"The first cut of Fugitive Pieces was a bit of a downer for audiences, says its writer/director. So it has been recut with a happy ending, digressing from the Anne Michaels novel."
Source: Playback
http://www.playbackonline.ca/articles/daily/20080410/pieces.html
Is it possible that all those years directing television didn't strengthen Podeswa's artistic integrity one bit? ;)
I'm sorry, I can't read the whole thing (subscription). I'm sure it's not what you think. It will be as in Atonement perhaps. A positive image in the end. I wouldn't object.
shareHi Clifton-K ..
Try this link to a Canadian paper. Same story . Good article:)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080429.wfugitive29/EmailBNStory/Entertainment/>;
But I still think that Robert Lantos may have had a hand in this change ??
This was shocking! We saw it at the Vancouver International Film festival with the correct ending. We just saw the film again as it opened in National theaters. What a shock, it completely changes the film. I was very disappointed in this choice.
share[deleted]
I just saw it on EPIX and I loved it. I did not know that I saw the "alternate" ending. Anyone want to tell me about it? You may send a personal e-mail if you want.
vince
I wouldn't say the ending is happy. Just ambiguous. In general, I don't believe in messing with the ending but quite honestly, I don't think I could have survived the movie without the change.
shareI hadn't read the book, but having just seen the movie, this makes a lot of sense. It's really too bad--because by closing on a sort of all-is-well note the movie actually dissipates some of its strong earlier impact. It's not that it's a "bad" ending, exactly, it just feels soft and somewhat unconvincing after so much more powerful material. I wonder, was this Podeswa's choice or did the producers force it on him? I couldn't read that Globe & Mail news article either without paying for it. Somebody want to cut 'n' paste excerpts?
shareSorry the link did not work. It did when it was emailed to me ? Maybe it "timed out" or something ? Or maybe it only works when a subscriber sends it to you ?
shareCan anyone who saw it in its earlier form say exactly what happened at the end?
shareMAJOR SPOILERS ABOUT THE BOOK AND ORIGINAL CUT
In the book... Jakob and Michaela are planning life together... in the final cut you see her leaving a note on their bed in which she says they should name their child Bela or Bella... they subsequently take a trip to Athens in March 1993 and are both killed in an accident.
The novel then switches to a second book from BENs perspective and echoes Jakobs life.... he leaves Naomi and goes to follow Jakobs journey from Poland to Greece, picks up a trivial woman, Petra, who is similar to Alex along the way, sees Athos' house and then goes to Jakob and Michaelas place and finds the unopened note about naming their child... He observes Jakobs house and writings like a shrine. One morning he wakes to find Petra has immaturely ransacked the place looking through Jakobs writing, they have a blowout and she leaves in anger.
Ben tries to replace Jakobs books and life in all the right places, then leaves to go back to Naomi, from his journey with Jakob, now knowing that "I see that I must give what I most need"
In the original movie Jakob and Michela are hit by a truck and killed and it ends, I don't believe from any of the coverage I've read or the DVD deleted scenes that they attempted any of the second book.
On the DVD, Anne Michaels commentary is very complementary to the film and supports the positive ending but at the same time infers that it's obvious that Jakob dies as is stated on the first page of the book.
So I far prefer the final cut as leaving a little respite from the melancholy even though such melancholy is, oh, so sweet.
Overall, it's a fantastic piece of writing... one of my favorite books ever, and the movie in either cut does it justice... a very satisfying experience.
Thanks for your post. Now I know what the debate is about. I saw the ending that deviated from the book and original film ending. However, I don't consider the ending I saw as happy. The final scene was a very quick shot of Michaela and that was it. I thought that meant they both died.
Of course I don't expect happy endings any longer unless the film is from Hollywood or a comedy. I guess I projected my own indie film (the meaning here is anything other than Hollywood!) watching experiences onto this ending.
..."We're just human beings. You know, YOU think you're God." "I gotta model myself after someone."
I have not had a chance to read the novel yet, perhaps I will in the future. I do not necessarily see a movie and then feel like I need to read the novel, or viceversa, it entirely depends on the novel or the film and some other factors I will not enumerate here.
Judging the movie itself, I found it to be a well crafted piece of cinema. This year has been horrendous for movies, the worst of the past five or more, as it seems that every year the bar for a what a movie is and should be gets set lower and lower, with quality and intelligence and even genunine thrills and entertaiment, being replaced by superficial, dumbded-down and meaningless fluff, movies which exude nothing but humiliation, meanness and all other manner of what passes for today as attention-grabbing gimmicks.
Jeremy Podeswa (whose own father is a Holocaust survivor if I'm correct in assuming) does an admirable job in managing to maintain a certain literary feel to the movie, a kind of visual novelization of the story itself. As I mentioned I have not read the novel so I have no basis to weigh in as to whether this movie does the book justice or if the novel measures-up to the movie.
Yet on the basis of having seen the movie, I thought it was well acted, very sad and melancholic and haunting. While I like the entire cast, I really must mention Ayelet Zurer who for my money is a great actress, and a very beautiful and sensual woman, one that has a certain aura of mistery and intrigue about her.
"Fugitive Pieces" was, in my mind, a wonderful insight into survivor guilt (a topic which I can identify with though not to the extent and themes expressed in the movie), wrestling with one's demons and coming to an understanting with oneself, letting go of all self-imposed burdens and hardships and making peace with oneself and the world around in order to go on living.
As for this issue of a happy ending, I didn't think that the movie sugarcoated the issues it touched upon, I think that there was no guarantee in the end that everything was going to be peachy and perfect. I for one didn't see a rosy outcome. The only thing that the movie concluded with was the promise of a brighter future or a better tomorrow if you will, one that was brought upon by the fact that Jacob finally learned to let go of the ghosts in his past (i.e. his sister Bella and his parents) thus allowing them to rest in peace and him to move forward. Everything came into focus through his love, as total and complete as possible coming from a person damaged and traumatized as he was, for this woman, Michaela, whom he considered an unexpected gift. Another push came through his motivation to leave his story to be told by his "upcoming" child (boy or girl, however I am not sure if the movie made it clear if she was pregnant already).
Yet Jacob's issues don't get magically solved nor does everything wrap-up neatly in a typical Hollywood happy-ending. We are left to wonder what will happen with him and all the people in his life. Another thing to ponder is also the fact that he realized that it will fall to others to tell his story and the story of the countless who perished or survived in/the Holocaust. Due to that fact that he had been so close to those horrendous events rendered him unable to really tell the story...even he says that whenever he was dreaming of his sister, or saw her ghost he always misunderstood the message, which wasn't "hold on", but rather "let go".
That is all I have to say, and it is too much already. This was a good movie overall and definitely one of the movies of the year already.
"Today is the tomorrow I was so worried about yesterday"--Anthony Hopkins
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Haven't read the book but did of course view the movie with the altered ending. Now it all makes sense as to why the last portion of the movie felt a bit out of place.
I do believe in love-at-first-sight but the Jakob/Michaela thing seemed a bit forced in the beginning. But I hand it to the great acting of Stephen Dillane and Ayelet Zurer (who has quickly become my favorite actress right after Cate Blanchett), who actually made their love seem palatable in the latter scenes.
Unfortunately the DVD that I purchased does not have the original ending in the Deleted Scenes, would have loved to see it.