beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2005-12-20 12:40 am
beccaelizabeth) wrote2005-12-20 12:40 am
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Saw Lost Hearts on BBC4
Read the story, don't watch the silly TV version.
It wasn't well done at all.
When I read it at boarding school it gave me nightmares. The dead child in the bath, terrible haunting image. But that moment in this version was just laughably stupid. The makeup was terrible, the child actors... can't be blamed for looking like prats when that was presumably how they were asked to do it, but weren't scary in the slightest, and they showed far too much. The two kids were both in there, and they dropped their arms to show big missing chunks in their chest. There were ribs and red lumpy bits and you were busy trying to (a) figure out what you were seeing and (b) wonder where they learned their anatomy.
"A figure inexpressibly thin and pathetic, of a dusty leaden colour, enveloped in a shroud-like garment, the thin lips crooked into a faint and dreadful smile, the hands pressed tightly over the region of the heart.
As he looked upon it, a distant, almost inaudible moan seemed to issue from its lips, and the arms began to stir."
Much, much scarier, because you have to wonder.
Also, re-reading the story, the actor they had for Mr Abney wasn't right at all. He looked like a manic santa with less beard. He's supposed to be "Mr Abney--the tall, the thin, the austere" Though the manic fits.
Also, they changed the words. They made the boy's birthday Halloween. For why? Cliche does not improve a story. Eleventh of September it was.
And I understand TV condensing the timeline, because you can't age an actor nearly a year conveniently, but it was much much creepier that a man could bring a child in and look after them for nearly a year with the sole purpose of the heart thing.
The fingernails were overdone. And also oddly underused.
They kept the ones in the bedroom door, which were nicely scary, but the incident was handled all wrong to my mind. And then they left out the scratches in his nightclothes, that he was wearing, right over his heart! Teensy tiny bit scarier, to have a ghost scratch you there and not know it.
Plus he's told 'Ah, that's a good child: always say your prayers, and then no one can't hurt you.' But considering how close they got, you are left to wonder how true that is.
In the written story.
In the TV adaptation he got yelled at for taking a knife to the door. How is that scary? Entirely the wrong way is how.
And throughout the TV thing the manic-santa Mr Abney is always there, apparently knowing everything that goes on and the reason for it. Again, an entirely different kind of scary. And quite wrong. He's mainly absent from the written story. Again one has to imagine, instead of being explained to endlessly.
Then he turns up, to invite the boy to his room, at 11 o'clock.
The TV thing made it midnight. I say again, cliche is not an improvement.
Because Abney hasn't been there before, his request has weight. If, as in the TV thing, he's been talking to the boy all along, this request is far less strange.
And that night is only the second time the ghosts are seen. First there is a dream, then the physical evidence of the cuts but without his seeing what did it, and then finally he sees both ghosts - the lost girl in the bath, and the angry boy with the long nails. And because he only now sees them, they are scarier. And because he only *now* sees them, the night is scarier.
And this is the first time they finally raise their hands away from their chests, and he sees a terrifying spectacle. On the left side of his chest there opened a black and gaping rent
Not ugly anatomy, not any mention of the lack of heart, but an absence, a gap, and we are left to fill in the detail ourselves.
And then the largest change, which I can only partly understand. In a written story you can wrap it up by having someone read someones notes, but on TV it has to be heard and seen. Fair enough. Though I do wish they'd kept this bit in, and as close to the end as possible
Some annoyance may be experienced from the psychic portion of the subjects, which popular language dignifies with the name of ghosts. But the man of philosophic temperament--to whom alone the experiment is appropriate--will be little prone to attach importance to the feeble efforts of these beings to wreak their vengeance on him.
Because of course as it turns out feeble is very much not the right word.
I suppose I can understand actually getting as close to the boy being killed as possible. The TV version brings him in to the room and drugs him, to make clear by showing what the old man planned, rather than the telling of the original.
But in the story he only hears the man talking to the ghosts, then bursts in, and
Mr Abney was found in his chair, his head thrown back, his face stamped with an expression of rage, fright, and mortal pain. In his left side was a terrible lacerated wound, exposing the heart. There was no blood on his hands, and a long knife that lay on the table was perfectly clean.
All the details of the story - the cuts over the heart, the long fingernails - add up to this - that the ghosts cut the bastard's heart out, just as he had done to them. And the knife being clean is absolutely *necessary* to the story, for it removes the possibility the man did it to himself.
Yet in the telvision version we watch the two ghosts pick up the knife and stab him. That uses none of the details that preceded it - not a single one - and therefore isn't the payoff to anything, let alone what should be an excellent story.
to add insult to injury, they add an entirely counterproductive funeral scene, where the priest wishes the old bastard to heaven. He murdered two children and wrote it down in detail - having the representative of authority hope that god will take him in is just sick.
MR James stories have an elegance, a set of details that tend to stick in the mind, and tension that rises carefully until it all makes sense - and you really wish it didn't.
That adaptation had all the subtlety of Scooby Doo. Cackling mad old men, and explaining everything in advance. No mystery, no suspense. Boring.
