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Surrey, United Kingdom

Saturday 5 February 2011

Brighton Rock - the film


Went to see Brighton Rock at the lovely Reigate Everyman cinema this afternoon, and am still a little undecided about it.  Of course, there is no arguing that the cinematography is beautiful and the acting, for the most part, is wonderful.  Andrea Riseborough gives Rose an innocence and childlike quality that goes some way to making her character believable.  Sam Riley, whilst certainly brooding and menacing wasn't much else and we never got a sense of why he was the way he was.  I haven't read the book, but watching the film made me wonder how much more there is in the novel than they were able to squeeze into the film.  So much of the story seems to be unexplained - I don't think we saw enough of Rose and her home life to understand her willingness to devote herself unconditionally to Pinkie.  The religious aspects of the story are glossed over and there are many sub-plots which are hinted at, but left undeveloped.  It may be that the book is much the same but I felt that many of the characters seemed quite flat because their motives were unexplained.  On the plus side, the film certainly gave me a good deal to think about - what makes us love or trust people the people we do, what are we driven by? - and it also made me want to read the novel!

2 comments:

  1. Visually this looks wonderful, but from what I remember of the book, it's a difficult story to pull off. I'm sorry that the religion and the characters didn't come through, because those are my favourite things about Greene.

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  2. I think the problem is that in terms of plot there really isn't that much going on - it's all about the characters and their motives and morals and these don't come across well in films as they do in a novel. I have the Ralph Fiennes version of The End of the Affair to watch this weekend (I've never seen it, but have read the book) so will be interested to see how that compares!

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