It is also the secret in the manor, and the crowd with strange actions.
If you watch this "Ghost Manor" with the expectation of the first season of "Ghost Invasion", you may only be disappointed.
There are only a handful of successful remakes of "The Screws Are Tightening".
Why is it so hard to shoot?
As a gothic horror novel, the weirdness of "The Screw is Tightening" is not horror, but ambiguous.
Think of another famous American horror and suspense novelist , Edgar Allan Poe .
The pet cat in "Black Cat" squatted beside the corpse through the wall from time to time; the secret room of the mother and daughter in "Murder in the Rue Morgue" tragically died; the ghosts and mentally abnormal people in the ruined castle in "The Fall of Usher"... It's scary to think about.
But "The Screws Are Tightening" is more of an uncertain horror .
After all, the biggest discussion around the book has always been: Are there ghosts?
Compared with the original work, the biggest change in "Ghost Manor" is to make "there are ghosts" into "there are ghosts".
This led to the audience's first set of discussions:
Does visualizing ghosts, that is, acknowledging the objective existence of ghosts, dispel the charm of the original work?
From text to video, the biggest problem encountered by the main creator is how to deal with the seemingly false behavior of the female governess seeing ghosts in the novel.
Since the images must involve specific ghost images, and "Ghost Manor" also focuses on horror and suspense, ghosts must be real in the play.
Therefore, the change from novels to American dramas is reflected in the following three points:
From individual ghosts to collective ghosts.
From the subjective suspicion of a single person to the objective world of many ghosts.
From self-righteous saving others, to self-liberation from sinking into the sea of misery.
There are only two ghosts in the original book, Peter Quint and Jessel, and even these two ghosts are most likely imagined by the female teacher.
And "The Screw Is Tightening" reflects the Victorian era, people's fear of ghosts, and religious beliefs.
Ghosts are more a symbol of the corruption, cruel hierarchy and patriarchy of the upper class.
In "Ghost Manor", in addition to Peter and Jessel, there are also a bunch of ghosts such as Mrs. Rutgers, Dany's fiance, and the lady's sister Viola.
This weakens the symbolism of the ghost, making it a real presence in the story, not a subjective guess of Dany alone.
In terms of character motivation, the novel is more like the wishful thinking of female teachers.
She came from a poor family and hoped to enter a middle-class family through education, and to educate their children into the upper class.
But her identity as a Puritan, and her traditional ascetic ideology, allowed her to control the children everywhere, which eventually led to tragedy.
When it comes to "Ghost Manor", everyone pays attention to themselves to get rid of their own doom.
Dany wants to face the shadow of her fiancé's death, Jamie wants to meet a lover who opens up to her, Peter and Jessel want to leave the manor to pursue their dreams, and even the chef wants to open a restaurant in France.
Everyone wants to be free from the constraints of estates, dogmatic thinking.
The second point of contention is the way in which "Ghost Manor" is told :
Does the unit drama have any influence on the overall narrative of the story and the setting of the horror rhythm?
The play has a total of 9 episodes. In order to enrich the volume, it is necessary to increase the background of the original characters and the multiple relationships between the characters.
As a result, the female governess Danny experienced the tragedy of her fiancé's car accident, and the gardener in the original novel was subdivided into two roles, a male cook and a female groundskeeper Jamie.
In terms of relationships, we see Dany and Jamie's LGBT relationship, the unspeakable relationship between the chef and Mrs. Gross, and the relationship between Uncle Henry and the mother of a young child.
Since the story has chosen to be narrated from an objective point of view, rather than the ambiguous tone of the original.
The expansion of the character background is particularly important. Each episode focuses on one character, and the visibility is greatly improved.
Of course, the complexity of the story leads directly to a slower narrative rhythm, lack of compactness, and poor thriller effect.
Especially in the last few episodes, after clarifying the relationship between the characters, the horror ghost-hunting film forcibly formed a love story of Shuang Ji.
The emotionally inclined plot makes it inevitable that the story will be interspersed with some social topics .
This also brings up the third discussion point:
Has the introduction of current American social issues in the play changed the essence of the original work?
When talking about "Ratchett" before, the show owner said that there are three general problems of the times:
Class, race, gender.
Looking at class first , this topic is actually an underlying theme of the original.
The first is about patriarchy .
The novel's depiction of the female teacher is reflected in her love for the male master, the uncle of Miles and Flora.
It is written in the original book that the female teacher walks in the garden and fantasizes about a romantic encounter with the male host.
In the manor, she is more like the mother of the children, the image of a female parent.
To put it bluntly, she tried to educate children and rule the manor by becoming a power subject.
A male-dominated society has become a necessary place for women to reach the upper echelons of power.
In the series, the attachment to the patriarchy gives way to an attempt to break free from it.
In the first episode, the contradiction between Uncle Henry and Dany was presented.
Henry, the male parent, first used tea and coffee to remind Dany of her nationality, and then used the word "hidden love" to test Dany's age, gaining advantages everywhere.
But Danni refuted the other party on the spot, analyzing for so long that a suitable candidate had not been found, there must be something hidden in the manor.
This elevates the original female thinking to the ideological differences between countries——
Feudal dogmatism in England, and liberalism in America.
It seems to be the impact of liberalism and feminism on traditional feudal dogmatic thinking, but in the subsequent plot, Dany's behavior still follows the narrative routine of women's self-remodeling with the help of male-dominated society in the novel.
