Thoughts on Julie & Julia

What a great piece of film. Even taking aside Meryl Streep’s characteristically awesome performance, this was an extremely well composed, well directed script. It’s funny, because we’ve all seen Nora Ephron’s work before, except we don’t refer to them by the writer/director, we refer to them as “Meg Ryan movies,” and they include Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, Hanging Up, and When Harry Met Sally.

It’s interesting, though, what I loved about this script was something that it very much shares in common with these other movies: the idea of taking two individual stories that are somehow intertwined, and making them one. And even though it’s necessarily cruder than the way it is with these other movies (what separates our heroes is decades, rather than physical and/or emotional distance that disappears by the end of the movie, what this movie did spectacularly well was melting all the themes together rather seamlessly. The food becomes a character, and we get to see these same crucial dishes coming back again and again, first in one character’s story, and then in the other’s.

For what it’s worth, I’m EXTREMELY grateful that Amy Adams, rather than Meg Ryan, was cast for the lead in this one. Meg totally would’ve nailed the part, too – the cute, mousy little failed-New York-writer-turned-perma-temp-suffering-from-personal-crisis is one that she plays all too well. But I think it would’ve taken something away. It would’ve been like casting Tom Cruise as Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption (which almost happened).The part needed an actress who was just a tad understated, who doesn’t quite have that same star-meter, and Amy Adams was so terribly endearing,  it paid off in spades.

More on Adaptations – The Shawshank Redemption

I’ve seen and read both before, but revisited the Stephen King novella recently, and decided to follow it up by watching the movie. The main plot is the same. The novella tells the story by subjects, guided by chronology, whereas the movie tells the story chronologically, guided by the subjects. In a few cases they shifted the chronology for dramatic effect – for example, Andy coming into the library before Brookes leaves, so that he can help so-and-so set up the trust fund and so that we care about Brookes when he dies; or Andy spending 19 years at Shawshank instead of 27, so that we can frame the movie with Red’s 20, 30, and 40-year parole hearings.

Casting Morgan Freeman in the role of the Irishman “Red” was just a stroke of genius. As well as being a perfect fit for the character, it just gives a timeless universality to the two heroes of the tale – black and white, hope and despair, yin and yang who make this perfect match. It would seem that this casting wasn’t a given during the writing of the script – supposedly Rob Reiner wanted to direct it and cast Harrison Ford as Red. Can you imagine how different a film that would’ve been?

Something else I’m noticing is the three-act structure. Is it there? There are three parole hearings. Maybe that’s it. We enter the prison and try to assimilate ourselves. We try to improve our situation. The shit hits the fan, and we leave.

Standard wisdom says that the turning points are decisions made by the hero. There a few things Andy does that constitute decisions deviating from the routine – The tarring-the-roof scene and the final exit are obviously huge plot-driving decisions. But the Italian ladies singing Mozart? The library project? The rock hammer or Rita Hayworth? No, I think the structure here is not quite so black and white. I think the story stands on its own, and the turning points are the little successes Andy achieves along the way – including all of the above, as well as Hadley beating the shit out of Bogs and Tommy getting his GED.

The thing is, in the presence of great storytelling, “three-act-structure” is a phantom menace. In this movie, every event is driven by the one before it or the one after it. The characters are constantly making decisions that affect each other and affect themselves, and the situation itself is perfectly sufficient to heighten the tension and the stakes. Because that’s really what the acts are measuring: the tension and the stakes.

I think this is a happy benefit of the adapting a novella of this length. The story is a hundred pages long, which is just long enough to get in every piece of the action, without having to cut anything and without having to embellish, and letting you jump in at just 2 hours. Sure, you shift some stuff around, but you don’t need to worry about restructuring it, because it’s the perfect length as it is.

I wonder how many great screenplays have been passed over or killed in spirit because they don’t fit the mold. I wonder whether, if Darabont hadn’t directed his own screenplay, it could have ended up as one of the most acclaimed movies of all time. I doubt it. Reiner’s version, with Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford, certainly would have grossed more in the box office, but it wouldn’t have had the same energy or spirit.

A lot of great movies are based on short novels. Darabont himself is currently rumored to be working on an adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, which definitely qualifies.  And I have no doubt he’ll make it great, because he’ll have the freedom to do what he wants.