MovieChat Forums > Oscar and Lucinda (1997) Discussion > What did you think of the ending being d...

What did you think of the ending being different from the book?

posted 11 years ago by celavie77
15 replies | jump to latest

Personally, I think I really preferred the movie ending. I thought it was a much more emotionally satisfying one considering Lucinda's character. In the book, and the movie, despite how the book is advertised, she really never had that same passion for labour and women's emancipation that her mother did. All she ever wanted was a laughing home and family. In the movie she got that. I totally see where Peter Carey was coming from in the ending, and that ending gave her life enormous meaning to the Labour movement and everything, but I just felt that the movie ending was a truer ending to the happiness of the character. I like that they were different. They feel almost like supplements to each other, and I'm glad that there are two endings.

I also loved the final scene of the father and son racing off in the motor boat!

[–] the sphynx 11 years ago

I am of two minds about it.

The book's ending was more logical and consistent. Lucinda felt guilty that she had inherited all that money she didn't want, in exchange for the homestead she desperately wanted to keep. Hence the bet. If she lost, she would give Oscar everything--but that was what she wanted to do anyway. In contrast to Oscar, who gambled chiefly to win for the sake of charity, Lucinda gambled because she WANTED to lose. Oscar having died right after winning the bet, Lucinda was free of her guilt and burden at last, and Oscar's lineage inherited it all.

On the other hand, since Lucinda's guilt was imperfectly conveyed by the movie, and since audiences would probably have risen up to burn the celluloid and/or lynch the director if she had ended up penniless and childless onscreen, the movie ending is good too--and avoids apparently rewarding Miriam for being such a manipulative bitch.

[–] celavie77 11 years ago

I don't agree that Lucinda losing her inheritance because she was guilty is necessarily logical, though it is convenient. I think logically it doesn't make much sense for such a ludicrous arrangement to take place or for the courts to uphold that legal document in the first place; in real life I think an argument that it wasn't made in good faith or was based in some inherent reduction in mental faculties due to both Oscar and Lucinda's gambling issues, or some other argument, would have gotten the document thrown out.

I agree though that overall it does link to her character in the way that you're talking about, I just also think that Lucinda could have or should have been liberated from her guilt in some other way.

I think it would have been hard to convey Lucinda's guilt without adding unnecessarily wordy lines, but yes I do agree that the guilt was not conveyed, though i think that was actually the point and that it ultimately led to an overall coherent film with the ending. Even so, I still think the movie ending lined up with the book quite well too, because the one dream I felt Lucinda truly had was simply to have a loud and happy home, and she got that in the movie. I'm so glad I watched the movie because of that; it feels like such a healthy supplement. And thankfully Peter Carey liked it too!

Anyway, glad to see someone else watched the movie and read the book too! I'm so happy actually. Thanks for responding! I'm thinking of re-reading it again; it's just such an incredibly detailed book there are so many things that feel new when you read the words again.

A kind of weird question, but what did you think of the mentions of money in the book? Do you by any chance know how much 10 thousand pounds was back then? I remember Lucinda said she wanted to invest half in the glass factory, and that everyone seemed to be astonished by it, and that she had "more than ten thousand pounds," but later in the book, after the wager, it's mentioned the she still had 10 thousand pounds, and Mr. D'Abbs is said to have that much too. But then Mr. Stratton is said to make three thousand pounds a year, so ten thousand can't be that much if Mr. Stratton is poor and makes nearly a third of Lucinda's fortune in a year. It's such a specific amount and I've always wondered and never had anyone to talk about it with, let alone an articulate person who read the book so closely!

[–] the sphynx 11 years ago

Oh, I HAD to read the book after I saw the film. It was such a rich experience the first time, and yet I still felt I had missed out on some crucial connective tissue or explanations that would help it make more sense. And then I loved the book too, and was glad to have experienced that also.

Now, I've only read the book once, and have seen the film about four times; but I do not recall the Reverend Stratton's income being named, only that he was poor--and three thousand a year would NOT have been poor then. I'd say you would have a fair minimum on the dollar amounts if you multiply them all by twenty. Anyway, I located a searchable PDF of the book and there is only one use of the phrase "three thousand", and it concerns the height of a mountain. Can you look again to see where Carey says how much Stratton gets per annum?

In Jane Austen's books, set some fifty years before, ten thousand pounds was a very respectable dowry, and the words of Lucinda's older friends confirm that was still the case when her mother's lands were sold against her will. When classic novels of that era mentioned the income on annuities, it was generally five percent, so ten thousand would have brought five hundred a year in income. Surely Stratton had nothing like six times Lucinda's fortune, or he never would have felt the pinch of poverty or the compulsion to get Oscar's gambling secrets to try to increase what little he had.

