New Year (Happy?)

Well, here we go with 2005...

So far it's been pretty uneventful and a bit of a downer on my part, not counting the party last night. The 1:00 show of Phantom was sold out, I've spent the last three hours touring shopping centres (ARGH) and it's painfully bright outside with the sun and the snow. On top of it all, Ubiquitouspitt is off having the time of her life communing with the ghosts of the ubiquitous Pitts, and I'm stuck here behind the Zion Curtain trying to think of things to draw.

Sushi tonight, though, they say. Something to (possibly) look forward to.

I'm sorry, I'd have gotten the Snicket Review finished by now but the darn thing's on the downstairs computer which is being occupied by my illustrious father and his freelance work. I just have to go on about the art direction and its relevance to the perceived fantasy of the plot (see? doctoral thesis.) and I'm done (allowing for proofreading and last-minute syntax changes, of course).

Voluble Film Dissection - The Snicket Review

The Spoiler-Reduced Version

If you are looking for an article in which a critic skewers a movie with clever and amusing one-liners, you would be better off reading some other review. Because, for the most part, I really liked this film. I would say probably about 86% of it. I beg you to keep this in mind as you read, because it is far easier to pick out things I don’t like, which are usually specific, than to pick out things I do like, which are usually general, vague, and hard to pin down.

One must take into account that film is a visual medium and books are not … a great deal of what makes the books so charming are things that can only be done in text. I thought the writer and director did an excellent job of translating the text to the screen (with the exception of some dialogue, which I’ll get to later), keeping as much as they could of the original and changing only what they had to. Frankly, I’m surprised they managed to keep as true to the books as they did. Of course, changes had to be made to have three separate stories with their own dramatic arcs make sense as one cohesive whole, but I thought this was done well.

Those who have read my description of my reaction to the opening of the film will know that I absolutely love how they started it off. There is no better way I can think of to simultaneously win the trust of fans of the books who may be sceptical of the film. This tone was further preserved by having the movie presented by Mr. Snicket (thankfully shown only in silhouette or out-of-focus) and included a judicious amount of text from the books. A great deal of the entertainment derived from the Series of Unfortunate Events comes from the writing style and the author’s asides, and it was very reassuring to see (or rather, hear) these included. Not only was there a healthy helping of the more humorous passages, but the often surprising genuine and tender side of the narrative was represented as well.

Another good example of a well-handled transition from text to screen is Sunny’s words. In the book, Mr. Snicket explains to you what each of her words mean, and in the movie they’re deciphered through subtitles. Really, this is the only way to do it efficiently and keep this very important aspect of her character. Unfortunately, the translations themselves are out of character – Sunny is at least as intelligent and articulate as her siblings (though not in a way most of us could understand) and would never, ever say anything so crass as “Bite me.” Sunny’s new vocabulary seems to be part of a much larger campaign of “updating” some of the dialogue, which is mostly written in a sort of mock-Victorian style in the books. In fact, it was dialogue changes that were the most troubling differences from the books, especially on the part of Olaf. It seems as though Jim Carrey only glanced at the script and then ad-libbed every line he had, hamming it up more and more. This had the result of making Olaf into a much more comic character than he is in the books. Mr Carrey can be a good actor. I’ve seen him at it. But his portrayal of Olaf is Comic Carrey, which only comes in one flavour, and this is not an Olaf flavour. Olaf is a sinister, evil villain who occasionally does goofy things, not a goofy pantomime villain who occasionally does evil things. Olaf is an arsonist and murderer who has no qualms about brutally killing children, acquaintances, and anyone else who gets in his way. Carrey’s Olaf was rather too silly to be believable as a sinister villain ... a cartoon one, perhaps, but not someone who would arouse feelings of terror or disgust in those who met him. On top of changing the character, often Carrey just goes on far too long. His entrance is about twice as long as it needs to be, and in the other occasions when he has significant screen time, half the time I just wanted him to shut up so we could get on with the scene. I have heard, from various sources (admittedly, some more reliable than others), that the director and other people were utterly taken by Carrey’s hilarious adlibbing, and it looks as though they fit as much as possible into the film. In animation, there is an adage: “Don’t fall in love with your drawing.” It means, basically, that no matter how good a drawing is, if it doesn’t work for its intended purpose, it must go. You can set it aside and keep it in a little box for yourself, but if it doesn’t work, it has to be fixed or replaced. It seems the crew had fallen in love with their actor, and even though what he was doing didn’t fit the character or the movie, they kept it anyway, to the detriment of all. It’s not just me who thinks this – I have gathered the opinions of four people who have seen the movie and not read the books, and they all agreed, independently, without any suggestion from me, that Olaf “stuck out” or “just didn’t belong.” Count Olaf was Jim Carrey, not the other way around, as he should have been. On top of this, he was written (I can only assume this was written and not adlibbed) with far more book smarts than Book Olaf: Book Olaf is full of clever evil plans that require a lot of cunning, but would never know how to use the word “verisimilitude” in a sentence, what with his scorn for all things academic.

