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catscradle Jun. 18th, 2007 12:40 pm)
catscradle Jun. 18th, 2007 12:40 pm)Since I've near nothing to do at work today, I wrote a very overly long and spoiler ridden summary and review of The Painted Veil. So if you have nothing to do also and don't mind the spoilers (for both the book and the movie), then please read on.
I ordered this movie from Netflix after I read the book. W. Somerset Maugham is one of my favorate author's, but I somehow escaped reading this book until just a week ago. It's not one of my favorite books from him when compared to The Razor's Edge or Of Human Bondage, but it's a good read and I'd recommend it. The movie does a good job sticking to the gist of the story, though it changes some key aspects to make it more palatable to a theater audience. I must admit, the book moves much more slowly and the action mostly takes place in the head of the protagonist, Kitty Fane, so if you're going to do a movie adaptation, I think they made the right choice in the changes.
The movie stars Naomi Watts as the seemingly dig-bat adultrous, Kitty Fane, and Ed Norton as her socially inept cuckold, though scientifically brilliant, husband, Walter Fane. Liev Schreiber plays Kitty's political opportunist lover. Don't worry, I've not given anything away. Both the novel and movie start out with us knowing these fact.
The movie begins with Kitty and Walter sitting by the side of a dirt road in China in 1925. It appears that Walter is none to happy with her from his seeming indifference to her comfort (if she were a Sim, her plum bob would be yellow going on puce), but Kitty quietly accepts his hostility.
We then hit a series of flashbacks that explain why Walter is so pissed off. Kitty was a young socialite - not quite of Paris Hilton stature, more like one of her friends you might see in the background of a paparazzi pic - but she's getting older and she still hasn't found a suitor. Mom is getting worried that she might never get Kitty out of her hair, so she puts the pressure on. This is much more detailed in the book, but from both accounts, mother is a bitch and most likely the reason Kitty turns out to be a ditz. Meanwhile, Kitty's dad, who seems to hate most of the men that Kitty likes to date, invites Walter Fane over. Walter is a bacteriologist and is stationed in China. When it's found out that he works for the government, most people are turned off. Not much money to be made in the public sector. He's not prime suitor material, but dad seems to like him well enough. And mom will take anything now just to get rid of her. On top of all that her younger sister is now engaged. Kitty is very in danger of becoming an old maid. Plus she has to beat her sister to the punch just 'cause. So when Walter makes a rather botched, but cute as hell proposal - because lets face it, Nerd!Ed Norton rocks! - Kitty decides to accept.
There's no doubt about it, Walter is totally head over heels in love with her. He'd give her the universe if he could. He's a bit awkward, but he's smart. Very smart. Kitty doesn’t understand most things he says, and he finds most things she says rather trite. But he seems to still love her regardless. To be honest, I've no idea from the book or the movie why Walter likes her in the least. She's shallow to the core.
So they're living in Shanghai - though in the book I think it was Hong Kong. In an attempt to keep her happy and provide a social life for her, he takes her to a theater event. There she meets Charlie Townsend and his wife Dorothy. She hates Dorothy on sight, but is quite taken with Charlie. He's a total schmoozer. She sees Charlie as the guy that will take her away from her horrible life with Walter and his stupid bacteria. Charlie is a British diplomat with his eye on being governor one day. He's going places big. What attracts her to Charlie is precisely the thing that will break up their little trist.
Kitty and Charlie embark on an affair. They're stupid enough to conduct it in Kitty's house and one day they notice someone is at the door, though whoever it is never comes in. Much internal drama occurs in Kitty's head, but Charlie isn't too worried over it. As it turns out, it really was Walter. He knows what's going on. He confronts Kitty alone and gives her an ultimatum - come with him to a shanty village in the middle of no where, as he has volunteered to assist them with the cholera epidemic, or be served divorce papers where he's name both her and Charlie in an adulterous affair, thus ruining Charlie's political career and Kitty's reputation. Kitty freaks out and begs him to just divorce her quietly, but Walter won't hear of it. When she tell him that he still married her when he knew she didn't love him, so it's his fault as much as hers, Walter relents - a little. He tells her if Charlie agrees to divorce Dorothy and marry Kitty, he'll divorce her quietly and leave Charlie's name out of it. Kitty is gleeful because now she and Charlie can be together forever. Earlier, Charlie remarked that women tend to believe that men are more in love with them than they really are. In Kitty's case, this is correct.