On the other hand, its just as well they screwed it up so badly. Because the real story still gives me the creeps big time, and I'm alone in my flat at midnight...
Read the story, don't watch the silly TV version.
It wasn't well done at all.
When I read it at boarding school it gave me nightmares. The dead child in the bath, terrible haunting image. But that moment in this version was just laughably stupid. The makeup was terrible, the child actors... can't be blamed for looking like prats when that was presumably how they were asked to do it, but weren't scary in the slightest, and they showed far too much. The two kids were both in there, and they dropped their arms to show big missing chunks in their chest. There were ribs and red lumpy bits and you were busy trying to (a) figure out what you were seeing and (b) wonder where they learned their anatomy.
"A figure inexpressibly thin and pathetic, of a dusty leaden colour, enveloped in a shroud-like garment, the thin lips crooked into a faint and dreadful smile, the hands pressed tightly over the region of the heart.
As he looked upon it, a distant, almost inaudible moan seemed to issue from its lips, and the arms began to stir."
Much, much scarier, because you have to wonder.
Also, re-reading the story, the actor they had for Mr Abney wasn't right at all. He looked like a manic santa with less beard. He's supposed to be "Mr Abney--the tall, the thin, the austere" Though the manic fits.
Also, they changed the words. They made the boy's birthday Halloween. For why? Cliche does not improve a story. Eleventh of September it was.
And I understand TV condensing the timeline, because you can't age an actor nearly a year conveniently, but it was much much creepier that a man could bring a child in and look after them for nearly a year with the sole purpose of the heart thing.
The fingernails were overdone. And also oddly underused.
They kept the ones in the bedroom door, which were nicely scary, but the incident was handled all wrong to my mind. And then they left out the scratches in his nightclothes, that he was wearing, right over his heart! Teensy tiny bit scarier, to have a ghost scratch you there and not know it.
Plus he's told 'Ah, that's a good child: always say your prayers, and then no one can't hurt you.' But considering how close they got, you are left to wonder how true that is.
In the written story.
In the TV adaptation he got yelled at for taking a knife to the door. How is that scary? Entirely the wrong way is how.
And throughout the TV thing the manic-santa Mr Abney is always there, apparently knowing everything that goes on and the reason for it. Again, an entirely different kind of scary. And quite wrong. He's mainly absent from the written story. Again one has to imagine, instead of being explained to endlessly.
Then he turns up, to invite the boy to his room, at 11 o'clock.
The TV thing made it midnight. I say again, cliche is not an improvement.
Because Abney hasn't been there before, his request has weight. If, as in the TV thing, he's been talking to the boy all along, this request is far less strange.
And that night is only the second time the ghosts are seen. First there is a dream, then the physical evidence of the cuts but without his seeing what did it, and then finally he sees both ghosts - the lost girl in the bath, and the angry boy with the long nails. And because he only now sees them, they are scarier. And because he only *now* sees them, the night is scarier.
And this is the first time they finally raise their hands away from their chests, and he sees a terrifying spectacle. On the left side of his chest there opened a black and gaping rent
Not ugly anatomy, not any mention of the lack of heart, but an absence, a gap, and we are left to fill in the detail ourselves.
And then the largest change, which I can only partly understand. In a written story you can wrap it up by having someone read someones notes, but on TV it has to be heard and seen. Fair enough. Though I do wish they'd kept this bit in, and as close to the end as possible
Some annoyance may be experienced from the psychic portion of the subjects, which popular language dignifies with the name of ghosts. But the man of philosophic temperament--to whom alone the experiment is appropriate--will be little prone to attach importance to the feeble efforts of these beings to wreak their vengeance on him.
Because of course as it turns out feeble is very much not the right word.
I suppose I can understand actually getting as close to the boy being killed as possible. The TV version brings him in to the room and drugs him, to make clear by showing what the old man planned, rather than the telling of the original.
But in the story he only hears the man talking to the ghosts, then bursts in, and
Mr Abney was found in his chair, his head thrown back, his face stamped with an expression of rage, fright, and mortal pain. In his left side was a terrible lacerated wound, exposing the heart. There was no blood on his hands, and a long knife that lay on the table was perfectly clean.
All the details of the story - the cuts over the heart, the long fingernails - add up to this - that the ghosts cut the bastard's heart out, just as he had done to them. And the knife being clean is absolutely *necessary* to the story, for it removes the possibility the man did it to himself.
Yet in the telvision version we watch the two ghosts pick up the knife and stab him. That uses none of the details that preceded it - not a single one - and therefore isn't the payoff to anything, let alone what should be an excellent story.
to add insult to injury, they add an entirely counterproductive funeral scene, where the priest wishes the old bastard to heaven. He murdered two children and wrote it down in detail - having the representative of authority hope that god will take him in is just sick.
MR James stories have an elegance, a set of details that tend to stick in the mind, and tension that rises carefully until it all makes sense - and you really wish it didn't.
That adaptation had all the subtlety of Scooby Doo. Cackling mad old men, and explaining everything in advance. No mystery, no suspense. Boring.
On the other hand, its just as well they screwed it up so badly. Because the real story still gives me the creeps big time, and I'm alone in my flat at midnight...