Interestingly, I felt like the movie was able to deal with that fallout better than the book was. Movies can show other characters' points of view a little more naturally than books can, so in the movie, we saw how the truth about Sarah affected a couple other characters besides Julia. For me, this meant not having so much disparate information crammed into the final pages of Julia's narrative and also intuitively understanding that the story wasn't over yet. I don't know if that makes sense, but I just thought it was an interesting difference between the book and movie.
On another note, the imagery in the movie was extremely hard to watch, another difference from the book. Both Kayla and I agreed the movie was more powerful in that way, without ever seeming to take advantage of such a horrible events. If you put the two of us together, we probably cried through the whole movie. Finally, most of the acting was very good, although there were just a couple forced scenes.
All in all, I'm going to take the easy route and say the two versions are tied, but if I wanted to go out on a limb, I'd say I prefered the movie better.
Did you read the book or see the movie? If so, what did you think?
I would have to agree with you, Bess. I liked the movie and the book almost the same in this instance, but I think the movie just edged out the book. I think it was partly because of the subject matter. The visuals for some of those scenes were incredibly difficult to watch. I haven't cried that much during a movie in a long time. I would wonder what other movies you guys think are equal to or better than the book they're derived from. Bookworms? Scott? Mom?
ReplyDeletePromoting a book on my blog today....
ReplyDeleteHere is a sanitized description I wrote for a squeamish friend who likes the actors but can't stand violence. I left out, as you can see, what the key was actually for.
ReplyDeleteOK Sarah's Key is not for you so here are the Cliff's Notes minus the bad stuff. This movie got a lot of stars but I don't think it deserved half of them.
Kristin Scott Thomas plays Julia Jarmond.
Julia is working on a start up magazine in Paris. They want to be in the same league as Vanity Fair. They are doing a retro story of how the French treated the Jews in WWII. Coincidentally, (too coincidentally if you as me) Julia is living in an apartment that belonged to one of the Jewish families that was deported.
The story is told in flashbacks as Julia playing reporter/detective uncovers details of the Nazi cruelty.
When she is back in present time another plot takes over. She has to deal with her duties as an editor and gets into a big fight with herself and her husband about whether of not to go ahead with her pregnancy. Her husband says no. The already have a teenage daughter and he says they are too old and he may be right because Julia is like 50 years old.
Then Julia goes and tracks down the whole family of Sarah who escaped from the Nazis (that is part of what the key is all about in Sarah's Key.) Finally she tracks down Sarah's son played (horribly) by Aiden Quinn. Quinn's character doesn't know he is Jewish and puts his fingers in his ears and goes: "la,la,la, la, I can't hear you...." Well not really but he might as well have because the acting was so bad. But then Quinn's father (played by George Birt who in turn is played by Rod Steiger) tells him the truth and gives him all his mother's scrapbooks and stuff.
So Sarah's son, played by Quinn meets Julia who now lives as a single mom in New York. They just discuss the details about Sarah and it is a dumb, anti climactic ending. Oh, and Quinn is all "what a beautiful child" about Julia's kid that she had when she was like 50 and it is a horrible scene because the kid is just some two year old that they dragged on the set and has the manners of a wolf cub.
Bad movie, I hope the book is better.
@Peter I really disagree with you on that one... First of all, Julia wasn't in her fifties.. She was in her forties... and her child didn't have bad manners.. why would you think that? I thought Aiden Quinn was good in this movie... And I rhought the movie and book were phenomenal.
ReplyDeleteI have read the book and then watch the movie and i find the book to be so much better then the movie.The book was a great piece of art that showed lots of emotion and understanding.Which in the movie I thought it skipped a lot of important details.I was extremely disappointed by how horrible the movie was.
ReplyDeleteMy advice for people who want to read Sarah's Key and then watch the movie is dont d it. The movie is a diss to the book and the author.