"Oh Baby, Never Let Me Go"

Only two films come to mind when thinking of which I prefer over the novels upon which they were based:  The Painted Veil, and more recently, Never Let Me Go.  In John Curran's adaptation of The Painted Veil, Edward Norton and Naomi Watts play a couple estranged by the lack of love and trust within their marriage.  As punishment for her infidelity Walter Fane (Nortan) drags his wife Kitty, played by Watts, through a cholera epidemic deep within the Chinese mountains.  Similarly to W. Somerset Maugham’s original novel, “The Painted Veil” beautifully portrays the power of change and forgiveness; however, I prefer Hollywood’s version of the story, which is why “The Painted Veil” has been dubbed one of my favorite movies and thus found it's place among my exclusive DVD collection (I must admit I am somewhat of a movie snob, just ask Larry). 

In the novel, the reader experiences Kitty's personal growth first hand, but I never felt as though she reached her full potential among Maugham’s pages.  Admittedly my perception may, in part, be skewed by the fact that I saw, and fell in love with, the film first and therefore read the book with how the story should end in mind.  However, I still stand by my opinion that I was inspired more by Kitty's growth from a high society snob to a compassionate young woman while watching the film than I was by the lack of true character development in the novel. 

Now available on red box is another movie I would recommend over its novel.  Through themes of innocence and knowledge, ignorance and enlightenment, Kazuo Ishiguro writes a gripping novel entitled Never Let Me Go.  Fascinating as it was, Ishiguro’s dystopia was more heartfelt on the big screen.  The way Ishiguro wrote Kiera Knightly’s character Ruth was more impressive than her screen role in that while reading the novel I couldn’t stand the manipulative snake, but while watching the movie she was just mildly annoying.  However, I never procured particularly strong feelings for his other characters while reading his novel.  Maybe the lack of connectedness I felt was because the characters and their relationships developed through the narrator Kathy’s memories, and therefore became just that, a distant memory.  Whatever the reason, I preferred the range of emotions I experienced while witnessing the love, loss, and coming of age on the big screen over the impressionless characters I found within Ishiguro’s words.