I saw the film adaptation of Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper this past weekend. Honestly, it was much better than I'd expected it to be. I only went to see it in the first place because my mother asked me to go--I very rarely watch films based on books I've read and enjoyed. I hadn't planned on being into it, on having tears pouring down my face for the film's duration ... but that's what happened.
If I'd walked out of the theatre at the requisite beach scene (this seems to be a requirement in films about the dying), I probably would have given it a grade in the B range.
However, I didn't. I stayed for the ending. And that's where my issue with the film came into play ...
******SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT THE ENDING RUINED******
Picoult's novel builds up some heavy themes--death and dying, the bonds between siblings and the incredible depths to which they reach, legal rights for children whose parents aren't necessarily acting in their best interest, and so on.
After reading My Sister's Keeper, I kept the book in my heart. I thought about the agonizing choice faced by Sara and Brian Fitzgerald, who must cause two of their children agonizing pain (one physically through forced blood, bone marrow, and potentially a kidney transplant and one emotionally through serious neglect) in order to pour their energies into keeping their cancer-stricken daughter Kate alive. The book's denouement, which sort of puts their decade-long fight into a grim and terrible perspective, brings up questions about fate and God and karma. It makes you think.
The ending might not be realistic (as my ever-practical nurse practitioner mother points out, there's no way a girl weakened to the point of death by leukemia would ever survive a kidney transplant), but it makes you think.
The film adaptation went for the cop-out. It went for the cliche. It turned Picoult's carefully crafted work into a watchable tearjerker, sure, but it was a story we've all seen or read before: kid-with-cancer-suffers-terribly-and-so-does-her-family-and-then-she-dies-and-everyone's-really-sad.
This is where the English teacher and writer in me comes out. For one thing, and not to beat a dead horse, but that book makes you think. It leads to rich discussions, to moral debates, to mind-stretching. Furthermore, I know a lot of people who read that book that haven't read a book in years. I've recommended it to students, many of whom have never finished a "real" book, and they couldn't put it down. It's what bothered me about Holes, about Twilight, about Bridge to Terebithia. Here are these great books that kids will actually read, and they make movie adaptations that make reading the books obsolete, at least as far as many kids are concerned.
But anyway, if you've read My Sister's Keeper and you take in the film, leave after the pizza in the hospital. Trust me. You won't be disappointed that way, and you can imagine the ending how you want it to be.
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I saw it this weekend too, and as a reader, I totally agree! I was mad they changed the ending! Yeah, yeah...Picoult gets a little carried away with her well-timed, wrought-with-meaning death endings, but it provokes a question, like you said....and they robbed that from us! I love Picoult (as cliche as she can be) and I'm mad they changed it.
ReplyDeleteI didn't (and don't) plan on seeing the movie but why do filmmakers deviate from the book???
ReplyDeleteThe ONLY movie I've seen that stuck to the book like glue was Stephen King's "The Dead Zone". They left out the beginning (lead character's childhood) because it would've made the movie way too long but the rest was perfect.
I agree...what wwas the point of the story, if that's how they ended it? However, a worse cop-out was the film ad. of The Golden Compass. I was LIVID!!!!! They tried to make it a kid's movie, and the book simply isn't. It's a story ABOUT a kid.
ReplyDeleteHmph. This makes me so not want to see the movie. I *loved* the end of the book, and had been really looking forward to seeing it on screen!
ReplyDeleteI have read the book but have not seen the film. I will look out for it.
ReplyDeletehate it when film makers change the ending of a good book though. Glad they didn't in this case.
Thanks for visiting me.
I loved the book, I read it in one day it gripped me so tightly and I cried like a baby at the ending. I did hear they changed the ending on the movie which kind of makes me irritated because the books ending made me gasp and bawl.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I haven't read the book nor watched the movie. It's a given however, that every movie director thinks they need to put their own spin on the story. Like this bestselling author obviously had it wrong, despite the fact that readers everywhere are buying the book and cherishing it. So whenever I do go to something like this, I try to visualize it as a brand new story. Kind of like watching different movies about Count Dracula. It's all the same premise, but the details are different so it's basically a new story on an old theme.
ReplyDelete