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narcasseThis latest adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray is a piece funded by the National Lottery and a production by Ealing Studios which should be all the positive indication that it needs but since every single modern adaptation of the story can’t even get Dorian Gray’s hair colour right it may just be that the heyday of Ealing Studios is over.
The opening of the film already gives the viewer Dorian Gray as Patrick Bateman disposing of a body in a rather messy fashion when according to canon by the point he needs to dispose of a body he doesn’t even have to do it himself because he has an entire database of gentlemen he can blackmail into doing it for him. The narrative then jumps to a point a year earlier with a naive Dorian apparently arriving in London for the first time, when the case in the novel isn’t that he’s overwhelmed by the city at all since he already lives there. He also comes in with a white trunk in opposed to the seemingly black one he dumps the body in as possibly one of the most ham-fisted indicators of the state of his soul when he first arrives. Possibly the only redeeming thing about this opening sequence is his being accosted by a rent boy in what might be a brief cinematic homage to a similar scene in Wilde.
Right from the start I had the distinct impression that somehow the producers of this film had mistaken naivety for stupidity. Dorian Gray isn’t stupid: he’s naïve; he lacks baser experiences or even world experience beyond what’s appropriate for his station. He isn’t on the other hand particularly thick because of a lack of this which is pretty much proven by the fact that when he does start haring off to opium dens and doing whatever it is that he does that causes his friendship to be fatal to young men he’s never actually caught. He’s also not particularly gauche which seems to be the angle the film plays up to begin with nor is he completely unknown in society being Lord Kelso’s grandson. Not that Lord Kelso beats him which seems to be what the film implies. The entire attic schoolroom sequence was ludicrous and read like a bad fanfic to the point where I seriously wondered from that point on if some teenaged fanboy had been allowed to write the script.
Furthermore, the actor cast as Basil Hallward is much too young for my taste and his first meeting with Dorian and the fact that he paints while drinking absinthe seemed ludicrous. To put the last part in perspective, it took me three attempts at reading this poem with the title right at the top to figure out that it was about the sun after two glasses of absinthe; what I thought I was doing trying to read Baudelaire while drunk being beside the point. Likewise the first meeting with Lord Henry paints Lord Henry as some elder lecher when in fact he’s nothing of the sort and it’s debatable whether he actually does any of the terrible things that Dorian interprets his advice to be about anyway. Lord Henry’s advice isn’t ever specific either, he tells Dorian to enjoy life and take pleasure from it but he never actually tells him to go to a whorehouse or destroy the reputations of women and men alike. Though the film does deliver Basil’s line addressing this in a roundabout way it then has Lord Henry proactively guide Dorian into ruining himself which ruins it. Dorian ruins himself in the novel, he chooses his various acts not Lord Henry. Even the entire rigmarole with Lord Henry setting Dorian up to have his corruption revealed isn’t necessary because by the time people are actively talking about his reputation in society Dorian has done enough to cause the gossip himself without anybody else’s input.
Regarding the implied sex and on-screen kiss between Basil and Dorian, while I’m glad to see an adaptation that gives us the suggestion of his homosexual escapades on-screen as well as his heterosexual ones I was also a little put out by it. While Basil/Dorian is the great unrequited pairing of the novel it can’t work as realised because Basil is fascinated by the original Dorian and by the time Dorian is ripe with corruption Basil wouldn’t have wanted him anyway. Likewise the odd scene involving Lord Henry pushing Dorian away instead of embracing him seemed to have touches of a similar theme about it but very, very oddly in the execution. Of course after the murder of Basil there’s a ridiculous sequence involving Dorian recalling his various activities prompted by things like jam or scones or whatever other idiotic piece of imagery could be shoehorned into afternoon tea, which culminates in Dorian apparently having a little drug session in the attic with the portrait while wrapped in Basil’s bloodstained scarf, just in case the film still had any dignity to do away with by that point. The cracked mirror imagery also came into play again during Basil’s murder but it’s so trite that it’s not even worth lambasting for its idiocy.