What is good news for Kitty is not so good for Charlie. He's isn't going to divorce his wife, and he thinks Walter is being rather fair in his deal. Kitty figures out pretty quickly that Charlie was really just after a good piece of ass. Walter set her up, knowing that Charlie was a total putz and wouldn’t risk anything over her. Kitty feels her life is now over so she might as well just get cholera and die. She leaves with Walter to certain doom.
Walter and Kitty share a silent hostility for the first few weeks they're there. If they do talk, it's usually Walter insulting her intelligence. When he warns her not to eat certain foods that might be contaminated, she stuffs it in her mouth. When he says she should be inoculated, she declines when she finds out he has not been inoculated either. It seems they both want to tempt fate. But Kitty starts to show signs that someone is actually home up in that brain of hers. Loneliness starts driving her to talk to people she wouldn't normally give the time of day. She even starts getting ideas and figuring things out for herself. Kitty starts getting with it.
One day she ventures out to an orphanage run by French nuns. As she tours it, the nuns all gush about how wonderful Walter is and how he's a saint and how much he loves the kids and on and on. Kitty is taken back a little - she never thought of Walter that way. She decides that rather than be useless she's going to help at the orphanage. She ends up loving the orphans and they love her - probably the first time in her life she actually felt love and gave it back.
Meanwhile, Walter is trying to determine the cause of the epidemic. Where I believe the movie is better than the book, is that it gives insight into Walter's mind. Because the book is only seen through Kitty's eyes, we only learn as she learns that Walter is mega brilliant - and because she never sees anything he does first hand, we learn everything third-hand. In the movie, we actually get to see it from his perspective.
Drama occurs on cue and Walter has to save Kitty from the Chinese nationalists that want the westerners to go home. Mostly they want Walter to stop telling them they can’t drink from the well. But it’s infected water, so Walter’s pretty stuck there. Anyway, he saves Kitty from being bashed to death and then they continue to run into each other at the orphanage. There they start seeing each other as caring individuals and not the spouse that they are stuck with. They then have one romantic day with each other and fall in love. This, by the way, never happens in the book. They never see what the other is doing and never fall in love, which makes it all the more tragic. I suppose this wouldn’t play well for a movie – I liked the book as it was, but found in the movie adaptation that I enjoyed the fact that they knew what the other was doing. It changes the story, but not as much as you’d think.
Kitty then learns she’s pregnant and is totally unaware of who the father is. When she tells Walter, he’s a little concerned, but soon decides it doesn’t matter. He’s going to lover her and the baby, all is well.
Or maybe not. Walter accidentally cut himself on a test tube he dropped that had the cholera virus in it. Back when he was still pissed at the world he didn’t inoculate himself and thus caught the virus. Kitty rushes to his side to take care of him, but there isn’t much hope – they’re out of saline solution that Walter needs to keep hydrated. They are unable to get it in time and Walter dies. The tragedy of the book is that Walter is never able to forgive himself for falling for Kitty. The implication is that he indirectly commits suicide by experimenting on himself – he dies virtually of a broken heart. The movie brings resolution at his death and he’s hopefully able to move on to the next world in peace.
But the point of the story has little to do with Walter, it’s about Kitty. In the end, Kitty is able to stand tall. She meets Charlie five years later on the streets of London with her little boy, whom she named Walter. Charlie tries talking to her but she insists she must move on and g'day, sir. She doesn’t need people like Charlie in her life – she’s learned what life is about and it’s not social climbing and affairs with frivolous men. Charlie can go stuff it for all she cares, she has important things to do that don’t involve him.
Ed Norton is totally brilliant as Walter. He does mild-mannered rage better than anyone else. I can’t think of another actor I would have rather seen in the role. His voice carries in the same even tone whether he’s in love or being brilliant or totally pissed off. Yet each emotion is conveyed and you’re never left wondering if he really means what he says. Likewise Naomi Watts portrays Kitty believably. Kitty may be a dipshit, but I get the feeling that she’s a dipshit because she just doesn’t know any better. Her transformation, then, is believable because it’s her exposure to a larger world beyond her realm that triggers it. It’s through knowledge and understanding that she becomes a real person who has concerns beyond her own.
