Steve Jacobs, who has considerable experience as an actor, has directed only one previous film, the rather episodic "La Spagnola", but here he has managed to do justice to a very fine literary work by J M Coetzee. The fairly short book, 220 pages, fits neatly into the 2 hours of screen time, and writer Anna Maria Montecelli has followed the book fairly closely – little is left out. The last two scenes in the book are reversed in the film which makes the ending a little less bleak, but otherwise it is a fairly faithful adaptation-perhaps too faithful, as others have said, but I'm not sure what other approach could have been taken. Coetzee's themes come through loud and clear. Although the production team is Australian, filming was mainly on location (on a shoestring $6 million) in South Africa.
The story of a professor's ill-judged affair with a student and his fall from grace is a pretty common one, a recent example being Philip Roth's novel "Elegy" filmed with Ben Kingsley as the professor. For some reason these errant academics always seem to be in the field of literature – surely professors of botany and physics have similar tendencies. Exposure brings about a variety of reactions. The parents and other students are apoplectic, but the panel of fellow academics inquiring into Professor Lurie's affair is all set to thrash him with a feather, as long as he apologises in public. However, Lurie is tired of teaching and just wants to confess and leave, perhaps to continue his work on Lord Byron (a suitable literary hero for a fornicator). He goes off to visit his daughter Lucy on her smallholding in the Eastern Cape countryside, but this turns out to be less than idyllic. In the new South Africa power has moved into the hands of the black majority, and white people are there on sufferance only, as Lucy has realised. Ex-professor Lurie becomes involved with an animal refuge, and its operator, a blowsy middle aged woman whom he would not have given a second look in his previous life. Yet somehow he comes to accept his humiliation.
John Malkovich's performance as Lurie is what you would expect – an arrogant, hissing snake of a man. I couldn't help wondering how differently Ben Kingsley would have done it. Malkovich is a very mannered actor at his best on the stage and his Lurie is, well, a bit lurid. Nevertheless he holds our attention if he does not capture our sympathy. Jessica Haines as his daughter Lucy does – a wonderfully judged and utterly realistic piece of acting.
What the film does give us, which the book cannot, is the magnificence of the setting, and the film makers have done very well in this regard, though they have used locations in the Western Cape rather than the East. I was struck by the similarities with parts of Australia, and wondered what it would be like living as a member of a white minority. As Coetzee and the film makers attest, it is not a comfortable position to be in.
The story of a professor's ill-judged affair with a student and his fall from grace is a pretty common one, a recent example being Philip Roth's novel "Elegy" filmed with Ben Kingsley as the professor. For some reason these errant academics always seem to be in the field of literature – surely professors of botany and physics have similar tendencies. Exposure brings about a variety of reactions. The parents and other students are apoplectic, but the panel of fellow academics inquiring into Professor Lurie's affair is all set to thrash him with a feather, as long as he apologises in public. However, Lurie is tired of teaching and just wants to confess and leave, perhaps to continue his work on Lord Byron (a suitable literary hero for a fornicator). He goes off to visit his daughter Lucy on her smallholding in the Eastern Cape countryside, but this turns out to be less than idyllic. In the new South Africa power has moved into the hands of the black majority, and white people are there on sufferance only, as Lucy has realised. Ex-professor Lurie becomes involved with an animal refuge, and its operator, a blowsy middle aged woman whom he would not have given a second look in his previous life. Yet somehow he comes to accept his humiliation.
John Malkovich's performance as Lurie is what you would expect – an arrogant, hissing snake of a man. I couldn't help wondering how differently Ben Kingsley would have done it. Malkovich is a very mannered actor at his best on the stage and his Lurie is, well, a bit lurid. Nevertheless he holds our attention if he does not capture our sympathy. Jessica Haines as his daughter Lucy does – a wonderfully judged and utterly realistic piece of acting.
What the film does give us, which the book cannot, is the magnificence of the setting, and the film makers have done very well in this regard, though they have used locations in the Western Cape rather than the East. I was struck by the similarities with parts of Australia, and wondered what it would be like living as a member of a white minority. As Coetzee and the film makers attest, it is not a comfortable position to be in.