There’s also a distinct miss when it comes to the corruption of the portrait. It’s meant to show a corrupted Dorian, his image changes: it’s not the integrity of the canvas itself that’s at stake. His expression is meant to twist and degrade not the material fabric of the canvas. Likewise his paranoia about the painting means that he doesn’t go on a grand tour so that when he comes back it’s obvious that he hasn’t changed. Society doesn’t seem to notice for the most part or they ignore it. Even James Vane when he catches up with Dorian, after being at sea not in a nuthouse, is fooled because he can’t confirm Dorian’s identity by name anyway since Sybil never knows it and just calls him ‘Prince Charming’ or ‘Sir Tristan’ in the 1945 adaptation.
All that said there are some nice touches such as where the film turns several gendered tropes on their heads and in the contrast of the sharpness of Lord Henry’s acerbic tone turned against Dorian instead of those around him, though that’s not nearly enough to win me over in comparison to the rest of it.
The overriding impression I came away with was that while there were a few moments of good cinematography and storytelling these were mostly buried under the metric fucktonne of How To Get It Wrong. This was The Picture of Dorian Gray for people who can’t read, have no understanding of subtlety or fancy Ben Barnes. For all that the 1945 adaptation added in a love interest who redeems Dorian in the end in the form of Basil’s niece it still was a rather good piece; even Angela Lansbury’s Sibyl Vane was just prettier. Which is to say that the redemptive love-interest plot can be done well, it’s just that this version seems to tag it on at the end as an afterthought on top of all the other piles of bad design choices.
One of the few good points that I took away from the film was simply the suggestion that Ben Barnes may in fact be able to act. I won’t know for certain till I’ve seen Easy Virtue which doesn’t seem to have sold itself on his looks but in Dorian Gray at least he does seem to have thrown himself wholeheartedly into the role. As for Colin Firth for all that the one interview I read seems to suggest that he’s a decent enough chap I’ve still no real indication of his acting ability other than possibly in Valmont which I dismiss anyway for being a study in why you shouldn’t adapt a derivative work in opposed to the original.
At the end of the day when it comes to this sort of thing I’m a purist anyway so I wasn’t going to be inclined to like this adaptation in the first place. Though I have to admit that if somebody had filmed an adaptation about ten years ago casting Jude Law as Dorian Gray and Stephen Fry as Henry Wotton I would have laughed myself silly in amusement.
The opening of the film already gives the viewer Dorian Gray as Patrick Bateman disposing of a body in a rather messy fashion when according to canon by the point he needs to dispose of a body he doesn’t even have to do it himself because he has an entire database of gentlemen he can blackmail into doing it for him. The narrative then jumps to a point a year earlier with a naive Dorian apparently arriving in London for the first time, when the case in the novel isn’t that he’s overwhelmed by the city at all since he already lives there. He also comes in with a white trunk in opposed to the seemingly black one he dumps the body in as possibly one of the most ham-fisted indicators of the state of his soul when he first arrives. Possibly the only redeeming thing about this opening sequence is his being accosted by a rent boy in what might be a brief cinematic homage to a similar scene in Wilde.
Right from the start I had the distinct impression that somehow the producers of this film had mistaken naivety for stupidity. Dorian Gray isn’t stupid: he’s naïve; he lacks baser experiences or even world experience beyond what’s appropriate for his station. He isn’t on the other hand particularly thick because of a lack of this which is pretty much proven by the fact that when he does start haring off to opium dens and doing whatever it is that he does that causes his friendship to be fatal to young men he’s never actually caught. He’s also not particularly gauche which seems to be the angle the film plays up to begin with nor is he completely unknown in society being Lord Kelso’s grandson. Not that Lord Kelso beats him which seems to be what the film implies. The entire attic schoolroom sequence was ludicrous and read like a bad fanfic to the point where I seriously wondered from that point on if some teenaged fanboy had been allowed to write the script.
