Whenever I read The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is often, I am amazed at the way this study of morality is so timeless and remains relevant even today. I've secretly wanted to adapt this book properly (see previous blog entries for more), and I thought perhaps I'd lost my chance when I read in Interview that Benjamin Barnes was playing Dorian Gray. Yeah...still have a chance to do it right.
Because the novel is really about the soul. Does it exist? What if we could see the ways in which we corrupt our soul? Would we use it as a constant reminder to be morally good, or would we use it to be bear the burden of all our misdeeds? It's also about society's obssession with youth, and what we would forego to recapture our youth. As Harry says, the only way to recapture your youth is to remember all the mistakes you made, and make them over again.
Which, by the way, is one of the very few lines of dialogue from the novel that feature in the film. I cannot believe the extent to which this film ignores the themes and concerns of the novel. All references to morality, pleasure and the soul are skipped over, so insubstantial that you feel they were put in as a break from all the sex scenes.
There are changes to the novel that make the film's plot and story seem weak. Sybil Vane's dramatic appearances are nonexistent, and therefore so is the reason for her suicide. And any credible reason for Dorian's dismissal of her. Dorian and Lord Henry, or Harry, become very superficial characters, praising only art, and pursue beauty at all costs, Dorian more so than Harry. And yet the writer has ignored this for the most part. The conversation that leads to Dorian's wish that Basil's portrait of him age is almost entirely superficial, but for the wrong reasons. Sure, there are a lot of conversations in the novel that would be hard to translate into film, but the dialogue has been paraphrased to the point of meaninglessness.
In the plot, essentially, Dorian meets Basil, who paints a portrait of him. He meets Harry, who takes him to a seedy bar and tells him to drink up. Dorian decides this is a good idea and gives his soul for eternal youth. The portrait begins to age and bear all the scars of his sexual conquests. He kills Basil after showing him the portrait, then buggers off for 25 years. Harry has a daughter, who Dorian falls in love with, Harry discovers his secret and tries to kill him. Then Dorian decides to let himself be destroyed with the picture after Harry's daughter Emily tries to save him. Dorian destroyed, the portrait reverts back to its former glory. Harry keeps it.
It seems like the novel, but it's so disgustingly superficial. The characters, the visual style, the narrative, and that's what it should be! Because describing in detailed paragraphs why the film is such a poor adaptation would take way too long, I'm going to list them here:
1. Dorian is a brunette. In the novel, he looks young, barely 20, and angelic, with curly golden hair and bright blue eyes. He looks like an innocent babe, which makes his eternal youth seem like a blessing. It also saves him from being completely ostracised from society. When people see his young face and angelic looks, they can't believe the stories are true. Ben Barnes is gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but he always looks dangerous and saucy. You never believe in his innocence, even when he really is.
2. Sybil knows Dorian's name. She only ever knows his first name in the novel, and calls him Prine Charming. One of Dorian's former conquests knows this and refers to him so at the opium den, which leads James Vane to find him. In the novel, Dorian's engagement to Sybil is known only to Sybil and her family, Basil and Harry. Dorian fears his involvement with her death and Harry assures him that no one will ever know. Which makes it more shocking later when his past catches up with him in the form of James Vane trying to kill him.
3. Dorian's pleasure in art is absent. Which changes his relationship with Sybil, making it little more than a plot device. Dorian's treatment of her is truly cruel, the first time we see what he is capable of now his soul is separate from him, and Lord Henry's influence is almost total. His preference for art over some life is what makes both he and Harry more monstrous, and the breakdown of his and Sybil's relationship looks foolish, making her suicide foolish. Sybil is essentially an actress. All she knows is the theatre, and the only things she knows about romance she learned from Shakespeare. It is this investment in drama that attracts Dorian, and when she discovers reality, it repels him. So her final desperate act is her return to drama. It is diminished in the film, especially as it is Sybil who dismisses Dorian, not the other way around.
4. Harry seems intentionally malicious at points. Though Harry is shallow and cruel, his corruption of Dorian is never a serious attempt to ruin the boy. He sees a blank canvas. Just as Basil is inspired by Dorian's physical beauty, Harry is inspired by Dorian's naivety. He sees someone he can model after himself, someone not as bound to societal rules as he is, being married and held in high regard by his family. He's also bored with his society and with Basil. He's not as cruel as he seems in the first half of the film. I never thought Colin Firth would make a good Lord Henry. Harry and Basil are only ten years older than Dorian, so it seems strange to have them played by actors who are clearly older than him. My pick for Lord Henry was always David Tennant. He's younger, attractive, and roguish, and has those features that Oscar Wilde describes in the novel.
5. All of Dorian's indulgences are to do with sex. Ok, some of it is with drugs as well, and while it is heavily suggested in the novel that his exploits and exploitation of women are sexual in nature (and most likely with men, too), there is a hint that Dorian's relationship with other men involves other sins. Drug use is almost certainly one of them, but gambling to me seems another obvious sin he indulges in and allows others to lose themselves in. One of his former aquaintances goes bankrupt, and while paying for hookers and drugs all the time will help that along, so will gambling. And gambling was also frowned upon at the time. But in Dorian Gray, it's all an excuse to show sex scenes. Surely, sometimes it's more shocking to leave misdeeds to the imagination?