Back to anomalies, what on earth was Cedric the Entertainer (the totally superfluous “detective”) doing in this movie? He served no real purpose, and might as well have been wearing a hat with “TOKEN MINORITY” picked out in sequins on it. He wasn’t even included in a way that was in keeping with the tone of the rest of the movie.

As for the other actors: Billy Connolly did what I thought was impossible and made Uncle Monty even more lovable and interesting than he was in the book. He did a marvellous job. Perhaps it was because his character was much more sympathetic and realistic than Aunt Josephine, but I preferred his performance to Meryl Streep’s. Not to say Streep’s wasn’t outstanding ... she was the ideal neurotic Aunt Josephine. Her scream at the realtors was absolutely perfect. Hers was a very exaggerated character, but no more so than she was in the book, and – this is the important part – exaggerated in the same way. Timothy Spall did a very good job as Mr Poe, in his nearly-personality-free way, though I’d have liked to see some coughing (his only character trait) just as a nod to the text. It was refreshing to see Mr Spall do a more subtle performance after that ridiculous Peter Pettigrew in the most recent Harry Potter. The Baudelaires were good... both Violet and Klaus had their moments where they appeared to be acting, but for the most part they portrayed their characters convincingly. Sunny, even with the character changes brought about by mistranslations, still had a lot of presence and fit naturally with her siblings. One thing about Sunny, however ... My first impression was that she was always happy, always giggling or smiling or making cute little noises, and this annoyed me. But then I reasoned: it would be awfully hard to get a small child to convincingly act afraid, sad, or angry, and relatively easy to get a giggle. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to find anyone to do what Sunny does in the books, without making the entire movie animated, so I must resign myself to Sunny being little more than comic relief. Some other characters with whom I was a little disappointed were Olaf’s troupe – they play such a negligible role that giving them any attention at all is a little unfair, but some things must be said. For one, whatever happened to the enormous person who looks like neither a man nor a woman? In the movie, this character looked as though he couldn’t decide whether to be a man or a woman, though he was very obviously male and certainly not obese. Perhaps there was a concern for political correctness, and they decided it would be safer to vilify transvestites rather than the unfortunately androgynous and/or overweight segment of the population. I was very amused by the Hook-Handed Man; he must have listened to the audio books because he did a nearly flawless imitation of Tim Curry’s Hook-Handed Man voice, down to the Cockney accent and everything.

As mentioned before, I was pleasantly surprised with how close they kept to the original books. This goes not only for some of the text being incorporated in the film, but basic plot points as well. The three books were very well condensed into one ... of course there are moments I’d like to have seen, but in the interest of the film, it’s better they were cut. The important elements of the relevant books were kept and that’s what matters. There was a tricky and well-handled swapping of climaxes to give the film a more solid and coherent dramatic arc – The Marvelous Marriage is much more thrilling than the scene on Lake Lachrymose.

