Peter Weir's adaptation of Joan Lindsay's novel worked superbly because of its contradictions and subtlety - genteel young society ladies in a finishing school on the untamed borders of the Australian Bush, guileless and innocent, their sexuality and sexualisation perceived variously through the contrasting filters of their bitter, repressed Headmistress and the barely co-ordinated adolescent infatuation of two young male onlookers. Nothing is resolved at the end of the tale, the cause of the girls disappearance is not explained, and though though atmosphere and symbolism hint at a possible supernatural causality , details are ambiguously rendered - the explanation may be mundane - but we will never know. Insinuation and suggestion create one of the most haunting mysteries in cinema precisely because of the lack of detail.
Given the unique appeal of the original novel and movie, one has to ask why Amazon bothered to adapt the story in such an unsubtle, bastardised form. the guileless girls are now worldly little madams, their sexuality more explicitly rendered, and everyone HAS to have a secret past.
Rachel Roberts was so effective as the monstrous Headmistress precisely because the reasons for her cruelty and bitterness were not explored: they are an incidental detail in a much larger drama. Here Natalie Dormer - a fine actress who deserves better - has hidden motives and a shady past which I fear will become a driving force in the narrative. And, of course, in keeping with the sledge-hammer subtlety of the show, she too is over-sexualised. Similarly Miranda, the 'Botticelli Angel' in the original is a cypher - all things to all people, and an idealised object of inexplicable fascination to all. Here the writers lazy spoon-feeding of salacious detail to keep audiences interested (because clearly we won't stay watching otherwise) shas her as a tomboy and a troublemaker, running off into the woods and pi***ing in a bowl to tick-off her prissy Bible Studies teacher, and the subject of an attempted rape...all within the first half hour.
I've heard arguments that these major conceptual changes are intended to give the key female characters emotional and psychological depth. Really? Then why is their interpretation so firmly hooked on their sexual representation? Lazy and cynical.
Unsubtle. Obvious. A shoddy and cynical appropriation of a classic story by people who clearly did not understand what made that story so enduring and effective.
That said, it is beautifully shot. Though the cinematography lacks the ethereal quality of the '70s movie, it all looks quite splendid. Pity about everything else.
Given the unique appeal of the original novel and movie, one has to ask why Amazon bothered to adapt the story in such an unsubtle, bastardised form. the guileless girls are now worldly little madams, their sexuality more explicitly rendered, and everyone HAS to have a secret past.
Rachel Roberts was so effective as the monstrous Headmistress precisely because the reasons for her cruelty and bitterness were not explored: they are an incidental detail in a much larger drama. Here Natalie Dormer - a fine actress who deserves better - has hidden motives and a shady past which I fear will become a driving force in the narrative. And, of course, in keeping with the sledge-hammer subtlety of the show, she too is over-sexualised. Similarly Miranda, the 'Botticelli Angel' in the original is a cypher - all things to all people, and an idealised object of inexplicable fascination to all. Here the writers lazy spoon-feeding of salacious detail to keep audiences interested (because clearly we won't stay watching otherwise) shas her as a tomboy and a troublemaker, running off into the woods and pi***ing in a bowl to tick-off her prissy Bible Studies teacher, and the subject of an attempted rape...all within the first half hour.
I've heard arguments that these major conceptual changes are intended to give the key female characters emotional and psychological depth. Really? Then why is their interpretation so firmly hooked on their sexual representation? Lazy and cynical.
Unsubtle. Obvious. A shoddy and cynical appropriation of a classic story by people who clearly did not understand what made that story so enduring and effective.
That said, it is beautifully shot. Though the cinematography lacks the ethereal quality of the '70s movie, it all looks quite splendid. Pity about everything else.