Love and Movies
When I was a junior in high school, I had a really good English teacher. He completely pounded into our heads that books translated into movies often times yield disaster. His wisdom has always stayed with me and was summoned forth today after watching Charly based on the book Flowers for Algernon.
I am tired of perfectly good novels/short stores/whatev being ruined by Hollywood in their attempt to sell a movie by inserting a “love/sex twist.” I know I am preaching to the choir about this, but damn it!
I enjoyed Flowers. Not the best book, but it was pretty good. It was sort of about Psychology and that makes me happy. Yeah, there was stuff about Charly’s emotional development in the book—that includes love. However, the book also focused on other aspects of his “treatment,” many of which were more prominent than the love stuff.
Oh, not the movie! Completely different! All love! They were worried about his emotional development and “emotional development,” to them, means only love. There was a montage that was way odd. I like to just think of it as “Homage to the 70’s.” It contained very odd colored boxes and shots of Charley making odd faces, which is a signal to the audience that he is learning about life. Fuck! The next thing we know he is trying to throw himself on his teacher. That was not in the book!
I honestly think the movie would have been better if they would have followed the book more. I mean, we could have at least seen him puke then. Eeeh…
