Scenes and Leaves
At the beginning of this year, my wife and I gathered ourselves up and took a visit to the movies. There we purchased our tickets for a movie that both, honestly, knew nothing about. What had hit us was much more than I ever thought it would have been; a beautiful film of such power that our brains were as if touched by divinity. As we exited the theater, and began our feet for the long walk home (and in all honesty, the better parts of the next couple of days), we found ourselves conversing unceasingly about the world we were driven into.
As soon as I had heard that this movies was in fact an adaptation of a film, a resolved myself to find it. And so, the very next day I headed to Osaka's highly, and distastefully romanticized fantasy of SoHo, NYC, Amemura, I entered Random Walk. With this book store comprised of nothing but foreign (mostly English) language books, I found it in a snap. Unfortunately, the "Now a major motion picture" label had been slapped on and Clive Owens sullied face stares blankly ahead, piercing into the heart of me.
Despite the ridiculousness of the price (nearly three-times the original UK price), I hit the counter with fury and made my purchase.
What We Find
In 2021, the world is a much more desolate place. It hasn't been ravaged by war. No real animosity lingers for anyone. The world is a desert of complacency, hollowed out by one single, completely unexplainable fact. There hasn't been a child conceived and delivered in twenty-five years.
Surrounded by the apathetic; by women who take dolls and cats as their own flesh and blood; by cities that become just a little bit quieter after each death, Theo is a teacher with barely any one person to teach. The old watch TV while those who are still young - the Omegas - are too spoiled, too self-important to do anything.
After his complete acceptance of the end, Theo is ready for anything, by having nothing. He accidentally killed his only child, and his wife has left him. All he has left is his museums. However, this desperate peace is broken by a beautiful woman and her four companions. Desperate to rid England of Theo's cruel cousin, The Warden of England, The Five feebly fumble into a farce of a revolution. Theo, wanting no part in this, finds that it he can't separate himself from it.
Theo is thrust into The Five's terrible world and is compelled to stay. To protect a secret that would profoundly change him and the world in both divinely and monstrous ways.
Action-packing
Those who have seen the movie and are expected fast-paced, adrenaline-pumping action right off the bat might be surprised at the pacing of the book. Ms. James splits the book into two parts and the first half of the book is quite slow. It's Theo's slow creep to his eventual and expected demise at the hands of time. Many of the problems that appear in the movie never rear their ugly heads in the book, though the hints that they may have happened in the past are there.
The second-half of the book speeds like wild cart downhill with no breaks and only an old man to try his best at steering it while screaming out for those below. Though there are some familiar aspects of the movie in the book, the road is much different. Characters that were more or less prominent in the book are quite the opposite in the film. Some characters from the movie don't even appear in the book at all.
What a Difference a Director Makes
I, once a week, reminded my wife on how different the book is from the movie - and she, each time, reminded my to 'shut up'.
More often than not, movie adaptations of books don't go so swimmingly. The only book-turned-film, other than Children of Men, that I actually liked was Fight Club. The directions taken in both movies were often radically different than those in the book. However I think that the spirit of each book was captured in a way that made it timeless.
And the fact that the movies were so different led me to not at all hate either the film or the printed versions of the story. Both the film and book of Children of Men were completely enjoyable for totally different reasons.
And In the End
To not read this book would be a shame. It shows us the ridiculousness of every argument, every war, every atrocity. It preaches the precious life poetically, with passion and prose. It stands on our chests and makes us feel how every moment in our lives is precious. It dances inside a world with no children, and explains that this is not where we will ever want to be.
