I am giving you fair warning: if you have not seen the new Room with a View, and you want to experience it with no preconceptions, all sparkly and new, you might not want to read this post. If you think you already know because you have read the book, you still might not want to read this post if you want to see the movie with fresh eyes.
I have a special place in my heart for A Room With a View. I find it witty, and I find it insightful. I also notice something new every time I read it. So I was excited when a new version of it came out, and Masterpiece Theatre featured it. Unfortunately, whoever wrote this screenplay was on crack. One of the sad side effects of all that crack was that they decided that the ending that Forster cooked up just wasn't quite good enough. It's not like the book was a classic or anything, so what does he know, right?
So at the end it couldn't just end like the book: back in the room with a view in the city in Italy. They advanced BEYOND that scene (which they played like a harlequin romance scene), to a scene where she was in Italy, with the same carriage driver who got in trouble for making out with his girlfriend while he drove them to the picnic (who now magically speaks English perfectly due to driving all those tourists--apparently he stopped making out with girls and started listening). The driver and our heroine drive out to the countryside and have a picnic together, because that's what you do when your husband has died in the war. You picnic with the strange Italian who happened to drive the carriage you once rode in with your husband in an awkward pre-courtship period of time. And as they picnic in this totally natural, uncontrived scene, the driver confesses that he led her to her future husband in the field where they had their fateful first kiss on purpose. Because of course the local peasant was the all knowing puppet master. I'm so glad the screenplay writer got the REAL point of the book.
Did I mention her husband died? WHY must they take a classic that ended happily and make the ending UNhappy? I do not understand this compulsion certain people have to equate tragedy with romance. Mostly they are wrong. Mostly tragedy just sucks. So why take a perfectly good love story, with an ending where the guy gets the girl, and kill off the guy?
1 comment:
I knew they couldn't improve on the Merchant Ivory version. How bizarre that the screenwriter felt compelled to kill off George and change the end. They really didn't get the book, did they?
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