Good book, good movie – go watch.
I ordered this movie from Netflix after I read the book. W. Somerset Maugham is one of my favorate author's, but I somehow escaped reading this book until just a week ago. It's not one of my favorite books from him when compared to The Razor's Edge or Of Human Bondage, but it's a good read and I'd recommend it. The movie does a good job sticking to the gist of the story, though it changes some key aspects to make it more palatable to a theater audience. I must admit, the book moves much more slowly and the action mostly takes place in the head of the protagonist, Kitty Fane, so if you're going to do a movie adaptation, I think they made the right choice in the changes.
The movie stars Naomi Watts as the seemingly dig-bat adultrous, Kitty Fane, and Ed Norton as her socially inept cuckold, though scientifically brilliant, husband, Walter Fane. Liev Schreiber plays Kitty's political opportunist lover. Don't worry, I've not given anything away. Both the novel and movie start out with us knowing these fact.
The movie begins with Kitty and Walter sitting by the side of a dirt road in China in 1925. It appears that Walter is none to happy with her from his seeming indifference to her comfort (if she were a Sim, her plum bob would be yellow going on puce), but Kitty quietly accepts his hostility.
We then hit a series of flashbacks that explain why Walter is so pissed off. Kitty was a young socialite - not quite of Paris Hilton stature, more like one of her friends you might see in the background of a paparazzi pic - but she's getting older and she still hasn't found a suitor. Mom is getting worried that she might never get Kitty out of her hair, so she puts the pressure on. This is much more detailed in the book, but from both accounts, mother is a bitch and most likely the reason Kitty turns out to be a ditz. Meanwhile, Kitty's dad, who seems to hate most of the men that Kitty likes to date, invites Walter Fane over. Walter is a bacteriologist and is stationed in China. When it's found out that he works for the government, most people are turned off. Not much money to be made in the public sector. He's not prime suitor material, but dad seems to like him well enough. And mom will take anything now just to get rid of her. On top of all that her younger sister is now engaged. Kitty is very in danger of becoming an old maid. Plus she has to beat her sister to the punch just 'cause. So when Walter makes a rather botched, but cute as hell proposal - because lets face it, Nerd!Ed Norton rocks! - Kitty decides to accept.
There's no doubt about it, Walter is totally head over heels in love with her. He'd give her the universe if he could. He's a bit awkward, but he's smart. Very smart. Kitty doesn’t understand most things he says, and he finds most things she says rather trite. But he seems to still love her regardless. To be honest, I've no idea from the book or the movie why Walter likes her in the least. She's shallow to the core.
So they're living in Shanghai - though in the book I think it was Hong Kong. In an attempt to keep her happy and provide a social life for her, he takes her to a theater event. There she meets Charlie Townsend and his wife Dorothy. She hates Dorothy on sight, but is quite taken with Charlie. He's a total schmoozer. She sees Charlie as the guy that will take her away from her horrible life with Walter and his stupid bacteria. Charlie is a British diplomat with his eye on being governor one day. He's going places big. What attracts her to Charlie is precisely the thing that will break up their little trist.
Kitty and Charlie embark on an affair. They're stupid enough to conduct it in Kitty's house and one day they notice someone is at the door, though whoever it is never comes in. Much internal drama occurs in Kitty's head, but Charlie isn't too worried over it. As it turns out, it really was Walter. He knows what's going on. He confronts Kitty alone and gives her an ultimatum - come with him to a shanty village in the middle of no where, as he has volunteered to assist them with the cholera epidemic, or be served divorce papers where he's name both her and Charlie in an adulterous affair, thus ruining Charlie's political career and Kitty's reputation. Kitty freaks out and begs him to just divorce her quietly, but Walter won't hear of it. When she tell him that he still married her when he knew she didn't love him, so it's his fault as much as hers, Walter relents - a little. He tells her if Charlie agrees to divorce Dorothy and marry Kitty, he'll divorce her quietly and leave Charlie's name out of it. Kitty is gleeful because now she and Charlie can be together forever. Earlier, Charlie remarked that women tend to believe that men are more in love with them than they really are. In Kitty's case, this is correct.
