Brief Film Commentary
Jun. 2nd, 2012 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
author_by_nightSo I feel weird reviewing a film I didn't finish (although maybe that says... a lot), so I'll just do a brief commentary because I do have thoughts on it.
The movie I saw was The Accidental Tourist, based on an Ann Tyler book of the same title. I think the reason I didn't finish wasn't so much the story, because while it's sad (the premise is that a man's twelve year old boy was killed a year ago) there's a lot of dry humor, and it's not so sad that it seems forced. But I get the sense that it was probably a wonderful novel, because with a novel, you read a few chapters, step away, and can get back to it later. The characters were real, the situation was real, but the subject was so dark, the situation so raw, that I needed to be able to take it in bit by bit.
The other problem I had was the character of Muriel. I just couldn't see why Macon fell in love with her; she tries to seduce him immediately after he tells her about his son's murder, and from the very beginning she pressures him to date her. She's always worried he'll leave her. Yet I wanted to love her because when she wasn't trying to date/seduce Macon, she was very likable, and maybe this was another instance where things translated better in the book. Perhaps seeing things from her perspective would have made her more bearable, and her compatibility with Macon more believable.
The movie I saw was The Accidental Tourist, based on an Ann Tyler book of the same title. I think the reason I didn't finish wasn't so much the story, because while it's sad (the premise is that a man's twelve year old boy was killed a year ago) there's a lot of dry humor, and it's not so sad that it seems forced. But I get the sense that it was probably a wonderful novel, because with a novel, you read a few chapters, step away, and can get back to it later. The characters were real, the situation was real, but the subject was so dark, the situation so raw, that I needed to be able to take it in bit by bit.
The other problem I had was the character of Muriel. I just couldn't see why Macon fell in love with her; she tries to seduce him immediately after he tells her about his son's murder, and from the very beginning she pressures him to date her. She's always worried he'll leave her. Yet I wanted to love her because when she wasn't trying to date/seduce Macon, she was very likable, and maybe this was another instance where things translated better in the book. Perhaps seeing things from her perspective would have made her more bearable, and her compatibility with Macon more believable.
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-02 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-03 12:32 am (UTC)Did they have the compulsive siblings in the movie? (who stocked food alphabetically in the cupboard). That part of it was amusing.