Disgrace - some thoughts
June 23
One thing that it is hard for the print version of Meanjin to do in a timely fashion, is run reviews around the time the book (or film, or exhibition) has come out. We are hoping to do more of this online. Though I wouldn't go so far as to call what follows a review, I did have a few comments I wanted to make about the film Disgrace. Be warned, there are spoilers ahead.
The film is based on JM Coetzee's extraordinary novel of the same name - a novel that is one of my favourite of all time. One of the things I admired and was moved by was the extreme honesty Coetzee is capable of when writing about race, and about masculinity You feel this incredible sense of relief that there is a writer who is capable of a kind of truth telling. I found it enriching as well as tough.
One of the things the film made me think about - obviously I suppose - was the difference between a film and a novel. While the film follows the bones of Coetzee's novel fairly faithfully, inevitably the different nuances in the adaptation/translation leaves you thinking about the material in another way.
An example of this would be the issue of empathy for the main character (this SMH review raises this). That is, I liked the main character of the novel, David Lurie, more in the novel than I did in the film. One of the reasons for this is the casting of John Malkovich. His casting has a very particular effect. He's an odd looking man. A strange mixture of exaggerated feminine features ( lips so lush they look botoxed, those broad hips) and an equally exaggerated masculinity. He uses this sense of debauch and physical excess to violent effect, so that scenes that I had not read as rape in the novel certainly look like it in the film. This is useful in that it allows the film to be, in part, explicitly about the blurry boundaries between consensual and forced sex. To be honest its analysis of heterosexual relations comes extraordinarily close to radical feminist analyses - such as Susan Brownmiller's - that all heterosexual relations are rape. But while I understood the novel was about the ambiguities of male/female relationships, especially in a country where rape is distressingly and increasingly common, it had not felt quite as bleak as the film does.
Of course this is where the character of Bev is important. She represents the possibility of sexual relations (indeed ANY relations) based on affection rather than fear. But in the book Lurie was totally surprised to find himself having sex with Bev. He was incapable of consciously perceiving an actual friend - a plain woman of his own age - as someone you could have a physical intimate relationship, and yet he found himself embracing her. This was a crucial point in the book. An understanding on Coetzee's part of the difference between unconscious and conscious motivations and the consequent possibilities for growth (or, I suppose, destruction). We lose the depth - perhaps the point? - of their sexual relationship in the more standard seduction scene we get in the film (despite a beautiful performance by Australian actress Fiona Press).
Another theme that felt blunter in the film was the central one of race relations. The novel was not interested in painting romantic pictures of black/white relations but what felt like directness in the novel feels almost like racism in the film. Petrus's increasing sense of entitlement to the land owned by Lurie's daughter, Lucy, is deeply unsettling though perhaps that was the film's intention: to confront white viewers with their own internalized racism. Certainly that is more a more familiar position for the white viewer than the depths of Lucy's guilt about race relations in South Africa, and the lengths to which she will go to atone. A friend of mine who has lived in South Africa said he thought her position was about white South African's 'stuckness' and their inability to move on. Certainly the phrase 'it is over' is used in both the book and the film to indicate that the colonizer's time in that country is finished. They need to be able to imagine new lives for themselves.
I'm left wondering whether the intense bleakness I felt in the film is more about how I read the novel rather than to do authorial intentions, in either text. Did I just need to see a possibility for hope in the novel that the film, correctly, refuses? All in all, I'm interested to go back to the book again and see how I respond to it on third reading.
There is alot more I could write about - Coetzee's sense (like Peter Singer's) that our relationship with animals is a necessary extension of both of being human, and what kind of human we might choose to be. I'm also interested in the fact that the film is an Australian film and that there seems to have been a decision to play that fact down when it comes to marketing the film. But, alas, the print journal beckons. (September is about to go to the typesetter) so I must away.
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Comments
23 Jun 09 at 12:00
I read Disgrace again last night, and it seemed clear to me that David wasn't aware of the magnitude of his actions. And this is for me one of the great strengths of the novel; everything David says and does can and should be read with and against the grain. Coetzee invites us to do so.
I'll wait until seeing it before I comment further.
...23 Jun 09 at 12:13
Thank you for that, Sophie. My memory of the book is vague, but I was sure teh film told a very different story, no matter how faithfully it reproduced the dialogue. John Malkovich gives us David Lurie as a bully, and a rapist who mouthes a lot of Romantic twaddle, which is a much less interesting character than Coetzee created.
