truly Experience the original female voice.
Lader's key mission is to find a director. She used to work as a film venture capitalist at the Sundance Film Festival. Because of Sundance's job opportunity, she appreciated the Norwegian female director Mona Fastvold's first work, The Sleep Walker, and invited her to direct.
The film did not have a lot of money, but Fastvold was unwilling to compromise on digital shooting, green screen special effects, artificial sets, etc. She insisted on a 16mm camera, filmed in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains, and asked for the real landscape to change in the four seasons, so the shooting schedule became very difficult. Harsh 24 working days. The crew shot back and forth many times as the seasons changed.
The location of the scene is deep in the forest where there are few people and no vehicles. The staff has to carry the equipment with bare hands and avoid attacks by wild dogs in the mountains. The difficult mountain trails caused Vanessa Kirby (Tallie) and art director Jean-Vincent Puzos to both sprain their ankles. Vanessa Kirby was injured on the first day and was moved by the crew on her back, and several scenes were changed to sitting in a chair.
I don't know if this film proved Lader's production skills, but she later jumped to the big production company Imagine Entertainment to get an exclusive production contract.
Fastvold is brave enough to challenge the narration. It is often seen in flashbacks, citing letters, and the ancient techniques of expressing one's heart, which are scorned by modern filmmakers and dismissed as lazy. The director's reverse operation aggravates the narration. Regardless of whether Abigail has a dialogue with others, he can often hear her inner words, and even overpower the dialogue. This narration effect is not like some comedies used to express disagreement, but highlights Abigail's inner world to endure real life.
From the beginning, the director was interested in Katherine Waterston as Abigail. The director thinks she can interpret the hidden secret. She liked this script very much, and hoped to take it up after she gave birth to a child. Waterston's restrained performance fits the character perfectly. Some people will be surprised that her breasts in the last montage of lingering breasts are actually just a side effect of parenting and breastfeeding.
After choosing Abigail, look for Tallie with the opposite trait. The director likes Vanessa Kirby because she has a playful energy, can master the timing of humor, and has control. To accentuate Tallie from the bleak winter, makeup artist Gemma Hoff dyed her hair red and added a little freckles. For Abigail, the red-haired Tallie is like spring.
The original article was published at https://www.orange-review.com/2021/03/the-world-to-come.html
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