Can anyone tell me how the movie compares to the the Conrad novel. I enjoy watching film versions of classic novels that i have read and was just wondering how this one stacks up.
shareDidnt watch the movie, but the book is a master piece in literature, its considered the best of Conrad.
shareI watched this movie for the first time only a few months after having read the book. At that time, I didn't like the movie because I thought that it made too many changes regarding the book.
The second time I watch this film -about ten years after the first time- I enjoyed it very much because I realised that -despite the changes- the movie respects the "soul" of the book: the thinking of the characters and the vision of human nature.
Yes, the book is a masterpiece but the film is worth to see it.
Sorry if my english isn't enough good.
Thanks for letting me know. I am having a very difficult time in getting through the novel. I have set it down three times now to read a different book. This is my first Conrad work and hope his others will be more to my liking.
shareThe problem with "Lord Jim" is that the first part of book demands an effort from the reader. But don't give up, this efford is rewarded in the second half.
After "Lord Jim", I recommend you "Nostromo", which is as good as "Lord Jim". Good luck.
Hi and I can see why you might find Lord Jim hard to get into because of the structure, the way the story is presented and unfolds -- some might find an element of Conrad's method there as placing impediments in the reader's path. He really gives you a workout, doesn't he? I was just a teenager when I was reading Conrad and loved Lord Jim in every possible way and was undaunted by his barriers to instant gratification; rather I quite enjoyed them. But I was very very young then (a great time to tackle daunting novels) and only wish I'd tried Bleak House at the time as I'd have just skipped over the J&J stuff at the beginning until I found the story whereas when I tried to read it (so many times) as an adult I just got bogged down at the beginning because I was stubbornly determined to understand what J&J was all about before proceeding. (Thank goodness for Masterpiece Theater at least insofar as an aid to getting into Bleak House, the novel, goes.) But getting back to Conrad, and reading him in my teens, it wasn't all a picnic for me. I found his probably two most famous and beloved works thoroughly impenetrable, i.e., *Heart of Darkness* and (recommended by another to you) *Nostromo* and have never had any desire to try them again. However, I read all his other novels and the three I'd recommend to you to choose one from are quite accessible and great tales too (or so I found them way back when). They are: CHANCE; OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS; and, VICTORY. His short stories are terrific too, especially if you're of a sea-faring bent (one marvelous thing about reading Conrad is he's proof that one may be of, or develop, such bent and never go near the water) and if you can find a collection of them with one entitled something along the lines of "When God Laughs" (which takes place on dry land) do try and pick that up because it's a really wicked and fun story.
shareRead "Heart of Darknes", it's short and really gives you a feel for Conrad. All his books are worth the effort, they haunt you.
shareCool. Thanks for putting this out there. It's a great book.
share
I've never been able to finish Lord Jim. It's confusing as hell and the narrative (like the movie) rambles. I do think Conrad is a great writer though. I love the short stories.. Heart of Darkness, the Secret Sharer , and Typhoon are all terrific.
Interesting, I read "Heart of Darkness". Although I enjoyed some phrasing used by Conrad, overall I found HOD quite tedious. This was after watching and enjoying "Apocalypse Now".
I haven't read "Lord Jim" so can't comment completely on the original question other than to say that I did enjoy the movie.
Hey, nobody has yet really compared the novel and the movie here!
The thing that really makes me giggle is the opening of the movie, with the flashing of lightning on a map of Asia while Jack Hawkins' voice, as Marlow, intones "Joseph Conrad wrote: to know the age of the Earth look upon a storm at sea." How ridiculous is that? Marlow was a frequently used stand-in for Conrad as a narrator... to put a quote of Conrad's in Marlow's mouth is kinda like having Gandolf in Lord of The Rings state "Well, as Tolkien used to say..."
