|
Literary
delight
>> Neil LaBute’s
page-to-screen adaptation
Possession is both thoughtful and entertaining
by MATTHEW
HAYS
 At
first glance, I wouldn’t have thought Neil LaBute the perfect
person to take on the film version of Possession, the A.S. Byatt novel
that won the Booker Prize in ’90. His oh-so-heavy first two films,
In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors, were terrifically
contemporary. And his last film, Nurse Betty, was a comedy, but an intensely
dark one.
But LaBute proves-beyond
any reasonable doubt-that he’s up for the task of adapting
a book this complex and intricate to the big screen. In the film, LaBute
regular Aaron Eckhart plays an American scholar of the fictional Victorian
literary figure Randolph Henry Ash. While visiting England on a fellowship,
Eckhart comes across an astonishing discovery, one he knows would propel
him high up in the ranks of literary historical academia: Eckhart finds
original correspondence between Ash and Christabel LaMotte (another
fictional literary figure), people who, up until that point, had never
been romantically linked by scholars. Enter Gwyneth Paltrow, a LaMotte
expert, whom Eckhart consults in an effort to unravel this new literary
mystery.
Unlike so many other movies
that cut between periods, LaBute’s leaps between the contemporary
fiction (with Paltrow and Eckhart sleuthing) and the Victorian fiction
(in which Jeremy Northam plays Ash and Jennifer Ehle plays LaMotte)
feel entirely seamless and unforced-an impressive achievement,
for sure. As Paltrow and Eckhart continue to delve into the various
historical leads, Northam and Ehle play out their convoluted past
lives, which reveal a Virginia Woolf-esque literati love triangle.
The past scenes are beautifully handled, with a clear attentiveness
to detail that enhances the film’s believability.
The choice of LaBute as
director does seem to make more sense as the film moves on. Paltrow
and Eckhart are clearly troubled academics with intimacy issues of
their own, while the characters of the Victorian era are dealing with
their own repressive barriers. (Interestingly enough, the characters
from the Victorian era live far more sexually daring lives than the
characters from the contemporary bits.) Seeing as LaBute’s specialty
has been the skewering and hyperbolizing of sexual mores, his shifting
between these two periods makes more sense.
Cinema-goers who love their lit will swoon over this movie, but don’t
forgo it if you’re not a big reader (or think all summer movies
should be XXX). Though Possession, the book, is clearly a novel about
writing and ideas surrounding writing itself, LaBute has created a
film that’s pleasingly cinematic as well. In particular, his
crucial bit of casting is delightful: Paltrow and Eckhart exhibit
serious chemistry in the leads. With their looks and brainy gravitas,
it’s hard not to be drawn in-and hard not to hope the
two are cast in the leads of another film soon. :
Possession opens
Friday, Aug. 16
>>
Movie Listings |