[Cut: long passage about the ending of the movie, absolutely rife with spoilers]

To counter this, the incorporation of the VFD mystery is absolutely fantastic. Not only is it extremely gratifying for established fans of the series to see VFD treated with such respect (down to the use of totally random old photos), but it gives the uninitiated the same sense of intrigue and even, at times, dramatic irony, that people who have read the later books would have when reading the first three over again. The set decoration crew must have had a lot of fun ... I kept wanting to pause the film and look at details, be it the headline of the Daily Punctilio or that intoxicatingly intriguing VFD photo of Aunt Josephine’s. They managed to preserve the excruciating instances of gradual revelation and being teased with information – just as soon as you’re about to learn something, it gets interrupted, or [spoiler!]. On top of this, I found myself in a dire dilemma in a number of scenes – it looked as though something very important was about to be revealed, something that hadn’t been revealed yet in the books, and I was torn between covering my ears, shutting my eyes, and yelling “LALALA!” or paying as close attention as I could so that I didn’t miss a word.

The art direction was one of the main draws of this movie, for me, and for a number of my friends in the animation industry who had never read the books. It didn’t disappoint – it was whimsical and artistic, colourful when it needed to be and monochromatic when it helped. There was a fairly good sense of a sort of indeterminate time period; something vaguely early-20th-century but without enough specifics to pin down a date. The costumes were interesting and fit the scenery to a tee, matching it in both whimsy and historical ambiguity. Those who have heard my opinions of the trailer know my reservations about Violet’s costume but it didn’t bother me as badly in the movie as I thought it would. Olaf’s costume was absolutely fantastic – probably the best in the movie.

As much as I liked the art direction on its own, however, I think it may have detracted a bit from conveying the spirit of the books. The books – especially the first two – have a context that is almost realistic, so realistic that when something happens that cannot happen in real life, it seems wrong. The reality is cunningly crafted so that you have no problem believing leeches can kill someone, or that a village can revolve around the adoration of crows – but when the Baudelaires heat fire pokers in an oven to use as welding torches after a climb down a 66-storey elevator shaft, you think “But that can’t happen! Ovens don’t get hot enough to get iron to glow white-hot! And they’d cool off on the way down the elevator shaft!” Not to mention all the times when the author reminds us that the real world “doesn’t work that way.” As fun as the art direction was on this film, I get the feeling that it made the world fantastic enough that the fantastic elements of the plot seemed ordinary, and not as ridiculous as they would have appeared otherwise. For example: if you had a story set in a floating castle with gelatine walls, populated by talking butterflies, where everyone wore sequined tracksuits, a little girl who can move things with her mind would hardly draw anyone’s attention. But put that same girl in an English suburb, attending an ordinary public school, surrounded by very normal people, and the whole telekinesis thing becomes much more wild. What I’m trying to say is, the visual aspect of the movie, as beautiful as it is, takes you into a world that is definitely not your own, definitely a fantasy world, so the bizarre and ridiculous things that happen seem to be less bizarre and ridiculous because, well, it’s a fantasy world, and that’s where bizarre and ridiculous things are commonplace.

I knew it – this makes it sound like I didn’t like the movie. I did like it, as mentioned before. I must admit that I liked it less the second time because all the pleasant surprises weren’t surprises anymore, which left no antidote to Mr Carrey’s annoying Olaf ... but it was only tiresome in comparison to the first viewing, which was anything but. As far as recommendations go: If you have read the books already, you won’t be disappointed by an unfaithful rendering; if you haven’t, this movie might very well encourage you to pick them up – if you like what you see, anyway. And if you would rather see a movie about a giggling elf, there is still room in Theatre 2...

If you've already seen the movie, or don't care about spoilers, the spoiler-rich version is HERE.