Anyway, the movie is waaay dated. The story, heavily boiled-down from Conrad's superfluous prose, comes across as overly sentimental and melodramatic. Conrad, were he alive, would have detested the way they broke down his non-linear narrative to turn it into a straight chain of events. Jim's story becomes much less compelling when it is presented as it is in the first half of the movie: a string of vignettes narrated by Marlow's voice-over. As often happens in film adaptations, minor characters are condensed. Several of Jim's benefactors are merged in Stein, and Stein's own back story is transplanted to having occured in Patusan. The character of Schomberg, who only appears in one line in the novel, is greatly enlarged in the film (by borrowing from other appearances of Schomberg in other Conrad tales). So too enlarged is the town of Batu Kring which shifts from being a ragged fishing village in the novel to a major port with rail access in the movie.
Before I leave Stein, it should be noted that in the novel Marlow introduces Jim to Stein while in the movie Marlow is unsatisfactorily dumped out of the film after Jim loses his certificate at the hearing (almost precisely at the point in the novel where Marlow becomes a major figure in Jim's life). Without Marlow, the film contrives Jim's introduction to Stein via a ridiculous scene where Jim puts out a fire on a boat with Stein's gunpowder on board while Stein watches in breathless anticipation. Then the movie borrows from Conrad's Nostromo and casts Jim as a gunrunner bringing powder and rifles to the natives of Patusan. In the novel Jim brings nothing to Patusan but himself and a revolver (a gift of Marlow's) which he has neglected to load. Patusan in the novel is located in Malaysia and the population is largely Muslim. In the movie, being 1965 with the Vietnam War escalating, Patusan is deftly inserted in Southeast Asia and the population made Buddhist. In the novel, there is a somewhat complex divided political situation in Patusan. In the movie they transplant a version of Kurtz from Conrad's Heart of Darkness and he becomes Eli Wallach's warlord character who rules Patusan with an iron fist. In the novel Jim gets bored of being detained by the idiotic local Rajah and jumps the tumbledown fence... in the movie it is an elaborately-staged breakout.
The Girl and Cornelius are about the same in both the book and movie... except the movie makes both much more active than they are in the book. The book makes passing reference to Jim's leading the Patusan rebellion... the film dwells on it in loving detail. In the book Marlow visits Jim in Patusan... in the movie it is Stein. The details of Brown's arrival and actions are also different between the movie and the book.
A big difference in the book and movie is that in the book Jim is frequently described as being dressed head to toe in gleaming white while in Patusan- as if to comment on his being literally "spotless" in his new incarnation. In the movie, however, Jim is portayed as clinging to his increasingly worn and patched Merchant Marine uniform... an effective visual of him literally carrying the shame of his past on his shoulders.
The biggest, most important difference comes at the very end. *BIG SPOILERS AHEAD*
In the book the character of the Girl is intensely jealous of Jim's presence and is terrified that something from his world will come and call him away and early in the Patusan part of the film the Girl expresses the same concern. At the end of the novel, when Jim walks into the monstrously obese Doramin's campong to be shot, the girl yells after him that he has betrayed her and has lied to her. Marlow later finds her at Stein's residence and she is beside herself and cannot comprehend why Jim died. In the movie, the Girl takes an Eastern philosphy tack and speaks of the wonder of souls being reincarnated, and smiles at the end when Jim's funeral pyre burns. This change in treatment of the girl, from an innocent who can't understand why she is made to suffer to her being a contempletive Buddhist, profoundly serene in her unflagging support for Jim and his honour, could be the subject for much discussion.
A fantastic post by Alan Smithee, but I freely admit to being a Neanderthal. I found the movies Lord Jim by Brookes, Last of the Mohicans by Mann, and The Count of Monte Cristo by Reynolds to be very fine films compared to slogging away through the same convoluted "classics" by Conrad, Cooper, and Dumas.
shareI found the movies Lord Jim by Brookes, Last of the Mohicans by Mann, and The Count of Monte Cristo by Reynolds to be very fine films compared to slogging away through the same convoluted "classics" by Conrad, Cooper, and Dumas.
It's not a problem for me at all since I clearly stated that "I found the movies..."
I read Cooper's The Deerslayer and my opinion of it is even lower than Mark Twain's. I'll never waste anymore of my time reading Cooper.