The reason Danny accepted this job was that she had managed too many children before, so she didn't show her strength. Now only manage two children, should be able to do something.
It's a pity that the show failed to present the confrontation between freedom and dogma, only a brushstroke.
There is a contradiction here for a woman who symbolizes freedom and who controls her children everywhere.
If you think that Dany is a defender of traditional thinking, how do you explain the cross-border relationship between her and Jamie?
In the end is to rely on patriarchy, or resist patriarchy. The contradiction between cause and effect makes the character of Danni's character change less reasonable.
Regarding the oppression of women by men , it is also reflected in the glasses of Dany's fiancé——
A dead man, still watching her.
This detail is very similar to the "Jerrod Game" that the director filmed before.
In the film, a ring and a blood moon are used to accuse the husband of manipulating his wife.
After talking about patriarchy, let’s talk about racial issues , which are presented in the play as discrimination between countries .
The cultural differences between the UK and the US are addressed several times in the play , and are even seen by the people on the estate as an advantage for the UK.
Danny made tea in the same way as instant coffee, which frightened Mrs. Gross to the point of seeing Mrs. Xianglin every time:
Put it down, I'm coming, don't touch it!
He even ridiculed Danny's American English and engaged in a lot of "accent discrimination".
Then there is the issue of gender .
Danni and Jamie's true feelings are revealed, it is estimated that many viewers will become fans of this pair of CPs.
Most viewers may feel that this is just an emotional line imposed by the main creator for the sake of political correctness because of the rise of the #MeToo movement.
It is worth mentioning that the readers of the original work have already guessed the orientation of the female teacher's sexual perversion based on the details of the text.
There is such a description in the novel that the female teacher sighed when she saw the spire of the Gothic manor:
"However, it seems that the person I think about day and night is not suitable for showing up in such a high place."
The spire of the castle implies the psychology of phallic worship in psychoanalytic theory. The female teacher's denial of this masculine symbol is interpreted as a female teacher who does not love men and women .
These are just readers' guesses, a joy of "overreading". Whether it is correct or not will not be said, but the show owner feels that it is still a bit far-fetched.
In the play, I personally feel that this adaptation is a failure.
The ending of the original book is that the female teacher drives away the ghost, but Miles is also dying in his arms.
It is indeed a pity that an open ending has become a part of a dog-blooded love movie.
Fourth discussion point:
Does the adjustment to the original structure affect the original effect of the story?
Both novels and American dramas use layers of nested frame narratives .
The novel is Douglas' retelling of the governess's experiences, while the play is an elderly Jamie recalling the life of his lover.
The novel "The Screw Is Tightening" has three layers of narrative : first, "I" describes to the reader, describing what "I" heard comes from a story told by Douglas, which is based on a female teacher's manuscript.
Looking at "Ghost Manor" again , the vertical three-layer narrative has become two layers, that is, Jamie's memories of Danny.
At the same time, the two of them worked in the manor, so what they told through Dany's mouth was actually Jamie's expression of his own experience.
The sense of alienation in the original work has been greatly reduced.
Moreover, there is an emotional relationship between the two, and the intimacy is self-evident. The mystery and ambiguity are gone.
The fifth discussion point is about the reference in the play to the details of the props in the novel .
The most important thing in horror movies is to create a terrifying atmosphere through a series of small props.
Such as the unanswered telephone ring in the play, the glasses of the female teacher's fiancé, the cracks in front of the housekeeper's eyes, and the songs in the music box.
The detailed props played by these screenwriters are not so much to serve horror, but to provide reasonable explanations for the emotional clues of the plot.
If there are not enough new ideas, how are the details in the novel restored?
Very disappointed!
Especially the change of the most important image in the novel——
Mirror peeping.
The second time the governess saw Peter, it was through the window glass.
The glass reflects an identical virtual world, and people outside the mirror seem to be watched by those in the mirror.
For a time, " peeping and being peeped, human and non-human, reality and illusion, there is only a thin line between them."
Could it be that the author also hints to readers here that Peter in the eyes of the female teacher may be a ghost imagined by himself?
In the show, Peter is completely confirmed to be a ghost.
Even more incomprehensible is that for the first time, Dany saw the shadow of her dead fiancé in the mirror.
If the novel is still telling readers, what the female teacher sees is her inner shadow.
Then, as soon as Danny came up in the play, she saw a person who used to exist objectively, and this mental fuzzy symmetry was destroyed.
The clues of the story of "Ghost Manor" are complicated, and there is a big reunion at the end.
Regarding the cause of the ghost, it is more like the family incest in "Scarlet Mountain", plus a replica of "All Ghosts" in "Frightening Island".
It is said that Henry James' "The Screws Are Tightening" is a psychoanalytic novel, showing the inner changes of the characters.
If it is only like this, without considering the ambiguity and the setting of horror, there is no doubt that "Ghost Manor" has achieved it.
But as a psychological horror drama, the show owner really can't bear it.
Under the rich imagery, in the drowsy plot, with the jealousy of the Countess, the audience realizes:
All we see is an impatient classicism bud, and it is unknown whether the branches have rose thorns.
The richness and simplification of the story, the heaviness and lightness of the plot, are indeed difficult to choose.
In "Ghost Manor," we're drawn to the tangled story lines, ignoring the simple structure within.
If there is a third season of "Ghost Invasion", I hope to see how far the characters are, but also to experience the complex thoughts under simple logic.
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