...23 Jun 09 at 16:14
I definitely didn't read David Lurie as a rapist. It's quite disappointing and brash if the movie portray him as so.
...23 Jun 09 at 19:47
I read the book quite some time ago and i haven't yet had a chance to see the movie but as far as i'm concerned David did force himself upon the young girl. This, set against what happens at the farm is what makes the book so interesting. Seeing david try to seperate his actions from those of the intruders is to me, the true subtext of the novel. I'm a big Malkovich fan so it will be interesting for me to see what he does with the character.
...24 Jun 09 at 19:31
It was very interesting to hear your thoughts and I hope you can write more. I found you expressed a lot of things I was thinking but couldn't have articulated...
At first I thought the film was fairly true to the book, despite it being some time since I read it. There were some things - basically what you pointed out above, that felt a little different though. Until I read this, I was thinking that I'd found it easier to sympathise with David in the novel simply because, it being a book, I was imagining it my own way and maybe my subconsciuos rendering of those scenes was not as harsh as the film portrayed. However seeing the same actions on screen, all the visual cues etc... well his actions seemed clearly worse. It's good to know that someone else had a similar reading of both, and that I wasn't just letting him off the hook because of my own interpretation of the novel.
...24 Jun 09 at 21:47
David definitely did force himself on his student and that is my impression from reading the book and seeing the film show it clearly. She did turn against him over the power he exerted over her in the relationship and he was 'disgraced' and lost his job over it. She made an attempt on her life in the book as well as in the movie so how can there be any question of her consent. She didn't fight him in either case but she submitted to his superior will and authority not exactly willingly. She was very sad about it all and we imagine him to be a softer character in the book but this is only superficial impression, his charm and erudition can persuade one of his culture and make him seem more interesting and alluring than he is. His daughter in the car tells him he knows what taking a woman by force means, alluding to his earlier actions with his student which led him to be there with his daughter. Also it is reasonable to wonder if there have been many other such conquests over young confused women. He felt he had to apologise to her family on his kneeds and then even in the book he lusted after the sister when he is left in the room with her waiting. He is an animalistic character but can we judge him as an evil monster? It is difficult to do that even with all the evidence against him. He is a man with a mad heart and no boundaries.
...25 Jun 09 at 9:35
I haven't read the book so can't compare the film with its
source material. I generally have ambivalent feelings about
Malkovich, but was impressed by his restraint in this film (he
often plays what seems like a parody of himself).
I don't have a problem with bleak stories per se but what I feel lets this film down is the lack of development or exposition of the relationships between Lurie and the two main female characters: the student and the daughter. It feels too constructed or contrived (perhaps as if it were a not wholly successful translation from novel to screen) and I felt that I was missing things that a reader might have more information about. Most importantly, it left me feeling emotionally cold about what is going on between the characters and why, a sort of distancing effect. It left me feeling frustrated. Perhaps that's the intention. Perhaps we're to feel Lurie's frustration. Anger, affection, hate, whatever... they're all good feelings to extract from a film, but to be left feeling frustrated is, well, frustrating.
...25 Jun 09 at 10:50
I certainly agree, Paul, that the film is distancing and, by the end particularly, disengaging emotionally. But like you I was left not being sure if that was a good, or a bad thing, for the film to have done to us. (And unclear about how much of it was a failure to bring the book to life, or, in fact, a very accurate representation of the book). Certainly I think that reading allows the reader to fill in more of the gaps than a film allows for the viewer, which makes it more forgiving.
...25 Jun 09 at 16:11
Regardless of the intentions of the writers of the book and film, I thought it was not a good thing. The writing (in the film) has the effect of keeping the viewer 'out' of the story when immersion in the story is what we generally seek.
...08 Jul 09 at 11:26
I have not read the book as yet however I have seen the movie. To me David was no different to a lot of men out there who would look at young girls with lust.I don't think the film portrays him as a bully. If you think the film portrays him as a bully/rapist then you'll think that men in general are all bullies and rapists. I think the film portrays him as a lonely man who would want to be loved and wants a relationship but is finding it very hard. After all he has had 2 failing marriages. As far as the daughter Lucy is concerned I think she is portrayed as feeling a little guilty (white woman post apartheid) but at the same time refuses to let go and move on. It seems to me she is punishing herself. I also see David as trying very hard to have a better relationship with his daughter regardless how he feels about the rape and the child she was about to have.
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