I've read Lord Jim twice, and disliked it even more the second time. I think Conrad's subject matter is fascinating, but I'm not a huge fan of his convoluted writing, although my second favorite movie is a film adaptation of his short story The Duellists.
I don't need to see The Grapes of Wrath on film because I loved the book and have read it several times along with most of Steinbeck's other stuff. Personally, I didn't care for the movie -- Henry Fonda, et al. or no.
Dickens I can take or leave, and I've read Great Expectations. I didn't know Lean had done film adaptations of it and Oliver Twist so thanks. I like some of Lean's films a lot, including Lawrence of Arabia which is my favorite movie -- not that it "honors" T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom because of all the historical inaccuracies. But that's okay, because again, I disliked Lawrence's needlessly complex writing style.
Haven't seen the original Brighton Rock but like Richard Attenborough, so I'll keep it in mind.
As far as The Count of Monte Cristo, I don't care if the latest film adaptation is "execrable" or not compared to the novel because I enjoyed the movie and didn't like what little I read of Dumas' book.
"I told you it was off." The Jackal
"Dickens I can take or leave." Let me recommend the 2005 television adaptation of Bleak House, commercially available. Although the massive novel is necessarily condensed, with some of its sprawling subplots truncated or omitted, it is nevertheless a remarkably faithful translation to the visual medium.
Judging from the books you like and those you don't, it sounds as though you haven't much patience for either structural or stylistic complexity. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm left wondering which novels or authors in the Western canon (the term excluding, that is, the oeuvres of Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel et al) meet with your approval.
Thanks for recommending the Bleak House adaptation. I'll make a note to watch it along with Lean's Oliver Twist.
My exposure to "Western Canon" has been fairly broad, but I really don't care for most of it. The oeuvres of the authors you mentioned I have not read.
My favorite author is Hemingway, and I'm pretty sure I've read everything of his that's ever been published except for his poetry, which I don't think even he thought was very good. I've also now finished all the novels that Steinbeck ever wrote. He comes in a distant second, but still very good.
But none of that really matters either because that's only what I personally like and not what I approve of. I don't try to impose my personal tastes on anyone. That, I leave to others.
"We all got it comin', Kid." Unforgiven (1992)
I don't agree with your every point, but a damned good job. Sounds like you WROTE the screenplay!
shareGood summation however, the single most important difference is that in the novel Jim and the crew abandon the Patna Queen in a dead calm while in the movie, as I remember, it's in the middle of a huge storm at sea.
shareMy memory of the book is a bit hazy but ... the character of Stein was watered down in the film and did not radiate the same charisma as the written character. It is Stein and not Jim who is the real star of the novel.
ncidentally when I first read Lord Jim I found the beginning quite boring. I woke up during Jim's trial and thereafter was gripped. Subsequent reads make the beginning easier as one understands how it fits and can perceive the foreshadowing that Conrad lays for Jim and indeed all his characters.
The distance is nothing. The first step is the hardest.share
Joseph Conrad can be difficult; I took "Lord Jim" along on a vacation, quit reading after 100 pages, bought the Cliff's Notes, and then tackled it again. I'll say that although it's worth plodding through, I prefer "Nostromo," "The Heart of Darkness," "The Secret Agent" and (my favorite) "Victory." I love the movie of "Victory." Alfred Hitchcock's "Sabotage" is an excellent version of "The Secret Agent."
The movie of "Lord Jim" is mostly a bummer. It's too long and confusing. Peter O'Toole is essentially replaying the role of Lawrence of Arabia. Seek out the movie "Victory" or "Sabotage" instead.
I've seen Sabotage and rate it highly. In fact I preferred it to the book but will give the latter a try another time. Not read Victory. Nostromo is my favourite of Conrad's that I've read, followed by Lord Jim. The character of Stein was to die-for in the book as was Dr Monygham in Nostromo.
The Lord Jim film is pretty poor.
He kicked me right in the middle of my daily routineshare