Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...note: In a riveting exercise in biblical scholarship and storytelling, Reynolds Price translated the Greek texts of Mark and John, then wrote his own narrative in Three Gospels (1996). We asked Price, a prolific novelist (Kate Vaiden, the trilogy A Great Circle, Roxanna Slade and the forthcoming children's novel A Perfect Friend), to take another look at episodes in Jesus' life and craft a new Gospel based on the historical evidence and his reading of the Bible. He adds a chapter in which his erudition and imagination take a leap into an unexplored moment after Christ's Resurrection...
...Moments such as these, however, are too scarce in a film that ends up expending most of its energy working through two major structural problems: an increasingly absurd plot and the difficulties of adapting a novel that consists primarily of first person interior narration. Jordan unadvisedly takes a literal approach here, employing the most drab, extensive set of voiceovers since the awful pre-director's cut version of Blade Runner. (Haven't seen it? Don't.) Fiennes, a subtle actor, is forced to explicitly identify every emotional state his character enters. Does Bendrix really need to tell us how "tortured...
...something is amiss in these scenes--the sex is cold and mechanical, and feels overly choreographed. Since Jordan gives us little else to define the relationship by, it's difficult to feel emotionally involved in the film's later, tragic scenes. There's an interesting subtext in the novel regarding the oft-blurred line between physical and emotional love, but the film just zeroes in on the copulation and leaves the rest to the imagination. Call me reactionary, but it seems a little backward...
Today, though, Jordan is far more interested in discussing his newest feature, The End of the Affair, an adaptation of a Graham Greene novel, starring Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore and Jordan favorite Stephen Rea. When it's pointed out that Rea has appeared in eight out of his ten films, Jordan deadpans, "Well, I owe him an awful lot of money from a bet years ago." When pressed on why Rea was right for the part of Henry, the film's jilted husband, Jordan replies, "I needed a strong and incredibly subtle actor for that. It's not an attractive...
...Jordan not only directed The End of the Affair, but wrote the adaptation of the Greene novel himself. "[The novel] has a combination of eroticism and spirituality I thought was fascinating" The themes that he explored through this love affair--he pushed the idea of commitment, and the idea of possession, and the idea of affection to such an extreme that you can touch on other areas that love stories don't often touch on. [Greene is] a great novelist of character, and he's kind of pitiless-he observes them at their worst and their best...