I'm sure people were startled that a woman had so much money in her own name, but I think they were equally startled that Lucinda was so open and guileless about blurting out the amount! :)

[–] celavie77 11 years ago

AHA I misremembered. It was actually Oscar who had the income and it was three HUNDRED pounds a year. I was wondering what was up that! Just some misremembering.

But even that still comes up as over half as much as Lucinda's annuity income right? And Lucinda was always depicted as jaw-droppingly wealthy. I guess the difference was partly that Lucinda also had twenty times as much in the bank to fall back on just in case, and could make big purchases as a result, and I guess Mr. Stratton depended on that income alone. But still, it does seem odd. Maybe it was just some mistake? Still a wonderful book lol.

I do remember some of the money mentions in Jane Austen. I remember Emma had thirty thousand pounds and was extremely wealthy, and I think Mr Darcy had an income of ten thousand pounds a year and Bingley had four thousand, and I think the annuity income was mentioned as 4% and they both had total fortunes over 100,000. But in Sense and Sensibility I remember Mr. Dashwood's step family was in dire straits with an income of 500 pounds a year, but of course that was a whole family. On the other hand, Australia was different than England, and another way of looking at it is comparing the average earnings in the 1800s, which apparently was £21.58 annually in England. So £10,000 would be 463 times that and over 12 million pounds.

I'm sure people were startled that a woman had so much money in her own name, but I think they were equally startled that Lucinda was so open and guileless about blurting out the amount! :)

LOL I agree. It's ironic, but today that would certainly be very unusual, so I guess proprieties have just changed and not gone away.

[–] the sphynx 11 years ago

I don't recall Oscar's income being mentioned, but if it was from the short-lived post as an Anglican minister in Australia, then he only had it for a few months, perhaps. (Are you sure you're not confusing him with the Reverend Hassett?) Or if Oscar earned about 300 pounds a year from gambling, that still is not as secure by a long shot as someone who gets 500 pounds a year from invested assets, just for breathing, and always has the assets to draw on in a pinch. The latter is clearly much wealthier.

To get back to the original topic: I freely forgive the movie for having ended differently from the book, but do feel it went a little off the rails after ninety minutes or so. The fifteen-minute journey sequence with Richard Roxburgh's character is way out of proportion to its impact in the book, and feels quite PC and out of character with the rest of this lovely piece. What say you?

[–] celavie77 11 years ago

If you look at the pdf I think you'll find it, if you search "three hundred pounds" or just pounds and keep clicking until the end. It was definitely concerning Oscar's income and it was a set income given by the Church, not his gambling income which he always gave away. I guess it could also be indicative of how rich and kind of corrupt the Church was back then that an Anglican minister would be able to have such an income.

I wouldn't say it went off-the-rails, mostly because I think that journey sequence was quite intense and almost begged to be skimmed through in the book. I think that in the translation to film the people involved probably realized that that sequence is just very different tonally from the rest of the story and probably wanted to maintain their own idea of cohesion by reducing it to fifteen minutes and such.

[–] the sphynx 11 years ago

Yes, I see now that he had three hundred pounds and a house while being an Anglican minister in New South Wales (which didn't last long because of the scandalous gap between his anti-gambling preaching and his private behavior). I'm guessing it wasn't easy to lure people to Australia then, so the wages would be premium, as they were for a friend of mine who worked in isolated stations on the DEW Line near the Arctic in the 1980s. Certainly the Anglican minister Stratton did not seem to be overpaid.

But "reducing it to fifteen minutes"? That section of the journey takes up just thirty pages out of 432. If it were proportional, the filmed segment would be nine minutes long. It's eventful and cinematic, so they understandably give it more time. But I had to go back to the book just now to confirm that the murders of the natives and Jeffries was in the source material and not added by the screenwriter. So perhaps it is my faulty memory. I definitely feel even now that the brief implication that the sobbing native woman in the tavern was being virtually gang-raped was totally not in the book. That was very PC indeed.

[–] celavie77 11 years ago

OH sorry, I thought you took issue with it being too short compared to the book! I actually skimmed through that section in the book so I kind of think I blew it up as being longer than it was, and I fast-forwarded through it for the movie because I think I had the same problem you had, that it was too long and possibly PC and took away from the movie. So I'm just misremembering again. Yeah, I wish they just turned it into a kind of dream-y sequence with some fast images and zipped through that section because it wasn't really core to the story and probably took away from the kind of happy, beautiful ending.