What is good news for Kitty is not so good for Charlie. He's isn't going to divorce his wife, and he thinks Walter is being rather fair in his deal. Kitty figures out pretty quickly that Charlie was really just after a good piece of ass. Walter set her up, knowing that Charlie was a total putz and wouldn’t risk anything over her. Kitty feels her life is now over so she might as well just get cholera and die. She leaves with Walter to certain doom.
Walter and Kitty share a silent hostility for the first few weeks they're there. If they do talk, it's usually Walter insulting her intelligence. When he warns her not to eat certain foods that might be contaminated, she stuffs it in her mouth. When he says she should be inoculated, she declines when she finds out he has not been inoculated either. It seems they both want to tempt fate. But Kitty starts to show signs that someone is actually home up in that brain of hers. Loneliness starts driving her to talk to people she wouldn't normally give the time of day. She even starts getting ideas and figuring things out for herself. Kitty starts getting with it.
One day she ventures out to an orphanage run by French nuns. As she tours it, the nuns all gush about how wonderful Walter is and how he's a saint and how much he loves the kids and on and on. Kitty is taken back a little - she never thought of Walter that way. She decides that rather than be useless she's going to help at the orphanage. She ends up loving the orphans and they love her - probably the first time in her life she actually felt love and gave it back.
Meanwhile, Walter is trying to determine the cause of the epidemic. Where I believe the movie is better than the book, is that it gives insight into Walter's mind. Because the book is only seen through Kitty's eyes, we only learn as she learns that Walter is mega brilliant - and because she never sees anything he does first hand, we learn everything third-hand. In the movie, we actually get to see it from his perspective.
Drama occurs on cue and Walter has to save Kitty from the Chinese nationalists that want the westerners to go home. Mostly they want Walter to stop telling them they can’t drink from the well. But it’s infected water, so Walter’s pretty stuck there. Anyway, he saves Kitty from being bashed to death and then they continue to run into each other at the orphanage. There they start seeing each other as caring individuals and not the spouse that they are stuck with. They then have one romantic day with each other and fall in love. This, by the way, never happens in the book. They never see what the other is doing and never fall in love, which makes it all the more tragic. I suppose this wouldn’t play well for a movie – I liked the book as it was, but found in the movie adaptation that I enjoyed the fact that they knew what the other was doing. It changes the story, but not as much as you’d think.
Kitty then learns she’s pregnant and is totally unaware of who the father is. When she tells Walter, he’s a little concerned, but soon decides it doesn’t matter. He’s going to lover her and the baby, all is well.
Or maybe not. Walter accidentally cut himself on a test tube he dropped that had the cholera virus in it. Back when he was still pissed at the world he didn’t inoculate himself and thus caught the virus. Kitty rushes to his side to take care of him, but there isn’t much hope – they’re out of saline solution that Walter needs to keep hydrated. They are unable to get it in time and Walter dies. The tragedy of the book is that Walter is never able to forgive himself for falling for Kitty. The implication is that he indirectly commits suicide by experimenting on himself – he dies virtually of a broken heart. The movie brings resolution at his death and he’s hopefully able to move on to the next world in peace.
But the point of the story has little to do with Walter, it’s about Kitty. In the end, Kitty is able to stand tall. She meets Charlie five years later on the streets of London with her little boy, whom she named Walter. Charlie tries talking to her but she insists she must move on and g'day, sir. She doesn’t need people like Charlie in her life – she’s learned what life is about and it’s not social climbing and affairs with frivolous men. Charlie can go stuff it for all she cares, she has important things to do that don’t involve him.
Ed Norton is totally brilliant as Walter. He does mild-mannered rage better than anyone else. I can’t think of another actor I would have rather seen in the role. His voice carries in the same even tone whether he’s in love or being brilliant or totally pissed off. Yet each emotion is conveyed and you’re never left wondering if he really means what he says. Likewise Naomi Watts portrays Kitty believably. Kitty may be a dipshit, but I get the feeling that she’s a dipshit because she just doesn’t know any better. Her transformation, then, is believable because it’s her exposure to a larger world beyond her realm that triggers it. It’s through knowledge and understanding that she becomes a real person who has concerns beyond her own.
Good book, good movie – go watch.