Furthermore, the actor cast as Basil Hallward is much too young for my taste and his first meeting with Dorian and the fact that he paints while drinking absinthe seemed ludicrous. To put the last part in perspective, it took me three attempts at reading this poem with the title right at the top to figure out that it was about the sun after two glasses of absinthe; what I thought I was doing trying to read Baudelaire while drunk being beside the point. Likewise the first meeting with Lord Henry paints Lord Henry as some elder lecher when in fact he’s nothing of the sort and it’s debatable whether he actually does any of the terrible things that Dorian interprets his advice to be about anyway. Lord Henry’s advice isn’t ever specific either, he tells Dorian to enjoy life and take pleasure from it but he never actually tells him to go to a whorehouse or destroy the reputations of women and men alike. Though the film does deliver Basil’s line addressing this in a roundabout way it then has Lord Henry proactively guide Dorian into ruining himself which ruins it. Dorian ruins himself in the novel, he chooses his various acts not Lord Henry. Even the entire rigmarole with Lord Henry setting Dorian up to have his corruption revealed isn’t necessary because by the time people are actively talking about his reputation in society Dorian has done enough to cause the gossip himself without anybody else’s input.
Regarding the implied sex and on-screen kiss between Basil and Dorian, while I’m glad to see an adaptation that gives us the suggestion of his homosexual escapades on-screen as well as his heterosexual ones I was also a little put out by it. While Basil/Dorian is the great unrequited pairing of the novel it can’t work as realised because Basil is fascinated by the original Dorian and by the time Dorian is ripe with corruption Basil wouldn’t have wanted him anyway. Likewise the odd scene involving Lord Henry pushing Dorian away instead of embracing him seemed to have touches of a similar theme about it but very, very oddly in the execution. Of course after the murder of Basil there’s a ridiculous sequence involving Dorian recalling his various activities prompted by things like jam or scones or whatever other idiotic piece of imagery could be shoehorned into afternoon tea, which culminates in Dorian apparently having a little drug session in the attic with the portrait while wrapped in Basil’s bloodstained scarf, just in case the film still had any dignity to do away with by that point. The cracked mirror imagery also came into play again during Basil’s murder but it’s so trite that it’s not even worth lambasting for its idiocy.
There’s also a distinct miss when it comes to the corruption of the portrait. It’s meant to show a corrupted Dorian, his image changes: it’s not the integrity of the canvas itself that’s at stake. His expression is meant to twist and degrade not the material fabric of the canvas. Likewise his paranoia about the painting means that he doesn’t go on a grand tour so that when he comes back it’s obvious that he hasn’t changed. Society doesn’t seem to notice for the most part or they ignore it. Even James Vane when he catches up with Dorian, after being at sea not in a nuthouse, is fooled because he can’t confirm Dorian’s identity by name anyway since Sybil never knows it and just calls him ‘Prince Charming’ or ‘Sir Tristan’ in the 1945 adaptation.
All that said there are some nice touches such as where the film turns several gendered tropes on their heads and in the contrast of the sharpness of Lord Henry’s acerbic tone turned against Dorian instead of those around him, though that’s not nearly enough to win me over in comparison to the rest of it.
The overriding impression I came away with was that while there were a few moments of good cinematography and storytelling these were mostly buried under the metric fucktonne of How To Get It Wrong. This was The Picture of Dorian Gray for people who can’t read, have no understanding of subtlety or fancy Ben Barnes. For all that the 1945 adaptation added in a love interest who redeems Dorian in the end in the form of Basil’s niece it still was a rather good piece; even Angela Lansbury’s Sibyl Vane was just prettier. Which is to say that the redemptive love-interest plot can be done well, it’s just that this version seems to tag it on at the end as an afterthought on top of all the other piles of bad design choices.
One of the few good points that I took away from the film was simply the suggestion that Ben Barnes may in fact be able to act. I won’t know for certain till I’ve seen Easy Virtue which doesn’t seem to have sold itself on his looks but in Dorian Gray at least he does seem to have thrown himself wholeheartedly into the role. As for Colin Firth for all that the one interview I read seems to suggest that he’s a decent enough chap I’ve still no real indication of his acting ability other than possibly in Valmont which I dismiss anyway for being a study in why you shouldn’t adapt a derivative work in opposed to the original.
At the end of the day when it comes to this sort of thing I’m a purist anyway so I wasn’t going to be inclined to like this adaptation in the first place. Though I have to admit that if somebody had filmed an adaptation about ten years ago casting Jude Law as Dorian Gray and Stephen Fry as Henry Wotton I would have laughed myself silly in amusement.
