To The Ends Of The Earth
Jul. 7th, 2005 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloWilliam Golding's Lord of the Flies is read in schools, but the rest of his novels are a minority taste.
Maybe this will change now the BBC has filmed his trilogy, To The Ends of the Earth.
Set on board a clapped-out man-of-war turned emigrant ship at the close of the Napoleonic era, To the Ends of the Earth is a bracing riposte to the Hornblower mythos. The cabins drip, the bilges stink and the sailors are into buggery. The characters are all flawed in unlikeable ways. The hero is callow, arrogant, snooty and unfeeling.
The film gives us the creased uniforms and sweaty faces but misses out on Golding's poetic intensity. It's less visual than the book, less cinematic. We get lots of reading aloud from journals but only odd, perfunctory glimpses of sea and sky. The book deals with sex, class and the romantic imagination; the film deals with sex and class.
I'll watch the next two episodes. But what I really want to do right now is go out and buy the novels.
Maybe this will change now the BBC has filmed his trilogy, To The Ends of the Earth.
Set on board a clapped-out man-of-war turned emigrant ship at the close of the Napoleonic era, To the Ends of the Earth is a bracing riposte to the Hornblower mythos. The cabins drip, the bilges stink and the sailors are into buggery. The characters are all flawed in unlikeable ways. The hero is callow, arrogant, snooty and unfeeling.
The film gives us the creased uniforms and sweaty faces but misses out on Golding's poetic intensity. It's less visual than the book, less cinematic. We get lots of reading aloud from journals but only odd, perfunctory glimpses of sea and sky. The book deals with sex, class and the romantic imagination; the film deals with sex and class.
I'll watch the next two episodes. But what I really want to do right now is go out and buy the novels.
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-07 06:02 am (UTC)To the Ends of the Earth is an upsetting book. Golding had a fairly bleak (or should that be "realistic") view of human nature.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-07 06:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-07 06:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-07 06:09 am (UTC)Yes, I know, his books always sell and I've heard him speak. But I don't like his books.
I think that's allowed. Although, I guess his view of the world is also 'realistic'.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-07 06:21 am (UTC)Good writing doesn't have to be likeable. I admire Hemingway no end while disliking almost everything about him.