And yeah I guess that does make sense that there had to be incentives for clergymen going to Australia. That's really interesting about your friend working near the Arctic! Was there like a community there or anything? Were they working in any country's territory in particular, or for a country?

[–] the sphynx 11 years ago

I suppose the sequence was important to the story in terms of adding to Oscar's enormous cumulative feelings of guilt and unworthiness and need for expiation of his sins. Just seems unnecessary, what with his guilt over contributing majorly to Stratton's death and everything else. (The Fish subplot was regrettably dropped from the movie, so we missed the sideshow of his trying to come to Australia and rejoin his friend Oscar. However, in the book, Fish sends a letter about breaking his engagement to the bishop's daughter and feeling he was far too worldly in comparison to the Odd Bod. "Had Oscar read this letter he would have held himself responsible for the broken engagement. But if blame was a commodity like eggs or butter, he already had more than he could safely carry. And even while he prayed to God to ease his burden, he cast around for more to pick up and carry.") But then, it did help create the situation where they had far too much stuff for the few remaining people to transport over land on the final leg of the journey. And who that loved "Oscar and Lucinda" can possibly regret whatever resulted in that glorious culminating sequence of Oscar sailing fearfully down the river to Bellingen in the madly impractical glass church?

The Distant Early Warning Line (DEW Line) was an artifact of the Cold War, set up by Canada and the US (I think) to watch for missiles coming from the USSR. There were a few dozen outposts of various sizes, none larger than about 100 people I believe, and people were cycled in and out of them for a few months at a time. It was understandably dismantled around 1994, and there was enough of a community among the people that they have at least one website of pictures and reminiscences and to show where they have gone.

[–] reaseltbim 8 years ago

can you tell me how the book ends

[–] the sphynx 7 years ago

**SPOILERS** (for both book and movie) It's been a while since I read it. But they established that the baby was Oscar's and therefore inherited all of Lucinda's wealth, because of the wager. Which actually sort of suited Lucinda psychologically, since she didn't want the money in the first place, only the farm, and also felt guilty about having so much. But the baby also stayed with the scheming widow. So there was no happyish ending in the book of Lucinda raising her beloved Oscar's child, with or without money. I suspect the director felt the real ending would be too much of a downer for most film audiences to swallow.

[–] Flora_Poste 7 years ago

It's been a while since I read it, too, but in the book, it's Miriam, Oscar's heir, who inherits all of Lucinda's wealth, as a result of their posting the marriage banns and changing their wills on the last day of Oscar's life. In the book, Oscar wins the wager, engages himself to Miriam, changes his will to name her as his beneficiary, and dies all on the same day, so Miriam inherits Lucinda's fortune as Oscar's legal heir. Nobody (not even Miriam) knows anything about her pregnancy at the time she inherits the estate.

In a way, though, Oscar's son does inherit the money, eventually, after Miriam dies. But I recall that, in the book, Miriam lives to be an old woman.

In the movie, Oscar parts from Miriam after she "compromises" him and goes straight to sit in the glass church. He considers himself engaged to Miriam, but there is no posting of the marriage banns and changing of the wills before he dies. Also in the movie, the Reverend Hassett destroys the wager document before Miriam ever learns of it, and Miriam is then conveniently killed off in childbirth.

Two radically different endings:

The novel - Miriam inherits everything, styles herself Mrs. Hopkins, raises Oscar's son, and dies an old, rich woman. Lucinda is left penniless and becomes a common laborer in a factory.

The movie - Miriam inherits nothing, dies in childbirth, and Lucinda gets to raise Oscar's son with her fortune intact.

I'd say somebody involved wanted the movie to end on a positive note.

[–] the sphynx 7 years ago

Your memory is better than mine. You are correct: Miriam inherits immediately, as Oscar's widow, and raises the child.

But yes, they must have decided the book's ending was way too much of a downer to fly with movie audiences. Even as it is, the movie's a beautiful little sleeper, nowhere near as well known as it deserves to be, given the cast and exquisite execution.

[–] Flora_Poste 7 years ago

I agree, it's a real gem, with so many wonderful performances. A real labor of love.

[–] the sphynx 7 years ago

The first couple of minutes, with the eerie, swelling Thomas Newman theme music and the church mysteriously floating across the landscape, are worth the price of admission all by themselves. I never tire of that sequence.

And that's long before Blanchett and Fiennes appear.