For many movie fans, the film that has been discussed the most recently may be " The Devil All the Time " ( 2020).
The film is based on the novel of the same name by Donald Ray Pollock. The story takes place in a remote post-war town in Ohio, full of corruption and atrocities, with the background of two generations in the life of a man trying to protect his loved ones from the chaotic environment around them. Young people's stories.
Pollock's original novel is quite famous. The intertwined branch lines and the character motivations worthy of in-depth exploration not only make the novel itself full of readability, but also bring infinite possibilities to the second creation of the film, but also bring a lot of difficulty to the adaptation.
If handled well, this would be an American epic that rivals The Irishman (2019), but that's clearly not the case.
A plate of loose sand
138 minutes lost in fragmented plots
At 138 minutes, director Antonio Campos and co-writer Paulo Campos brought in too many plots and clues, and scattered them haphazardly in the original novel. every corner of the film.
For example, veterans Willard, Carl, waiter Charlotte and waiter Sandy are introduced in the opening paragraph of the film, and they are constantly in these characters. Switching the narrative focus, the audience can easily get lost in the complexity and triviality.
In fact, director Antonio is not incapable of dealing with complex multi-line stories. In 2016's "Christine" ( 2016 ), he methodically exposes a tragically strong story with a calm narrative pace, and the effect is commendable.
But this time, when faced with an intricate tome story, he chose to wander between the perspectives of different characters like a novel, rather than connecting the story with a complete narrative thread. As a result, the final presentation can only be a mess of sand, rather than a complete and compact story.
More controversial is his extensive use of narration - the narration in the film is performed by the original author Pollock.
This kind of processing, on the one hand, allows the audience to understand the development of the story more intuitively, and can reduce some plot jumps; but at the same time, it also makes the film lose a piece of plot and clues through thematic structure. An opportunity to connect.
thin image
Superficial character setting
Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgård, Haley Bennett, a cast like this is a must for any For a movie, it's a big plus.
However, in this movie that was blown up in the early stage, the advantages of these actors did not play their due role at all because of the defects of the overall narrative.
First of all, it is worth affirming that as long as we let go of the presuppositions of "a new generation of Batman", "Spiderman" and "The Winter Soldier" in our hearts, the performance of the young actors in this film is still worthy of affirmation.
Whether Tom Holland or Robert Pattinson and other young actors have inherited the fine tradition of British actors-their vivid southern country accents in the film can at least convince many audiences that they are indeed performing a scene. Stories in America.
But after all, there are too many characters in the film, not to mention that the director tries to evenly distribute the scenes to these characters. So that each character lacks character development, and in the end there is only a strong southern accent and a single character trait.
For the character of Carl, for example, there is no more in-depth expression of the character except his penchant for violence and explanations made only in the narration of the original author himself.
Or the character of Robert Pattinson, whose performance in Forsaken Land is somewhat similar to last year's performance in The King of Lancaster ( 2019): pronounced accent, screeching The voice is also one of the most exaggerated characters in the overall image in the film - just seeing his emaciated appearance, it is already very memorable.
Especially when he preaches, the character characteristics brought from the appearance are more obvious. It doesn't even need any backstory or any other reason to convince the audience that he'll cause endless pain to the main character, Arvin. But that's all, it doesn't go any further.
It can be said that the entire film spends almost no time on the inner psychological construction of these characters, but only pushes the gist of the film to the audience through specific but fragmented plots and untimely flashbacks.
Difficulty in film adaptation
A third-rate film adapted from a first-rate novel
Someone once said: "A first-rate novel is adapted into a third-rate movie, and a third-rate novel is adapted into a first-rate movie". Although this sentence is not a golden rule, it also shows the difficulty of film adaptation literature. The more literary the novel, the more difficult it will be to adapt it into an equally good film.
No matter what method is used to adapt, the creator should not stick to the original work, let alone try to copy the original work, because video and literature are two completely different artistic means. Yet even a great man such as Luchino Visconti made this mistake in his adaptation of Albert Camus' L'Etranger.
Whether it's "2001: A Space Odyssey" ( 2001: A Space Odyssey , 1968) and "Blade Runner" ( Blade Runner, 1982), or "Jurassic Park" (Jurassic Park, 1993) and "A Clockwork Orange" ” (A Clockwork Orange, 1971), both successfully brought the audience a sensory enjoyment beyond words through the unique charm of the film. Although the adaptation themes involved in these films are all different, they all break through the shackles of the original work and replace the logic of words with the language of images.
On the other hand, "Land Forsaken by God", but because the director sticks to the structure mode and narrative technique of the original novel, he has fallen into a vicious circle of fixed thinking that is difficult to escape. This kind of attempt to copy the literary creation technique to the film creation will not only make the film lose the pleasure brought by the audio and video, but also will leave some regrets.
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