AsMoral Wrote:Having read the short story on which this movie is based it surprises me that Ang Lee squeezed out 2 and a half hours worth of material form a 48 page large print story.
I have not seen the movie but can say that the short story left a lot to be desired. The relationship was definitely rushed in the book as there was a lot to be said in such a short tale. The story is gritty and though it is indeed a love story the trick is to not make it a love story because of the subject matter and the type of charcters the two leads are.
This movie sat for years in script development due to the fact that no director/producer wanted to touch it because of the difficulty in translating the story to celluloid.
In written form we can forgive the sudden and abrupt joining of the two men and the 20 years that subsequently pass in the span of 40 some pages. My fear though is that the film is going to lose the feel of the book, the gritiness and feeling of loss and confusion the two men felt in the story. A lot was left unsaid in the book and relied on the charcters thoughts.
Not once did the two charcters every say they loved each other though the reader knows they did. The closest we get to confirmation that these two guys do indeed care for each other and love one another is when one says to the other, "Why can't I quit you?"
I will see this, but my expectations are low.
(I doubt it will even play here in Arkansas.)
You are probably correct in saying this won't play in Arkansas but it has played solidly in a few small Texas towns
I had not read the short story and am not a big fan of either actor although I miss confess I enjoyed Day after Tomorrow and A Knight's Tale, so I was pleasantly surprised at the performances rendered by Heath Ledger and Jake
Gyllenhall. In watching this, I couldn't help but think wjat it must be like to love someone so very much and not be with them as much as you want to be. No one should be killed fro loving whom they do. Perhaps, to borrow a title from an underrated Eastwood film, in A perfect World, it would not matter but this ain't no perfect world, and it does.
Ang Lee returned to his Sense and Sensibility direction with this film rather than going the HULK route.
If I had an Academy vote, I'd split it between Crowe, Ledger and Phoenix (for his very rendition of the Man in Black)