6. The film opens with Basil's murder. This suggests before we've even started that Dorian will become a horrible person. Which is ok, I guess. Hitchcock wouldn't mind it - suspense and all that. But then we get a flashback. A title appears on the screen: 'One Year Earlier'. What! No! Dorian kills Basil much later than that. And no one discovers Basil's body. Dorian makes absolutely sure of that, through blackmailing an old friend, Alan, into doing it for him. Alan is a minor character in the film, so he could have been called upon to do this. Instead, Dorian clumsily disposes of the body, it's found, and after Basil's funeral Dorian goes travelling for 25 years. When he returns, everybody is confused at his agelessness, and seem a little uncomfortable in his presence. But they quickly get over it. They get over it. People are surprised and jealous that Dorian never seems to age, which means they don't really question his strange appearance. Remove him from the picture, so to speak, and it seems shocking. But I get it, everything has to be so obvious in a film, right? So his actions have to have huge consequences...
7. ...Except that subtlety is Wilde's strongest point. The point of the novel is that Dorian's shallow decision ruins him, but it is a prison of his own making; he destroys himself, and other people and their superficial natures keep them from seeing his own. The comment is that society ignores the soul all the time. Dorian's morality, or lack thereof, is what has changed his life. There need be no outside punishment - internal punishment is enough. And this could have been done on film perfectly, hello, Crimes and Misdemeanors? The Player? And those films go further than The Picture of Dorian Gray. Their protagonists, rather than going mad at the lack of external punishment for their crimes, actually get over it. So the filmmakers could have been true to the book in this sense. They try, but it's too little too late. James is killed, but Dorian is only slightly haunted. So Harry then must deliver the punishment, by discovering Dorian's secret.
8. The homoerotic subtext from the book is clumsily handled. The novel begins with Basil nervously revealing to Harry that he may be revealing his love for Dorian in his paintings. He is afraid of these feelings, and needs Harry to help him understand them. Harry dismisses them, perhaps going on to have them for Dorian himself. In any case, there does appear to be a love triangle of sorts until Sybil's intrusion. The first film adaptation was made in 1945, in Hollywood, and so subject to the Hays Code. So, no homosexual subtext there. So, come the 2009 version, and no such strictures to be placed on the film, how is this handled? Terribly. Some creepy looks from Colin Firth, a quick glance at Dorian's naked back from Ben Chaplin's Basil, and...oh, a kiss and the suggestion of oral sex. Yep. That's it. Dorian comes on to Basil to distract him from the missing portrait. And it doesn't really work. In the novel, Basil's feelings are pretty obvious, and the film is all about being obvious. So why handle this theme so badly? It is very annoying. What would have been truer to the novel would have been Dorian drawing out a confession from Basil as a distraction, but also having Dorian slightly appalled by Basil. It seems obvious to most readers that Dorian and Harry have feelings for each other; they even live together at one point! Why not use more of that?
9. Harry has a daughter that makes him tame. This isn't so bad as it sounds, actually. In the novel, strong female characters are lacking. Wilde must have noticed this, because toward the end of the novel he introduces the little Duchess, Gladys. She's Harry's cousin, so they have verbal sparring matches and she seems able to see through Harry's nonsense. It's also clear that despite being married, she is taken with Dorian, who flirts with her but takes it no further. After the incident with James he is determined to change his life. I'm not this character is entirely necessary to the plot, but she is a strong female character designed to challenge Harry's sexist ideas. Making her Harry's daughter is interesting, but she's never quite as strong as Gladys is in the novel. I think she's also a nod to Dorian's country girl, whom he abandons as an act of what he thinks is contrition, and Harry thinks is self-serving. Again, I'm not sure it works, but I don't find it entirely offensive, either.
10. There is a ridiculous subplot involving Dorian's memories of abuse at the hands of Lord Kelso. It seems that the only purpose it serves is to show Dorian's imperfection and perhaps a more credible explanation for his propensity toward cruelty. This is handled differently in the novel, but it would have been hard to translate onto film. Dorian does a family history and finds that previous generations have indulged in sin and madness just as he does, and he wonders if he's simply inherited this behaviour and if the picture isn't just a figment of his imagination. But again, it is dealt with so swiftly in the film that it's clumsy. It seems little more than a visual device to reveal to Dorian that the picture is taking on all his imperfections. Which isn't strictly what the novel suggests.
11. The picture is a monstrous, living thing, seemingly infested with maggots. I can understand the film wanting to make the portrait more organic, but does it have to be so stupid? It's so loud that it's uncomfortable. And it seems to be able to see. In the film, we get subjective pov shots from the painting. I don't really like this. I like that the portrait remains largely unseen both in the novel and the 1945 film. When you do finally see it in the 1945 film it's truly hideous. I still find it disturbing. This is pretty much it:
Much scarier than the picture in Dorian Gray. The portrait should have been more like the shark in Jaws. Unseen and therefore more terrifying. And largely unheard.
It's not all bad, I guess. I did mention that Ben Barnes is ridiculously attractive? Ben Chaplin is pretty good as Basil. Colin Firth seems miscast. I like all of Rebecca Hall's appearances in film, so I enjoyed her turn as Emily Wootten. The costumes were pretty? Oh, I give up, I really hated it. I hated its guts. I vow to do Oscar justice!
1 comment:
I wish someone would create a faithful adaptation with a beautiful blonde Dorian Gray. If you ever do Oscar justice, I'll help out gladly!
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