And I definitely got the sense in the movie that by the time he actually talked to Neil he was at the 'aware this is not a UFO thing but hiding from the knowledge' point, but it probably had much more of an impact to see him actually reach that point.
I think it's the difference between watching Brian realize he's wrong about the UFO theory -- without him ever really verbalizing his growing suspicions -- and reading rather overblown prose in which he tells you about realizing he's wrong. The first pulled me along with him; the second left me weirdly frustrated. Some things are more powerful left unverbalized.
any degree of COMPLETELY FUCKING AWFUL is still, well, completely awful
Exactly. And I think... because the story sets Neil and Brian up as parallels, I liked the way the movie made them feel more equal to me. The relative weight of the various storylines in the book was subtly different, which may also have had something to do with which secondary characters got POV chapters and who was narrating what events. For instance, some of Brian's life is shown from his sister's POV. She is resolutely normal and also largely ignorant of his issues, whereas Wendy knows the details of Neil's abuse and Eric gets talked into shoplifting sprees with Neil, so there's a greater sense of wrongness in Neil's half of the book than in Brian's. That may be for artistic effect -- showing the different ways people and families react to horrible things -- but as I said, it unbalanced things for me.
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Date: 2011-05-30 03:58 am (UTC)I think it's the difference between watching Brian realize he's wrong about the UFO theory -- without him ever really verbalizing his growing suspicions -- and reading rather overblown prose in which he tells you about realizing he's wrong. The first pulled me along with him; the second left me weirdly frustrated. Some things are more powerful left unverbalized.
any degree of COMPLETELY FUCKING AWFUL is still, well, completely awful
Exactly. And I think... because the story sets Neil and Brian up as parallels, I liked the way the movie made them feel more equal to me. The relative weight of the various storylines in the book was subtly different, which may also have had something to do with which secondary characters got POV chapters and who was narrating what events. For instance, some of Brian's life is shown from his sister's POV. She is resolutely normal and also largely ignorant of his issues, whereas Wendy knows the details of Neil's abuse and Eric gets talked into shoplifting sprees with Neil, so there's a greater sense of wrongness in Neil's half of the book than in Brian's. That may be for artistic effect -- showing the different ways people and families react to horrible things -- but as I said, it unbalanced things for me.