![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasIt was wonderful. We loved the book when we read it, and the author wrote the screenplay (which is not always a good sign, especially if it's the author's first attempt at putting together a movie, but, in this case Louis Sachar was aware that a good book is not the same thing as a good novel, and got plenty of advice about the differences, and listened. And the movie is as beautifully-interwoven an example of magical realism as the book is.)
On the way out, Lis asked what I thought the problems with the movie are, since one thing that we like discussing about works that we really like is how they could have been better. I couldn't think of anything, in particular. But something just struck me as a problem -- something that is kind of jarring my suspension of disbelief.
Okay, I've got no problem believing that a curse could be passed down through generations. The idea that nature itself would rebel against a town and destroy it for their racism and injustice, that's easy to believe. That a family curse could be broken by a descendant of the victim doing for a descendant of the curser what the victim failed to do for the curser -- that's just plain common sense.
And that the hand of fate would have worked reality so that all this could take place -- that's all perfectly easy to believe.
But there's a major problem with the ending. In the end, Camp Greenlake (the juvinile prison camp where the movie mainly takes place) is shut down, and the directors arrested, because they're actually criminals using the juvinile delinquents as slave labor, they've destroyed records, and recklessly endangered the lives of their charges.
But, see, Camp Greenlake is in Texas. I mean, c'mon, can you imagine Texas shutting down a juvie prison camp for something as petty as that?
On the way out, Lis asked what I thought the problems with the movie are, since one thing that we like discussing about works that we really like is how they could have been better. I couldn't think of anything, in particular. But something just struck me as a problem -- something that is kind of jarring my suspension of disbelief.
Okay, I've got no problem believing that a curse could be passed down through generations. The idea that nature itself would rebel against a town and destroy it for their racism and injustice, that's easy to believe. That a family curse could be broken by a descendant of the victim doing for a descendant of the curser what the victim failed to do for the curser -- that's just plain common sense.
And that the hand of fate would have worked reality so that all this could take place -- that's all perfectly easy to believe.
But there's a major problem with the ending. In the end, Camp Greenlake (the juvinile prison camp where the movie mainly takes place) is shut down, and the directors arrested, because they're actually criminals using the juvinile delinquents as slave labor, they've destroyed records, and recklessly endangered the lives of their charges.
But, see, Camp Greenlake is in Texas. I mean, c'mon, can you imagine Texas shutting down a juvie prison camp for something as petty as that?