new england woe

Patricia Arquette. I can never make up my mind as to whether or not I find her attractive. Something about her teeth vaguely disturbs me. Well, putting that small issue aside, I discovered in class today that she was Mattie Silver in the film version of Ethan Frome that we were going to be watching.

After seeing the film I guess that I would say that she was an appropriate choice, but her accent sounded odd. It was Southern and I had no idea why. Then when I did a background check online I found out that she spent part of her childhood in the South. As to why she didn't try to mask this accent in the film is beyond me though.

Liam Neeson as Ethan was also a good choice, but the man way overdid the crippled walk. Sigh. Yes, we all know that he suffered, but it was almost to the point of parody. Monty Python stagger, stagger, stagger kept going through my mind. Then again maybe that was Yellowbeard. Peter Sellers as the Inspector from the Pink Panther films also came to mind. Drama suddenly became comedy.

The biggest revision in the story that I did not like was the change in the narrator. In the novel the narrator is an engineer, but in the film they made him a reverend which for me changed the theme of the story a great deal.

For me most of the novel is about people being trapped by things that they can not control and people accepting them. Two primary factors are social class and the need for money to advance if not survive in the world. With the sudden introduction of religion there is the hint of hope or to go the other way maybe justice for what Ethan and Mattie did. One might almost get the impression that they deserved to be crippled for what they did. Suddenly their love becomes something forbidden and in need of punishment. Rather than being two people who wanted to escape and couldn't, they become symbols of what not to do in life.

Maybe I am reaching with this line of thought, but instead of Ethan having lost potential I saw him more as someone being punished for trying to do something that he shouldn't have done. Yes, there is a certain element of doom running throughout the novel, but I see that as the tradition of New England writing with other examples being The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, poems of Edgar Allen Poe and to a certain degree the work of Robert Frost. The overall message always seems to be saying that life in New England is hard and people will suffer.

The comparative discussion on Thursday should be quite lively.

...

On the romance front, I saw but did not speak with my classmate Kelly. Usually we sit on opposite sides of the room and once the lights went down for the film no one moved. Maybe we'll have a chance to talk on Thursday. I have one more play to attend this year and I might ask her to go with me.

 
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